Page:Walks in the Black Country and its green border-land.pdf/24

10 all the classic languages of the old world ever had such living power as, this Teutonic noun-heim, ham, or home. In all the history of the world not another such a word can be found that has moved the heart of so many millions. What a heim England has become to more millions than peopled the earth in Homer's day! Go to the furthest sheepcote in Australia, or woodcutter's cabin in Canada, and the youngest child of the family, that has read an English picture book, or has understood its father's stories about the land of his youth, will call England, home. Home-bound is a term first used when the whole English-speaking race in both hemispheres had but one centre, and but one home in sentiment. Home-bound meant then nothing more nor less than England-bound.

Birmingham, of course, is built on the same historical strata as all other large towns in England. As to the old British layer there is the usual thickness of variegated conjecture. Then succeeds the Roman, of which a few indices and relics have been discovered. With the Saxon period a little written history commences, and it is recorded that the township was given to a family named Ulwine, and afterwards Allen, but which, on taking possession of the property, affected the old Norman custom, and assumed the name of De Bermingham. It is quite probable that this Saxon family changed their name in this way at the conquest, in order to