JOHN CORDEAUX: LINCOLNSHIRE. 



3 



the VI. and X. Legions, when iron darts from catapult hurtled through 

 the air, and huge stones from the balistse bounded down the slopes. 



Of the successive waves of conquerors — Saxon, Dane, and 

 Norman — which during the six centuries subsequent to the Roman 

 occupation swept over Lincolnshire, none have so indelibly left 

 their mark as the Dane. The county is still England's Denmark, 

 and the names of 292 towns and villages indicate the prevalence of 

 the Danish element. Of these 212 have the termination by, 63 have 

 thorpe, one has with, four have toft, eight have beck, and three have 

 dale* Nowhere else, except in Holderness, have the repeated 

 Danish invasions left such landmarks. And, just as in the present, 

 the emigrant from our shores to the backwoods of America gives to 

 his small freehold the name of the old home beyond the seas, so 

 likewise his Danish fore-elders, for everywhere in Denmark we find 

 names having close affinity to Lincolnshire villages. t Mr. Freeman 

 shows how the Danish invasions of eastern England may be divided 

 into three periods — simple plunder, period of settlement, political 

 conquest. :J Terrible indeed were the ravages, of which oral tradition 

 still lingers, of these ferocious sea-rovers during the first period. 

 Loosing from the opposite shores of the North Sea in the early spring, 

 they sped across in the long ships with big main-sails spread, wing 

 and wing, running before the east wind and tossing the salt spray 

 above the splendours of their richly-blazoned prows, like falcons swoop- 

 ing on their prey. The Humber offered unusual facilities for landing: 

 berthing their galleys in the muddy creeks, as Grimsby and Tetney 

 havens, where at low-water they lay like painted serpents in the 

 slimy ooze— creeks to which the song of Kal§ the son of Kali is as 

 yet equally applicable as then: 



Unpleasantly we have been wading 

 In the mud a weary five week, 

 Dirt we had indeed in plenty 

 When we lay in Grimsby harbour. 



There is scarcely a church on our eastern coast which shows not, 

 in some part or other of its structure, red and calcined stones 

 suggestive of Danish ravage ; and it is by no means improbable, as 



* Freeman's ' Norman Conquest,' Vol. I, p. 437. 



t The whole subject of the occupation and settlement of Lincolnshire by the 

 Danes has been most ably and exhaustively treated by the Rev. G. S. Streatfeild, in 

 'Lincolnshire and the Danes.' (Kegan Paul, Trench and Co., London, 1884.) 



\ Freeman, ' Norm. Conq.,' Vol. I, pp. 12, 43 seq. 



§ ' Orkneyinga Saga,' Anderson's Ed., p. 76. 



Jan. 1886. 



