(Vol. vii., p. 269.)
Your correspondent C. affirms, as a mark of the Roman origin of
Chichester, that "the little stream that runs through it is called the
Lavant, _evidently from lavando_!" Now nobody, as old Camden says, "has
doubted the _Romanity_ of Chichester;" but I am quite sure that the
members of the Archæological Institute (who meet next summer upon the
banks of this same _Lavant_) would decidedly demur to so singular a
proof of it.
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C. is informed that, in the fourth volume of the _Archæologia_, p. 27.,
there is a paper by the Hon. Daines Barrington, on the term _Lavant_,
which, it appears, is commonly applied in Sussex to all brooks which are
dry at some seasons, as is the case with the Chichester river.
"From the same circumstance," it is added, "the sands between
Conway and Beaumaris in Anglesey, are called the _Lavant
sands_, because they are dry when the tide ebbs; as are also
the sands which are passed at low water between Cartmell and
Lancaster, for the same reason."
To trace the origin of the term _Lavant_, we must, I conceive, go back
to a period more remote than the Roman occupation; for that remarkable
people, who conquered the inhabitants of Britain, and partially
succeeded in imposing Roman appellations upon the greater towns and
cities, never could change the aboriginal names of the rivers and
mountains of the country. "Our hills, forests, and rivers," says Bishop
Percy, "have generally retained their old Celtic names." I venture,
therefore, to suggest, that the British word for river, _Av_, or _Avon_,
which seems to form the root of the word _Lavant_, may possibly be
modified in some way by the prefix, or postfix, so as to give, to the
compound word, the signification of an _intermittent_ stream.
The fact that, amidst all the changes which have passed over the face of
our country, the primitive names of the grander features of nature still
remain unaltered, is beautifully expressed by a great poet recently lost
to us:
"Mark! how all things swerve
From their known course, or vanish like a dream;
Another language spreads from coast to coast;
Only, perchance, some melancholy stream,
And some indignant hills old names preserve,
When laws, and creeds, and people all are lost!"
Wordsworth's _Eccles. Sonnets_, xii.