BOUNDARY OR PROTECTION.

The idea of a river as a protection or as a boundary seems to indicate a more settled state of society, and therefore not to belong to the earliest order of nomenclature. And consequently, though this chapter is not quite so bad as the well-known one "Concerning Owls," in Horrebow's Natural History of Iceland, the sum and substance of which is that "There are no owls of any kind in the whole Island"—it will be seen that the number of names is very small in which such a meaning is to be traced.

The word gard, which in the Celtic, Teutonic, Slavonic, and other tongues has the meaning of protection or defence, must, I think, have something of the same meaning in river-names. Or it may perhaps rather be that of boundary, for the two senses run very much into each other.

1.	France.	The Gard. Joins the Rhone.
	Germany.	Gard(aha), 8th cent. The Gart(ach).
	Germany.	The Kart(haue) in Prussia.
2.	With the ending en.
	Scotland.	The Gairden. Joins the Dee.
	France.	The Gardon. Joins the Rhone.
	Greece.	Jardanus ant. in Crete—here?

In the Gael. sgia, Welsh ysgw, guard, protection, and in the Welsh ysgi, separation or division, we have two senses, of which the latter may be more suitable for the following. The Editor of Smith's Ancient Geography suggests that the Scius of Herodotus may be the present Isker in Bulgaria: in an etymological point of view this seems probable, for as Scius = Welsh ysgi, so Isker = Welsh ysgar of the same meaning.

Netherlands.	The Schie by Schiedam.
Danub. Prov.	Scius ant., now the Isker?

From the Gael. scar, sgar, Welsh ysgar, Ang.-Sax. scêran, to divide, in the sense of boundary, may be the following. The small river Scarr in Dumfriesshire forms for six miles a boundary between different parishes.[65]

1.	England.	The Shere. Kent.
	Scotland.	The Scarr. Dumfriesshire.
	Scotland.	The Shira. Argyle.
	Germany.	Scere, 11th cent. The Scheer.
2.	With the ending en.
	England.	The Skerne. Durham.
	Germany.	Schyrne, 11th cent., not identified.

Any names in which the sense of land, terra, occurs, may, I think, be explained most reasonably in the sense of boundary or territorial division. To this Grimm places the Fulda of Germany, Fuld(aha), 8th cent., referring it to Old High Germ. fulta, Ang.-Sax. folde, earth, ground.

Perhaps also to a similar origin may be referred the Mold(au) in Bohemia, and the Mold(ava) of Moldavia. But the Gael. and Ir. malda, malta, gentle, slow, Anglo-Sax. milde, Eng. mild, may be perhaps more suitable: the Mulde, which joins the Elbe, and which in the 8th cent. appears as Milda, seems more probably from this origin.

The Bord(au), formerly Bordine, which forms for some distance the boundary between East and West Friesland, may, as suggested by Förstemann, be derived from Old Fries. and Anglo-Saxon bord, border. Another river of the same name (p. [33]) may perhaps be otherwise derived.

I am inclined to bring in here the Granta, and to suggest that it may have been a Sax. or Angle name of the Cam, or of a certain part of the Cam. This river seems to have formed one of the boundaries of the country of the Gyrvii;[66] its name appears in Henry of Huntingdon as Grenta; and the Old Norse grend, Mod. Germ. grenze, boundary, seems a probable etymon.