it does now. When forest, to a large extent, covered the surface of the land from end to end, clearances had to be made before the soil could be cultivated. These clearances must have received different designations by the different races who inhabited the country: the British inhabitants would call them by one name, it might be maes or cae, or some term equivalent to these; the Norseman would call his clearing a thwaite, while the Dane would term it a rydning, another form of which is our modern rudding. Field was the word used by the Anglo-Saxon for a forest clearance. We need not here enter into the many and various uses of the word, suffice it to say that wood and field were terms frequently contrasted together, wood indicating the part where the trees were still standing, and field the part where they had been felled and a clearance made.

It is well known that in many places the name field adheres to the early forest clearing, even though such clearing has been for generations sub-divided into what we now call fields. There was a good instance of this in my late parish. The Field there was a large tract of ground covering, probably, some hundreds of acres, and some of the older people used always to speak about it as the field, as distinct from the smaller sub-divisions which it contained. And again, in a parish near to that in which I now live, the whole of one farm, consisting of about four hundred acres, goes by the name of New Cote Field.

Now it is interesting to note that in Denmark, with which country the East Riding has in many ways such a close relationship, the word fjeld or field means pretty much what we should term cultivated land. A farm has a large field there, where we should say it had a large acreage, while in Jutland, when they speak about an enclosed piece of land such as we should describe as a field in ordinary English, it is called a fenne. man says, "Jeg har en fenne som hedder Lille-eng "

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(I have a field which is called Little meadow). The land is not of necessity moist or peaty, though it is always divided from the next fenne by trenches rather than by the hedges which are such a special and pleasing feature in our own landscape scenery.

I should add that it is very common to find, among a number of field-names in close proximity, that one of them is called simply the field, probably because it is the only part of the original clearing which still continues to bear the early designation of field.

The distribution of the generic terms which are applied to fields or divisions of the land, is another point that might be followed up, in all likelihood with some interesting results. These are more numerous, perhaps, than is generally supposed. The following are some of those which are to be found in East Yorkshire, and bear marks of the different races who have, in generations long past, tilled the land. Such are-Field, close, garth, croft, pasture (dialect— pastur), ings, acre, ley, rake, gait, flat, bottoms. It is not hard to trace the origin of such names as these, which are either Anglo-Saxon, Norse, Danish, or Norman-French. Take, for instance, such a word as ley, which is so common a suffix in many of our placenames. This term is still commonly applied in parts of the East Riding to pasture land, and might be applied to fields which have specific names besides. Mr. So-and-So's leys is an expression of every day occurrence in some districts, while in others the word would not be known.

Or again, to take the word acre; how entirely has this term lost its earlier meaning. You walk across a farm and are told that the field in which you are standing is called, and always has been called, "t' au'd twenty yakker" (the old twenty acre). Your informant, in giving you the name, thinks that it applies only to the size of the field. It may be now either arable or pasture. But this, and such like names, commonly

betoken that at the time when the name was given to them the land was under the plough. The same thing applies in Denmark. There, ager or acre is not a fixed measure at all, but signifies that portion of land which a ploughman may conveniently plough round, beginning from a certain line. In point of fact these agre vary considerably in size on different farms, some being much longer than others, while the breadth is generally about the same in all cases. The boundary line between any two agre is called a reen, a term particularly interesting to us in East Yorkshire, where the word is still frequently used under the form rein, and generally signifies the ends or edges of fields, commonly overgrown with brushwood, and consequently such as cannot be ploughed. In Icelandic the same word signifies a strip of land.

When we come to the consideration of individual field-names, even within much narrower limits than those of the East Riding, we are at once launched upon a sea of difficulties. When we think that these existing names date from the time of early forest clearings down to the days of some recent occupier, when we think of the different races of men who have left their traces upon the names of the lands they cultivated, and still more when we consider the distortions and corruptions which must have taken place in so many of the original names through a long course of years, it seems almost a hopeless task to attempt to draw any reliable conclusions from a large portion, at all events, of this branch of archæological study. And yet there is so much that may be easily ascertained from a knowledge of many of our fieldnames, and so much more that with tolerable certainty reveals itself upon a closer investigation, that one is led on to hope that still more will, by degrees, be brought to light by those who can give careful attention to the subject in their own immediate neighbourhood. For, as I said, it should be borne in mind that a more

or less accurate knowledge of the physical surroundings both past and present, of many of our fields is necessary in order to determine with any degree of certainty the meaning of their traditional names.

There is not a parish in the Riding where something interesting may not be discovered from a study of its field-names. What we require are competent students to seriously take the matter in hand.

In this parish of Nunburnholme, or immediately contiguous to it, the following field-names occur :Mead Hills, Crathorne Nooks, Ley Garth, Nutt Hills, West Beck Swarth, the Bratts, Lownin Dale, New Briggs, Sudlands Deepdale Brows, Chopping, Rauf Kelds, Tithe Hay, Hanging Flats, East and West Sudlings, High and Low Methills, Morcam Thorn, Morkell, Great Ludhill, No Star, Hunger Hill, Fisher Crofts, Stone How, Long Gow, Whin Cover, Dugdale Garth, High and Low Mosshill, Big and Little Nab, Weazel Hill, Sharp Field, Blanch Field, Scarndale Hill, Far Bushes, Intak, Leng How, Renglings, Coney Garth, Little Deaz'n, Deaz'n Brow, Sin Tofts, Harp Flat, Great Hold (dialect-Greeat Ho'd), Gildert dale, High and Low Wether Walk, White Stone Cliff (Dialect Whiss'n Cliff), Yeddon, Geirs, Jack Nab, Keasa, Minnin Dale, Blackburn Rush, Scorbrough Close, Field, Axhold, The Syke.

The orthography of several of these names is probably incorrect; thus, for instance, Morkell is doubtless Morkeld, the final d being so commonly mute in the dialect; Morcam should in all likelihood be written Morcombe, combe being also found in the neighbourhood in the name Cleaving Combe.

Even in this brief list of field names, although there are some of which it is difficult to trace the origin, there are others which it is easy to account for, while some seem to have a special, though it be perhaps but a local, interest. Of these latter I will mention only a single instance: it is the last. In this case the name

speaks for itself; for through this picturesque field runs the little syke or streamlet, which trickles down from its tiny source in the chalky wold just above. Its course is but a short one-not more than a few hundred yards in all. But even this little runnel can reveal to us something. For the eyes of those who built the old Religious House at Nunburnholme, or Burnholme as it was then called, must have been quick to catch sight of the sparkling water of the obscure little syke, which clearly had its say in finally fixing the site of the Sanctuary of the Nuns of Burnholme. There, at the foot of the hill, stood the fabric of this sequestered Benedictine priory, said to have been founded in the days of the third King Henry. The walls are now no more, but the place where the convent stood may still be clearly traced. The Nuns' Walk still keeps its name, and the silvery syke runs through the bed of the pool which supplied provision for the religious on days of abstinence. For this good purpose it lent its waters, and then went bubbling down into the nameless beck hard by, which takes its rise two thousand paces up the valley in the far-famed and never-failing Warter Bucksea-probably one of the oldest spring-names in the Riding. The ancient Nunnery fish-pond is now long since emptied of its store, the House itself robbed and spoiled, its sisters rudely scattered; only the seaves flourish in the lingering moisture of the pool.

Who knows how many long silent records of the past lie buried in the field-names spread over the length and breadth of the East Riding-names which look as unpretending as that which takes its title from the Nunburnholme Syke? It is for such a society as ours to try and make these quiet nooks and corners speak for in speaking they may tell us many an interesting tale, and perhaps besides teach us many an abiding lesson.

[Rev. M. C. F. Morris, Nunburnholme Rectory, will be glad to receive any information on the subject of the field-names of the East Riding from members of the Society.]

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