penetrate into Northern Italy. The name of Antwerp denotes the
town built at a "wharf"; but it sounds very much like the
Flemish handt werpen, "hand-throwing": "hence arose the legend
of the giant who cut of the hands of those who passed his
castle without paying him black-mail, and threw them into the
Scheldt."[68] In the myth of Bishop Hatto, related in a
previous paper, the Mause-thurm is a corruption of maut-thurm;
it means "customs-tower," and has nothing to do with mice or
rats. Doubtless this etymology was the cause of the floating
myth getting fastened to this particular place; that it did
not give rise to the myth itself is shown by the existence of
the same tale in other places. Somewhere in England there is a
place called Chateau Vert; the peasantry have corrupted it
into Shotover, and say that it has borne that name ever since
Little John shot over a high hill in the neighbourhood.[69]
Latium means "the flat land"; but, according to Virgil, it is
the place where Saturn once hid (latuisset) from the wrath of
his usurping son Jupiter.[70]

[66] Meyer, in Bunsen's Philosophy of Universal History, Vol.
I. p. 151.

[67] Aimoin, De Gestis Francorum, II. 5.

[68] Taylor, Words and Places, p. 393.

[69] Very similar to this is the etymological confusion upon
which is based the myth of the "confusion of tongues" in the
eleventh chapter of Genesis. The name "Babel" is really
Bab-Il, or "the gate of God"; but the Hebrew writer