Page:History of the Fylde of Lancashire (IA historyoffyldeof00portiala).pdf/39

 with other rivers of the neighbourhood, which is less likely, regarded by the natives as a stream of no insignificant magnitude and importance. As far as its navigability was concerned the Portus may have been placed on its banks near to the junction of Wyre, but the distances of Ptolemy, which agree pretty fairly, as shown above, with the location of the Portus on the west extremity of the present "Lune Deep," are incompatible with such a station as this one for the same harbour. The collection of coins discovered near Rossall may imply the existence in early days of a settlement west of that shore, and many remains of the Romans may yet be mingled with the sand and shingle for centuries submerged by the water of the still encroaching Irish Sea. Leaving this long-argued question of the real site of the Portus Setantiorum, in which perhaps the patience of our readers has been rather unduly tried, and soliciting others to test more thoroughly the merits of the ideas here thrown out, we will hasten to examine the traces of the Anglo-Saxons and Danes.

Many, in fact most, of the towns and villages of the Fylde were founded by the Anglo-Saxons, and have retained the names, generally in a modified form, bestowed upon them by that race, as instance Singleton, Lytham, Mythorp, all of which have Saxon terminals signifying a dwelling, village, or enclosure. The word hearb, genitive hearges, indicates in the vocabulary of the same people a heathen temple or place of sacrifice, and as it is to be traced in the endings of Goosnargh, and Kellamergh, there need be no hesitation in surmising that the barbarous and pagan rites of the Saxons were celebrated there, before their conversion to Christianity. Ley, or lay, whether at the beginning of a name, as in Layton, or at end, as in Boonley, signifies a field, and is from the Saxon leag; whilst Hawes and Holme imply, respectively, a group of thorps or hamlets, and a river island. Breck, Warbreck, and Larbreck, derive their final syllables from the Norse brecka, a gentle rise; and from that language comes also the terminal by, in Westby, Ribby, and other places, as well as the kirk in Kirkham, all of which point out the localities occupied by the Danes, or Norsemen. Lund was doubtless the site of a sacred grove of these colonists and the scene of many a dark and cruel ceremony, its derivation being from the ancient Norse lundr, a consecrated grove, where such rites were performed.