Page:Origin of the Anglo-Saxon Race.djvu/17

Rh not yet wholly passed away, as the differences in grammar, vocabulary, intonation, and pronunciation of English dialects still show. It is to the ancient tribes of North Germany and Scandinavia that we must look if we would understand who were the real ancestors of the Old English people, and in comparison with the Germanic element, the Scandinavian has probably not received the attention to which it is entitled. The old place-names in England, except along the Welsh border and in Cornwall, are almost all of Teutonic origin, but we cannot say what they all mean. It is easy to guess, but not easy to guess rightly, for the Northumbrian and Mercian speech of the earliest periods have been almost lost, and the early West Saxon dialect during the later period was not what it was during the earlier. The names of places appear in perhaps the majority of cases to have been given them from topographical considerations. Some of these, derived from hills, fords, woods, and the like, may be of very early date, but most of them are probably later. The place-names derived from tribes or clans are, however, as old as the settlement, whether they arose from a kindred of people or from one man of a particular race. In considering this subject the earliest forms of local government must not be ignored. In the primitive settlements the customary law was administered by families or kindreds. It at first was tribal, and not territorial. The communities must have been known by names they gave themselves, or those by which the neighbouring communities commonly called them. Probably in most cases the names which survived were those by which their neighbours designated them. As regards the disappearance of Anglo-Saxon names, nothing is more striking in one county of Wessex alone—Hampshire, the original Wessex—than the large number of boundary names and names of places mentioned in the Saxon charters that now are lost or are beyond 1—2