196 AN ENGLISH SHIRE. 



between Beachy Head and Brighton ; so they would 

 naturally sail along past the marshland and the chalk 

 diffs till they reached the open champain shore near 

 Chichester. Cymenes-ora, where they are said to have 

 landed, is now Keynor on the Bill of Selsea ; and Selsea 

 itself, as its name (correctly Selsey) clearly shows us, was 

 then an island in the tidal flats. This was just the sort 

 of place which the English pirates loved, for all tradition 

 represents their first settlements as effected on isolated 

 spots like Thanet, Hurst Castle, Holderness, and Bam- 

 borough. Thence they would march upon Eegnum, the 

 square Eoman town at the harbour head, and reduce it 

 by storm, garrisoned as it doubtless was by a handful 

 of semi-Romanised Welshmen or Britons. The town 

 took the English name of Cissanceaster, or Chichester. 

 Moreover, all around the Chichester district, we still find 

 a group of English clan villages, with the characteristic 

 patronymic termination ing. Such are East and West 

 Wittering, Donnington, Funtington, Didling, and others. 

 It is vraiscmhlahle enough that the little strip of very low 

 coast between Hayling Island and the Arun may have 

 been the first original South Saxon colony. Nor is it by 

 any means impossible that the names of Keynor and 

 Chichester Cymenes ora and Cissanceaster — may still 

 enshrine the memory of two among the old South Saxon 

 freebooters. 



The tradition of a battle at Mearcredes Burn, when 

 the Welsh were again defeated, may refer to an advance 

 by which, a few years later, the South Saxon pirates 

 pushed eastward along the coast, and occupied the strip 

 of shore as far as Brighton, together with the fertile 



