OUR ANCESTORS. 231 



Herefordshire, Lancashire, and Ayrshire, a few English 

 overlords seem, after a long struggle, to have settled 

 at last among a very large subject population. And 

 finally, into Cornwall, "Wales, and the Highlands, the 

 English never penetrated at all, except as purely 

 political conquerors. But we must leave over for 

 another paper the settlements of the Scandinavians in 

 Scotland, the Lake district, and Ireland, as well as the 

 existing distribution of the ethnical elements in the 

 British Islands of our own day. 



IV. THE FINAL MIXTUKE. 



AFTER the English settlement in south-eastern Britain 

 two other ethnical elements of less importance were 

 added at different times to the population of our 

 islands. Both were originally Scandinavian (and 

 therefore Aryan) by descent, but more or less mixed 

 with other strains from elsewhere. The first was that 

 of the heathen Scandinavians from the North. In the 

 eighth and ninth centuries, large bodies of Danes and 

 Northmen began to settle all round the coasts of 

 Britain. In Ireland they occupied all the large river 

 mouths and havens, such as Dublin, "Wexford, Water, 

 ford, and Cork, where they formed a set of Scandi- 

 navian colonies which gradually coalesced with the 

 native Celt-Euskarian population. In Scotland they 

 seized upon Caithness, Sutherland, and Eoss, on the 

 mainland, together with Orkney, Shetland, and the 

 whole of the Western Isles, from Lewis to Arran. In 



