ARDEN, the common name of forests among the Celts, from the wildly extensive one which ranged for 500 miles in length across the country of Gaul, or covered more than half the county of Warwick in Britain, and the fites of which still retain the appellation of Arden, to the much smaller one of the ancient Manencion, that covered and surrounded the site of the present Manchester. Written Arduen by Cæsar and Tacitus in speaking of the forest in Gaul, and Arduen by Ossian in mentioning the woods of Caledonia, it cannot be compounded of ar the prepositive article in Celtic, and the substantive den, as Baxter and Camden assert it to be; but is formed of ard an adjective, and en the same as den. The meaning of the name therefore is not, as Mr Baxter renders it, simply the hills, or even, as the ingenious translator of Ossian interprets it, the high hill. Ard signifies either high or great, and en or den either an hill or wood. Arduen, Arduen,
Ardenburg Arduen, or Arden, then, means a considerable wood. Hence, only, the name became applicable to such very different sites, as the plains of Warwickshire and the hills of Scotland: and it was given, not only to the most extensive forests, to that which was the greatest in Gaul *, or so considerable in Britain; but to many that were important only within their own contracted districts, as the wood of Mancenion abovementioned, and others. See MANCHESTER.