252 ANGLO-SAXONS AND DANES. 



the Cumbrian bards, and listened to those mighty strains, which 

 for hundreds of after-years animated the mountaineers to glo- 

 rious war against the Saxon, Norman and English sword. That 

 a considerable portion of the natives might remain under the 

 rule of Ida who is painted in fair colours as a brave and gene- 

 rous prince is almost a necessary inference ; but we may as 

 freely admit that, long before the days of Ida, detached bands of 

 Northmen had entered Bernicia, for even Taliesin had been 

 brought up at the Court of Norway. The opposition to Ida 

 seems to have been chiefly from the mountainous west, and his 

 rule was on the eastern coast. 



Ida and his descendants fought many battles against the 

 Britons, but there is no record, nor any sure ground for affirm- 

 ing, that any of these battles were fought in Yorkshire. It is 

 remarkable that along the whole eastern coast, from the Tweed 

 to the Thames, the very slight narrative of Anglian conquest 

 reads more like a further colonization of lands which were 

 already held by a kindred race, than a violent expulsion of an 

 earlier people. We find indeed, in 620, Edwin employing his 

 power to drive out from the principality of Elmete*, Cerdic or 

 Cereticus, supposed to have been a British regulus or petty 

 king. And if Mr. Stephens is right in his view of the meaning 

 of the great poem of Aneurin the Gododin the fight of Cat- 

 traeth was at Catterick, the assailants were Saxons, and the 

 defenders Britons f. But Mr. Davies explains this interesting 

 composition differently, and extracts from it a full description of 

 the treacherous feast and cruel slaughter at StonehengeJ. 



Nothing, however, prevents our acknowledging that under 

 Ida's immediate successors the subjugation of Northumbria 

 became complete ; and from that time the country of the North 

 acquired feelings and interests always distinct from those of the 

 South ; always ready to sympathise with the Danes, and to 

 contend with the Saxons and Welshmen. 



* Nennius. f Literature of the Kymri. 



J Mythology of the British Druids. See Appendix. 



