The Name and Office of Port-Reeve.
By James Hurly Pring, M.D.
PART II.
(Continued from Vol. IV. p. 266.)
THE transference of the significance of words beyond the scope to which it was originally applied, is so obvious and generally recognised a fact, that I did not consider it necessary to insist more particularly upon it in my former paper.
Many of your readers would doubtless be able to call to mind numerous examples of the kind, and, indeed, I did not credit any of them with being unacquainted with so common and notorious a fact, and one which suggests itself so readily in the instance of the word port which was the word here specially under discussion.
It may, however, under the circumstances, be well to call attention to that very remarkable instance of the kind which has been made familiar to us by Mr. Isaac Taylor, in his “Words and Places.” He states (p. 309) that “on the Mons Palatinus—a name the etymology of which carries us back to the time when the sheep were bleating on the slope—was the residence of the Roman emperors, which, from the site, was called Palati(n)um, or Palatium. Hence the word PALACE has come to be applied to all royal and imperial residences.” And he goes on to observe, that “it is one of the curiosities of language that a petty hill-slope in Italy should have thus transferred its name to a hero of romance, to a German State, to three English counties, to a glass-house at Sydenham, and to all the royal residences in Europe.” The example thus cited is doubtless very marked and extreme of its kind, very different in this respect to the easy and obvious transference of the word port to a city enclosed within gates, the contracted word port itself being derived from the Latin porta, a city-gate.
When indeed it is considered that, like other Roman towns, each of the numerous cities or towns of Roman Britain which subsequently became a Saxon burh or borough was empowered not only to collect tolls in respect of the objects actually sold at its gates, but also (as at present in Continental towns) to levy octroi (ansaria) on all provisions and wares brought within the gates for subsequent sale at the markets (the Fora venalia) inside, it is easy to understand not only how such towns speedily came to acquire a mercantile character, but also how the word port, originally restricted to the gates where such extensive transactions were carried on, would at no distant period become applied also to the town itself.
When, therefore, the learned Professor Stubbs, now Bishop of Chester, derives the word port from porta, as referring to “a mart or city of merchants,” it is only reasonable to suppose that the recognition of this change was present to his mind, and that he had in view that advanced period in Saxon times when the word port had already become transferred from the gates themselves to the town which was enclosed within them, and was apparently applied indifferently to either. But however this may be, we may at least be absolutely assured that he never intended to imply that porta, which carries us back to the original derivation, a portando aratrum, did not primarily and originally mean a city-gate.
It is not my intention to follow Mr. Round through all his erratic criticisms of my paper. The greater part of them may safely be left to the discretion of your readers; at the same time, the want of candour by which some of his remarks are characterised, will not fail to be noted. Thus, for example, when he dilates upon the occurrence of the word “underlying,” instead of “unlying,” in my reference to the Laws of Athelstan, everyone will at once perceive that this accidental error of transcription (for which I cannot account) is at least quite immaterial to the point at issue, which turns entirely upon and is wholly centred in the question of the signification of the word port. It is to an examination, therefore, of Mr. Round’s strictures on my use of this word port that I shall now advert.