The Place - Names of &folk. By the late Rev. W. W.
Skeat. (G. Bell and sons. Ss. net.)--This interesting volume forme the eleventh ofa series-initiated by the Cambridge Antiquarian Society, and is published in the condition in which it was left by the late Professor Skeet, who died before the proof sheets -could be submitted to him. The names are arranged according to their suffixes, and the book concludes with some mis- -cellatieoue examples, not exactly classifiable. Among these -are many interesting words, such as Copdock, meaning the -" copped " or pollarded oak, Bishangles, which is compounded of two Anglo-Saxon words meaning respectively " rushes " and " a hanging wood," and Woolpit, which, for all its peaceful ,sound, seems to be derivable from wolf-pit. Professor Skeet finds names clearly indicating a Frisian settlement, unmistak- able traces of Danes and Norsemen, and even of Normans (e.g., in Boulge, a Norman word meaning a heathery waste), while he states thatthe purely English names belong generally to the Mercian or Midland dialect as distinguished from the Anglo-Saxon or Southern, showing that Suffolk may be included among the rather limited number of counties that have helped to build up the all-conquering East Midland elialect which has superseded all others and become the speech of the Empire.
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