In the case of long intermissions, such as occur to the Croydon bourne, it is not wonderful that the sudden appearance of waters in considerable force, where none are usually seen to flow, should give rise to superstitious dread of coming evils. Indeed, the coincidence of the running of the bourne, a wet summer, a worse sowing-season, and a wet cold spring, may well inspire evil forebodings, and give a colourable pretext for such apprehensions as are often entertained on the occurrence of any unusual natural phenomenon. These intermittent rivulets have no affinity, as your correspondent E. G. R. supposes, to subterraneous rivers. The nearest approach to this kind of stream is to be found in the Mole, which sometimes sinks away, and leaves its channel dry between Dorking and Leatherhead, being absorbed into fissures in the chalk, and again discharged; these fissures being insufficient to receive its waters in times of more copious supply. The subterraneous rivers of more mountainous countries are also not to be included in the same category. They have a history of their own, to enlarge on which is not the business of this Note: but it may not be irrelevant to turn the attention for a moment to the use of the word bourne or burn. The former mode of spelling and pronouncing it appears to prevail in the south, and the latter in the north of England and in Scotland; both alike from the same source as the brun or brunen of Germany. The perennial bourne so often affords a convenient natural geographical boundary, and a convenient line of territorial division, that by an easy metonymy it has established itself in our language in either sense, signifying streamlet or boundary-line,—as witness the well-known lines:
"That undiscovered country, from whose bourne
No traveller returns."—Shakspeare.
"I know each lane, and every alley green,
And every bosky bourn from side to side."—Milton.
M.
CHRISTIAN NAMES.
(Vol. vii., pp. 406. 488, 489.)
The opinion of your correspondents, that instances of persons having more than one Christian name before the last century are, at least, very rare, is borne out by the learned Camden, who, however, enables me to adduce two earlier instances of polyonomy than those cited by J. J. H.: