9* s. ii. NOV. 12,
NOTES AND QUERIES.
391
Theydon- Gernon and Stansted-Montfichet
villages in Essex. An account of this family
is given by the Duchess of Cleveland in he
4 Battle Abbey Koll ' (ii. 103, 266) ; and notice
of Gernons in Essex of later date than her;
appear in the ' Rotuli Hundredorum.' In thi
instance, "al Gernon" was shortened into
" Gernon " on French soil.
Four centuries elapsed from the date of the Conquest before the original sobriquet o: William de Percy, "as Gernons " or "al Ger- non" (become "Algernon"), was bestowec on the fifth Earl of Northumberland, Henry Algernon Percy, to be borne about 150 yean later by Algernon Sidney. F. ADAMS.
106A, Albany Road, Camberwell.
HEXHAM PRIORY AND THE AUGUSTALES (9 th
S. ii. 241). If MR. ADDY will turn to Prof.
Kluge's German 'Etymological Dictionary,'
s.v. 'Hagestolz,' he will see that the Germanic
word represented by the Old English hagu-
steald stands in no need of a derivation from
the Latin. It is there derived from Germanic
hagu (related to our haw, O.E. haga), and
staldan, "to possess" (Gothic staldan)* Bor-
rowing from the able article of Moritz Heyne
in Grimm's ' Worterbuch,' Klugo tells us that
the original meaning was that of younger
son, who merely possessed a "haw, whilst
the elder son, according to Germanic law,
inherited the chief house, the "hof." This
explanation accounts for the diverse Latin
words by which hagusteald and its conti-
nental forms are glossed, such as tirojuvenis,
ccelebs, famulus, agricola, mercenarius. It
will be seen from these glosses that the word
does not necessarily connote a bachelor, but
that it has developed that meaning in much
the same way as bachelor itself has obtained
its present signification, as has been pointed
out by Kluge. Thus, on the ground of mean-
ing alone, we must reject MR. ADDY'S deri-
vation from the Latin augustalis, with the
assumed meaning of " monk " or " celibate."
Historically we must also reject it, for it so
happens that the Germanic word is recorded
in two Norse runic inscriptions of so early a
date that they absolutely put out of court
any suggestion of its being a loan-word from
the Latin. One of these is the inscription at
Strand and the other at Valsf jord, both in
Norway. The form is HagustaldaR, which
corresponds to an Icelandic *Ho'gstaldr.
These inscriptions, which historically are
older than the Gothic forms, are usually dated
somewhere between the years 500 and 700 ;
- The latter part of the compound is familiar to
us in the Lomhardic gastaldo.
but whatever their real date may be, it is
certain that they are many centuries older
than any state of Scandinavian society in
which the Norsemen could have been fami-
liarized with augustalis in the sense of
"monk," if there ever was a time when
they could have learnt the word with that
meaning. Prof. Bugge, in Paul, Braune, and
Sievers's 'Beitrage,' xxii. 131, quotes the
modern Norwegian dialectal forms hogstall,
/taugstall, which mean "widower." In the
two inscriptions here cited HagustaldaR is a
man's name. This is not one of the Germanic
names belonging to the Aryan name system,
but belongs to a class well represented in
Old Norse, that is, it is a nickname or an
epithet used as an ordinary personal name.
Its nearest parallel is the name of Sweinn,
and it may be compared with names like Karl
(Old English Ceorl) in other branches of the
Germanic name system, or with O.E. JSsne,
which means " servant." Hence it is obvious
that it may have been a personal name in Old
English, where it occurs in a forged charter of
682 as Hcegstaldescumb ('Cartularium Saxoni-
cum,' i. 97), and in the name of Hexham (Hagu-
staldensis ecclesia in Bede).* It is, of course, not
altogether impossible that Bede's Hagustald
may have been etymologized by the first
English settlers from an earlier Celtic or
Latin name ; but it is not possible on philo-
logical grounds that this can have been
the Latin augustalis. To fit MR. ADDY'S
theories we should have to assume so early a
sorrowing of this word into English that we
should expect the Latin au to be represented
- >y English ea that is, it would have shared
- ffagustafdccs-a' in Eddi, ' Vita Wilfridi ' (seventh
- entury) ; Hayustaldes-ham or ea in the ' Chronicle ';
Hehstealdes-iy, &c., in Simeon of Durham. The gen. es is a strong presumption in favour of the lerivation from a masc. personal name. The old Northumbrian Hagiwtald produced by regular sound changes the later (tenth-century) hehstald cf . late West Saxon hcngsteald). This is the Hextold, tfextild, or Hestild of the later mediaeval forms of the name of Hexham (Hextildetiham, Hestildesham, &c.), ivhich present no difficulties as to sound develop- ment. From the compound has been disengaged the imaginary ?) brook name Htxtold or Hextild, now he Cockshaw Burn, to the west of the town. This hould clearly be added to the long list of bogus iver names evolved from local names. The sur- mme Hextall may, from its form, represent the lersqnal name Hagustald, &c. ; for scores of Old English personal names still exist as surnames. It a strange that MR. ADDY could doubt that the German Hagustalt, &c., in Forstemann's 'Namen- mch' was a man's name. Some of the examples re from lists of obits (necrologies). There can be .ttle doubt that the continental local names cited rom Forstemann are derived from this personal ame.
