—I would suggest to your correspondents S. S. S. (2) another derivation for our word berth.
The present French berceau, a cradle, was in the Norman age written berȝ, as appears in a MSS. Life of St. Nicholas in the Bodleian Library. This Life has been printed at Bonn by Dr. Nicolaus Delius, 1850; but in the print the character ȝ has been represented by the ordinary z. This is a pity, because, as all know who are familiar with our MSS. of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, this figure ȝ took not unfrequently the place of ð (th); and on this account it is a character which ought to be scrupulously preserved in editing. Berȝ then was probably pronounced berth, or possibly with a little more of the sibilant than is now found in the latter. How easily the sibilant and the th run into one another may be seen by the third person singular of our present Indicative:
| saith | says. | |
| doth | does. | |
| hopeth | hopes. |
J. E.
Oxford, August 2. 1851.
Suicides buried in Cross-roads (Vol. iv., p. 116.).
—P. M. M. makes inquiry respecting a practice formerly observed of burying murderers in cross-roads. I have often heard that suicides were formerly interred in such places, and that a stake used to be driven through the body. I know of two places in the neighbourhood of Boston in Lincolnshire, where such burials are stated to have taken place. One of these is about a mile and a half south of Boston, on what is called the low road to Freiston; a very ancient hawthorn tree marks the spot, and the tree itself is said to have sprung from the stake which was driven through the body of the self-murderer. The tradition was told me sixty years since, and the interment was then said to have occurred a hundred years ago; the suicide's name was at that time traditionally remembered, and was told to me, but I cannot recall it. The tree exhibits marks of great age, and is preserved with care; it still bears "may," as the flower of the whitethorn is called, and haws in their season.
The second grave (as it is reported) of this kind is on the high road from Boston to Wainfleet, at the intersection of a road leading to Butterwick, at a place called Spittal Hill; near the site of the ancient hospital or infirmary, which was attached to the Priory of St. James at Freiston. This spot is famous in the traditions of the neighbourhood as the scene of the appearance of a sprite or hobgoblin, called the "Spittal Hill TUT;" which takes, in the language of the district, the shape of a SHAG foal, and is said to be connected with the history of the suicide buried there.
TUT is a very general term applied in Lincolnshire to any fancied supernatural appearance. Children are frightened by being told of Tom Tut; and persons in a state of panic, or unreasonable trepidation, are said to be Tut-gotten.
P. T.