So now you see that that “echo in another hemisphere” of St. Botolph’s Town is, of course, the name of our own Boston, so called by its early English settlers in memory of the English Boston they had left behind them; though, as those of you who have read Higginson’s History know, it had at first borne the name of Trimountain, because of its three hills; its Indian name having been Mushauwomuck, shortened, English fashion, to Shawmut. Boston school-boys, never forget that the original Indian name meant Free-country, or Free-land!
The name Botolph means “Boat-help;” and so, in those old times St. Botolph came to be deemed the patron saint of mariners; and as both Bostons are commercial cities by the sea, it is eminently appropriate that they should bear the old Boat-helper’s name. Perhaps, too, that is why “Simon Kempthorn, Mariner,” in Longfellow’s New England Tragedy of John Endicott, cries out, when a fire is kindled in Boston’s Market Place, in the year 1656, to burn the religious books of the persecuted Quakers:
“Rain, rain, rain,
Bones of St. Botolph, and put out this fire!”
(Would not that quotation make a capital motto for a Boston Fire Company!)
The English Boston has a high church-tower, one of the most beautiful in England,
“The loftiest tower of Britain’s isle,
In valley or on steep.”
It resembles the tower of Antwerp Cathedral, and is crowned by a beautiful octagonal lantern, that can be seen forty miles off. It serves, therefore, as a landmark for seamen.