9 th S. I. JUNE 11, '<
NOTES AND QUERIES.
473
inquiry, and who practically withhold all
assistance by avoiding research on their own
account. No one can fairly expect help as to
a place-name till he takes the preliminary
trouble of ascertaining the present pronun-
ciation and the old spelling. These may not
help much, but they are all we have to go
upon ; and it frequently requires local know-
ledge or acquaintance with some county
history to which the unfortunate student
otherwise very ready to help has no con-
venient means of access.
We now know something. The prefix goud- rimes to loud or to mood ; and is found in old documents with the spelling gut-, or, as I am privately informed, gout-. This enables us to say, definitely, that the A.-S. form must have begun with gu-. Long u is denoted by u or ou by Norman scribes, and comes out in modern English as ou in loud, or (very rarely) as oo in mood or room. Beyond that, all is guesswork. I can only say that the A.-S. guth, war, which occurs in over seventy compounds, is a possible source ; but the sense is not satisfactory. Another possibility is that it represents a personal name formed from the same root.
WALTER W. SKEAT.
Are not Goudhurst (Kent), Gayhurst (Bucks), and Goathurst (Somerset) all derived from a common origin 1 Of this last parish Collinson, in his ' History of Somerset,' vol. i. p. 79, states that " in the Norman survey the name of this place (which is obviously com- pounded of the Saxon Gar, a goat, and Hynrt, a wood, the village having large woods abound- ing formerly with that animal) is limpingly written Gahers ; the French transcribers having been unable either to pronounce or indite so rough a word as Gatkurst" Curiously enough, when paying a visit last _ summer to my sisters, who had gone to reside at Gay- hurst, in Buckinghamshire, I found that tlie original name of that village (immortalized by its connexion with the Gunpowder Plot) was Gothurst ; and now CANON TAYLOR tells us that "in 1291 Goudhurst appeared as Gutlierst " (p. 375). I think it is pretty evi- dent, therefore, that all three places have one origin and one meaning. I may add that the yokels of this village, caring little for Anglo- Saxon derivations, facetiously call it Go- athirst, from the fact of it having no public- house within its area.
ST. DAVID KEMEYS-TYNTE.
Sherwood, Goathurst, Bridgwater.
" SPALT " (9 th S. i. 268). This word may be found in the East Anglian glossaries of Nail and of Rye. The former gives a variety of de-
finitions and cognate words. Mr. Eye simply
has, "Spalt, brittle (Cull, 'Haw.'). Used in
Cambridgeshire." The reference in paren-
theses is to Cullum's ' Hawsted ' (Suffolk),
1813. For the derivation of the word, Nail
suggests Ger. and Dan. gpaft, Dutch spalten,
&c. Mr. Rye's 'Glossary of Words used in
East Anglia,' founded on that of Forby, was
published for the English Dialect Society in
1895. I am tempted to add that East Anglians
reprehensibly neglect their local literature.
JAMES HOOPER.
Norwich.
Your correspondent will find spalt in the 'Encyclopaedic Dictionary,' with the mean- ing " brittle ; liable to break or split," and it is stated that it is " probably allied to spall, split, &c." The following quotation is also given :
" 'The park oke is far more spalt and brickie
than the hedge oke.' Holinshed, 'Descript. Eng.,' bk. ii. ch. xxii."
C. H. C.
"NOBLESSE OBLIGE" (9 th S. i. 228). The more interest attaches to the note of the REV. R. M. SPENCE from the circumstance that in some remarks of Count de Laborde, at a meeting of the Societe de 1'Histoire de France, on 4 April, 1865, upon the history of this proverb, there is the statement of an instance of its use in 1808, which he supposes to have been the earliest (' N. & Q.,' 3 rd S. x. 4). Littre supplies no better information.
The late Archbishop of Canterbury, in his 'Cyprian, his Life, his Work, his Times' (Lond., 1897, p. 245), makes this reference to the proverb :
"At Carthage, so soon as the usual street-scenes and house-scenes began, in a speech which his deacon wished the whole city could have heard from the rostra, he developed the duty of divineness of prayer and labour on behalf of persecutors. In this light he appealed to their Christian belief in their veritable sonship to God. His epigrammatic ' Respondere natalibus ' is a nobler version of Nobleste oblige, and no less defies rendering."
In a note there is, " Pontii ' Vita,' ix. : ' Re- spondere nos decet natalibus nostris.' "
ED. MARSHALL, F.S.A.
VALENTINES (9 th S. i. 248, 410). These love epistles have a different meaning in Scottish legal phraseology. In contradistinction to letters patent or open sent by the sovereign, the term is used to denote letters closed or sealed. By the Act of James VI., 1587, c. 103, it is enacted "that the Justice Clerk sail twise in the yeir
Eocure the Kingis Majesties close Valentines, to sent to the Maisters, Landis-lords, Baillies and Chieftaines of all notable limmers and thieves, chargeing to present them, outlier before his
