THE NORMANS the Norman invaders who, like all their predecessors, found the Fenmen a hard nut to crack. Hereward, who was not son of Leofric, but a Lincolnshire man, had many a fight for liberty, and held the Isle of Ely against the repeated attacks of the Normans, and, when at last the Fenmen were beaten, they still maintained a sort of independence, and instead of becoming Normans in manners and language they are said to have kept their own methods and their own speech, so that there may well be some truth in the boast that the ordinary speech of the East Lincolnshire men of "the Fens" and "the Marsh" is the purest English in the land.
Holland Fen and Fen Skating.
In the Fens there were always some tracts of ground raised above the waters which at times inundated the lower levels there. These are indicated by such names as Mount Pleasant, or by the termination 'toft,' as in Langtoft, Fishtoft, Brothertoft, and Wigtoft in the Fens; and similarly in the Isle of Axholme, Eastoft, Sandtoft, and Beltoft. Toft is a Scandinavian word connected with top, and means a knoll of rising ground. When the staple commodities of the Fens were "feathers, wool, and wildfowl," these knolls were centres of industry. Sheep might roam at large, but in hard weather always liked to have some higher ground to make for, and human beings have a preference for a dry site, hence a cottage or two and, if there was room, a collection of houses and possibly a church would come into existence, and the grassy knoll would be often white with the flocks of geese which were kept, not so much for eating as for plucking; and we know that the monasteries always had 'vacheries' or cow-pastures either on these isolated knolls or on rising ground at the edge of the fen. One of the most notable of these island villages was called at one time Goosetoft, now Brothertoft, in the Holland Fen about four miles west of Boston. Here on the 8th of July, O.S., all sheep "found in their wool," i.e., who had not been clipped and marked, were driven up to be claimed by their owners, fourpence a head being exacted from all who had no common rights.
The custom survives in Westmorland, where in November of every year all stray Herdwick sheep are brought in to the
