earliest chapter in the local history of the PLACES to which they severally refer.

"Assuming therefore as axiomatic the significancy of local names, it need hardly be said that in endeavouring to detect the meaning of a geographical name, the first requisite is to discover the language from which the name has been derived. The choice mostly lies within narrow limits— geographical and historical considerations generally confining our choice to the three or four languages which may have been vernacular in the region to which the name belongs. No interpretation of a name can be admitted, however seemingly appropriate, until we have first satisfied ourselves of the historical possibility, not to say probability, of the proposed etymology.

"For example, Lambeth is a Saxon name, meaning the loam hithe, or muddy landing place. We must not, as a Saturday Reviewer has amusingly observed, plume ourselves on the discovery that lama is a Mongolian term for a chief priest, and beth a Semitic word for a house, and thus interpret the name of the place where the primate lives as the house of the chief priest.'" "

I

Or, to quote a local example, we must not be led away, as a recent writer has been, in the derivation of Birkenhead, by the fact that there is an Arabic word, birket, meaning a pool. Or, instead of accepting the more or less prosaic etymology of Hargrave, from the Old-English words meaning "a grey ditch," float into the realms of esoteric Bhuddism and derive it from a Hindoo word meaning "a sacred grove.

While on this subject, it may be as well to draw your attention to the amusing fact that in a recently published memoir of Birkenhead, we find that Holt

I Canon Taylor's Words and Places, p. 311 in fourth edition.

Hill (so named, we had always understood, from the holt or wood that till recent years clothed its summit) is in reality so called because "the army "of Cromwell (sic) was called to halt upon this "eminence." I may add that the name Holt Hill occurs in a document dated 1327.

The next thing to do, I take it, is to ascertain, so far as possible, the earliest documentary form of the name. This having been done, it remains to interpret the name which has been thus recovered. To do this with success requires a knowledge of the ancient grammatical structure and the laws of composition which prevail in the language in which the name is significant-the relative position, for instance, of adjective and substantive, and the usage of prepositions and formative particle.

A slight knowledge, at all events, of the grammatical construction of the Celtic and Teutonic languages is absolutely essential, to prevent one from being led into all sorts of errors.

Having arrived at a probable interpretation of the name in question, we must proceed to test the result. If the name be topographic or descriptive, we must ascertain if it conforms to the physical features of the spot; if, on the other hand, the name be historic in its character, we must satisfy ourselves as to the historic possibility of its bestowal.

I am extremely conscious of my shortcomings in the matter of familiarity with the ancient languages which go to make up our place names, but I think, on the other hand, that I can lay claim to a very fair knowledge of the country-side with which I hope to deal to-night. I do not think there are many field-paths and certainly no roads in North Wirral over which I have not frequently walked, and there are few if any fields in the same district with the names of which I am not familiar; so

where I come short in the one case, I trust that the information which I am able to bring to bear on the other hand will prevent the scale being turned too much against me.

Canon Isaac Taylor remarks somewhere on the wonderful vitality of the original forms in placenames; and adds that they, of all words in a language, are least liable to change. I have been very much impressed with this fact of late, and I am convinced that the difference in the pronunciation of local names between that of a genuine native of Wirral to-day and one living at the time of the Norman conquest would be of the most trifling. description.

The earliest document which refers in detail to Wirral is The Domesday Survey-date about 1086and throughout this paper I shall give the Domesday readings whenever they occur. Following on these, I shall quote from that splendid series of documents published by the Deputy-Keeper of the Public Records-The Plea and Recognizance Rolls of Chester. Though these printed books are not so reliable as original documents, yet for practical purposes I think we may accept their readings; in the hundreds of documents referring to Wirral, that they include, I have only been able to detect two or three trifling errors.

But to approach more closely the subject of this evening's paper.

The Hundred of Wirral is, as you all know, that tongue or promontory of land bounded on the north by the Irish sea and on the east and west by the rivers Mersey and Dee, and joining the rest of Cheshire on the south. It is, roughly speaking, eighteen miles long by seven broad; the coast line is regular, except on the eastern side, where it is broken by several pools, which run for some distance into the land.

We have in the place-names of Wirral traces of the settlement of at least three different races-the Briton, the English, and the Norse. Its peculiar position on the sea-coast makes it in several ways remarkable, and there is special interest attaching to its place-names. Canon Isaac Taylor, in a letter which I recently received from him, says, "I doubt "if there is any district in England more likely to "yield valuable results," and in his well-known book, Words and Places, he devotes some space to dealing with Wirral.

Perhaps the simplest plan to adopt to-night will be to divide the names, so far as is possible, under the three heads-British, English (or Anglo-Saxon) and Norse. I may point out that several writers on this subject have erroneously spoken of this third occupation as Danish. It was not; the Norwegians, though closely allied, were quite distinct from the Danes, who attacked the eastern coast.

Coming then to the first class, we find, as we might expect, that the names of the two streams. in the Hundred can undoubtedly claim a British ancestry.

THE FENDER; a name which is applied both to that sluggish stream which, rising in Newton Carr, flows into Wallasey Pool, and to the stream which, rising beyond Prenton, flows into the same pool.

I take it that the second syllable of this word is the Cymric dwr, meaning water, though I am at a loss to account for the first syllable.

It may be of interest to note that "fender" has become in Wirral a common noun, and the farmers in Moreton and Bidston call all the ditches or drains which run into the central stream "fenders," and I have seen it used in a legal document of this century, where, in speaking of Wallasey Marsh, the document stated that, at high tide (before the docks were made), the water "backed up in the

"fenders or ditches"; and in the Court Rolls of Bidston Manor, frequent mention is made of soand-so being fined for not keeping his fenders clear of mud, etc.

While still on the subject of these two streams, it may be as well to state that I have never discovered the least grounds for the name Birket being applied to either of them. Though the name Fender constantly occurs, I have never once met with the name Birket in any old documents, and I have been told over and over again by farmers in The Meols and Moreton that they never heard it called anything but Fender until within the last few years, and to this day none of the natives would ever call either stream the Birket.

The other stream dignified by bearing a name forms part of the boundary between Wirral and Broxton namely, the Gowy, a still more undoubtedly British name, being simply the Cymric word gwy, meaning water.

Of place-names, we may probably with safety head our list with LANDICAN (Domesday Book, Landechene; fourteenth century documents, Landecon, Lancan, and Lancon), and derive the first syllable, without much fear of contradiction, from the Cymric llan-an enclosure, later, a church. If the second half of the word contain the name of the saint to whom the church was dedicated, I must leave that discovery to some student of British saints.

TRANMERE (in thirteenth century documents Tranmull, Tranmoll, and Tranmoel): the word standing, with very little alteration, for its original British form, Tre-yn-moel, the town on the hill,—a particularly good description of that salubrious neighbourhood. Coming in by train from Chester some evenings ago, as I passed under Tranmere I looked up and saw the cluster of houses at the top of the hill looming out against the evening