Natural History. 67 



wall* was lined with the hardy veterans of the VI. and X. 

 Legions, when iron darts from catapult hurtled through the air, 

 and huge stones from the balistae bounded down the slopes. 



Of the successive waves of conquerors Saxon, Dane, and 

 Norman which during the six centuries subsequent to the 

 Roman occupation swept over Lincolnshire, none have so 

 indelibly left their mark as the Dane. The county is still 

 England's Denmark, and the names of 292 towns and villages 

 indicate the prevalence of the Danish element. Of these 212 

 have the termination by, 63 have thorpe, one has with, four 

 have toft, eight have becf^ and three have dale.\ Nowhere 

 else, except in Holderness, have the repeated Danish invasions 

 left such landmarks. And, just as in the present the emigrant 

 from our shores to the backwoods of America gives to his 

 small freehold the name of the old home beyond the seas, so 

 likewise his Danish fore-elders, for everywhere in Denmark we 

 find names having close affinity to Lincolnshire villages. J 

 Mr. Freeman shows how the Danish invasions of eastern 

 England may be divided into three periods simple plunder, 

 period of settlement, political conquest. Terrible indeed 

 were the ravages, of which oral tradition still lingers, of these 

 ferocious sea-rovers during the first period. Loosing from the 

 opposite shores of the North Sea in the early spring, they sped 

 across in the long ships with big main-sails spread, wing and 

 wing, running before the east wind and tossing the salt spray 

 above the splendours of their richly-blazoned prows, like 

 falcons swooping on their prey. The Humber offered unusual 

 facilities for landing; berthing their galleys in the muddy 

 creeks, as Gaimsby and Tetney havens, where at low-water 

 they lay like painted serpents in the slimy ooze creeks to 

 which the song of Kal U the son of Kali is as yet equally 

 applicable as then : 



Unpleasantly we have been wading 

 In the mud a weary five week, 

 Dirt we had indeed in plenty 

 When we lay in Grimsby harbour. 



* The walls of Roman Lincoln are computed at 10 to 12 feet thick, and 20 to 25 

 feet high. The area of the camp was about six or seven acres. Line. Diocesan 

 Arch. Soc. report, 1876, pp. 178, 179. 



f Freeman's Norman Conquest, Vol. I, p. 437. 



J The whole subject of the occupation and settlement of Lincolnshire by the 

 Danes has been most ably and exhaustively treated by the Rev. G. S. Streatfeild, in 

 Lincolnshire and the Danes. (Kegan Paul, Trench and Co., London, 1884.) 



Freeman, Norman Conquest ,V 'ol. I., pp. 12, 43 seq. 



^[ Orkneyinga Saga, Anderson's Ed., p. 76. 



