the Cornish, we actually
find _kleuz_ and _kloz_ for tomb or inclosure. (See Le Gonidec, "Dict.
Breton-Francais," s. v.) The _en_ might either be the Cornish preposition
_yn_, or it may have been intended for the article in the genitive, _an_.
The old rock in the tomb, _i.e._ _in tumba_, or the old rock of the tomb,
Cornish _carag goz an cloz_, would be intelligible and natural renderings
of the Latin _Mons in tumba_.

But though this would fully account for the origin of the Cornish name as
preserved by Carew, it would still leave the Saxon appellation the "Hore
rock in the wodd" unexplained. How could William of Worcester have got
hold of this name? Let us remember that William does not mention any
Cornish name of the Mount, and that nothing is ever said at his time of
the "Hore rock in the wodd" being a translation of an old Cornish name.
All we know is that the monks of the Mount used that name, and it is
hardly likely that so long and cumbrous a name should ever have been used
much by the people in the neighborhood. How the monks of St. Michael's
Mount came to call their place the "Hore rock in the wodd" at the time of
William of Worcester, and probably long before his time, is, however, not
difficult to explain, after we have seen how they transferred the
traditions which originally referred to Mont St. Michel to their own
monastery. Having told the story of the "_sylva opacissima_" by which
their mount was formerly surrounded to many visitors, as they told it to
William of Worcester, the name of the "Hore rock in the wodd" might easily
spring up among them, and be kept up within the walls of their priory. Nor
is there any evidence that in this peculiar form the name ever spread
beyond their walls. But it is possible that here, too, language may have
played some tricks. The number of people who used these names and kept
them alive can never have been large, and hence they were exposed much
more to accidents arising from ignorance and individual caprice than names
of villages or towns which are in the keeping of hundreds and thousands of
people. The monks of St. Michael's Mount may in time have forgotten the
exact purport of "Cara cowz in clowze," "the old rock of the tomb," really
the "Mons in tumba;" and their minds being full of the old forest by which
they believed _their_ island, like Mont St. Michel, to have been formerly
surrounded, what wonder if _cara cowz in clowze_ glided away into _cara
clowse in cowze_,