Page:Studies in Lowland Scots - Colville - 1909.djvu/189



is a hopeful sign of progress that the mutual dependence of history, geography, and philology is becoming more and more recognised and acted upon. The bond of union is that element of human interest without which every study will soon lose its savour. The specialist who gropes round the study of his choice and sneers at others is but exploring his own dark chamber to the exclusion of the sunlight of fact and nature. No better illustration could there be of this helpful interdependence than what a glance at the map of England discloses. Down the West Coast extend three well-marked groups of hill country, Cumberland, Wales, and Cornwall, and in each and all the historical, geographical, and linguistic elements are "confusedly mingled," offering that prolonged quest which is so fascinating to the genuine student. The Cumberland group is particularly interesting as leaning more closely to Scotland than to England, towards which the Pennines seem to have presented a greater barrier than the Cheviots and the Solway did on their side. As a principality it was of old the appanage of the heir-apparent to the Scottish Throne, and as such raised nice questions of feudal tenure, which often brought the Scots and English to serious hand-i-grips, and made much history. At a still earlier period it formed, with South-Western Scotland, the country of the Strath-Clyde Britons, where the primitive Celts formed a counterpart to that Frisian race which gave a common character to the whole district between Humber and Tay. All over this Strath-Clyde Celtic has vanished before Norse with a strong Anglian admixture. It lives only in place-names. In Galloway even the patronymic Mac precedes Williams and Eoberts and Hughs, and the redoubtable Macdougall has become Macdowal (pronounced Madool). To north of Galloway, again,