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.[1] 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.’[2] 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
