A HISTORY OF NORTHAMPTONSHIRE 



population. The Peterborough district and the whole of Rutland are 

 connected by dialect with Cambridgeshire ; while the lower Nene 

 valley, forming the centre of the county, is grouped with Huntingdon- 

 shire, Bedfordshire, Hertfordshire and Essex. 



The line joining the two historic castles of the Welland and Nene 

 valleys is only an approximate frontier, and an equally convenient and 

 perhaps a more logical one is to be found here, as further westward, in a 

 Roman highway. The Leicester road fairly parts the mixed cemeteries 

 of the centre from the north-east of the county, and is virtually the same 

 as the linguistic boundary on the dialect map. 



In the light of these two instances it may not be out of place to 

 suggest that Roman roads may have played an important part as 

 boundaries in the early days of the Anglo-Saxon conquest. Conditions 

 had no doubt changed by the time that the midlands came to be 

 parcelled out and stretches of Roman highway used as the border of 

 kingdoms and counties ; but even during the pagan period these monu- 

 ments of Roman civilization may have exercised considerable influence. 

 It has often been remarked that the Romanized Britons took to the 

 towns or chose sites within easy reach of the highways that connected 

 the larger towns. After the withdrawal of the legions the Teutonic 

 immigrants, who studiously avoided such localities, spread far and wide 

 over the country ; and it is just possible that for a period long enough 

 to leave its mark in varieties of dialect, the Romano-Britons along these 

 lines served to isolate one group of settlers from another till a social 

 amalgamation was finally completed under the influence of Christianity. 



Whether the coincidences above mentioned between linguistic and 

 archaeological areas are more than accidental may in the present state of 

 knowledge be doubted, but should not be overlooked as a possible 

 explanation of the diverse burial customs noticed within the county. 

 Archaeological discoveries are but seldom recorded in detail, but the 

 objects to some extent speak for themselves ; and the presence of radiated 

 brooches, for instance, in the north of Huntingdonshire,^ in Cambridge- 

 shire,^ in Essex and Lincolnshire^ would be easily accounted for by 

 supposing that the kindred inhabitants of these counties, through which 

 runs the Ermine Street, kept up some connection with the southern 

 shore of the Thames estuary ; for there is little doubt that the brooch in 

 question belongs to a continental type, numbers of which were imported 

 into Kent. 



Further, without asserting that the dialect noticed in the strip of 

 country between Wisbeach and Oakham is directly descended from the 

 tongue of the Fenmen, it is more than probable that this area with 

 Cambridgeshire formed a considerable portion of the territory in which 

 the isolated Gyrwa so long maintained their independence and no doubt 

 their peculiarities of language. 



Among the miscellaneous discoveries of which the accounts are 



' Journal of British Archteolo^cal Auociatm, 1899, p. 346. 

 * Neville, Saxon Obsejuies, pi. 8. ^ Both in British Museum. 



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