ty for having attempted to give to their ancient and
honorable names a kind of Norman varnish, and for having adopted
new-fangled coats of arms, Mr. Scawen remarks on the several mistakes,
intentional or unintentional, that occurred in this foolish process. "The
grounds of two several mistakes," he writes, "are very obvious: 1st, upon
the _Tre_ or _Ter_; 2d, upon the _Ross_ or _Rose_. _Tre_ or _Ter_ in
Cornish commonly signifies a town, or rather place, and it has always an
adjunct with it. _Tri_ is the number 3. Those men willingly mistake one
for another. And so, in French heraldry terms, they used to fancy and
contrive those with any such three things as may be like, or cohere with,
or may be adapted to anything or things in their surnames, whether very
handsome or not is not much stood upon. Another usual mistake is upon
_Ross_, which, as they seem to fancy, should be a Rose, but _Ross_ in
Cornish is a vale or valley. Now for this their French-Latin tutors, when
they go into the field of Mars, put them in their coat armor prettily to
smell out a Rose or flower (a fading honor instead of a durable one); so
any three such things, agreeable perhaps a little to their names, are
taken up and retained from abroad, when their own at home have a much
better scent and more lasting."

Some amusing instances of what may be called Saxon puns on Cornish words
have been communicated to me by a Cornish friend of mine, Mr. Bellows.
"The old Cornish name for Falmouth," he writes, "was _Penny come
quick_,(63) and they tell a most improbable story to account for it. I
believe the whole compound is the Cornish _Pen y cwm gwic_, 'Head of the
creek valley.' In like manner they have turned _Bryn uhella_ (highest
hill) into _Brown Willy_, and _Cwm ty goed_ (woodhouse valley) into _Come
to good_." To this might be added the common etymologies of _Helstone_ and
_Camelford_. The former name has nothing to do with the Saxon _helstone_,
a covering stone, or with the infernal regions, but meant "place on the
river;" the latter, in spite of the camel in the arms of the town, meant
the ford of the river Camel. A frequent mistake arises from the
misapprehension of the Celtic _dun_, hill, which enters in the composition
of many local names, and was changed by the Saxons into _town_ or _tun_.
Thus _Meli-dunum_ is now _Moulton_, _Seccan-dun_ is _Seckington_, and
_Beamdun_ is _Bampton_.(64)

This transformation of Celtic into Saxon or Norman terms is n