which the descendants of the early Anglian settlers were least disturbed by subsequent Danish inroads, and south Cheshire appears somewhat to resemble them. On the other hand, there is a clear line of difference between the local talk in south Cheshire and Shropshire, where the highly-pitched tone, the habit of raising the voice at the end of a sentence, the sharp and clearly-defined pronunciation, probably marks a Welsh element among the Shropshire people which is absent in south Cheshire.
As the settlement proceeded from east to west in the Mercian States, some of the Welsh people must have been allowed to exist among the newcomers. As far east as Buckinghamshire there was in the Anglo-Saxon period a place called Wealabroc, and in the south-west of Northamptonshire there exists still an old way called the Welsh Road. These names probably imply old frontier lines. As the advance was continued towards the present Welsh border, it is certain that here and there small areas inhabited by Welsh people in the midst of Old English settlements were left. Beyond the present border, as around Radnor, settlements of Old English or Scandian folk surrounded by Welsh people were formed. Offa’s Dyke, thrown up in the eighth century to divide the Welsh from the English, was not a strict ethnological frontier. There were some English to the west of it at the time it was made, or soon afterwards, and some Welsh to the east of it, as at Clun, Oswestry, and Cherbury, at which places early Welcheries existed, which were not governed by English customs.
It was along this border that the customs of the Old English settlers were brought into contact with the tribal customs of the Welsh. The various English customs of inheritance derived from tribal settlers have been described. In some important respects the Welsh differed from all of these. The land of the Welsh tribesmen was held by families and allotted to members of the family. On the death of the head of the family, it was first divided
