Manor Place, South Lambeth.
CHICHESTER: LAVANT.
(Vol. vii., p. 269.)
Your correspondent C. affirms, as a mark of the Roman origin of Chichester, that "the little stream that runs through it is called the Lavant, evidently from lavando!" Now nobody, as old Camden says, "has doubted the Romanity of Chichester;" but I am quite sure that the members of the Archæological Institute (who meet next summer upon the banks of this same Lavant) would decidedly demur to so singular a proof of it.
C. is informed that, in the fourth volume of the Archæologia, p. 27., there is a paper by the Hon. Daines Barrington, on the term Lavant, which, it appears, is commonly applied in Sussex to all brooks which are dry at some seasons, as is the case with the Chichester river.
"From the same circumstance," it is added, "the sands between Conway and Beaumaris in Anglesey, are called the Lavant sands, because they are dry when the tide ebbs; as are also the sands which are passed at low water between Cartmell and Lancaster, for the same reason."
To trace the origin of the term Lavant, we must, I conceive, go back to a period more remote than the Roman occupation; for that remarkable people, who conquered the inhabitants of Britain, and partially succeeded in imposing Roman appellations upon the greater towns and cities, never could change the aboriginal names of the rivers and mountains of the country. "Our hills, forests, and rivers," says Bishop Percy, "have generally retained their old Celtic names." I venture, therefore, to suggest, that the British word for river, Av, or Avon, which seems to form the root of the word Lavant, may possibly be modified in some way by the prefix, or postfix, so as to give, to the compound word, the signification of an intermittent stream.
The fact that, amidst all the changes which have passed over the face of our country, the primitive names of the grander features of nature still remain unaltered, is beautifully expressed by a great poet recently lost to us:
"Mark! how all things swerve