Origin of the Anglo-Saxon Race/Chapter 20

by Thomas William Shore

CHAPTER XX.

SETTLERS IN NORTHUMBRIA—continued.

THE settlement of Frisians in Northumbria is probable from the historical evidence of Procopius, who says that ‘three very numerous nations possess Brittia, over each of which a King presides, which nations are named Angeloi, Phrissones, and those surnamed from the island, Brittones.’ Some of these Phrissones must have settled in the northern counties of England and in the south of Scotland, for the Firth of Forth is called by Nennius the Frisian Sea, and part of its northern coast was known as the Frisian shore.^[1] The name Dumfries appears also to afiord a trace of the same people.

It is reasonable to conclude that in the settlement of the coasts of the North-east of England and the South of Scotland by the Angles their neighbours the Frisians took a large part. Even at the present time the resemblance between the Frisian dialects and Lowland Scotch is in some respects very close. As we have seen, Octa and Ebissa, with whom as leaders the early settlements in Northumbria are connected, have characteristic Frisian names ending in a. The early kingdom of the Beornicas included the Lowlands, and these people had a Frisian name. Halbertsma refers to the name Beornicas as having been derived from the Frisian word bearn, denoting men, used possibly in the sense of descendants.^[2]

There are in Yorkshire old place-names which point directly to Frisians, such as Fristone in the West Riding, mentioned in Domesday Book; Freswick, an old place in the North Riding; and Frismarsk, or Frysemersh, a lost place that formerly existed in Holderness.^[3] It is probable there was a very early colony of Frisians in this district, for Ptolemy mentions a race of people resident there whom he calls the Parisi.^[4] The Teutonic equivalent of Parisi is Farisi, and the probability is that these were a colony of Frisians from the opposite coast. This identification of the Parisi of Ptolemy as Frisians is supported by some remarkable circumstances pointing to a Frisian migration to the country of the Humber. Holderness had an alternative name, that of Emmertland, and among the ancient river names of the northern part of Old Saxony or Frisia was the Emmer or Ambra,^[5] which we now call the Ems. Along the course of this river the tribal Ambrones, or people of the Emisga pagus, lived.^[6] These Ambrones are mentioned by Roman writers. From the consideration of all the circumstantial evidence connected with them and with Holderness, the settlement of Frisians of this old tribe at an early date near the mouth of the Humber is practically certain. It was from this tribe that in all probability the Humber received its name, after that of the Ambra in their old country. It should also be remembered that Paulinus is said to have preached for forty days among certain old Saxons. We know he did carry on this mission among the people south of the Humber, and these may have preserved their old tribal designation of Ambrones, or old Saxons, until that time.

The Holderness dialect, which has probably come from more than one source, is one of the most interesting in Yorkshire, for it shows variations in vocabulary in different parts of the district. It has usually only one form of the verb for the three persons, many participles ending in -en or -in, many adjectives ending in -ish or -fied, and no possessive case.^[7] The pronunciation of the place-names in some of the northern parts of England at the present time strongly points to Frisian settlements. In Northumberland there are many places whose names end in -ham, but, with the exception of Chillingham, they are all pronounced as if ending in -um, like the terminal sound so common in the present place-names of Friesland. In the Cleveland district of Yorkshire, also, examples of the same kind occur, in which the local pronunciation making names ending in -um is very marked. Thus, Yarm is pronounced Jarum; Moorsholm, Morehusum; Acklam, Achelum; Lealholm, Laclum or Lelum; Airsome, Arusum; and Coatham, Cotum, and so on.^[8] A similar pronunciation of names in Sussex has been referred to in the chapter relating to that county.

There can be no doubt that Frisian was one of the dialects used by the settlers in the northern counties, and that many Frisian words passed into the Anglian speech. As late as 1175 we find a Frisian dialect separately mentioned by Reginald, a monk of Durham.^[9] In referring to the eider-duck, he says these birds are called lomes by the English, but eires by the Saxons and inhabitants of Frisia.

The dialect of Northumberland and on Tyneside shows important differences from that in the middle and south parts of Durham and Yorkshire.^[10] This helps to prove that when the Danes overran and conquered Northumbria it was chiefly in Yorkshire they settled. The country north of the Tyne was left, apparently, more in the occupation of the descendants of the original colonists. The old Northumbrian dialect was the language of the Anglian and Frisian settlers from Aberdeen to the south of Yorkshire. When Yorkshire was recolonised by Danes and their allies, a modified dialect arose. The evidence of the place-names affords striking testimony to the extent of the Danish settlements. North of the Tyne the terminations -ham and -ton are conspicuous, while -by, which abounds in the East Riding, does not occur. The streams in Northumberland are called burns, and not becks, as in the Scandinavian districts of the northern counties. The pronunciation of the word ‘the’ is not clipped in Northumberland into ‘t’,’ as it is in the Danish districts of Yorkshire and Lancashire. The contrast in this respect between Northumberland and Tyneside on the one hand, and the south of Durham and East Riding of Yorkshire on the other, is very marked.^[11] There are, however, some traces to be found in Northumberland of Norse colonists of a kind different from those of the Danes in the East Riding, although traces of Angles and Frisians are most in evidence.

The Firth of Forth, mentioned by Nennius as the Frisian Sea, and a part of its northern shore known as the Frisian shore, must have had an early connection with the Frisians, although, as Skene says, ‘the great bulk of immigrants are Anglians.’^[12] This is of interest in reference to the people of Northumberland, a county in which traces of Frisian occupation are strong. It is known that Frisians came to Britain among the Roman military, and Skene says that ‘of the Saxons who settled in Britain before the year 441, the colony which occupied the northern district about the Roman wall were probably Frisians.’ This may well have been the case, and the traces of people of this race which the Northumberland place-names supply may therefore be of older date than the time of Hengist and Horsa. There may, indeed, have been settlements in the time of the Roman Empire of both Frisians and their allies the Chaucians. This view possibly receives support from the discovery in Northumberland of a Roman altar,^[13] bearing the inscription ‘Deo Cocidi’—a reference, perhaps, to a supposed Chaucian divinity.

The name of the river Coquet and others, apparently connected with Chaucians, may be traces of a settlement before the end of the Roman rule in Britain. A garrison of Frisians was certainly located on Hadrian’s Wall early in the fifth century.^[14]

The Roman place-name Hunno^[15] has been identified with Sevensdale in Northumberland, and that named Cocuneda civitas^[16] with Coquet in the same county.^[17] In the Boldon Book relating to the tenancies held under the Bishop of Durham in the eleventh or twelfth century we find old place-names that are apparently traces of settlers who had Frisian names, such as Hunwyk and Hunstanworth. The same record also affords instances in which brothers held land jointly, and of other parceners more or less resembling the holdings in Kent. In connection with these Hun names, it is of special interest to note the existence of a Roman station called Hunnum in Northumberland. As an old tribe called Phundusii is mentioned by Ptolemy living near the mouth of the Elbe, not very far from the later Frisian districts, inhabited by the Hunse or Hunte, the name Hunnum may have been one used in Roman time in connection with the Frisian garrison.

If further proof were wanted of Frisians among the Angles of this part of England and the adjacent coast of Scotland, the remarkable inscribed stone found at Kirkliston, Edinburghshire, would supply it. Stephens describes it as a heathen stone of the fourth or fifth century, bearing Roman letters and words to commemorate a fallen chieftain, with a name so rare that it has only been found three times in English literature and once in Northern. It has also his father’s name, a rarer one still. Both these names are Frisian, and are still found among modern Frisian personal names.^[18] The inscription, by dividing the letters into words, reads: ‘In oc tumulo iacit Vetta f(ilius) Victi.’ The name Wyttenham in Northumberland, apparently derived from a similar name Witte, is mentioned in the Hundred Rolls. Sweet has pointed out another linguistic connection of the Anglians of Northumbria with the Frisians. He says that the Anglian dialect was characterised by a special tendency to throw off the final n in names.^[19] Of this many examples may be found among old place-names of the Northern counties, and the early personal names connected with them, some of which have been referred to. It was also a Frisian characteristic.

In his ‘History of Cleveland,’ Atkinson tells us of four places whose ancient names were Englebi, of two whose old names were Wiltune, and of two named Tollesbi. They may have been so named after heads of families who bore tribal names. The Tollenzi on the Tollensee were a Wendish tribe.^[20]

In considering the evidence relating to the settlement of people of different races in the North of England, that afforded by the runic monuments is of the first importance. The Anglian runes are the older Gothic with modifications, and their modifications were made on English soil. This points to Goths among the so-called Anglian settlers, or Angles from Swedish Gothland. In any case, the knowledge of runic writing must have been brought into Northern England by early settlers from Gothland or the countries near it. The Frisians who formed settlements in Northumbria, on the contrary, had no knowledge of runes.

In one of the old Norse records we are told of Old Northumbria, that ‘Nord-imbraland is for the most part inhabited by Northmen. Many of the names are in the Norræna tongue Grimsbær (Grimsby), and Hauksfljot (Hawkflot), and many others.’^[21] This refers to the older and larger Northumberland, and includes, apparently, part of South Humberland or Lincolnshire. The earliest runic inscriptions of old Northumbria are not within the limits of the present county, but are within the kingdom of the Northumbrian Anglians. Among them are those on the Bewcastle column in north-west Cumberland, and on the Ruthwell cross in Dumfries. The date of the Bewcastle^[22] monument is about A.D. 670, and the words used in the inscription on the Ruthwell cross show that it cannot well be later than the middle of the eighth century,^[23] The inscriptions on the Collingham cross in Yorkshire, and on a slab found at Lancaster, have been assigned to the seventh century.^[24] All these and others are inscriptions of the Anglians, and not of the later Danes or Norse, whose runic letters differed in some instances from those of the earlier Anglian.

One of the Old English tribes that can be clearly recognised in Northumbria is that of Lindisfarne. This name was not originally given to the island off the Northumbrian coast, but to a strip of country along it. Lindisfaran was part of the mainland along the courses of two rivers—the Lindis, which was the old name for the Low, and the Waran, that ran into the sea a little north of Bamburgh.^[25] This island was the island of the Lindisfarne people or territory, as mentioned by Bede. This small Anglian tribe is one of the most interesting of which any trace has come down to us. Its rulers derived their origin from Woden, through a line of mythological ancestors of their own,^[26] and it is not improbable that their island was known as Hälig or Halige, the Holy Isle, before they became Christians, for the Continental Angles and Frisians had a Holy Isle off their coast, and it still retains the name of Heligoland. The Wends of the Baltic coast also had their sacred island—viz., Rügen—where their chief pagan temple was situated. The possession of a sacred or holy isle for their pagan rites was, therefore, probably considered by the pagan Angles who settled in Northumberland as part of their religion; and after their conversion the sacred isle of the pagan time was selected for the site of the Christian monastery.

Some of the old shire and district names in the northern counties were apparently derived from Scandinavian and other tribal names. Hallamshire appears to have got its name from a manor mentioned in Domesday Book as Hallun. As this district is called a shire, and this as a designation for a district is Scandinavian, Hallun may not improbably have been connected in its origin with people from Halland, in the South-west of Sweden, and within the limits of Old Denmark. Gillingshire, also, for Gilling Wapentake in Yorkshire, appears to be a Scandinavian name. Gylling, an island in Halogaland, is mentioned in the Northern Sagas.^[27] One thing, therefore, is certain in reference to old settlements in the northern counties, that we find districts which contain many traces of Norse near others in which traces of Anglians have survived. There may have been a connection between the name Rossendale in Lancashire and the Wrosn tribe of the Pomeranian coast. As the settlement of Norse and their allies in Lancashire was probably late, the possibility of such a connection is strengthened by the known association of Danes and Norse with the Jomberg Wends of Pomerania.

The Yorkshire Domesday names Scotona, Scotone, Englebi, and Engleston, point to family settlements of people who were Scots and Engles. Similarly, there can be little doubt that the Domesday names Danestorp, Danebi, Wedrebi, Leccheton, and Lecchestorp, point to settlers who were Danes, Wederas or Ostrogoths, and Lechs, who were their allies. Traces of Swedes are met with in the old names Suanebi in Yorkshire and Suenesat in Agremundreness in Lancashire,^[28] and other names similar to those of tribal allies of the Danes may be traced.

The name Wensleydale and the old Semer names which it contains suggest some connection with Wends, and this is strengthened by the folk-lore. A special characteristic in the folk-lore of the Northern Slavs is that of magic horses, of which many examples occur in Russian folk-tales.^[29] In Wensleydale folk-lore the kelpie or water-horse comes up occasionally out of the water,^[30] and, like the Russian horses, is a wonderful beast. The place-name Semer also occurs in Cleveland, near Stokesley,^[31] and Domesday Book tells us of Semser in the North Riding and Semers in the West Riding, these names being, apparently, of old Wendish origin, from zieme, the land. Their parallels may be found in Slavic countries, and other examples of their occurrence in Wiltshire and Sussex have already been mentioned.

The earliest frontier between the kingdoms of Northumbria and Mercia on the west of the Pennine Range, along the Mersey, appears to have been subsequently altered to the Ribble. There is some documentary evidence relating to this later boundary. In 923 King Edward ordered a body of Mercians to take possession of Manchester, and to repair and fortify it.^[32] We read, also, that the northern limit of Mercia was Hwitanwylles geat,^[33] which may be identified with Whitwell in the upper part of the valley of the Ribble. Whitaker’s researches point to the Ribble as having been an ethnological frontier.^[34] The Fylde, between the mouths of the same river and the Lune, exhibits evidence of Scandinavian settlements. Its name may be compared with the Norse Fjelde, the name for the Norwegian wastes. The Lancashire Fylde consists even at the present time of a great extent of more or less peaty soil, commonly called moss. Danes pad, or path, the name for an old road across it, Angersholm, Mythorp, Eskham, and other place-names in the district, are distinctly Scandinavian.

When we remember that the Anglian kingdom of Northumbria was conquered by Northmen, and was a Danish kingdom for about 200 years, until reduced in status to one of the great earldoms of the later Saxon period, we naturally expect to find more characteristic remains of Danes and Northmen than of the earlier Anglians. Some interesting evidence of the agricultural customs of Northmen connected with the old farmhouses called onsteads survived in Northumberland as late as 1827, and may still survive in part. The customs may be ancient, even if the farms are comparatively modern. They are scattered over a large part of that county, at a distance of two or three miles from each other, and from the villages or towns. In these onsteads the farmers resided with their dependents. Immediately adjoining them a number of cottages were situated, proportionable in some degree to the size of the farms. They are, or were, inhabited by the steward, the hinds, and in some instances by the bondagers, who have, or had, their cottages at a small rent, and are entitled to a certain quantity of potatoes. The wages of the steward and hinds were chiefly paid in kind, and they had their cottages rent free, with hay or grass for one or two cows and other privileges, and a small sum of money.^[35]

The system in Norway is very similar to this. The farms have houses for housemen, with enclosed land to each, that extends to the keeping of two cows and six sheep all the year round, and to the sowing of a certain quantity of corn and potatoes. A small general rent is paid for these holdings. In this system the main object provided for is that the labourer may be able to live on the produce of the land.^[36]

We may recognise the Scandian or Danish influence in the northern counties in some of the ancient designations of the tenants mentioned in the Boldon Book of Durham, such as Cotmanni and Malmanni, the former corresponding to the cottars of southern counties. The Danes commonly used the word manni^[37] in names of this kind. The characteristic Scandinavian termination -hope or -op in place-names is found in many instances in the west of Northumberland—Bowhope, Ramshope, Wickhope, Blenkinsop, Killhope, and Hawhope being examples. The significance of these -hope names will be discussed in the chapter relating to the Welsh border. The word -side, also, which is a characteristic in the Cumberland names, is found in the western parts of Northumberland, such as Hesleyside, Whiteside, Wheelside, and Monkside. These point to a similarity in dialect, and hence probably in race. The place-names originally derived from shelter names, such as booth, shield, and scale, are more frequently met with in the northern counties than elsewhere. They had their origin, probably, in summer huts, commonly erected by pastoral people among the hills or on the upland wastes, for temporary abodes while pasturing their cattle away from their permanent homesteads, as is the custom in Norway at the present time.

The descendants of Danish or Norse settlers may be distinguished in Lancashire as late as the time of Domesday Survey by the statements that some of them paid their rents in the Danish computation. Thus, in many places between the Ribble and the Mersey each carucate of land paid a tax or tribute of two ores of pennies.^[38] The ore was a Danish coin of the value of sixteen pence, and later of twenty pence. Similarly, it may be noted in the ancient Northumbrian Priest-law that the fines mentioned are in half-marks, also of old Northern origin.

People of the same descent may be recognised in the land register of the monastery of Hexham, which tells us of ‘husbands’ and ‘terræ husband.’^[39] These husbands were no doubt descended from Northern settlers known as bondi, a name still used for the peasant proprietors of Scandinavia.

The race characters shown at the present time by the people of Northumberland are, according to Beddoe, strongly Anglian, and can be well seen in the rural population around Hexham.^[40] The Northumberland people are, in the main, above the average English size. It is on evidence that a regiment of men of that county standing in close formation occupies more space than an average regiment of the same number. The old race in north Durham is also Anglian in the main. The North and East Ridings of Yorkshire have an Anglo-Danish population, the prevailing types being Anglian and Danish. Phillips describes these people as tall, large-boned, and muscular, with a visage long and angular, fair or blonde complexion, blue or gray eyes, and light-brown or reddish hair.^[41] In the more elevated districts of the West Riding he describes the people as robust in person, of an oval, full, and rounded visage, with a nose often slightly aquiline, a complexion somewhat embrowned or florid, brown or gray eyes, and brown or reddish hair. This brown, burly breed Phillips thought to be Norwegian, but Beddoe considers it to be a variety of the Anglian race, as it abounds in Staffordshire, which is a very Anglian county.

In the plains of Yorkshire, Durham, and Northumberland the old agricultural arrangements of the townships appear to have been largely those of the nucleated villages or collected homesteads. This system corresponds to that now prevailing in Holstein, part of Schleswig, which was within part of the Anglian country, a circumstance that points to the plan of collected homesteads having been introduced into these parts of the northern counties by people of that race. On the other hand, on both sides of the Pennine Range isolated homesteads have largely survived in both west Yorkshire and east Lancashire, and these are probably traces of ancient Celtic occupation. The homestead arrangements in these districts have much in common with those found in Cumberland and in Wales.

1. Skene, W. F., ‘Celtic Scotland,’ i. 192.
2. Halbertsma, J. H., ‘Lexicon Frisicum.’
3. Cal. Patent Rolls, 1340-1343, p. 449.
4. English Dialect Society, ‘Glossary of Holderness,’ p. 2.
5. Monumenta Germaniæ, i. 166, 167.
6. Ibid., ii. 386.
7. English Dialect Society, ‘Glossary of Holderness,’ p. 6.
8. Atkinson, J. C., ‘Glossary of the Cleveland Dialect.’
9. Reginaldi Monachi Dunelm. Libellus, chap, xxvii.
10. English Dialect Society, ‘Glossary of Northumberland,’ viii.
11. English Dialect Society, ‘Glossary of Northumberland,’ ix.
12. Skene, W. F., ‘Celtic Scotland,’ ii. 192.
13. Ferguson, R., ‘The River-names of Europe,’ 85.
14. Notitia Imperil, and Wright, T., Lancashire and Cheshire Historic. Soc., viii. 141.
15. Notitia Imperii.
16. Ravennas.
17. Pearson, C. H., ‘Historical Maps,’ quoting authorities.
18. Stephens, R. G., ‘Old Northern Runic Monuments,’ i. 60.
19. Sweet, H., ‘Dialects and Prehistoric Forms of Old English,’ PhiloL Soc. Transactions, 1875-6, 560, 561.
20. Latham, R. G., ‘Germania of Tacitus,’ Prolegomena, xvii.
21. ‘The Heimskringla’ by Sturluson, trans, by Laing, ii. 6.
22. Stephens, G., loc. cit., vol. i., 398.
23. Sweet, H., ‘Oldest English Texts,” 125.
24. Ibid., 124-130.
25. Proceedings Soc. Antiquaries, Newcastle-on-Tyne, iii., p. 401.
26. Grimm, J., ‘Teutonic Mythology,’ iv. 1711.
27. ‘The Heimskringla,’ by Sturluson, trans, by Laing, ii., 180.
28. Dom. Bk.
29. Ralston, W. R. S., ‘Russian Folk-Tales,’ 243-258.
30. Gomme, G. L., ‘Ethnology in Folk-Lore,’ 78.
31. Abbrev. Rot. Originalium, vol. i., 181.
32. Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.
33. Ibid., A.D. 941.
34. Whitaker, T. D., ‘History of Whalley,’ 4th Ed. i. 52.
35. Mackenzie, E., ‘View of the County of Northumberland,’ ii., pp. 52, 53.
36. Laing, Samuel, ‘Journal of a Residence in Norway.’ ed. 1851, pp. 101, 102.
37. du Chaillu, P., ‘Viking Age,’ i. 23.
38. Domesday Book, quoted by Fishwick, H., ‘History of Lancashire,’ 54.
39. Nasse, E., ‘The Agricultural Community,’ translated by Oudry, p. 71.
40. Beddoe, J., ‘Races in Britain,’ 249.
41. Beddoe, J., ‘Races in Britain,’ 250.