Bottesford Moors, Kirton-in-Lindsey.
_Derivation of the Word "Island"_ (Vol. viii., p. 209.).--Your
correspondent C. gives me credit for a far greater amount of humour than I
can honestly lay claim to. He appears (he must excuse me for saying so) to
have scarcely read through my observations on the derivation of the word
_island_, which he criticises so unmercifully; and to have understood very
imperfectly what he has read. For instance, he says that my "derivation of
_island_ from _eye_, the visual orb, because each are (_sic_) surrounded by
water, seems like banter," &c. Had I insisted on any such analogy, I should
indeed have laid myself open to the charge; but _I did nothing of the
kind_, as he will find to be the case, if he will take the trouble of
perusing what I wrote. My remarks went to show, that, in the A.-S.
compounded terms, _Ealond_, _Igland_, &c., from which our word _island_
comes, the component _ea_, _ig_, &c., does not mean _water_, as has
hitherto been supposed to be the case, but an _eye_; and that on this
supposition alone can the simple _ig_, used to express an _island_, be
explained. Will C. endeavour to explain it in any other way?
Throughout my remarks, the word _isle_ is not mentioned. And why? Simply
because it has no immediate etymological connexion with the word _island_,
being merely the French word naturalised. The word _isle_ is a simple, the
word _island_ a compound term. It is surely a fruitless task (as it
certainly is unnecessary for any one, with the latter word ready formed to
his hand in the Saxon branch of the Teutonic, and, from its very form,
clearly of that family), to go out of his way to torture the Latin into
yielding something utterly foreign to it. My belief is, that the
resemblance between these two words is an accidental one; or, more
properly, that it is a question whether the introduction of an _s_ into the
word _island_ did not originate in the desire to assimilate the Saxon and
French terms.