A ‘hay’ was nothing but a ‘hedge.’ In the Hundred Rolls we find such names occurring as ‘Margery de la Haye’ or ‘Roger de la Hagh,’ or in a compounded form ‘Richard de la Woodhaye,’ or ‘Robert de Brodheye.’ Of the simple root the forms most common now are ‘Hay,’ ‘Hayes,’ ‘Haighs,’ ‘Haigs,’ and ‘Hawes.’ The composite forms are endless. ‘Roundhay’ explains itself. ‘Lyndsay’ I find spelt at this period as ‘Lyndshay,’ so that it is not the islet whereon the lind or linden grows, but the hedge of these shrubs. Besides these we have ‘Haywood’ or ‘Heywood,’ ‘Hayland’ and ‘Hayley.’ From the form ‘hawe,’ mentioned above, we have our ‘Hawleys,’ ‘Haworths,’ and ‘Hawtons,’ or ‘Haughtons,’ and probably the longest name in the directory, that of ‘Featherstonehaugh.’ We still talk of the haw-thorn and haw-haw. Chaucer uses the term for a farmyard or garth—
And eke there was a polkat in his hawe
That, as he sayd, his capons had yslawe.
This at once explains such a name as ‘Peter in le Hawe’ found in the Hundred Rolls. But Chaucer has a prettier use of it than this, a use still abiding in our ‘Churchays,’ relics of the mediæval ‘de Chirchehay.’ He speaks twice of the ‘Churchhawe,’ or graveyard. How pretty it is! almost as pretty as its Saxon synonym ‘Godsacre,’ only that is more endeared to us, inasmuch as since the acre always denoted the sowed land (Latin ‘ager’), so it whispers to us hopefully of the great harvest-tide to come when the seed thus sown in corruption shall be raised an incorruptible body. Our ‘Goodacres’ are doubtless thus derived—and with such names as ‘Acreman’ or ‘Akerman,’ ‘Oldacre’ or ‘Oddiker,’ ‘Longacre’ and ‘Whittaker’ (or ‘Whytacre’ or ‘Witacre,’ as I find it in the thirteenth century), help to remind us how in early days an acre denoted less a fixed measure of land than soil itself that lay under the plough. But this by the way. I have just mentioned ‘Hayworth.’ A name like ‘William de la Worth’ (H.R.) represented our ‘Worths’ in the thirteenth century. Properly speaking, any sufficiently warded place—it had come to denote a small farmstead at the time the surname arose. ‘Charlesworth’ is the ‘churl’s worth,’ the familiar metamorphosis of this name being identical with that of the astronomic ‘Charles Wain,’ and with such place-names as ‘Charle-wood,’ ‘Charlton,’ ‘Carlton,’ and ‘Charley.’ Our various ‘Unsworths,’ ‘Ainsworths,’ ‘Whitworths,’ ‘Langworthys,’ ‘Kenworthys,’ ‘Wortleys,’ and others of this class are familiar to us all. Surnames like ‘Roger de la Grange,’ or ‘Geoffrey de la Grange,’ or ‘John le Granger,’[[129]] remind us that grange also was commonly used at this time for a farmstead, it being in reality nothing more than our granary.[[130]] Piers Plowman portrays the good Samaritan thus—
His wounds he washed,
Enbawmed hym, and bound his head,
And ledde hym forth on ‘Lyard’
To ‘lex Christi,’ a graunge
Wel sixe mile or sevene
Beside the newe market.