William Shakspeare asks, "What's in a name?" England's other great
poetical William has devoted a series of his versifyings to the naming
of places. Which has the right of it, let us not undertake to pronounce
without consideration. England herself has long ago determined the
question. As Mr. Emerson says of English names,--"They are an
atmosphere of legendary melody spread over the land; older than all
epics and histories which clothe a nation, this undershirt sits close
to the body." Dean Trench, who handles words as a numismatist his
coins, has said substantially the same thing. And it is true not of
England only; for the various lands of Europe are written over like
palimpsests with the story of successive conquests and dominations
chronicled in their local names. You stop and ask why a place is so
called,--sure to be rewarded by a legend lurking beneath the title.
Like the old crests of heraldry, with their "canting" mottoes beneath,
they are history in little, a war or a revolution distilled into the
powerful attar of a single phrase. The Rhineland towers of Falkenstein
and Stolzenfels are the local counterparts of the Scotch borderers'
"Thou shalt want ere I want," for ominous meaning.
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