78 NAMES OF PLACES 



borne in mind, of course, that nothing approaching 

 English, or any other branch of Teutonic speech, was 

 spoken in any part of these islands up to the end of the 

 fourth century; but the fifth was not half run before 

 Prosper Aquitanus wrote in his chronicle for the year 

 441 that 'Britain up to this time is brought widely 

 under dominion of the Saxons by various conflicts and 

 transactions.' The Angles, it is true, did not settle in 

 Northumbria under Ida until the year 647; but long 

 before that the warlike Frisians had infested the Firth 

 of Forth till it was known to geographers as Mare 

 Fresicum,, and had established several settlements, of 

 which one is tentatively identified with Dumfries — dun 

 Fris — the Frisian's fort, mentioned by Nennius as Caer 

 Pheris, just as he mentioned Dunbarton as Cker Bretain, 

 the fort of the Britons or Welsh Celts. Down to the 

 coming of these colonists, the language of the natives 

 of the British Isles, from the Land's End to Cape Wrath, 

 was Celtic in one or other of its forms — Gaelic or Welsh 

 — and all the names of dwellings and natural features 

 were in that language, except those that had been handed 

 down from Pre-Celtic days and the very few which the 

 Romans had succeeded in fixing upon the lands they had 

 conquered. 



The coming of the Angles, Saxons, Jutes, and Frisians 

 — branches of that great Teutonic family of nations which 

 had overthrown the civilisation of Rome — brought to pass 

 the extermination, or at least the expulsion and partial 

 absorption, of the Celts or Britons, except in the mountain- 

 ous regions of Wales and Scotland — our 'Celtic fringe' 

 at this day. Not less industrious than warlike, these 

 Germanic colonists soon settled to work in their new 



