99 



were obliterated by the return to the former native names ; and 

 subsequently by the imposition of Teutonic and Scandinavian 

 names. 



After some reference to the Picts and Scots the paper con- 

 tinued ;— About the middle of the fifth century, and, for more 

 than a hundred years after that, bands of invaders, consisting 

 of Jutes or Danes, Norwegians, Frieslanders, (Frisons), Angles, 

 Saxons, and neighbouring tribes, continued to pour upon the 

 south and east shores of Britain. These gave us, not only innu- 

 merable j)lace-names, but what we call the Anglo-Saxon, which 

 forms the great basis of the language, which to day wespeak as 

 our Mother- tongue. Subsequently, the Danelacjh took in nearly 

 the same territory that the Angles had occupied, including a 

 large portion of Lancashire, which became almost a Danish 

 colony. In the Lancashire dialect there are many words of 

 Danish origin even now, and about fifty place-names. Finally, 

 came the settlement of the Normans. The Norman-French, 

 and other provincial dialects which these introduced, however, 

 gave us comparatively few descriptive names of places, except 

 those of Castles, Abbeys and the like, the names of the lands 

 they acquired being derived, chiefly, from then- Christian and 

 family names, rather than from natural characteristics. 



We have given this rapid sketch of these various nations, 

 because from them, we are directly or indirectly descended, and 

 derive from their several languages and dialects, the names by 

 which we to day call our seas and rivers, mountains and plains, 

 hills and valleys, and all the natm-al features of our country, as 

 well as its various civil and political divisions, national and local, 

 its cities and towns, villages and home-steads, and all the place- 

 names with which we are so familiar. And this we shall find to 

 be no less true of Rossendale in particular, than of England, 

 Ireland, Scotland and Wales, in general. 



The special subject of our paper is the place-names in a some- 

 what isolated and limited, but pretty well defined district, around 

 which cluster not a few other names, when its position and 

 relations are fully stated. This ancient Eoyal Forest of Kossen- 

 dale originally formed a part of the Forest of Blackburnshire, 

 and the Chase of Pendle. 



In the composite designation : " The Forest of Eossendale," 

 we have three very expressive and descriptive names. Forest is, 

 both in orthography and meaning, a purely Armenian word, and 

 was probably brought by the Celts, from the mountainous forest- 

 lands of their ancient Asiatic home. In the various European 

 tongues, its radical meaning is strange, foreign, wild, barbarous, 

 and indicates wandering, and distance from cities and civihzation. 

 In our country it means wooded land and pasture-ground for 

 wild animals, occupied by trees of natural growth, in contra- 



