In the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle we find the following notices:—"This year King Beorhtric took to wife Eadburg, King Offa's daughter; and in his days first came three ships of Northmen, out of HÆretha-land. And then the reeve rode to the place, and would have driven them to the king's town, because he knew not who they were; and they there slew him. These were the first ships of Danish-men which sought the land of the English race." Again:—

"This year dire forewarnings came over the land of the North-humbrians, and miserably terrified the people; these were excessive whirlwinds, and lightnings; and fiery dragons were seen flying in the air. A great famine soon followed these tokens: and a little after that, in the same year, on the 6th of the Ides of January, the ravaging of heathen men lamentably destroyed God's church at Lindisfarn, through[245] rapine and slaughter. And Siega died on the 8th of the Kalends of March."

After this the notices of the formidable Danes become numerous and important. But it is not in the pages of history that the influence of their invasions is to be found. The provincial dialects of the British Isles, the local names in the map of Europe, the traditions and (in some cases) the pedigrees of the older families are the best sources.

If we study the local names of Germany and Scandinavia, we shall find that when we get North of the Eyder a change takes place. In Sleswick the compound names of places begin to end in -gaard, -skov, and -by; in -by most especially, as Oster-by, Wis-by, Gammel-by, Nor-by, &c. In Jutland the forms in -by attain their maximum. They prevail in the islands. They prevail in Sweden. They are rare (a fact of great importance) in Norway. In Germany they are either non-existent or accidental. In respect to its meaning, by=town, village, settlement; and By-en=the town, is a term by which Christiania or Copenhagen—the metropoles of Norway and Denmark—are designated. Such forms as Kir-ton, Nor-ton, and New-ton in German would, in Danish, be Kir-by, Nor-by, New-by.

Now the distribution of the forms in -by over the British Isles has the same import as its distribution[246] in Germany and Scandinavia. It indicates a Danish as opposed to a German occupancy. Again—the Anglo-Saxon forms are Church and Ship, as in Dun-church and Ship-ton; whereas the Danish are Kirk and Skip, as in Orms-kirk and Skip-ton. The distribution of these forms over the British Isles closely coincides with that of the compounds in -by.

With these preliminaries we will follow the lines which are marked out by the occurrence of the places in -by; beginning at a point on the coast of Lincolnshire, about half-way between the entrance to the Wash and the mouth of the Humber; the direction being south and south-west. Ander-by Creek, Willough-by Hills, Mum-by, Or-by, Ir-by, Firs-by, Reves-by, Conings-by, Ewer-by, Asgar-by,[27] Span-by, Dows-by, Duns-by, Hacon-by,[27] Thurl-by, Carl-by[27] take us into Rutlandshire, where we find only Grun-by and Hoo-by. Neither are they numerous in Northamptonshire; Canons' Ash-by, Cates-by, and Bad-by giving us the outline of the South-eastern parts of their area. For Huntingdon, Cambridge, and Beds, nothing ends in -by, whilst the other forms are in sh, and ch—as Charlton, Shelton, Chesterton rather than Carlton, Skelton, Casterton. Leicestershire is[247] full of the form, as may be seen by looking at the parts about Melton, along the valleys of the Wreak and Soar; but as we approach Warwickshire they decrease, and there is none south of Rug-by. More than this, the form changes suddenly, and three miles below the last named town we have Dun-church and Coach-batch. Tradition, too, indicates the existence of an old March or Debateable Land; for south of Rug-by begins the scene of the deeds of Guy Earl of Warwick, the slayer of the Dun Cow. Probably, too, the Bevis of Hampton was a similar[28] North-amp-ton-shire hero, notwithstanding the claim of the town of Southampton.

The line now takes a direction northwards and passes through Bretby (on the Trent) to Derby, Leicestershire being wholly included. And here the frontier of the forest which originally covered the coal-district seems to have been the western limit to the Danish encroachments, Rotherham, Sheffield, and Leeds lying beyond, but with the greater part of Nottinghamshire and a large part of Derby within, it. In Yorkshire the East Riding is Danish, and the North to a great extent; indeed the western feeders of the Ouse seem to have been followed up to their head-waters, and the watershed of England to have been crossed. This gives the numerous -bys[248] in Cumberland and Westmoreland[29]—Kirk-by, Apple-by, &c.

So much for the very irregular and remarkable outline of the area of the forms in -by on its southern and western sides. In the north-east it nearly coincides with the valley of the Tees—nearly but not quite; since, in Durham, we have Ra-by, Sela-by, and Rum-by. The derivatives of castra, on the other hand, are in -ch-; e.g., Ebchester, Chester-le-street, Lanchester (Lan-caster). In Northumberland there are none.

I look upon this as the one large main Danish area of Great Britain, its occupants having been deduced from a series of primary settlements on the Humber. It coincides chiefly with the water-system of the Trent, makes Lincolnshire, and the East Riding of Yorkshire the mother-countries, and suggests the notions that, as compared with the Humber, the rivers of the Wash, and the river Tees were unimportant. The oldest and most thoroughly Danish town was Grimsby. The settlements were generally small. I infer this from the extent to which the names are compounded of -by and a noun in the genitive case singular (Candel-s-by, Grim-s-by, &c.). Danish names such as Thorold, Thurkill, Orme, &c., are eminently common in Lincolnshire; and, at Grimsby,[249] a vestige of the famous Danish hero Havelok is still preserved in Havelok-street. On the other hand, the number of Danish idioms in the provincial dialects is by no means proportionate to the preponderance of the forms in -by. In Lincolnshire it is but small, though larger in Yorkshire and Cumberland.

The extent to which the rivers which fall in the Wash are not characterized by the presence of forms in -by is remarkable. The Witham and Welland alone (and they but partially) have -bys on their banks. Again—

Just above Yarmouth, between the Yare, the North River and the sea, is a remarkable congregation of forms in -by. These are more numerous in this little tract than the rest of Norfolk, Suffolk, and Essex together—Mault-by, Orms-by[30] (doubly Danish), Hemes-by, &c. This may indicate either a settlement direct from Scandinavia, or a secondary settlement from Lincolnshire.

However doubtful this may be, it is safe to attribute the -bys on the West of England, to the Danes of Cumberland and Westmoreland, the Danes of the Valley of the Eden. These spread—

A. Northwards, following either the coast of Galloway or the water-system of the Annan, Locker-bie, &c.[250]—

B. Westwards into the Isle of Man—

C. Southwards into—

a. Cheshire, Lancashire, and Carnarvonshire (Orms-head), always, however, within a moderate distance of the sea—Horn-by, Orms-kirk,[31] Whit-by, Ire-by, Hels-by, &c.—

b. Pembrokeshire; where in Haver-ford and Mil-ford the element ford is equivalent to the Danish Fiord, and the Scotch Firth, and translates the Latin word sinus—not vadum. Guard- in Fish-guard is Danish also; as are Ten-by and Harold-stone.

Such is the distribution of one branch of the Scandinavians, viz.: those from Jutland, the Danish Isles, and (perhaps) the South of Sweden. That of the Norwegians of Norway is different. Shetland, the Orkneys, Caithness, and Sutherland, the Hebrides, and Ireland, form the line of invasion here. In Man the two branches met—the Danish from the east, and the Norwegian from the north and east.

The numerous details respecting the Scandinavians in Britain are to be found in Mr. Worsaae's "Danes and Northmen;" and, besides this, the proof of the distinction just drawn between the[251] Danes of South Britain and the Norwegians of Scotland, the Hebrides and Ireland. It lies in the phenomena connected with the form -by.

a. Common as they are in Denmark and Sweden, they are almost wholly wanting in Norway.

b. Common as are other Scandinavian elements, the forms in -by are almost wholly wanting in Scotland and Ireland.

Hence—Northman or Scandinavian means a Dane in South Britain, a Norwegian in Scotland and Ireland, and a Dane or Norwegian, as the particular case may be, in the Isle of Man, Northumberland, and Durham. This is well shewn, and that for the first time, in the valuable work referred to.

Can this analysis be carried further? Probably it can. Over and above the consideration of the Frisians of Friesland,[32] there is that of the North-Frisians.[33] Some of these may easily have formed part of the Scandinavian invasion. The nearest approach to absolute evidence on this point is to be found in the East Riding of Yorkshire; where in Holdernesse we have the Frisian forms News-om, Holl-ym, Arr-am, and the compound Fris-marsh. The Leicestershire Fris-by is more evidently North-Frisian.

Again, a writer who, like the present, believes that, until a comparatively recent period, South[252] Jutland, the Danish Isles, and the South of Sweden, at least, were Sarmatian, is justified in asking whether members of this stock also may not have helped to swell the Scandinavian host. The presumption is in favour of their having done so; the a posteriori evidence scanty. Two personages of our popular mythology, however, seem Slavonic—Old Bogy and Old Scratch. Bog in Slavonic is God, or DÆmon; so that Czerne-bog=Black God, and Biele-bog=White God; whereas no Gothic interpretation is equally probable.

Old Scratch is the Hairy one, or Pilosus, as his name is rendered in the glosses. In Bohemian we have the forms scret, screti, scretti, skr'et, s'kr'jtek=demon, household god; in Polish, skrzot and skrzitek; in Slovenian, shkrÁtie, shkrÁtely. On the other hand, in the Old High German, the Icelandic, and some of the Low German dialects, the word occurs as it does in English. Still the combination of sounds is so Slavonic, and the name is spread over so great a portion of the Slavonic area, that I look upon it as essentially and originally belonging to that family.

The ethnological analysis of the Scandinavians is one question; the date of their first invasion, another. The statements of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle opened the present chapter. Is there[253] reason to criticize them? For the fact of Danes having wintered in England A.D. 787 they are unexceptionable. For the fact of their having never done so before, they only supply the unsatisfactory assertion of a negative.

For my own part I should not like to deny the presence of Scandinavians in certain parts of Great Britain, even at the very beginning of the Historical period. That this was the case with Orkney and Shetland few, perhaps, are inclined to deny. But the gloss dal[34], combined the exception which can be taken to the words penn fahel,[35] gives a probability to the Scandinavian origin of the Picts which has not hitherto been generally admitted—the present writer, amongst others, having denied it.

When the Britons had occupied the greater part of the Island they were met by the Picts from Scythia. It was not, however, on any part of Great Britain that the Picts first landed.

It was on the north coast of Ireland, then held by Scots. But the Scots had no room for them, so they told them of the opposite island of Britain, and recommended them to take possession of it; which was done accordingly. "And as the Picts had no wives, and had to seek them from the Scots, they were granted on the sole condition, that whenever the succession became[254] doubtful, the female line should be preferred over the male; which is kept up even now amongst the Picts." This peculiarity in the Pict law of succession is interesting; and as Beda speaks to it as a cotemporary witness, it must pass as one of the few definite facts in the Pict history. Another statement of true importance is, that the Scriptures were read in all the languages of Great Britain; there being five in number: the Latin, the Angle, the British, the Scottish, and the Pict.

Could this Pictish have been Scandinavian, a language closely allied to the Anglo-Saxon, without Beda knowing it? I once answered hastily in the negative, but the fact that he actually overlooks the Gothic character of the word dal (=part), has modified my view.

On the other hand, their deduction from Scythia goes for nothing. The text which supplied Beda with his statement has come down to us, though, unfortunately, with three different readings. It is from Gildas, and seems to be one of that author's least happy attempts at fine writing.

He calls the German Ocean the Tithic Valley, or the Valley of Tithys (Thetis?). In one out of the two MSS. which deviate from the form Tithecam Vallem, the reading is Aticam, and in the other Styticam. I give the texts of Gildas in full. They may serve to shew his style:—"Itaque illis[255] ad sua remeantibus, emergunt certatim de curucis, quibus sunt trans Tithecam vallem vecti, quasi in alto Titane incalescente caumate de aridissimis foraminum cavernulis fusci vermiculorum cenei, tetri Scotorum Pictorumque greges, moribus ex parte dissidentes, et una eademque sanguinis fundendi aviditate concordes, furciferosque magis vultus pilis, quam corporum pudenda pudendisque proxima vestibus tegentes, cognitaque condebitorum reversione, et reditus denegatione, solito confidentius, omnem Aquilonalem extremamque terrÆ partem, pro indigenis muro tenus capessunt."—Historia, §. 15.

But, perhaps, Gildas readily wrote Scythica; for there was a reason, as reasons went in the sixth century, for his doing so. It was, probably, the following lines in Virgil:—

That either Gildas or Beda knew of the line or translated it as if the Picts were Geloni cannot be shewn; but that an author not very much later than Beda did so is shewn by the following extract from a Life of St. Vodoal, written about the beginning of the tenth century—"The Blessed Vodoal was (as they say) sprung from the arrow-bearing nation of the Geloni, who are believed to have drawn their origin from Scythia. Concerning[256] whom, the poet writes Pictosque Gelonos; and from that time till now they are called Picts."[36] Sagittiferi is as Virgilian as the word Picti—

Another element in the reasoning upon the date of the earliest Scandinavians is the fact that more than one enquirer has noticed in the nomenclature of a writer so early as Ptolemy, words with an aspect more or less Scandinavian—e.g., Ar-beia, Leucopi-bi-um, Vand-uarii (Aqui-colÆ), Lox-ius fluvius (=Salmon River), and, perhaps, some others.

To argue that there were Scandinavians amongst us in the second century, because certain words were Norse, and then to infer the Norse character of the words in question from the presence of Scandinavians is a vicious circle from which we must keep apart. At the same time, the insufficiency of the early historians to give a negative, the oversight of Beda in respect to the word dal, and the exceptions which can be taken to the gloss penn fahel, are all elements of importance. The present writer believes that there were Norsemen in Britain anterior to A.D. 787, and also that those Norsemen may have been the Picts.[257]

The Danish and Norwegian subjects of Canute give us a direct, the Normans of William the Conqueror an indirect, Scandinavian element.

"The latest conquerors of this island were also the bravest and the best. I do not except even the Romans. And, in spite of our sympathies with Harold and Hereward, and our abhorrence of the founder of the New Forest and the desolator of Yorkshire, we must confess the superiority of the Normans to the Anglo-Saxons and Anglo-Danes, whom they met here in 1066, as well as to the degenerate Frank noblesse, and the crushed and servile Romanesque provincials, from whom, in 912, they had wrested the district in the north of Gaul, which still bears the name of Normandy."[37]

This leads us to the analysis of the blood of the Norman, or North-man. Occupant as he is of a country so far south as Normandy, this is his designation; since the Scandinavians who in the eighth, ninth, and tenth centuries ravaged Great Britain, extended themselves along the coasts of the Continent as well. And here they are subject to the same questions as the Scandinavians of Lincolnshire, Scotland, and the Isle of Man. They are liable to being claimed as Norwegians, and liable to be claimed as Danes; they may or[258] they may not have had forerunners; their blood, if Danish rather than Norwegian, may have been Jute or it may have been Frisian; they may have been distinct from certain allied conquerors known under the name of Saxon, or they may be the Saxons of a previous period.

They seem, however, in reality, to have been Norwegians from Norway rather than Danes from Jutland and the Danish Isles; Norwegians, unaccompanied by females, and Norwegians who preserve their separate nationality to a very inconsiderable extent. They formed French alliances, and they adopted the habits and manners of the natives. These were, from first to last, Keltic on the mother's side; but on that of the father, Keltic, Roman, and German. That this latter element was important, is inferred from the names of the Ducal and Royal family: William, Richard, Henry, &c., names as little Scandinavian as they are Roman or Gallic.

Hence, the blood of even the true Norman was heterogeneous; whilst (more than this) the army itself was only partially levied on the soil of Normandy—Bretons, who were nearly pure Kelts, Flemings who were Kelto-Germans, and Walloons who were Kelto-German and Roman, all helped to swell the host of the Conqueror. What these effected at Hastings, and how they appropriated the country, is a matter for the civil[259] rather than the physical historian; the distribution of their blood amongst the present Englishmen being a problem for the herald and genealogist. The elements they brought over were only what we had before—Keltic, Roman, German, and Norse. The manner, however, of their combination differed. There was also a slight variation in the German blood. It was Frank rather than Angle.

Kelts, Romans, Germans, and Scandinavians, then, supply us with the chief elements of our population, elements which are mixed up with each other in numerous degrees of combination; in so many, indeed, that in the case of the last three there is no approach to purity.

However easy it may be, either amongst the Gaels of Connaught, or the Cambro-Britons of North-Wales, to find a typical and genuine Kelt, the German, equally genuine and typical, whom writers love to place in contrast with him, is not to be found within the four seas, the nearest approach being the Frisian of Friesland.

It is important, too, to remember that the mixture that has already taken place still goes on; and as three pure sources of Keltic, without a corresponding spring of Gothic, blood are in full flow, the result is a slow but sure addition of Keltic elements to the so-called Anglo-Saxon stock,[260] elements which are perceptible in Britain, and which are very considerable in America. The Gael or Briton who marries an English wife, transmits, on his own part, a pure Keltic strain, whereas no Englishman can effect a similar infusion of Germanism—his own breed being more or less hybrid.

The previous pages have dealt with the retrospect of English ethnology. The chief questions in the prospect are the one just indicated and the effects of change of area in the case of the Americans.

[27] These are Danish forms throughout—Asgar-, Hacon-, and Carl- being as little Anglo-Saxon as -by. Carl-by in Anglo-Saxon would be Charl-ton.