not translating.[32] The "castrum
sancti Jacobi" appears as "Saint James" in Wace, and it is "Saint James"
to this day alike in speech and in writing. The fact is worthy of some
notice in the puzzling history of the various forms of the apostolic
names Jacobus and Johannes and their diminutives. _Jacques_ and _Jack_
must surely be the same; how then came _Jack_ to be the diminutive of
_John_? Anyhow this Norman fortress bears the name of the Saint of
Compostela in a form chiefly familiar in Britain and Aragon, though it
is not without a cognate in the Italian _Giacomo_. The English forms of
apostolic names are sometimes borne even now by Romance-speaking owners,
as M. James Fazy and M. John Lemoinne bear witness. But here the name is
far too old for any imitative process of this kind. And it is only as
applied to the place itself that the form "James"[33] is used; the inn
is the "Hotel Saint-Jacques," and "Saint-Jacques" is the acknowledged
patron of the parish. Anyhow the effect is to give the name of the place
an unexpectedly English air. Perhaps such an air is not wholly out of
place in the name of a spot which was fortified against the Breton by a
prince who was to become King of the English, and whose fortification
led to a war in which two future and rival Kings of the English fought
side by side.

For the castle of Saint James was one of the fortresses raised by
William's policy to strengthen the Norman frontier against the
_Bret-Welsh_ of Gaul, just as in after days he and his Earls raised
fortresses on English ground to strengthen the English frontier against
the _Bret-Welsh_ of Britain. It stands very near to the border, and we
can well understand how its building might give offence to the Breton
Count Conan, and so lead to the war in which William and Harold marched
together across the sands which surround the consecrated Mount. In this
way Saint James plays an indirect part in English history, and it plays
another when it was one of the first points of his lost territory to be
won back by Henry the AEtheling after his brothers had driven him out of
the Mount and all else that he had.[34] But the place keeps hardly
anything but its memories and the natural beauty of its site. A steep
peninsular hill looks down on a narrow and wooded valley with a
_beck_--that is the right word in the land which contains Caude_bec_ and
_Bec_ Herlouin--running round its base. The church--a strange modern
building with some anc