GOTHIC COLONISATION.

43

in the direction of Longtown, another westward towards Wigton. The Cumrew of the fell-sides were thus isolated from the rest of Cumbria, but we subsequently find them uniting with the Angles at Cumwhinton, Cumwhitton (C. C. cum, a valley).

The Saxons entered Cumbria from the south. Under their most peculiarly distinctive mark, the termination ham, they do not seem to have made much impression even on Lancashire. In Westmorland, their principal settlements were near the lakes and rivers; and we find them between Kendal, Morecambe, and Windermere, and near Ullswater and the Eamont. We cannot assume the arrival of the Saxons in Westmorland to have been earlier than

the close of the eighth century. As an invasive or colonising people, they never entered Cumberland.

The movements of the Danes in Cumbria are more difficult to determine than those of either Angles or Saxons. Identifying them by their peculiar terminations, the most usual of which are by and thorpe, we find them more or less spread through the two counties. Of the Danish population of the north of England, a large proportion always continued to lead an unsettled, roving life, prepared to take part in any kind of commotion. After the pressure of defeat, some of those marauders would find in these counties a secure place of refuge. Through Cumberland they extended themselves into Scotland, and this points more particularly to an immigration from Yorkshire.

The Danes were not the only Scandinavian people that colonised these counties. Some Norse endings testify to the presence of a few Norwegians. One portion of these, perhaps, reached Cumberland by sea, but a great part might easily find their way over land with their kinsmen. Prof. Worsaae adduces evidence to show that the bulk of the Scandinavians of England (including Cumbria) were Danes. In Lincolnshire, the most purely Danish part of England, he reckons two hundred and twelve names of places ending in by, and in Cumberland and Westmorland sixty-three. The endings by and thorpe are scarcely known in the Norwegian districts of Scotland, the Islands, the Isle of Man, or Ireland. And this is tolerably conclusive on the Scandinavians of Cumbria.

The last people that entered the north-west of Europe, came in two divisions, the Swedes and Norwegians. The latter crossed, or passed round, the gulf of Bothnia; and having penetrated the Kiölen mountains, they settled on the coasts of the Atlantic. Both these tribes were provided with iron weapons, but continued to burn the corpse down to a late period. The Iron age thus introduced into the north, flourished in Sweden and Norway long before it made its way into Denmark. It is remarkable, too, that the Iron graves of Denmark contain exclusively unburnt corpses. In these data we possess an additional means of ascertaining what claim the Norwegians may have to the colonisation of Cumbria.

The immigration of the Angles, though well-defined and widely spread, does not seem to have been very strongly supported by numbers. Their attitude on the map of the whole kingdom is that of a dominant people, who penetrated by bold expeditions, where others only reached by the slow progress of population.* It need scarcely be observed, that the fact of the Angles having given their name to the country and to the language, is quite in accordance with this characteristic. But as neither Angles nor Saxons tended very much to fill these counties, it remained for the Danes and the Norsemen to assume an apparent preponderance on the map that did not belong to their numbers. It is well known, too, that the Dane never scrupled to make himself a home as the cuckoo builds a nest, and that his only reparation was to change or disguise the name, if he were able. Penrith, in Cumberland, is a remarkable instance of the Danish mode of colonisation. This place remained a Cambro-Celtic settlement, with, of course, a considerable population, until the

* In the Angle parts of England the ending ton frequently appears in names of places of importance. It is not so in the Saxon parts, where in such cases ton is never found except as an addition to the older name. Northampton, Southampton, are examples, in which the Saxons could not have added ton to their own ham, the former having had with them only the lesser meaning of a farm or farm-house. Cf. Wolverhampton and Birmingham. The accent on the second syllable shows the construction of the compound.

THE DANE AS A COLONIST.

45

honest Danes "made their own" of it, as we find by the names Iwith which the interior of the town abounds.*

Nevertheless, together with this unfortunate want of discrimination in affairs of property, the Dane possessed many good qualities that it is useless any longer to deny, at least in England. Chief of these was the disposition to unite with those about him, which must have peculiarly fitted him to be the colonist of a distracted country, such as England was for a length of time. The fusion is not so apparent in Cumbria, though the points of junction with the other peoples are sufficiently numerous. Celts and Danes have united in many places, the most remarkable of which is Oughterby (Upperby); Danes and Angles, at Skirwith and Dalston (the town in the dale); Danes and Saxons, at Askham, Hackthorpe, Dallam (dale-ham), and Kempley, near Penrith, and in Westmorland. But there was also in the Dane a stubborn, restless individuality, contrasting with the easy, centralising disposition of the Saxon, that must have exercised a wholesome influence on the laws and constitution of the country. Without granting all that Prof. Worsaae claims for his countrymen, there can scarcely be any doubt that to the Danes we owe our system of by-laws, Scotch bir-laws (D. by, byr, a town), that is, laws made for a town, perhaps the most valuable part of our present mode of government.

* Penrith has thus been converted into Perith, though it is not meant to be insinuated that old predatory habits appear in the change.

CHAPTER VII.

MIXED NAMES OF PLACES.

THE mixed or Gothic names of places in England, compared with the Celtic, bear the character of lateness, that is, a great part of them belong to the present day, and nearly all the rest to the period immediately preceding. Substantive names have already become endings; and through this arises a facility of dealing with them, they may be classed by their terminations, and thus apportioned to the different peoples. It holds good as a general rule, that no tribe of people used two different endings to express precisely the same meaning.

Mixed names, compared with older names, are liable to an illegitimate increase; what the latter lose, the former gain. All that has been said on pseudo-etymology in a former chapter, belongs equally to this place. The latest dialect gains from all the preceding, checked only by the dominant language. Prof. Worsaae observes on this subject: "It is not of course very easy to point out the meaning of every name of a place that has a Danish or Norwegian termination, * * the Scandinavians having often merely added an ending to the older names, or at most remodelled them into forms that had a home-like sound to their ears." This remodelling, having no connexion with the origin of the place, must be especially worthless to ethnographers.

One of the latest and most ordinary mistakes that second colonists make with regard to older names, is that of personification. If the name is not otherwise to be accounted for, it becomes the name of a person. The moor in Denmark called Dannerlyng, on the centre of which stands a single stone, is said to be the burial-place of King Dan, the first king of Denmark. Dunmaile

ANGLE AND SAXON TERMINATIONS.

47

(the hill of the tumulus) was in the same way converted into a crowned head, and the addition of "raise," eq. maile was thus made intelligible,-it was King Dunmaile's Raise. The mistakes of this kind amongst mixed names of towns, barrows, and monumental stones, must be very numerous.

ANGLE TERMINATIONS.

Bury, berry (N. byr, a farmhouse), a village originating in a farmhouse.

Ey (H. C. i, D. ö, an island, H. C. innis, an island or river-side ground), river-side ground more or less surrounded by water. Eq. in meaning to the D. ing.

Ton (C. dun, tun, a hill, a fort), a farmhouse and outbuildings strengthened for defence.-The Eng. town.-Hutton (G. hut, guard), the herdsmen's village is nearly eq. Wharton, Warwick, etc. Whitehaven has also the popular name of Whitton.

Wick (Lat. vicus, a village, N. ve, a dwelling), a village. Wigton, that is, Wick-ton, eq. Wickham. It has become wich in the Saxon parts of England.

Worth (N. virki, a mound, an entrenchment, D. värge, to defend, Eng. work), a village originating in a fortified house. Cf. the D. wark. Naworth (G. neu, new) and Newark have precisely the same meaning. In Warkworth we have both forms explaining each other. There is no doubt that Workington is the correct form of Worthington.

SAXON TERMINATIONS.

Barrow, berg (A. S. beorg, a hill, a tumulus, G. berg, a hill) a burial-place. Bargheist, the ghost that haunts the barrow. Eq. the D. höi, a hill, a tumulus.

Burn (C. bran, a mountain torrent), a stream.—The Fr. borne, a boundary. The two parts of Wytheburn (C. C. gwyth) translate each other. Holborn in London (holtbourne), the wooded stream, was probably once the name of the Fleet.