276 CASTERS AND C HESTERS. 



In the first place, without troubling ourselves for the 

 time being with the diverse forms of the word as now 

 existing, a difficulty meets us at the very outset as to 

 how it ever got into the English language at all. ' It 

 was left behind by the Eomans,' says the pupil teacher 

 unhesitatingly. No doubt ; but if so, the only language 

 in which it could be left would be Welsh ; for when the 

 Romans quitted Britain there were probably as yet no 

 English settlements on any part of the eastern coast. 

 Now the Welsh form of the word, even as given us in 

 the very ancient Latin Welsh tract ascribed to Nennius, 

 is ' Caer ' or ' Kair ; ' and there is every reason to 

 believe that the Celtic cathir or the Latin castrum had 

 been already worn down into this corrupt form at least 

 as early as the days of the first English colonisation of 

 Britain. Indeed I shall show ground hereafter for 

 believing that that form survives even now in one or two 

 parts of Teutonic England. But if this be so, it is quite 

 clear that the earliest English conquerors could not have 

 acquired the use of the word from the vanquished Welsh 

 whom they spared as slaves or tributaries. The new- 

 comers could not have learned to speak of a Ceaster or 

 Chester from Welshmen who called it a Caer ; nor could 

 they have adopted the names of Leicester or Gloucester 

 from Welshmen who knew those towns only as Kair 

 Legion or Kair Gloui. It is clear that this easy off-hand 

 theory shirks all the real difficulties of the question, and 

 that we must look a little closer into the matter in order 

 to understand the true history of these interesting 

 philological fossils. 



Already we have got one clear and distinct principle to 



