King's English at the court of Alfred; and so Isca became on Devonian
lips Exan ceaster, after the West Saxon conquest. Thence it passed
rapidly through the stages of Exe ceaster and Exe cester till it
finally settled down into Exeter. At the same time, the river itself
became the Exe; and the Exan-mutha of the _Chronicle_ dropped into
Exmouth. We must never forget, however, that Exeter, was a Welsh town
up to the reign of Athelstan, and that Cornish Welsh was still spoken
in parts of Devonshire till the days of Queen Elizabeth.

Wroxeter is another immensely interesting fossil word. It lies just at
the foot of the Wrekin, and the hill which takes that name in English
must have been pronounced by the old Celtic inhabitants much like
Uricon: for of course the awkward initial letter has only become silent
in these later lazy centuries. The Romans turned it into Uriconium; but
after their departure, it was captured and burnt to the ground by a
party of raiding West Saxons, and its fall is graphically described in
the wild old Welsh elegy of Llywarch the Aged. The ruins are still
charred and blackened by the West Saxon fires. The English colonists of
the neighbourhood called themselves the Wroken-sætas, or Settlers by
the Wrekin--a word analogous to that of Wilsætas, or Settlers by the
Wyly; Dorsætas, or Settlers among the Durotriges; and Sumorsætas, or
Settlers among the Sumor-folk,--which survive in the modern counties of
Wilts, Dorset, and Somerset. Similar forms elsewhere are the Pecsætas
of the Derbyshire Peak, the Elmedsætas in the Forest of Elmet, and the
Cilternsætas in the Chiltern Hills. No doubt the Wroken-sætas called
the ruined Roman fort by the analogous name of Wroken ceaster; and this
would slowly become Wrok ceaster, Wrok-cester, and Wroxeter, by the
ordinary abbreviating tendency of the Welsh borderlands. Wrexham
doubtless preserves the same original root.

Having thus carried the _Castra_ to the very confines of Wales, it
would be unkind to a generous and amiable people not to carry them
across the border and on to the Western sea. The Welsh corruption,
whether of the Latin word or of a native equivalent _cathir_, assumes
the guise of Caer. Thus the old Roman station of Segontium, near the
Menai Straits, is now called Caer Seiont; but the neighbouring modern
town which has gathered around Edward's new castle on the actual shore,
the later metropolis of the land of Arfon, became known to Welshmen as
Caer-yn-Arfon, now corrupted into Caernarvon or even into Carnarvon.
Gray's familiar line about the murdered bards--'On Arvon's dreary shore
they lie'--keeps up in some dim fashion the memory of the true
etymology. Caermarthen is in like manner the Roman Muridunum or
Moridunum--the fort by the sea--though a duplicate Moridunum in South
Devon has been simply translated into English as Seaton. Innumerable
other Caers, mostly representing Roman sites, may be found scattered up
and down over the face of Wales, such as Caersws, Caerleon, Caergwrle,
Caerhun, and Caerwys, all of which still contain traces of Roman
occupation. On the other hand, Cardigan, which looks delusively like a
shortened Caer, has really nothing to do with this group of ancient
names, being a mere corruption of Ceredigion.

But outside Wales itself, in the more Celtic parts of England proper, a
good many relics of the old Welsh Caers still bespeak the
incompleteness of the early Teutonic conquest. If we might trust the
mendacious Nennius, indeed, all our Casters and Chesters were once good
Cymric Caers; for he gives a doubtful list of the chief towns in
Britain, where Gloucester appears as Cair Gloui, Colchester as Cair
Colun, and York as Cair Ebrauc. These, if true, would be invaluable
forms; but unfortunately there is every reason to believe that Nennius
invented them himself, by a simple transposition of the English names.
Henry of Huntingdon is nearly as bad, if not worse; for when he calls
Dorchester 'Kair Dauri,' and Chichester 'Kair Kei,' he was almost
certainly evolving what he supposed to be appropriate old British names
from the depths of his own consciousness. His guesswork was on a par
with that of the schoolboys who introduce 'Stirlingia' or 'Liverpolia'
into their Ovidian elegiacs. That abandoned story-teller, Geoffrey of
Monmouth, goes a step further, and concocts a Caer Lud for London and a
Caer Osc for Exeter, whenever the fancy seizes him. The only examples
amongst these pretended old Welsh forms which seem to me to have any
real historical value are an unknown Kair Eden, mentioned by Gildas,
and a Cair Wise, mentioned by Simeon of Durham, undoubtedly the true
native name of Exeter.

Still we have a few indubitable Caers in England itself surviving to
our own day. Most of them are not far from the Welsh border, as in the
case of the two Caer Caradocs, in Shropshire, crowned by ancient
British fortifications. Others, however, lie further within the true
English pale, though always in districts which long preserved the Welsh
speech, at least among the lower classes of the population. The
earthwork overhanging Bath bears to this day its ancient British title
of Caer Badon. An old history written in the monastery of Malmesbury
describes that town as Caer Bladon, and speaks of a Caer Dur in the
immediate neighbourhood. There still remains a Caer Riden on the line
of the Roman wall in the Lothians. Near Aspatria, in Cumberland, stands
a mouldering Roman camp known even now as Caer Moto. In Carvoran,
Northumberland, the first syllable has undergone a slight contraction,
but may still be readily recognised. The Carr-dyke in Norfolk seems to
me to be referable to a similar origin.

Most curious of all the English Caers, however, is Carlisle. The
Antonine Itinerary gives the town as Luguvallium. Bæda, in his
barbarised Latin fashion calls it Lugubalia. 'The Saxons,' says
_Murray's Guide_, with charming _naïveté_, 'abbreviated the name into
Luel, and afterwards called it Caer Luel.' This astounding hotchpotch
forms an admirable example of the way in which local etymology is still
generally treated in highly respectable publications. So far as we
know, there never was at any time a single Saxon in Cumberland; and why
the Saxons, or any other tribe of Englishmen, should have called a town
by a purely Welsh name, it would be difficult to decide. If they had
given it any name at all, that name would probably have been Lul
ceaster, which might have been modernised into Lulcaster or Lulchester.
The real facts are these. Cumberland, as its name imports, was long a
land of the Cymry--a northern Welsh principality, dependent upon the
great kingdom of Strathclyde, which held out for ages against the
Northumbrian English invaders among the braes and fells of Ayrshire and
the Lake District. These Cumbrian Welshmen called their chief town Caer
Luel, or something of the sort; and there is some reason for believing
that it was the capital of the historical Arthur, if any Arthur ever
existed, though later ages transferred the legend of the British hero
to Caerleon-upon-Usk, after men had begun to forget that the region
between the Clyde and the Mersey had once been true Welsh soil. The
English overran Cumberland very slowly; and when they did finally
conquer it, they probably left the original inhabitants in possession
of the country, and only imposed their own overlordship upon the
conquered race. The story is too long a one to repeat in full here: it
must suffice to say that, though the Northumbrian kings had made the
'Strathclyde Welsh' their tributaries, the district was never
thoroughly subdued till the days of Edmund the West Saxon, who harried
the land, and handed it over to the King of Scots. Thus it happens that
Carlisle, alone among large English towns, still keeps unchanged its
Cymric name, instead of having sunk into an Anglicised Chester. The
present spelling is a mere etymological blunder, exactly similar to
that which has turned the old English word _igland_ into _island_,
through the false analogy of _isle_, which of course comes from the old
French _isle_, derived through some form akin to the Italian _isola_,
from the original Latin _insula_. Kair Leil is the spelling in
Geoffrey; Cardeol (by a clerical error for Carleol, I suspect) that in
the _English Chronicle_, which only once mentions the town; and Carleol
that of the ordinary mediæval historians. The surnames Carlyle and
Carlile still preserve the better orthography.

To complete the subject, it will be well to say a few words about those
towns which were once _Ceasters_, but which have never become Casters
or Chesters. Numerous as are the places now so called, a number more
may be reckoned in the illimitable chapter of the might-have-beens; and
it is interesting to speculate on the forms which they would have
taken, 'si qua fata aspera rupissent.' Among these still-born Chesters,
Newcastle-upon-Tyne may fairly rank first. It stands on the Roman site,
called, from its bridge across the Tyne, Pons Aelii, and known later
on, from its position on the great wall, as Ad Murum. Under the early
English, after their conversion to Christianity, the monks became the
accepted inheritors of Roman ruins; and the small monastery which was
established here procured it the English name of Muneca-ceaster, or, as
we should now say, Monk-chester, though no doubt the local
modernisation would have taken the form of Muncaster. William of
Normandy utterly destroyed the town during his great harrying of
Northumberland; and when his son, Robert Curthose, built a fortress on
the site, the place came to be called Newcastle--a word whose very form
shows its comparatively modern origin. _Castra_ and _Ceasters_ were now
out of date, and castles had taken their place. Still, we stick even
here to the old root: for of course castle is only the diminutive
_castellum_--a scion of the same Roman stock, which, like so many other
members of aristocratic families, 'came over with William the
Conqueror.' The word _castel_ is never used, I believe, in any English
document before the Conquest; but in the very year of William's
invasion, the _Chronicle_ tells us, 'Willelm earl came from Normandy
into Pevensey, and wrought a castel at Hastings port.' So, while in
France itself the word has declined through _chastel_ into _château_,
we in England have kept it in comparative purity as castle.

York is another town which had a narrow escape of becoming Yorchester.
Its Roman name was Eburacum, which the English queerly rendered as
Eoforwic, by a very interesting piece of folks-etymology. _Eofor_ is
old English for a boar, and _wic_ for a town; so our rude ancestors
metamorphosed the Latinised Celtic name into this familiar and
significant form, much as our own sailors turn the Bellerophon into the
Billy Ruffun, and the Anse des Cousins into the Nancy Cozens. In the
same way, I have known an illiterate Englishman speak of
Aix-la-Chapelle as Hexley Chapel. To the name, thus distorted, our
forefathers of course added the generic word for a Roman town, and so
made the cumbrous title of Eoforwic-ceaster, which is the almost
universal form in the earlier parts of the _English Chronicle_. This
was too much of a mouthful even for the hardy Anglo-Saxon, so we soon
find a disposition to shorten it into Ceaster on the one hand, or
Eoforwic on the other. Should the final name be Chester or York?--that
was the question. Usage declared in favour of the more distinctive
title. The town became Eoforwic alone, and thence gradually declined
through Evorwic, Euorwic, Eurewic, and Yorick into the modern York. It
is curious to note that some of these intermediate forms very closely
approach the original Eburac, which must have been the root of the
Roman name. Was the change partly due to the preservation of the older
sound on the lips of Celtic serfs? It is not impossible, for marks of
British blood are strong in Yorkshire; and Nennius confirms the idea by
calling the town Kair Ebrauc.

Among the other _Ceasters_ which have never developed into full-blown
Chesters, I may mention Bath, given as Akemannes ceaster and Bathan
ceaster in our old documents, so that it might have become
Achemanchester or Bathceter in the course of ordinary changes.
Canterbury, again, the Roman Durovernum, dropped through Dorobernia
into Dorwit ceaster, which would no doubt have turned into a third
Dorchester, to puzzle our heads by its likeness to Dorne ceaster in
Dorsetshire, and to Dorce ceaster near Oxford; while Chesterton in
Huntingdonshire, which was once Dorme ceaster, narrowly escaped
burdening a distracted world with a fourth. Happily, the colloquial
form Cantwara burh, or Kentmen's bury, gained the day, and so every
trace of Durovernum is now quite lost in Canterbury. North Shields was
once Scythles-ceaster, but here the Chester has simply dropped out.
Verulam, or St. Albans, is another curious case. Its Romano-British
name was Verulamium, and Bæda calls it Verlama ceaster. But the early
English in Sleswick believed in a race of mythical giants, the
Wætlingas or Watlings, from whom they called the Milky Way 'Watling
Street.' When the rude pirates from those trackless marshes came over
to Britain and first beheld the great Roman paved causeway which ran
across the face of the country from London to Caernarvon, they seemed
to have imagined that such a mighty work could not have been the
handicraft of men; and just as the Arabs ascribe the rock-hewn houses
of Petra to the architectural fancy of the Devil, so our old English
ancestors ascribed the Roman road to the Titanic Watlings. Even in our
own day, it is known along its whole course as Watling Street. Verulam
stands right in its track, and long contained some of the greatest
Roman remains in England; so the town, too, came to be considered as
another example of the work of the Watlings. Bæda, in his Latinised
Northumbrian, calls it Vætlinga ceaster, as an alternative title with
Verlama ceaster; so that it might nowadays have been familiar to us all
either as Watlingchester or Verlamchester. This is one of the numerous
cases where a Roman and English name lived on during the dark period
side by side. In some of Mr. Kemble's charters it appears as Walinga
ceaster. But when Offa of Mercia founded his great abbey on the very
spot where the Welsh martyr Alban had suffered during the persecution
of Diocletian, Roman and English names were alike forgotten, and the
place was remembered only after the British Christian as St. Albans.

There are other instances where the very memory of a Roman city seems
now to have failed altogether. For example, Bæda mentions a certain
town called Tiowulfinga ceaster--that is to say, the Chester of the
Tiowulfings, or sons of Tiowulf. Here an English clan would seem to
have taken up its abode in a ruined Roman station, and to have called
the place by the clan-name--a rare or almost unparalleled case. But its
precise site is now unknown. However, Bæda's description clearly points
to some town in Nottinghamshire, situated on the Trent; for St.
Paulinus of York baptized large numbers of converts in that river at
Tiowulfinga ceaster; and the site may therefore be confidently
identified with Southwell, where St. Mary's Minster has always
traditionally claimed Paulinus as its founder. Bæda also mentions a
place called Tunna ceaster, so named from an abbot Tunna, who exists
merely for the sake of a legend, and is clearly as unhistorical as his
piratical compeer Hrof--a wild guess of the eponymic sort with which we
are all so familiar in Greek literature. Simeon of Durham speaks of an
equally unknown Delvercester. Syddena ceaster or Sidna cester--the
earliest see of the Lincolnshire diocese--has likewise dropped out of
human memory; though Mr. Pearson suggests that it may be identical with
Ancaster--a notion which appears to me extremely unlikely. Wude cester
is no doubt Outchester, and other doubtful instances might easily be
recognised by local antiquaries, though they may readily escape the
general archæologist. In one case at least--that of Othonæ in
Essex--town, site, and name have all disappeared together. Bæda calls
it Ythan ceaster, and in his time it was the seat of a monastery
founded by St. Cedd; but the whole place has long since been swept away
by an inundation of the Blackwater. Anderida, which is called
Andredes-ceaster in the _Chronicle_, becomes Pefenesea, or Pevensey,
before the date of the Norman Conquest.

It must not be supposed that the list given here is by any means
exhaustive of all the Casters and Chesters, past and present,
throughout the whole length and breadth of Britain. On the contrary,
many more might easily be added, such as Ribbel ceaster, now
Ribchester; Berne ceaster, now Bicester; and Blædbyrig ceaster, now
simply Bladbury. In Northumberland alone there are a large number of
instances which I might have quoted, such as Rutchester, Halton
Chesters, and Little Chesters on the Roman Wall, together with
Hetchester, Holy Chesters, and Rochester elsewhere--the county
containing no less than four places of the last name. Indeed, one can
track the Roman roads across England by the Chesters which accompany
their route. But enough instances have probably been adduced to
exemplify fully the general principles at issue. I think it will be
clear that the English conquerors did not usually change the names of
Roman or Welsh towns, but simply mispronounced them about as much as we
habitually mispronounce Llangollen or Llandudno. Sometimes they called
the place by its Romanised title alone, with the addition of Ceaster;
sometimes they employed the servile British form; sometimes they even
invented an English alternative; but in no case can it be shown that
they at once disused the original name, and introduced a totally new
one of their own manufacture. In this, as in all other matters, the
continuity between Romano-British and English times is far greater than
it is generally represented to be. The English invasion was a cruel and
a desolating one, no doubt; but it could not and it did not sweep away
wholly the old order of things, or blot out all the past annals of
Britain, so as to prepare a _tabula rasa_ on which Mr. Green might
begin his _History of the English People_ with the landing of Hengest
and Horsa in the Isle of Thanet. The English people of to-day is far
more deeply rooted in the soil than that: our ancestors have lived
here, not for a thousand years alone, but for ten thousand or a hundred
thousand, in certain lines at least. And the very names of our towns,
our rivers, and our hills, go back in many cases, not merely to the
Roman corruptions, but to the aboriginal Celtic, and the still more
aboriginal Euskarian tongue.

THE END.


HENDERSON & SPALDING, LTD., 3 & 5, MARYLEBONE LANE, W.