55 
year A.D. 1000, it was laid waste by the English. At this time it 
was the chief rendezvous of the Danes in Britain: it is doubtful 
whether the English attack was on the native Cumbrians, or on the 
Danish settlers. This vendezvous-ing of the Danes in Cumbria 
would be the time when they made extensive settlements in the 
district now Cumberland and Westmorland, which may yet be 
known by the termination “by.” There are some sixty-three of 
these. Like the “tons,” the English “tons,” they occupy the best 
of the country, running in a circle from Appleby on the S.E. along 
the Cumbrian plain to Allonby on the Solway, and cropping up 
again at Ponsonby. 
In addition to this Danish colonization, was an extensive one 
from Norway, utterly unrecorded in history, but proved beyond 
possibility of cavil by the researches of my cousin, the well known 
Scandinavian scholar, Mr. Ferguson, M.P. 
The place names of the district prove it—above one hundred 
end in the Norse termination of “thwaite”; nearly as many (I am 
not certain of the number) end in the Norse termination “garth,” 
or “guards,” or “gard.” These names lie, not in the plain, but in 
the high ground avoided by the Danish dys and the English ozs. 
The ¢hwaites occupy higher ground, as a rule, than the guards. 
They lie thickest towards the west of the district, thus showing the 
Norsemen to have entered from the west. They came from their 
depét in the Isle of Man, which they had seized. There exists a 
striking similarity between the placenames in that Island, and in 
West Cumberland. 
Amid all these settlers and invaders—English, Danes, and 
Norse—the Britons, or Welsh of Strathclyde, Reged, and Cumbria 
gradually melted into the surrounding population, and their lan- 
guage ceased to be discernible as that of a separate race. But 
that was a slow process: their language is thought to have lingered 
in secluded places until the Reformation, when it was possibly 
destroyed by the ministrations of the Protestant clergy. A few 
British local traditions still remain among us. Pendragon Castle 
reminds the traveller of the fabled Ather, or Uther. Some of the 
mountains which adorn the landscape, retain the appellations given 
