UTIS--great noise; _2 King Henry IV_., Act II., Scene 4.

Place-names everywhere are a most interesting study; as a rule, people
do not recognize that every place-name has a meaning or reference to
some outstanding peculiarity or characteristic of the place, and that
much history can be gathered from interpretation. In cycling, it is
one of the many interests to unravel these derivations; merely as an
instance, I may mention that in Dorset and Wilts the name of
Winterbourne, with a prefix or suffix, often occurs; of course,
"bourne" means a stream, but until one knows that a "winterbourne" is
a stream that appears in winter only, and does not exist in summer,
the name carries no special signification.

One hears some curious personal names in the Worcestershire villages;
scriptural names are quite common, and seem very suitable for the
older labourers engaged upon their honourable employment on the land.
We had a maid named Vashti, and she was quite shy about mentioning it
at her first interview with my wife. In all country neighbourhoods
there is a special place with the unenviable reputation of stupidity;
such was "Yabberton" (Ebrington, on the Cotswolds), and Vashti was
somewhat reluctant to admit that it was her "natif," as a birthplace
is called in the district. Among the traditions of Yabberton it is
related that the farmers, being anxious to prolong the summer, erected
hurdles to wall in the cuckoo, and that they manured the church tower,
expecting it to sprout into an imposing steeple! There is a place in
Surrey, Send, with a similar reputation, where the inhabitants had to
visit a pond before they could tell that rain was falling!

But perhaps the best story of the kind is told in the New Forest,