DUAL PURPOSE CATTLE 13 



enquiring reporter of local agricultural details, by being the agent 

 of Col. Harboard on the Gunton Estate -from August, 1780, to Novem- 

 ber, 1782. In Vol. I of his "Rural Economy of Norfolk" (1787), he 

 generalizes the knowledge he had thus acquired; in Vol. II he recounts 

 his many talks with East Norfolk farmers. He was not a dweller in 

 the county long enough to permit of his inspecting and reporting on 

 other districts. Norwich and St. Faith's the latter place on the oc- 

 casion of the then famous cattle fair were the extent of his move- 

 ment outside the Eastern Coast area. In his most interesting book 

 he says: 



The native cattle of Norfolk are a small, hardy, thriving race, fattening as 

 freely and finishing as highly at three years old as cattle in general do at four or five. 

 They are small-boned, short-legged, round-barrelled, well-loined, thin-thighed, clean- 

 chapped ; the head, in general, fine, and the horns clean, middle-sized, and bent upward ; 

 the favorite color a blood-red, with a white or mottled face. The breed of Norfolk is 

 the Herefordshire breed in miniature. ... I have seen Norfolk spayed heifers, 

 sent to Smithfield, as well as laid up, and as full in their points as Galloway or 

 Highland "Scots" usually are; and if the London butchers be judges of beef, there 

 are no better fleshed beasts sent to Smithfield Market. 



Professor Low, writing of the Zetland (Shetland) Islands, re- 

 minds us that they were formerly Norwegian; and that the inhabi- 

 tants, who were essentially Norwegian until the 17th century, spoke 

 the Norse language. Of the Shetland live stock he says: 



The cattle are distinctly Norwegian in their characters, and a similar race 

 extends to Iceland. They are small, but of very good form when pure, and fatten 

 with great quickness when carried to superior pastures. Their horns are short, 

 their skin soft, and their flesh is equal to that of any cattle produced in the British 

 Islands. . . . The cows are tolerably good milkers . . and in this respect they 

 agree with the cattle of Jersey and the islands of the Channel which are likewise 

 believed to be of Norwegian origin. 



The East Norfolk settlers, the "by folk," whose place names and 

 personal names abound all over the area, we may assume to have 

 been Lachmanni, whom the Irish chroniclers termed "White Danes" 

 as distinct from the Danars "Black Danes," those who in the 8th 

 century ravaged our lands. 



When the Romans had left the East Anglian area, taking with 

 them the Brython men-folk, to aid them in their struggles for power 

 in Gaul, the Lachmanni must have taken possession of the, then num- 

 erous harbors and water-ways. Place names Norwich, Lowestoft, 

 Dunwich, Aldeburgh, Ipswich, and others record it. The wooded, 

 inland districts were of little value to the sea-rovers. A new element 

 entered, after the Geotas had shown that they could master the Ro- 

 mano-Brythons and settled in Kent. The Englen, folk who dwelt on 

 what was little better than a waste of heather and sand, in what we 

 know as Schleswig, were not addicted to sea-roving and land-fighting. 

 They, so Bede tells us and he lived about a hundred years after, in 

 an area that had been settled by Englen folk brought over their 

 slaves, their cattle, and all of their live stock, leaving their home land 

 without any living thing, and so it remained for a very long time. 

 That these Englen came in families, one after the other, is evident 

 from their place-names, "ing," denoting a family settlement with its 

 bordering woodland, "the mark;" "-ham" denotes the later, and "-ton" 

 the latest aggregation of families, until the East Coast was settled 

 quite up to the Scoch border. Dr. E. A. Freeman, in his "Norman 

 Conquest of England" (Vol. I, App. A.), shows that the Engl en-name 

 became the one name for the whole land, that which had been mas- 

 tered by Geotas, Seaxan and Frisan, as well as that quietly settled 

 by Englen-folk. Hence our "England." 



The earliest settlers must have taken possession of the woodland 

 of fairly rich soil, which extended some 25 miles westward from Dun- 



