The name is absent

In looking over this list we are immediately
struck with a remarkable repetition of various
names, some of which are found at once in several
counties; and most striking are those which, like the
examples already alluded to, give a habitation upon
our own shores to the races celebrated in the poetical
or historical records of other ages and other lands.
There are indeed hardly any enquiries of deeper
interest, than those whose tendency is to link the
present with the past in the bonds of a mythical
tradition ; or which presents results of greater im-
portance to him who has studied the modes of
thought and action of populations at an early stage

have a record of the progenitor of the W ælsings, who is alike unknown
to the Scandinavian and the German legends of that noble race. In
dealing, however, with these names, some amount of caution is neces-
sary : it is by no means enough that a word should end in -ing, to
convert it into a genuine patronymic. On the contrary it is a power of
that termination to denote the genitive or possessive, which is also the
generative, case : and in some local names we do find it so used : thus
Æselwulfing Iond (Cod. Dipl. No. 179, a. 801) is exactly equivalent to
ÆSelwulfes lond, the estate of a duke Ætîelwulf, not of a family called
ÆSelwulfings. So again, ‰t Folcwining Iond (Cod. Dipl. No. 195,
a. 811), 'SaetWynheardinglond (Cod. Dipl. No. 195, a. 811), imply the
land of Folcwine, of Wynheard, not of marks or families called Folc-
winings and Wynheardings. Wooibedington, Wool Lavington, Bar-
Iavington, are respectively Wulfbmding tιin, Wulflafingtiln, Beorlafing
tιin, the tιin or dwelling of Wulflaf, Wulfbæd and Beorlaf. Between
such words and genuine patronymics the line must carefully be drawn,
a task which requires both skill and experience : the best security is,
where we find the patronymic in the genitive plural : but one can very
generally judge whether the name is such as to have arisen in the way
described above, from a genitive singular. Changes for the sake of
euphony must also be guarded against, as sources of error : thus Abing-
don in Berks would impel us strongly to assume a family of Abingas ;
the Saxon name Æbban dun convinces us that it was named from an
Æbba (m.) or Æbbe (f). Dunnington is not Duninga tιin, but Dunnan,
that is Dunna’s tun.

of their career. The intimate relations of mytho-
logy, law and social institutions, which later ages
are too apt scornfully to despise, or Superstitiously
to imitate, are for them, living springs of action :
they are believed in, not played with, as in the
majority of revivals, from the days of Anytus and
Melitus to our own ; and they form the broad foun-
dation upon which the whole social polity is esta-
blished. The people who believe in heroes, origi-
nally gods and always god-born, preserve a remem-
brance of their ancient deities in the gentile names
by which themselves are distinguished, long after
the rites they once paid to their divinities have
fallen into disuse ; and it is this record of beings
once hallowed, and a cult once offered, which they
have bequeathed to us in many of the now unin-
telligible names of the Marks. Taking these facts
into account, I have no hesitation in affirming
that the names of places found in the Anglosaxon
charters, and yet extant in England, supply no
trifling links in the chain of evidence by which we
demonstrate the existence among ourselves of a
heathendom nearly allied to that of Scandinavia.

The AVselsings, the Volsungar of the Edda, and
Volsungen of the German Heldensage, have al-
ready been noticed in a cursory manner: they are
the family whose hero is Siegfried or Sigurdr ɪ, the
centre round which the Nibelungen epos circles.
Another of their princes, Fitela, the Norse Sinfiotli,

ɪ In Beowulf (1.1743), Siegfried, is replaced by Sigmund, his father.
Here occurs his patronymical appellation of Wmlsing (1. 1747), and
Washes eafora (1.1787).

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