Note 63 — Chapter VIII · FROM SKYE TO CALCUTTA.

Nevertheless she was probably nearer right than ourselves, inasmuch as Dean Stanley tells us that Holborn, like Hay Hill, owes its initiatory H to sheer Cockneyism; the latter denoting the hill where the Aye Brook once flowed, while the former takes its name from the Old Bourne (the ancient river), which, rising in High Holborn, formerly ran down that green hillside. Its once clear waters, like those of all the neighbouring streamlets, have now been imprisoned and sentenced to hard labour underground, in purifying sewers. The Dean also quotes the suggestive names of Langbourne (the long stream), Tyburn (The Aye Bourne), Mary-le-bone (from St. Mary le Bourne), Southborne, and Shareborne as reminders of the early days, when these shares, or small rills, flowed through peaceful meadows; and when ships came up to Old Bourne Bridge, pausing on their way at Fleet Bridge; strange vision of a time when the fleet, or swift brook, flowed (a silent highway) where now the stream of busy life surges so noisily, with ceaseless roar. Apart from this curious change in London’s geography (above-ground at least) it is interesting to remember that our own Scotch name for a brook, a burn, has so near a relationship to old English—though I doubt whether many modern Britons ever think of a river, in connection with “the bourne whence no traveller returns.”