WOE WATER.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."] it a fact that certain of the intermittent streams of Southern England were designated by some name equivalent to " Woe Water " P That such streams were so named appears to me to be merely a conjecture resting on insufficient evidence. Two names have been brought forward in your columns in support of the " Woe Water " hypothesis,—namely, " Wemere " (or "Womere "), mentioned in the " Warkworth Chronicle" (circ. 1480) as the name of an intermittent stream near St. Albans, and " Woburn " (or " Wooburn "), the name of places in Beds and Bucks. With regard to the instance in the " Warkworth Chronicle," it may be said that the editor, Mr. Halliwell, considers " Wemere" to be the correct spelling. The spelling " Womere," which occurs on the same page, is probably due to an attempt of the chronicler to explain the name of the stream as " woo watere " (Woe Water). As for " Woburn," it is quite clear, from a comparison of spellings in Domesday, Charters, and other authorities, that the name has nothing to do with " woe," but that it is to be equated with O.E. Ina burn,—ite., "crooked stream." For the various spellings of Woburn see Professor Skeat's valuable paper on "The Place-Names of Bedfordshire" (Cambridge Antiquarian
Society, No. am, Sir, &o., A. L. IlaYBEW. Wadham College, Word.
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