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that great tract of level and fertile land which, commencing near 

 the confluence of the Wampool and the Waver, extends for many 

 miles along the coast of the Solway, called the Holme or the 

 Abbey Holme — marks, I think, the point where many of the 

 Norsemen must have landed and settled upon the shores of the 

 Solway ; for I know of no other district which in an equal area 

 includes so many names that are purely and distinctively Norse. 

 Ness, Beck* and Force (Fos) are all Norse, and are of such frequent 

 occurrence that it is needless to point out the names and places in 

 which they are found. 



Speaking of the Solway, I am reminded of a term which the 

 Norse'settlers must have first introduced. Haaf is the old Norse 

 word for the sea ; and the fishermen of the Solway speak of their 

 sea nets as?the haaf-nets, and describe sea fishing as haafing; and 

 in their old charters the word is spelled haaf — exactly as it is 

 spelled in the Norse. Havex\^g, Millom, the most south-western 

 point of Cumberland — washed on one side by the Duddon, on 

 the other by the sea — is evidently Ifaaf-ridge, or sea-ridge. 



There are really three divisions of language which may be said 

 to represent the Old Norse, or Scandinavian, viz. — Icelandic, 

 Danish, and Norwegian. I have, however, the authority of one of 

 our most eminent scholars — a Cumbrian by extraction — and very 

 intimately acquainted with the Norse, both by residence in 

 Denmark and by the fact that he had a share in bringing out a 

 standard work in Icelandic, " Cleasby's Icelandic Dictionary" — 

 I have his authority for saying that with the exception of nautical 

 terms and other words of that class, these three divisions are in a 

 great measure identical, and any one of them may be used for root 

 words in contrasting our own dialect with the Norse. 



So far I have confined myself to proper names or to words 

 which may be regarded as on the borderland between proper 

 names and common names ; but now I should like to draw your 

 attention to the Language of Lakeland properly so called. To 



* The proper name Beckermet is evidently from the Norse Bekkja, gen. plu. 

 of Bekkr—\itQk, and oto/= meeting, i.e., the meeting of the waters. The 

 village of Beckermet stands at the confluence of two streams. 



