Page:The New Forest - its history and its scenery.djvu/182

Rh and fields as Penerley, Denny, Cocketts, Kamel or Cammel Green, and Flasket's Lane. As might be expected, the traces of the Danes are very much less; and I hardly like even to venture on the conjecture that the various "Nashes" along the coast are corruptions of næs. Here, in the Forest, we have no Danish "thorpes" or "bys." There are no Carlbys, as in Lincolnshire and Yorkshire, but plenty of Old-English Charltons, and Charlmoors, and Charlmeads. No Norse "forces" run here, as in the north of England, but only "rides." No "denes" open out to the sea, as in Durham, but only "chines" and "bunnies." No Jutish "ings" are dwelt in, as in Kent, but only "tons" and "leys." Here, in fact, the people of Cerdic have identified themselves with the land, and have left their impress, now unchanged for more than thirteen centuries, on all the towns, and hamlets, and homesteads.

Thus we find on the eastern side of the Forest, formerly in it, Eling, the Mark of the Ealingas, Totton, the Mark of the Totingas; on the south, Lymington and Pennington, the Marks of the Limingas and Penningas; and on the west, Fordingbridge, the Mark of the Fordingas, and Ellingham, that is, Adeling's Hamlet, Adelingeham, in Domesday, where some of the neighbouring woods are to this hour called Adlem's Plantations.

We will not press, as a proof of descent, the number of Old-English surnames, which may easily be collected in the district. We must remember that they were not used, in our modern sense, till long after the Norman Conquest; and when adopted, people were more likely to choose them from English, than from Norman or other sources. Such evidence establishes nothing.

In other ways, however, do we find the Old-English 164