278
THE ESSEX NATURALIST.
distance would speak of it—if, indeed, they ever spoke of it at
all—as "So-and-So's River." There would have been no
Ordnance Surveyors calling on him periodically and demanding
to know its proper name, so that they might enter it on their
official maps. Furthermore, river-names are not localized in
the way ordinary place-names are. Thus, people living beside
a river at one part of its course often call it by a name totally
different from that by which other people living on it at another
part of its course call it. This tendency continues to exist,
as will be seen, even at the present day. Thus it was that only
our larger rivers, known to many people over a wide area,
ever received or required definite names. Even to-day, most
of our smaller streams still have no names, properly so called.
They are spoken of (and even indicated on the maps of the
Ordnance Survey) by what I have styled "descriptive epithets,"
derived either from the name of the parish in which they rise
or through which they chiefly flow, or from the name of some
owner of land on their banks, or from some adjacent place.
Such descriptive epithets do not develop into names, properly
so called, until they have ceased to have an obvious descriptive
meaning in current language. Many of our smaller rivulets
are still known, therefore, by such descriptive epithets as
"So-and-So's Brook "or the "Such-and-Such Water"—the
latter specially in the chalk-area round Saffron Walden. Thus,
we have, among other small rivulets which are just large enough
to have become known by such descriptive epithets and to
be designated thereby on the maps of the Ordnance Survey, the
following eighteen3:—
The Belchamp Brook (5 miles), flowing through Belchamp
Walter, Borley, and Bulmer, into the Stour;
The Cambridge Brook (4 miles), flowing through Mount
Bures into the Stour;
Clavering Water (2 miles), flowing through Clavering into
the Stort;
Cobbin's Brook (6 miles), flowing through Cobbin's Farm
(Epping) and Waltham Abbey into the Lea;
The Cripsey Brook (7 miles), flowing through North Weald,
Moreton, and Chipping Ongar into the Roding;
Debden Water (3 miles), flowing through Debden and New-
port into the Cam;
3 Their lengths and courses, as given, are approximate only. Several of them arc named
on Chapman and Andre's Map of 1777.