“Port” and “Port-Reeve.”
By J. H. Round, M.A.
PART III
(Continued from Vol. V. page 287.)
BEFORE tracing the working of this process in the similar case of ceaster, it may be as well to dispose etymologically of port. I have avowedly restricted myself, in this paper, to port as it occurs in “port-reeve.” But Professor Skeat, in his “Etymological Dictionary” (p. 457), while wholly ignoring, it would seem, its meaning in this and the similar compounds, assigns to the Anglo-Saxon “port,” not merely the derivation direct from portus, but an identity of meaning with that word. And in support of that meaning, “a harbour, haven,” he aptly adduces Alfred’s translation of Bede, in which “to tham porte” means “to the haven.” Here, however, it might perhaps be urged that Alfred was influenced in his choice of the term by the “portus” in the original before him. It need not follow that when not so influenced, he would have spoken of a haven as a “port.” Moreover, it is possible, and indeed probable, that the original sense of “port” was replaced by that narrower one of a “haven” or “sea-port,” which it had certainly come to bear by Middle English days, in consequence of that recurrence to Latin models, in which Alfred had himself led the way, and which would lead to what might almost be termed a re-introduction of the word into the language, fresh from the Latin itself.
But again, Alfred might have been influenced in his style by the Welshman, “Asser, my bishop.”[9] For though the Welsh, as I have said, adopted “portman” in the sense of a “trader” from the A. S., they had in their own word porth the equivalent at once of porta and portus. Of its use in the former sense we have an illustration, as Mr. Barnes has pointed out (Arch. Jour. xxii. 232), in the Welsh version of Matthew vii. 13:—“ehang yw’r porth, a llydan yw’r fford,” (“wide is the gate, and broad is the way “), where in the A. S. version the word used is geat. Its use in the latter is familiar.
This brings us to a consideration of such terms as the “Westport” and “East-port” of Wareham, and the “Newport Gate” of Lincoln. The survival, at Wareham, of “port” in the sense of gate, is ingeniously attributed by the above writer to a direct derivation from the Welsh porth, rather than from the Latin porta. At Lincoln, on testing Mr. Freeman’s statement that the gate was actually known simply as “The New Port” (Norm. Conq. iv. 212), I can find no evidence whatever for it.[10] If, therefore, as seems to be the case, “Newport Gate” has always been its name, within historic times, the inference is surely not that which has been drawn by Mr. Freeman in his paper on Lincoln,[11] but rather that the “barbarian” conquerors, ignoring the meaning of the “port” (porta), spoke of the Roman “porta” by their own word “geat,” distinguishing it from the other gates by the prefix “Newport,” and thus producing the, at first sight, unmeaning pleonasm, “Newport Gate,” just as Thorney Island, Mersea Island, &c., are pleonasms formed by the addition of “Island,” when the ea or ey (“Island”) no longer possesses a meaning.
We see, then, that the Latin porta failed to pass direct into our language in the form of port (“a gate”). It was, indeed, as Professor Skeat has shown, imported at a much later period, but then only through the French porte, and not direct from the Latin. But it could not, even so, succeed in establishing its position in the language. Found not unfrequently in the Elizabethan age, both in poetry and in classical prose, it lingered on, as a classical affectation, even so late as the Civil War, when we find it used of a city-gate, in a military sense, by such writers as Sprigge and Carter. A sure proof of its disuse is afforded shortly after this by the substitution of “port hole” for “port,” a pleonasm which, like those above quoted, implies that the original word no longer retained its meaning.
(To be continued.)
An Old Play-Bill—The following is a copy of the first play-bill issued from Drury-lane Theatre: “By His Majesty’s Company of Comedians, At the new Theatre in Drury-lane, This day, being Thursday, April 8th, 1663, Will be acted, a Comedy called THE HVMOVROVS LIEVTENANT. The King, Mr. Wintersel; Demétrivs, Mr. Hart; Selevcvs, Mr. Bvrt; Leontivs, Major Mohvn; Lievtenant, Mr. Clun; Celia, Mrs. Marshall. The play will begin at three o’clock exactly. Boxes 4s. Pitt 2s. 6d. Middle-Gallery 1s. 6d. Upper Gallery 1s.”