them there was a sprinkling of eorls, earls, who were men of nobler birth, but enjoyed no superior legal rights. The homesteads of each mark clustered around the moot-hill, where the whole community met to administer justice, and the wise men to settle questions of peace and war and to frame laws. Their religion was pagan; each mark had its fane, or church, and every man was the priest of his own household. Their gods, Tiw, Woden, Thor, and Frea, have given names to all but three of the days of our week. Our Old Nick, Old Scratch, weird, Easter, and hell can be traced to other, though minor, deities of theirs.

On the withdrawal of the Roman legions from Britain, the unsubdued Picts and Scots of the north attacked the Celts of the south, who had been Roman subjects. Whether the assailed Britons detached the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes from an alliance with the Picts and Scots, and turned them against their former allies; whether, without having been in alliance, these foreigners came by invitation across the North Sea to help beat back these Picts and Scots; or whether, lured by the fertile soil, they came uninvited, and on their own account, we may never know; but it is certain that they came, and that they came to stay. Their coming is of immense significance, for they became the basis of the English nation, and their speech the mothertongue of the English language.

The Jutes, we are told by the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, came over under Hengist and Horsa in 449, and settled in Kent. Ella and his followers, in 477, and Cerdic with his, in 495, settled Sussex in the south and Wessex in the west, and later Saxons founded Essex. The ending sex would of itself suggest the origin of these kingdoms. Three kingdoms north of Thames-the largest of which,

Northumbria, stretched from the Humber to the Forth— were founded by the Angles. Besides this, East Anglia and Mercia were established.

The conquest of the Celts by these Low German invaders that of a Christian people by a pagan, it may be noticed-proceeded slowly, and in 520 came to a halt which lasted fifty years. It was then resumed, and by 607 the unexterminated Britons had taken refuge in the western part of the island. And now for more than two hundred years the conquerors waged fierce war upon one another. The seven kingdoms, for war begat the king, contended for the overlordship, till in 827 Wessex secured it, the Heptarchy became a Monarchy, and Egbert ruled from the English Channel to the Firth of Forth.

Meanwhile the invaders had been Christianized, Augustine and his missionaries arriving from Rome in 597. The Christian temple rose on the site of the pagan fane. By the end of the seventh century, the Church was a single organization in spite of the division of the island into warring kingdoms. As population increased, the marks coalesced and became shires, of which in Alfred's time there were thirty-two, each with its organization, religious, legal, and political.

VI. The Danish Conquest.-The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle relates that in 787 the Danes, as all Northmen, or Scandinavians, at this time were called, began their invasions. Sweeping up the great rivers that pour their waters into the North Sea, they laid waste the territory adjacent, harried and killed the inhabitants, and settled as they conquered. The very verb harry is Anglo-Saxon, derived from their name for the dreaded Danish army-here. What terror this army inspired may be gathered from the

fact that this prayer made its way into the Anglo-Saxon litany "From the incursions of the Northmen, good Lord, deliver us."

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These Scandinavians were beaten in great battles, and driven back only to return. They were bought off with gold; and finally, on condition that they would confine themselves within it, they were given the territory to the east and north-east of Watling Street, an old Roman military road, which stretched from near Dover through London to Chester on the Dee. But they could not be kept within the limits of this territory, called the Danelagh, and at last succeeded in placing four kings in succession on the throne-Sweyn, Canute, Harold Harefoot, and Hardicanute, 1013-1042.

VII. The Languages Spoken on the Island.-The unconquered Celts, or Kelts, of the west and north spoke their own tongue, of course, the Celtic, or Keltic. That of the conquered portion was overwhelmingly the language of the conquerors, and was called the Anglo-Saxon. But it was not quite pure; some few Celtic words had entered it. The Celtic names for the rivers, lakes, hills, and mountains clung fast to these objects, and are found in English

even now.

Isaac Taylor in Words and Places says, "Throughout the whole of England there is hardly a single river-name which is not Celtic." Avon, Celtic for water, is the name of fourteen English rivers to-day. Esk, meaning the same thing, designates more than twenty. It has entered into the names of towns also, as in Exeter, Axminster, Oxford, and Uxbridge. Thames, Humber, Wye, Cam, Ouse, and many other river-names are Celtic. Pen or Ben, the usual Celtic name for a mountain, is seen in the name for the range

called Pennine, in that of the hills called Pentland, in BenNevis, and Ben-Lomond. Dun, a hill-fortress, is found in London, Dumbarton, Dundee, etc. Scores, even hundreds, of other Celtic words can be found on almost any map of England; and, indeed, as Taylor claims, on the maps of Spain, Italy, Switzerland, and Germany. Besides these geographical terms it is said that the common words

Clout, crock, cradle, cart, down, pillow, barrow, glen, havoc, kiln, mattock, and pool

came into the Anglo-Saxon before the Norman Conquest. As other Celtic words appeared later, we will call all these, whether geographical or other, entering the Anglo-Saxon and continued into English, the Celtic, or Keltic, of the First Period.

But in the Celtic vocabulary foreign words had found a lodgment. The Romans held most of the island for hundreds of years. Many of their words filtered down into the speech of the subject Celts. Some of these, seven it is said, all geographical but two, forced their way up into the language of the Anglo-Saxon conquerors. Castra, a camp, appears in the names of towns ending in chester, caster, and cester; as, Manchester, Lancaster, and Leicester; strata, paved streets, in Stratford, Streatham, etc.; colonia, a settlement, in Lincoln and Colne; fossa, a trench, in Fossway and Fosbridge; portus, a harbor, in Portsmouth and Bridport; vallum, a rampart, in wall; and mile. These seven now in English we call Latin of the First Period.

But, as we have said, the heathen Anglo-Saxons were Christianized. Hosts of Roman words, some of which were derived from the Greek, the language of the New Testament and of the early Christians, came in with, or fol

lowed in the wake of, the Christian Church, whose services were conducted in Latin. Presbyter, originally an elder, apostolus, one sent, clericus, one ordained, and episcopus, an overseer, taking the forms in Anglo-Saxon of preost, postol, clerc, and biscop, and, in English, of priest, apostle, clerk, and bishop; and such words as cheese, pound, candle, table, and marble illustrate these acquisitions.

Sometimes after naturalization these words combined with the Anglo-Saxon, as in sealm-boc, our psalm-book. Sometimes they took Anglo-Saxon endings. Monachus becoming munuc, monk, added had and formed an abstract. To this same munuc, lic, our like, was annexed, and an adjective was created; lice, and a new adverb appeared. The Latin missa (est), changed to Anglo-Saxon masse, mass, took the infinitive ending, and became mæssian, to say mass; and prædicare turned into predician, our preach.

Of the Latin words brought into Anglo-Saxon by the Church, or following in its wake, there were before the Norman Conquest at least six hundred, it is thought; if compounds are counted, three or four times as many. These are styled the Latin of the Second Period.

The Danish Conquest introduced Scandinavian terms. Taylor says that in the east of England, most of them in the Danelagh, there are six hundred places whose names end in by, Scandinavian for town. This, seen in Rugby, Grimsby, in one hundred names in Lincolnshire alone, is found also in our word by-law. Thorp, or torp, German dorf, a village, is found in Althorpe and Wilstrop; thwaite, a clearing, in Finsthwaite and Braithwaite; ness, a nose or cape, in Sheerness and Caithness; wic, a creek or bay, in Wickham, Norwich, and in viking; toft, a home