the origin of the name receives strong confirmation from a passage in Strabo (303) who actually mentions some other place (I think in Peloponnesus) called the "Ass's Jawbone." I need not say that Strabo narrates no such Samsonian incident to explain the name, and that it was probably derived (like Dog's Head, Hog's Back and many other such names) from some similarity between the shape of an ass's jawbone and the shape of the valley. Moreover, the word translated "hollow," though it might represent the cavity in an ass's jawbone, might also represent the hollow in a valley, as in Zephaniah (i. 11) "Howl, ye inhabitants of the hollow." Again, the name Ramath-lehi cannot mean "casting away of the jawbone;" it means "lifting up," or "hill," of Lehi: and accordingly the Revised Version translates, "that place was called Ramath-lehi;" and the margin interprets the name thus, "The hill of the jawbone." I should add also that the Revisers—instead of the Old Version, "clave an hollow place that was in the jaw"—give us now, "clave the hollow place that is in Lehi." You must see now surely how on every side the old miraculous interpretation breaks down and makes way for a natural and non-miraculous explanation of the legend. But we have still to explain the name of the fountain, said to have been given from the "calling" of Samson. This is easily done. It appears that the phrase "him that calleth," or "the Caller," is a Hebrew name for the Partridge, so named from its "call," or cry. The "Fountain of the Caller," therefore, in the "hollow place" of the "Ass's Jawbone," was simply, as we might say, Partridge Well in Jawbone Valley, which lay below Jawbone Hill.
But now, many years after the champion of Israel had passed away, comes the legendary poet or historian, who has to tell of some great exploit of deliverance wrought by the hero Samson in this Valley of the Jawbone of the
