CORRESPONDENCE.

A SURVEY OF ENGLISH PLACE-NAMES.

fifADABI,-h the October number of HISTORY Professor Stenton, in a " Historical Revision " on the Study of Place-names, foie- shadowed the possibility of a Survey of English Place-names which should attempt to deal with that problem as a whole and endeavour to satisfy tlic requirements not only of the philologist, but also of the historian, archaeologist, topographer and all those scholarly interests which have a right to be heard in any serious attempt to solve the problems of our place-nomenclature and to draw from them all that wealth of historical and cultural lorc which is latent in them.

Such a Survey is now in being. The need for it was urged by Dr. Round some twenty Twelve months ago it was revived in a paper read be 9 ore the British Academy. The Academy appointed an expert committee of inquiry to look into the question, under the chairmanship of Dr. Henry Bradley, the doyen of these studies in this country, and on their recommendation the Academy gave its cordial approval to the idea of such a Survey and promised help in certain directions if i t were undertaken. It was only with great reluctance that they found themselves unablc to give that financial help which they would have wished. The Survey was then brought before distinguished scholars both at home and abroad interested in various aspects of place-name study and on all hands was warmly welcomed. Among the historians who thus gave their support may be mentioned Professors Tout and Sir Paul Vinogradoff, Drs. Liebermann and J. H. Round, and among archivists Dr. Wm. Farrer, Canon Foster, Sir Henry Maxwell-Lyte and Mr. A. Hamilton Thompson. Several of these promised and are now giving active help in the Survey. A small advisory committee was then formed, historical interests being represented on it by Professor Tait, who is acting as chairman, and Professor Stenton, who from the first has been untiring in his efforts on behalf of the Survey. Instructions for the gathering of the material, together with illustrative model slips, have been prepared and are now printed. From the outset the promoters of the Survey ham been in close touch with and received much help from the Public Record Office staff and from the Ordnance Survey Department.

The work of the Survey may roughly be divided into two parts :- (i) The collection of material.-This will include the collection not

only of place-name forms from documentary evidence printed and manuscript, but also of all other historical evidence which may throw light on the history of individual names, e. g. names of holders of the land incorporated in or added to the place-name, notes on the history or meaning of the name by the writers of the documents themselves, local legends with regard to the names, archsological remains which may have left their mark in the name itself.

No. 25.-VOL. VII. D

ears ago.

34 HISTORY [APRIL

The collection is being orgaiiised by counties or other convenient areas under the direction of skilled and competent organisers. The Survey has been peculiarly fortunate in arranging within the first two months of its work for the following counties :-

Berkshire . Essex Lincolnshiro

Northamptonshirc . Nottinghamshirc . Somersetshire . Sussex

Yorkshire (North Riding)

Mrs. F. ill, Stenton, University College,

Mr. P. S. Tabor, Evegate, Bocking. The Rev. Canon Poster, Timberland

Miss Joan Wake, 17 Pimlico Road,

Professor L. V. D. Owen, University

Mrs. H. W. V. Temperley, 34 Lensfield

Mr. L. F. Salzman, 14 Brookside,

Reading.

Vicarage, Lincohi.

London, S.W.1.

College, Nottingham.

Road, Cambridge.

Cambridge.

South Cliff, Scarborough. ah. C. J. Battersby, 35 West Street,

Plans for other comities are already in train and in thc meantime individual workers in any district are welcomed.

A prominent feature of the Survey will be the use of unpriiited material, which has hitherto been almost entirely neglected in place- name study. Alread very valuable transcripts have been placed

Hamilton Thompson and Professor Stenton, and many have promised, as they work on new documents, to record for us the place-name material. Professor Stenton also is helping with a very important side of place-name study, viz. Early English personal names. A very cordial welcome will be given to further offers of help in these directions.

(ii) The interpretation of this materiaZ.-This is looking a long way ahead, but the promoters of the Survey hope that perhaps in five years’ time they may have sufficient comparative evidence for the whole of England to enable them, in the case of any county whose material has been collected as completely as is humanly possible, to arrange for the issue of a volume on the place-names of that county. In its authorship it will be their endeavour to secure that co-operation of specialist8 not only in English and the Scandinavian and Celtio languages; but also of historians and others who can alona make it possible for those larger inferences to be drawn which will be of so great service in enabling us to reconstruct the history of tlic mediaeval past. It will also be their endeavour to secure that them volumes by their character and general arrangement shall satisfy not only the requirements of the scholar, but also of teachers of history generally and of that wider public in whom an interest in the meaning of place-names seems to be instinctive.

Branches of the Historical Association have already done great service to the Survey in various parts of the country, and its promoters will be very glad to try to arrange for the Director or some other friend of the Survey to speak about it to any branch of the Association which is interested in the subject. There is a great variety of work to suit a great variety of interest, training and skill. There is probably

at the disposal of t i e Survey by Dr. Farrer, Canon Poster, Mr.

19221 CORRESPONDENCE 35

no member of the Sssociation who is not capable of helping the cause in some way or other. The need of helpers is great, and offers or inquiries will be very gladly entertained by either the local oganisers or by myself.

The three Scandinavian kingdoms have each their Survey, and through them work of the greatest value to the historian has been done and is still being done. England has an incomparably greater wealth of early material, greater than that of any other nation in Western Europe. It is for us to show that we value our proud position in this matter and make the fullest use possible of the material which our forefathers have left us. ALLEN MAWER.

(Director of the Survey.) The University,

Liverpool.

A HERODOTEAN EPISODE IN THX HISTORY OF NOVGOROD. &DAM,-The story of the slaves who took advantage of their

masters’ absence at the wars to marry their masters’ wives and seize the state was already a commonplace of Greek legendary history by the fifth century B.c., and versions of it are connected with Argive history and with the foundation of Tarentum (Avmuul British School at Athens, xvi. 213). It is also told by Herodotus of the Scythiaii invaders of Asia (Herodotus, iv. 1-4). The army was twenty-one years away from Scythia. The wives consorted with the slaves during their husbands’ absence and a new generation had grown up. The slaves and their progeny dug a great ditch from the Tauric Hills to the Maiotic Sea a t its widest point and prepared to dispute the return of their masters. After some inconclusive fighting one of the Scythians suggested putting aside their arms and attacking the slaves with whips. At the sight of these familiar instruments of punish- ment the “ slaves by nature,” as Aristotle would have called them, incontinently ran away. The great ditch mentioned in the story has never been satisfactorily identified; some have thought that it referred to a trench across the Crimea, others that it was an explanation of the origin of the Putrid Sea (see How and Wells, CmmentccPy on Herodotus, Macan and Stein, ad loc.).

Giles Fletcher (Of the Russe Commonwealth, ed. Bond (Hakluyt Soc., 1856), pp. 17-18 ; Hakluyt, Voyages and Travels (Glasgow, 1903), vol. iii. p. 372)) who visited Russia in 1588, was told that this Slave War belonged to the history of Novgorod. Clearly he recognised the Herodotean source, for he speaks of “ the memorable warre so much spoken of in stories of the Scythian servants, that took armes against their masters.” The latter had been long absent on an expedition against the Tartars. Meeting with opposition from the slaves on their return, the masters, “ advising what was best to be done, agreed all to set upon them with no other show of weapon but with their horsewhips (which as their maner is every man rideth withal), to put them in remembrance of their servile condition, thereby to terrifie them and abate their courage. And so marching on and lashing a1 together with their whips in their hands they gave the onset, which seemed so terrible in the eares of their villaines and stroke such a sense into them of the smart of the whip which they had felt before, that they fled altogether like sheepe before the drivers. In memory

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