By J. H. Round, M.A.

PART IV.

(Completed from p. 24.)

TURNING now to ceaster, I claim it, as I claim port, as a distinctively English word. Just as, ever on the same principle, I see in the use of weal (wall)—a word etymologically derived from vallum—for a stone wall (murus), an indication that the Teutonic rovers, struck by a phenomenon to them so strange as a fortification even of earth, formed for themselves, out of vallum, a word denoting a barrier irrespective of its material, so I contend that they formed for themselves, from a phenomenon so strange as that castrum which faced them on the border of “the Saxon shore,” the word ceaster by which to denote a walled enclosure, irrespective of its size. Is it not a striking thought that, in these English rovers, we have the forefathers of those to whom, as they gazed on the Norman donjon,—

“Both the name and the thing were new.... Such strongholds, strange to English eyes, bore no English name, but retained their French designation of castles.”[36]

Thus, to return, as when they made the acquaintance of a stone wall (murus), they would apply their word weal to it, so, when they reached the large Roman towns of the interior they would apply to them, as being walled enclosures, their own word “ceaster,” totally independent of the proper name by which they were known to Roman or Briton.

Now here we have an instance of the striking results that may follow from minute analysis of “these interesting philological fossils.” For it follows, as a corollary from the above proposition, that the point of view from which all historians, whatever their school of thought may be, have hitherto agreed to look at “-ceaster,” is entirely erroneous and misleading. So far from being essentially a Roman, I shall prove it to be essentially an English termination. Thus, though in no way a follower of Mr. Freeman’s sweeping theories, I go, it will be seen, in this matter of fact, even beyond the exponent of the extreme “Teutonic” view.

Let us ask ourselves, in the first place, what we mean when we talk of towns with the -ceaster termination having retained their “Roman names.” Mr. Pearson, for instance, who is a follower of Mr. Coote, asserts that—

“Roman local names were preserved by the conquerors as they found them.”[37]

Even Mr. Allen, though an independent thinker, contends that—