The Luck in the Head: A Problem in English Folklore

Abstract

THE question I wish to discuss in this paper, that of the true import of certain English placenames, was, to the best of my knowledge, first formulated in 19071 when, in a lecture on English placenames the late Henry Bradley called attention to those OE names which were compounded of an animal's name and the word head. Hartshead and Swineshead are two straight-forward examples and there are others in which the meaning has been concealed by a change of word form e.g. Farcet in Hunts, which is Fearresheafod or Bull's head. Proceeding, I feel rather rashly, from the fact that some of these are the names of hundreds and that it was common to name a hundred from its place of customary assembly, Bradley concluded that the names possibly derived from 'a custom of setting up the head of an animal, or a representation of it, to mark the place for public open air meetings.' In 1933 Professor Bruce Dickens took up Bradley's hypothesis and propounded the view2 'that some of these places were once the site of bloody sacrifice in which the head, animal or human, was offered to a heathen deity'. In 1934 Professor Dickens contributed an Appendix to the volume 'Placenames of Surrey' on this same question3 (EPNS, XII C.U.P.