[14] Scottish Review, vol. xxxii.
[15] Some writers give the name of moot-hill to places in Yorkshire and elsewhere where the older ordnance maps give moat-hill. Moat in this connection is the same as motte, the Scotch and Irish mote, i.e., the hillock of a castle, derived from the Norman-French word motte. As this word is by far the most convenient name to give to these hillocks, being the only specific name which they have ever had, we shall henceforth use it in these pages. We prefer it to mote, which is the Anglicised form of the word, because of its confusion with moat, a ditch. Some writers advocate the word mount, but this appears to us too vague. As the word motte is French in origin, it appropriately describes a thing which was very un-English when first introduced here.
[16] At York, a prehistoric crouching skeleton was found by Messrs Benson and Platnauer when excavating the castle hill in 1903, 4 feet 6 inches below the level of the ground. The motte at York appears to have been raised after the destruction of the first castle, but whether the first hillock belonged to the ancient burial is not decided by the account, “Notes on Clifford’s Tower,” by the above authors. Trans. York. Philosoph. Soc., 1902. Another instance is recorded in the Revue Archæologique, to which we have unfortunately lost the reference.
[17] From the report of a competent witness, Mr Basil Stallybrass.
[18] Earle, Two Saxon Chronicles Parallel, Introd., xxiii.
[19] Nennius says that Ida “unxit (read cinxit) Dynguayrdi Guerth-Berneich”=a strength or fort of Bernicia. Mon. Hist. Brit., 75. Elsewhere he calls Bamborough Dinguo Aroy. It is quite possible that there might have been a Keltic din in a place so well fitted for one as Bamborough.
[20] Bede, H. E., iii., 16.
[21] See Bede, as above, and Symeon, ii., 45 (R.S.).
[22] We infer this from the strong defences of what is now the middle ward.
[23] The fact, however, that the Trinoda Necessitas, the duty of landholders to contribute to the repair of boroughs and bridges, and to serve in the fyrd, is occasionally mentioned in charters earlier than the Danish wars, shows that there were town walls to be kept up even at that date. See Baldwin Brown, The Arts in Early England, i., 82.