{102} Dr. Oliver (in his “Religious houses on the Witham,” appendix pp. 165–167) says: “The honours of the Witham may be inferred, not only from the consecrated spots and temples (once existent) on its banks, but from its very names. It was called Grant-avon, or the divine stream; and Cwaith-Ket, _i.e._ the work or river of “Ket” (Ked or Keridwen, the Druid goddess Ceres). Ket survives in Catley, not far from the Witham. The river was worshipped as her embodiment. Oliver adds: “The sacred places on its banks were more numerous, perhaps than those of any other river in Britain.” It will be apparent, to anyone that the name Witham is not a river name at all, but that of a village, the village near which the river rises. In the time of Leland, the antiquary (circa 1550) it was known as the Lindis. He says: “There be four ferys upon the water of Lindis betwixt Lincoln and Boston. Shut (Short) Fery, Tatershaul Fery, Dogdick Fery, Langreth Fery” (quoted by Mr. G. Sills, Archl. His. Wash., “Lin. N. and Q.,” Nat. His. section, July, 1897, p. 108). But Mr. Taylor tells us (in his “Words and Places,” p. 130) that “throughout the whole of England there is hardly a single river name which is not Celtic,” and accordingly the Celtic name of the Witham was Grant-avon (avon meaning “river”), while the town upon it was Grantham. It was also known by the names “Rhe” and “Aye,” the former Celtic, the latter Saxon or Danish. “Lin. N. and Q.,” vol. ii., p. 222. {103a} “Introduction to vol. on “The Geology arounde Lincoln.” Government Geolog. Survey Memoir. {103b} “Naturalist,” 1895, p. 274. {103c} The late Mr. W. H. Wheeler, one of our ablest engineers, held the opinion that there was a time when the Witham, by a somewhat similar process, instead of passing through “the Lincoln Gap,” if it then existed, found its way through a low tract of country northward into the Trent, and so passed out into the Humber. See “Lincolnshire Notes and Queries,” vol. i., pp. 53, 54, and 213. It would almost seem that the poet Drayton had an idea of something of this kind, when he says of the Witham— “Leaving her former course in which she first set forth, Which seemed to have been directly _to the north_, She runs her silver front into the muddy fen . . . coming down, . . . to lively Botolph’s town.” Polyolbion, song xxv. It may here be added that the antiquary, Stukely, who at one time lived at Boston was of opinion, that the Witham, at one period, diverged from its present channel a little below Tattershall, about Dogdyke, to the east, and through various channels, which are now drains, found its way to Wainfleet and there debouched into the sea. And an old map of Richard of Cirencester, in the 14th century, confirms this. {105a} “Naturalist,” 1895, pp. 230, 231.