Page:Archaeological Journal, Volume 8.djvu/203

 AND TlIK l'i;t»l'>AHLK DATK OF SToNEII KNCH. 1 1 T, liypothesis advanced by Stiikelc}', and accepted I»v W'arton, is, to say the least, not an unreasonable one. If we attempt to trace the progress of Belgic conquest by the light of Welsh tradition, we shall be disa})pointed. The all but utter silence of the Triads, with respect to a pcoi)lc who fill such a place in history, is one of the most jMizzling circumstances connected with these mysterious records. The Triad, which mentions the three " refuge-seeking tribes," tells us, that the first of these tribes came from Galedin, and had lands allotted to them in the Isle of Wight. Welsli scholars consider Galedin to mean the Netherlands ; ^ and, perhaps, we may conclude, that, according to Welsh tradition, the Belgae came as refugees to this country, and were first located in the Isle of Wight — di-iven, it may be, from their own country' by some inundation of the sea, an accident Avhich appears to have been the moving cause of several of those great migrations w^e read of in Koman history. It is clear from Cccsar, that for some centuries before Christ, the Belga} were the most energetic and powerful — and among half- civilised races, this means the most aggressive — of the Gaulish tribes ; and we can have little difficulty in supposing, that the fugitive Belga), with the aid probably of their continental brethren, might soon change their character of refugees into that of assailants. Of the inlets, opposite the Isle of Wight, by which the mainland could be assailed, Tweon-ea (now Christchurch), at the mouth of the Stour and Avon, appears to have been one of the most important in the earlier periods of our history. Here, it would seem, the Belgce landed. The uplands in the neighbourhood are barren, but the vallies rich, and the Belga3, we may presume, were soon in possession of the pastures along the Stour as far as the neighbourhood of Blandford. This town lies in a kind of defile, over which, at that period, the woodlands of Cranbourne Chase in all probability extended. At this wooded gorge the Britons seem to have held their own, and the comse of Belgic con- quest to have been diverted — in the direction afterwards followed by the Roman road and the modern railway — into the vallies of the Piddle and the Frome. We may now ask, " This hypothesis would receive strong a dictum of " Richard of Cirencester,'' confirmation if wo were justified in giving and I will not insult the reader by <iuoting to the Belgic settlers of the south-east of a patent forgery. I allude to Bertram's Dorsetshire the name of Morini. But I clever fabrication, merely to show the believe our only authority for so doing is reader that I have not overlooked it.