"Etymology," spells the word "ground-sill," and then derives the
last syllable from "soil." Nothing can be more stupid. Door-sill is as
common as grunsel, for threshold, in Staffordshire, as well as
Lincolnshire; and, in both counties, "window-sill" is frequent. I
remember, too, in my boyhood, having heard the part of the plough to
which the share is fitted--the frame of the harrows--and the frame of a
grindstone, each called "sill" by the farmers of Lindsey.

VII.

ROMARA.

In this instance I have also used a name associated with the ancient
history of Lincolnshire as an imaginary Norman lord of Torksey. "William
de Romara, lord of Bolingbroke, in Lincolnshire, was the first earl of
that county after the Conquest. He was the son of Roger, son of Gerold
de Romara; which Roger married Lucia, daughter of Algar, earl of
Chester, and sister and heir to Morcar, the Saxon earl of Northumberland
and Lincoln. In 1142 he founded the Abbey of Revesby, in com. Linc.,
bearing then the title of Earl of Lincoln."--BANKES' _Extinct and
Dormant Peerage_.

VIII.

THE TRENT.

"Or Trent, who like some earth-born giant spreads
His thirty arms along the indented meads."

MILTON.

IX.

THE HEYGRE.

The tide, at the equinoxes especially, presents a magnificent spectacle
on the Trent. It comes up even to Gainsborough, which is seventy miles
from the sea, in one overwhelming wave, spreading across the wide
river-channel, and frequently putting the sailors into some alarm for
the safety of their vessels, which are dashed to and fro, while "all
hands" are engaged in holding the cables and slackening them, so as to
relieve the ships.

To be in a boat, under the guardianship of a sailor, and to hear the
shouts on every hand of "'Ware Heygre!"--as the grand wave is beheld
coming on,--and then to be tossed up and down in the boat, as the wave
is met,--form no slight excitements for a boy living by the side of
Trent.

I find no key to the derivation of the word Heygre in the Etymologists.
The Keltic verb, Eigh, signifying, to cry, shout, sound, proclaim; or
the noun Eigin, signifying difficulty, distress, force, violence--may,
perhaps, be the root from whence came this name for the tide--so
dissimilar to any other English word of kindred meaning. It is scarcely
probable that the word by which the earliest inhabitants of Britain
would express their surprise at this striking phenomenon should ever be
lost, or changed f