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Hwicce was a tribal kingdom in Anglo-Saxon England. According to the ''Anglo-Saxon Chronicle'', the kingdom was established in 577, after the Battle of Deorham. After 628, the kingdom became a client or sub-kingdom of Mercia as a result of the Battle of Cirencester. The ''Tribal Hidage'' assessed Hwicce at 7000 hides, which would give it a similar sized economy to the kingdoms of Essex and Sussex. The exact boundaries of the kingdom remain uncertain, though it is likely that they coincided with those of the old Diocese of Worcester, founded in 679–80, the early bishops of which bore the title ''Episcopus Hwicciorum''. The kingdom would therefore have included Worcestershire except the northwestern tip, Gloucestershire except the Forest of Dean, the southwestern half of Warwickshire, the neighbourhood of Bath north of the Avon, plus small parts of Herefordshire, Shropshire, Staffordshire and north-west Wiltshire.〔Della Hooke, ''The Kingdom of the Hwicce'' (1985), pp.12-13〕〔Stephen Yeates, ''The Tribe of Witches'' (2008), pp.1-8〕 ==Name== The etymology of the name ''Hwicce'' "the Hwiccians" is uncertain. It is the plural of a masculine ''i''-stem. It may be from a tribal name of "the Hwiccians", or it may be from a clan name. One etymology comes from the common noun ''hwicce'' "ark, chest, locker", in reference to the appearance of the territory as a flat-bottomed valley bordered by the Cotswolds and the Malvern Hills.〔J. Insley, "Hwicce" in: Hoops (ed.) Reallexikon der germanischen Altertumskunde, vol. 15, Walter de Gruyter, 2000, ISBN 978-3-11-016649-1, p. 295.〕 A second possibility would be a derivation from a given name, "the people of the man called Hwicce", but no such name has been recorded.〔William Henry Duignan, ''Notes on Staffordshire place names'', 1902.〕〔A. H. Smith, 'The Hwicce', in Medieval and Linguistic Studies in Honour of F. P. Magoun (1965), 56-65.〕 Eilert Ekwall connected the name of the Gewisse.〔Eilert Ekwall, ''The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Place-Names'' (Oxford Clarendon Press, reprinted 1991)〕 Also suggested by Smith is a tribal name that was in origin pejorative, meaning "the cowards", cognate to ''quake'', Old Norse ''hvikari'' "coward". It is also likely that "Hwicce" referred to the native tribes living along the banks of the River Severn, in the area of today's 'Worcester', who were weavers using rushes and reeds growing profusely to create baskets. The modern word 'wicker', which is thought to be of Scandinavian origin, describes the type of baskets produced by these early people. Stephen Yeates (2008, 2009) has interpreted the name as meaning "cauldron; sacred vessel" and linked to the shape of the Vale of Gloucester and the Romano-British regional cult of a goddess with a bucket or cauldron, identified with a ''Mater Dobunna'', supposedly associated with West Country legends concerning the Holy Grail.〔Stephen J. Yeates, ''The Tribe of Witches: The religion of the Dobunni and Hwicce'', Oxbow Books (2008). Stephen Yeates, ''A Dreaming for the Witches'' (2009).〕 The toponym ''Hwicce'' survives in Wychwood in Oxfordshire, Whichford in Warwickshire, Wichenford, Wychbury Hill and Droitwich in Worcestershire. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Hwicce」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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