The magnificent bronze shield and _bric a brac_ found in London were thus presumably made there, and it is not improbable that the principal smitheries were situated either at Smithfield in the East, or Smithfield in the West in the ward of Farringdon or Farendone. Stow in his _London_ uses the word _fereno_ to denote an ironmonger, in old French _feron_ meant a smith, and wherever the ancient ferenos or smiths were settled probably became known as _Farindones_ or _fereno towns_. Stow mentions several eminent goldsmiths named Farendone; from _feron_, the authorities derive the surname Fearon, which may be seen over a shop-front near Farringdon Street to-day. Modern Farringdon Street leads from Smithfield or Smithy field[524] to Blackfriars, and it may be suggested that the original Black Friars were literally freres or brethren, who forged with industrious ferocity at their fires and furnaces. Without impropriety the early fearons might have adopted as their motto _Semper virens_: smiting in smithies is smutty work, and all these terms are no doubt interrelated, but not, I think, in the sense which Skeat supposes them, _viz._: "Smite, _to fling_. The original sense was to smear or rub over. 'To rub over,' seems to have been a sarcastic expression for 'to beat'; we find _well anoynted_--well beaten." The word _bronze_ was derived, it is said, from Brundusinum or Brindisi, a town which was famous for its bronze workers. Brindisi is almost opposite Berat in Epirus; the smith or _faber_ is proverbially _burly_, _i.e._, _bur_ like or _brawny_, and it is curious that the terms _brass_, _brasier_, _burnish_, _bronze_, etc., should all similarly point to Bru or Brut. With St. Bride or St. Brigit, who in one of her three aspects was represented as a smith, may be connoted _bright_, and with Bress, the Consort of Brigit, may be connoted _brass_. And as Bride was alternatively known as Fraid, doubtless to this form of the name may be assigned _fer_, _fire_, _fry_, _frizzle_, _furnace_, _forge_, _fierce_, _ferocious_, and _force_. That the island of Bru or Barri in South Wales was a reputed home of the burly _faber_, _feuber_, or Fire Father, is to be inferred from the statement of Giraldus Cambrensis, that "in a rock near the entrance of the island there is a small cavity to which if the ear is applied a noise is heard like that of smiths at work, the blowing of the bellows, strokes of the hammers, grinding of tools and roaring of furnaces".[525] It is supposed that Barri island owes its name to a certain St. Baroc, the remains of whose chapel once stood there: that St. Baroc was Al Borak, the White Horse or _brok_, upon whom every good Mussalman hopes eventually to ride, is implied by the story that St. Baroc borrowed a friend's horse and rode miraculously across the sea from Pembrokeshire to Ireland.