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THE LANGUAGE OF LAKELAND IN ITS TESTIMONY 

 TO THE NORSEMAN AND THE CELT. 



By Rev. T, ELLWOOD, B.A., Torver Rectory, Coniston, 

 Ambleside. 



(Read at the Ambleside Annual Meeting.) 



In the outset of my paper, I may venture to express two principles 

 which have in some measure guided me in its composition. 

 \st. — That the proper names of the district have a right to be 

 claimed to have a place as the exponents of its language— »as being 

 the remnants of the language of its earlier inhabitants ; and, 

 2ndly, — That the Folk-Speech of these our mountain valleys differs 

 from English, usually so called, in that it has preserved the most 

 archaic forms of words, and in that we retain in the dialect of our 

 dalesmen original forms of speech which the polish of refined 

 society has elsewhere improved off the face of the earth. 



The records of the Norsemen as we find them in our English 

 Histories are Httle more than one continued series of piratical 

 descents upon our coasts ; of plunderings, burnings, and devast- 

 ation. Commencing in the early part of the 9th Century, or even 

 earlier, their attacks are continued to the time of the Conquest ; 

 and their sea-kings, when they did for a time settle down upon 

 the coast or go further inland, still seem to have maintained their 

 old spirit of piracy and plunder — roaming about without any 

 settled habitation — taking where and what they could. A verse 



