[66] So the Franks explained the name of
the town Daras, in Mesopotamia, by the story that the Emperor
Justinian once addressed the chief magistrate with the
exclamation, daras, "thou shalt give":[67] the Greek
chronicler, Malalas, who spells the name Doras, informs us
with equal complacency that it was the place where Alexander
overcame Codomannus with dorn, "the spear." A certain passage
in the Alps is called Scaletta, from its resemblance to a
staircase; but according to a local tradition it owes its name
to the bleaching skeletons of a company of Moors who were
destroyed there in the eighth century, while attempting to
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.
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