Perhaps if we walk long enough we shall discover something about roads. There could be few better objects for walking, unless it be to meet a mistress or to fetch a doctor. We walk for a thousand reasons, because we are tired of sitting, because we cannot rest, to get away from towns or to get into them, or because we cannot afford to ride; and for permanent use the last is perhaps the best, as it is the oldest. [8] See his Introduction to _The Footpath Way: an Anthology for Walkers_. [Illustration: The Icknield Way and Old Parallel Tracks, near Newmarket.] CHAPTER II HISTORY, MYTH, TRADITION, CONJECTURE, AND INVENTION Few in the multitude of us who now handle maps are without some vague awe at the Old English lettering of the names of ancient things, such as Merry Maidens, Idlebush Barrow, Crugian Ladies, or the plain Carn, Long Barrow, or Dolmen. Not many could explain altogether why these are impressive. We remember the same lettering in old mysterious books, and in Scott’s _Marmion_ and Wordsworth’s _Hartleap Well_. We are touched in our sense of unmeasured antiquity, we acknowledge the honour and the darkness of the human inheritance. Most impressive of all, because they recur across many counties, are the names of roads, like the Sarn Helen of Wales, the Pilgrims’ Way of England. It is part of their power that they have no obvious and limited significance, and were certainly not bestowed by king or minister as names are given by a merchant to his commodities. Instead of “London Road” we see “Watling Street”; instead of “North Road” there is “Foss Way” or “Ermine Street.” But all these make some appeal, however fantastical, to the intelligence. “Icknield Street” or “Icknield Way” makes no such appeal. It is the name of two apparently distinct roads: one with a Roman look running north and south through Worcestershire and Warwickshire, the other winding with the chalk hills through Suffolk, Cambridgeshire, Hertfordshire, Bedfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Oxfordshire, Berkshire, and Wiltshire. I shall confine myself as far as possible to this second road. It runs south-westwards from East Anglia and along the Chilterns to the Downs and Wessex; but the name is mysterious. For centuries--since Holinshed--it was supposed to be connected with the East Anglian kingdom of the Iceni: only fifty years ago Guest confidently translated it as the warpath of the Iceni, and connected it with the names of places along its course, such as Icklingham, Ickleton, and Ickleford. To-day, it is pointed out with equal confidence that “according to philological laws Iceni would have produced in England a form beginning with Itch- or Etch-.” Dr. Henry Bradley cannot believe that there was any knowledge of the Iceni in Berkshire, but finds it “a natural supposition” that the road was called after a woman named Icenhild, though he points out that no such person or name is known in myth or history.