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the Lake country are unacquainted with the brandrifh. It was an 

 iron tripod held together by rims of iron, and employed in sup- 

 porting the gird/e-^/aU used above the hearth fire in baking oat-bread, 

 and was at one time in very general use. The name brandrith is 

 entirely and without change a Scandinavian name (see Cleasby, 

 brand reid), and, although the name and the thing named are 

 gradually passing away before modern improvements, yet there is 

 hardly a valley in Lakeland in which they may not yet be found, 

 and are not yet occasionally used. 



In Lakeland our most general name for fuel is fire-eldin ; the 

 Old Norse for fuel is elding^ which again comes from the Norse 

 eldr, fire. Lowe is a flame, and corresponds with the Danish hie ; 

 both point to a connexion with the Meso-Gothic liuham, to 

 enlighten. In the Danish Bible we have eldr — fire, and hie — a 

 flame, compounded together in one word in Exodus iii., where the 

 flame of fire is called ildslue. For tongs we have tangs in one part 

 of the Lake district, and tengs in another; there is evidently a 

 relationship in the Norse, for tangs is the Swedish, tang, Danish; 

 tang meaning tied together. 



The Danish word toft, signifying an enclosure, or what is en- 

 closed by farm buildings, including the farm-house, is found as a 

 proper name in some parts of England, as Lowestoft. In Cumber- 

 land, however, and portions of Lakeland, it is still retained as a 

 common noun. I was born and brought up in what was then an 

 isolated district in Cumberland, and until I was eleven or twelve 

 years of age, I hardly knew any other name for farm buildings than 

 toft. Almost the first question that a Cumberland farmer asks 

 about a farm is, what sort of a toft there is upon it ; and he 

 generally speaks about getting his toft done up, when he is about 

 to have his buildings put in repair. The Rev. I. Taylor, in his 

 well known Text-Book of Names and Places, says that this Danish 

 word toft is found elsewhere in the proper names of England, but 

 that in Lakeland it is almost, if not altogether, unknown ; and 

 hence he concludes that the race that inhabited those regions of 

 Lakeland were the Norwegians, and not the Danes ; and he 

 assumes this apparently because in looking over the map he does 



