99 



So much for the two proposed locations, in Damnonia and 

 Cambria, evidently confined to the choice between these, because 

 no other was thought of as possible, by those who only looked 

 to written history for an example of a neighbourship of the two 

 nationalities sufficient for the conditions of the Code. It is 

 thought that the survival of a smaller Wales within Dorset, 

 now brought forward, better satisfies these conditions, whilst it 

 requires scarcely more indulgence for the philogical difficulty as 

 to the name "Dunssete." If what Sir F. Palgrave ventured to 

 say upon most doubtful textual authority, we may be allowed to 

 do by pure conjecture, fortified by external probabilities ; if we 

 may introduce a single letter and write "Durnssete," we shall 

 have before us a document which is not only a confirmation of 

 what has been said, of the insulated people, from an independent 

 consideration ; but which itself is unable to be otherwise satis- 

 factorily accounted for. It must however be at once confessed 

 that this sort of interpolation of a letter into a proper name is, 

 in any case whatever, one of extreme danger ; and the conve- 

 nient flexibility of interpretation imported by this practice, has 

 already been much abused, and may be again, if too readily 

 admitted. If the absence of the letter wanted was caused by 

 an error, the error must have occurred in the prototype of every 

 existing text, and must have occurred three several times in the 

 course of the document. 



The questions also remain : Who were their neighbours the 

 " Wentseete"? And what was the " stream" that seems to 

 have divided the English from the Welsh ? We have, in our 

 own Dorset- Welsh district proposal, a choice upon both these 

 questions : but in such matters a choice is an embarrassment 

 and not a privilege. 



Eastward of our Welsh district, is another, in which the 

 name ingredient of "Wim-" or "Win-" appears. Several 

 authors, struck with the repetition of the name "Wim- 

 borne," for places through the whole course of the river Allen, 

 have reasonably concluded that " Wimbourn " had been the name 

 of that stream. The present name " Allen " is no doubt a relic 



