11 



the country up to the time of the latest Saxon invasion, and until the Saxons 

 obtained permanent possession of Herefordshire. 



Borlase, the Cornish antiquary, says that "when the Saxons had driven 

 the Britons before them into the extremities of the country, they called one 

 place of their retreat "Wealas or Wales, either from their being strangers to 

 them, or from their supposed descent from and resemblance to the Gauls. The 

 other place to which the Britons retired they called CORN-AVE-iXAS. The origin 

 of the name Wales is here evident, for the Saxons did not call the natives they 

 dispossessed Britons as the Romans did, but gave them the appellation of Waal, 

 which, whether a corruption of Gaul or not, meant with them atratigers. These 

 Waal or Wall Hills then were so called not from the walls upon them, but from 

 the people who there had their habitations. This appears highly probable when 

 we find these WomI Hills chiefly if not entirely on tlw Welsh confines, where, of 

 course, the natives would linger longest. Besides the Wall Hills before us, 

 there is a Wall Hills near Thombury, Wall Hill near Orleton, Herefordshire, 

 Wall Hill at Suckley, Wall Hill at Alfrick, and another at Eastham — these 

 last in West Worcestershire — and there is also Walls-field at Cradley, Wall-batch 

 in Grimley, and WaU-ford near Goodrich. Coxwall KnoU in Radnorshire may 

 supply another, and more might be enumerated. 



It is but candid in me to say that my friend Mr. Flavell Edmunds, a mem- 

 ber of this Club, with whom I have often had a friendly fight, and whose researches 

 in archwology and etymological derivations entitle his opinions to great respect, 

 differs with me as to this particular Walls Hill entrenchment, and to my idea 

 as to Wall Hills in general. He considers this fortification to be one that was 

 occupied and defended in post-Roman times by the Welsh against the Saxons ; 

 while the word loall he thinks was used by the Britons to indicate Roman 

 works, and was derived from the Latin vallum. The word gicaicl, he says, was 

 used by the Britons to denote Roman works, and the great wall of Severua 

 was called by them Gtcawl Severus. He also adduces Walls-End and other 

 places that no doubt had reference to actual walls. The war of words need 

 not much trouble us, and mere sounds are often very uncertain. My friend 

 invites me to run my head against a wall literally ; but I decline to do so, and 

 with the utmost courtesy give him tlie xcall ! The enquiry is not what the 

 Britons called the Roman works, which might be gaul as Camden says, or gwaxul 

 according to Mr. Edmunds, but what term was applied by the Saxons to the 

 Komano-Britons, and their positions. Borlase, Wright, and all who have 

 studied the subject, admit that the terms Welsh and Wales are derivations of 

 a Teutonic appellation that meant foreigners — not of the Saxon race. If then 

 the people and the country of their refuge were Wealas, or Waalas (the latter 

 latinized, as Borlase says, into Guallia), surely the last refuge of the demoralized 

 natives on their wooded hills, where perhaps by sufferance they long remained 

 even after the fertile vaUies were settled and cultivated, might very properly 

 be referred to as the Waal or Wall Sills, — eminences surrounded by woods and 

 thickets, where the last relics of a degraded population clung to a miserable 



