300
THE ESSEX NATURALIST.
Round Stourmere, never shall they say—the sturdy fighters there—
The scornful words that, now my lord is fall'n, I turned from fray,
And went home lordless! No ! me rather spear and sword shall stay.
Messrs. Mawer and Stenton suggest91 that the name Stour
has been derived "from a [Keltic] root steu or stou, to drip."
The foregoing entries seem to show, however, that the root
was something more nearly resembling stur.
However this may be, Stur or Stour is probably the com-
monest English river-name. We even have two rivers so called
in Essex, as shown already.92 There are also considerable rivers
named Stour in Kent, Hants, Oxfordshire, Wiltshire, Worcester-
shire, and other counties ; also not a few places taking their
names from such rivers, as Sturry and Stourmouth, in Kent ;
Stourport and Stourbridge, in Worcestershire ; Stourton, Stour-
paine, and Sturminster, in Dorsetshire ; and others elsewhere.
The name appears also on the Continent. The Stor (Latinised
formerly as Sturia) is, for instance, an affluent of the Elbe.
(20).—The Cam or Granta (length about 65 miles : but
about 11 miles only in Essex) is the fifth and last of the rivers
rising on the tiny watershed near Wimbish. It rises at an elevated
spot (about 350 ft.) between Debden and Henham, within a
couple of miles of the sources of the Pant, the Chelmer, and
the Roding. It flows westward for the first two miles ; after
which, turning sharply, it continues northward, flowing through
Widdington, Newport, and Littlebury to Great Chesterford,
where it enters Cambridgeshire, continuing through Cambridge and
Ely, and discharging ultimately into the Wash. The Cam is the
only Essex river which, rising within the county, flows out of it.
Though called the Granta by Saxton (1576), Harrison (1587),
and a few other writers, it has been called the Cam by most
later writers and cartographers, including Chapman and Andre
(1777). Messrs. Mawer and Stenton suggest93 that the name
Cam is of Keltic origin and akin to the modern-Welsh cam, crooked.
It appears not uncommonly as a river-name throughout Britain,
there being streams so called in Cumberland, Gloucestershire,
Yorkshire, and elsewhere. Yet "Granta," though often re-
garded as a comparatively-modern academic name, is
apparently equally-ancient ; for no less an authority than
91 Survey of English Place-Names, p. 24 (1914).
92 See ante, p. 284.
93 Survey of Engl. Place-Names, p. 24 (1924).