Around Park Lane, with might and main,
You hear the rumour wag
That “Gordon” may be Guggenheim,
And “Mervyn,” “Mosenbag.”
Romance we trace in commonplace,
And fact that custom shocks.
Thus we come daily face-to-face,
With cunning paradox.
Thus again we have, in the undoubted derivation of the name of Uphill, another instance of that eternal truth: “Things are not always what they seem.” Yet who, looking at this most notable hill, rising so suddenly from the surrounding levels, would doubt, without the evidence of ancient forms, that the name was and could be nothing else than descriptive of the peculiarly striking geography of the spot?
The Norman clerks who, travelling from place to place, compiled Domesday Book from information received on the spot, very often made a singular hash of the place-names they heard from the Saxon, who spoke what was to those newcomers a difficult language. “Opopille,” the best those Norman emissaries could make of “Hubba’s Pill,” sounds very like a sudden and violent Norman appearance, and the shaking of some unfortunate Saxon churl, with the rough question put to him. “Vat is zat which you call zis place here, hein?” and the reply, “Oh, sir! don’t shus-shake me like that: ’Ubba-pup-pille, sir.”