CASTERS AND CHESTERS. 297 



the Cymry — a northern Welsh principality, dependent 

 upon the great kingdom of Strathclyde, which held out 

 for ages against the Northumbrian English invaders 

 among the braes and fells of Ayrshire and the Lake 

 District. These Cumbrian Welshmen called their chief 

 town Caer Luel, or something of the sort ; and there is 

 some reason for believing that it was the capital of the 

 historical Arthur, if any Arthur ever existed, though 

 later ages transferred the legend of the British hero to 

 Caerleon-upon-Usk, after men had begun to forget that 

 the region between the Clyde and the Mersey had once 

 been true Welsh soil. The English overran Cumberland 

 very slowly ; and when they did finally conquer it, they 

 probably left the original inhabitants in possession of the 

 country, and only imposed their own overlordship upon 

 the conquered race. The story is too long a one to repeat 

 in full here : it must suffice to say that, though the 

 Northumbrian kings had made the * Strathclyde Welsh ' 

 their tributaries, the district was never thoroughly 

 subdued till the days of Edmund the West Saxon, 

 who harried the land, and handed it over to the King 

 of Scots. Thus it happens that Carlisle, alone among 

 large English towns, still keeps unchanged its Cymric 

 name, instead of having sunk into an Anglicised 

 Chester. The present spelling is a mere etymological 

 blunder, exactly similar to that which has turned the old 

 English yfordigland into island, through the false analogy 

 of isle, which of course comes from the old French isle, 

 derived through some form akin to the Italian isola, 

 from the original Latin insula. Kair Leil is the spelling 

 in Geoffrey ; Cardeol (by a clerical error for Carleol, I 



