THE HEDGE-BANKS OF DEVON AND CORNWALL. 
35 
the stake and the wattle, never attempted or were unequal to the 
achievement of a solid hedge. 
Kather, was not this last, from the requirements of the times, 
the very thing they would be most likely to build ? 
That there were fixed boundaries in the south-west we have 
reason to believe from primitive names of places. Celtic words in 
the English language are few, but Celtic names of places abound ; 
so that what is wanting of the ancient tongue in the grammar, is 
as it were, in the extreme south-west, almost made up in the 
geography. 
The oft-recurring prefixes of "caer" and "ker," which have in 
a manner weathered the storms of time and fate, and stick fast to 
this day, can point to but one conclusion, that those who gave the 
names had marked in some indelible way the lands their syllables 
yet cling to. 
Hallam questions whether some English hedges may not be 
among the most venerable relics of this country. 
The remark would scarcely apply to the quick-set fences of the 
midlands, through which dragoons might charge without brushing 
the dust from their boot-tops ; but in the south-west of Britain, all 
through that tract of country once peopled by the Damnonii, we 
encounter hedges that would stop a cannon-ball — rural ramparts 
wide and high, before which the lightest cavalry that ever pressed 
a spur must pause, and where the heaviest would be equally 
powerless; and here you are aware it is exceedingly difiicult to 
remove a neighbour's landmark. 
How very ancient some of these landmarks look ! Whether it 
may be the green mound deep sunk in the soft vale below, or the 
gray parapet of granite boulders threading its way towards the 
upland tor. 
We look at them clustering round the old homesteads along 
the country-side, and of the times of their origin we feel we are 
ignorant ; but wherever the scattered dates may lie, of one thing 
we are certain, that through all the English shires there are no 
older marks of the first husbandmen, nor any hedge of any kind 
stamped with a deeper impress of antiquity than that which 
crowns the venerable front of the massive earthwork of Devon 
and Cornwall. 
Now, that this remains a feature of the soil nowhere else but 
in the south of Ireland it might be hazardous to assert in the face 
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