Goathland, which was often spelt Gothland, has a most suggestive sound, and the family names of Scoby and Scoresby seem to be of Danish origin. The "gate" of the streets of Pickering is a modification of the Danish "gade," meaning a "way," for the town was never walled. The influence of the Danes on the speech of this part of Yorkshire seems to me apparent in the slight sing-song modulation so similar to that of the present day people of Denmark.

In A.D. 597 Augustine commenced his missionary work among the Saxons, and King Ethelbert of Kent was baptised on June the 2nd of that year. Twenty-seven years later Edwin, the powerful king of Northumbria, married Ethelburga, daughter of Ethelbert. When she accompanied her husband to his northern kingdom she took with her Paulinus, who was ordained bishop of the Northumbrians. "King Aldwin, therefore," Bede tells us,[1] "together with all the nobles of his nation, and very many of the common people, received the faith and washing of sacred regeneration, in the eleventh year of his reign, which is the year of the Lord's incarnation, 627, and about the year 180 from the coming of the Angles into Britain. Moreover, he was baptised at York, on the holy day of Easter, the day before the Ides of April, in the church of the holy apostle Peter, which he himself built of wood in that place with expeditious labour, while he was being catechised and prepared in order to receive baptism." The Northumbrians from this time forward were at least a nominally Christian people, and the seventh century certainly witnessed the destruction of many of the idols and their shrines that had hitherto formed the centre for the religious rites of the Anglo-Saxons. Woden or Odin, Thor and the other deities did not lose their adherents in a day, and Bede records the relapses into idolatry of Northumbria as well as the other parts of England. There can be no doubt that fairies and elves entered largely into the mythology of the Anglo-Saxons, and the firmness of the beliefs in beings of that nature can be easily understood when we realise that it required no fewer than twelve centuries of Christianity to finally destroy them among the people of Yorkshire. In Chapter XI. we see something of the form the beliefs and superstitions had assumed at the time of their disappearance.

[1] Bede's "Ecclesiastical History of the English Nation," translated by Gidley, Rev. L., 1870, p. 152.

In the seventh century most of the churches erected in Yorkshire were probably of wood, but the example of King Edwin at York, who quickly replaced the timber structure with a larger one of stone, must soon have made itself felt in the country. Nothing, however, in the form of buildings or inscribed stones for which we have any evidence for placing at such an early date remains in the neighbourhood of Pickering, although there are numerous crosses and traces of the masonry that may be termed Saxon or Pre-Conquest.

The founding of a monastery at Lastingham is described by Bede, and with the particulars he gives we can place the date between the years 653 and 655. Bishop Cedd was requested by King Oidilward, who held rule in the parts of Deira, "to accept some possession of land of him to build a monastery to which the king himself [Æthelwald] also might frequently come to pray to the Lord, and to hear the Word, and in which he might be buried when he died." Further on we are told that Cedd "assenting to the king's wishes, chose for himself a place to build a monastery among lofty and remote mountains, in which there appeared to have been more lurking places of robbers and dens of wild beasts than habitations of men." This account is of extreme interest, being the only contemporary description of this part of Yorkshire known to us. "Moreover," says Bede, "the man of God, studying first by prayers and fastings to purge the place he had received for a monastery from its former filth of crimes, and so to lay in it the foundations of the monastery, requested of the king that he would give him during the whole ensuing time of Lent leave and licence to abide there for the sake of prayer; on all which days, with the exception of Sunday, protracting his fast to evening according to custom, he did not even then take anything except a very little bread and one hen's egg, with a little milk and water. For he said this was the custom of those of whom he had learnt the rule of regular discipline, first to consecrate to the Lord by prayers and fastings the places newly received for building a monastery or a church. And when ten days of the quadragesimal fast were yet remaining, there came one to summon him to the king. But he, in order that the religious work might not be intermitted on account of the king's affairs, desired his presbyter Cynibill, who was also his brother, to complete the pious undertaking. The latter willingly assented; and the duty of fasting and prayer having been fulfilled, he built there a monastery which is now called Læstingaeu [Lastingham], and instituted rules there, according to the customs of the monks of Lindisfarne, where he had been educated. And when for many years he [Cedd] had administered the episcopate in the aforesaid province, and also had taken charge of this monastery, over which he set superiors, it happened that coming to this same monastery at a time of mortality, he was attacked by bodily infirmity and died. At first, indeed, he was buried outside, but in process of time a church was built of stone in the same monastery, in honour of the blessed mother of God, and in that church his body was laid on the right side of the altar." Cedd's death took place in 664, and Ceadda or Chad, one of his brothers, succeeded him as he had desired.