The Welsh appear to have remained under Teutonic (or later, Scandinavian) masters, and one relic of their tongue seems to show how they were treated. They seem to have been employed as shepherds, and they counted their flocks:—
Un, dau, tri, y pedwar, y pimp;
Chwech, y saith, y wyth, y nau, y dec;
Un-ar-dec, deu-ar-dec, tri-ar-dec, pedwar-ar-dec, pemthec;
Un-ar-pymthec, deu-ar-pymthec, tri-ar-pymthec, pedwar-ar-pymthec, ucent;
or in the ancient equivalent form of these Welsh numerals, which their masters learned from them, and used ever after in a garbled form as the right way to count sheep. The Coniston count-out runs—
Yan, taen, tedderte, medderte, pimp;
Sethera, lethera, hovera, dovera, dick;
Yan-a-dick, taen-a-dick, tedder-a-dick, medder-a-dick, mimph;
Yan-a-mimph, taen-a-mimph, tedder-a-mimph, medder-a-mimph, gigget.
And from these north-country dales the Anglo-Cymric score has spread, with their roaming sons and daughters, pretty nearly all the world over. (See the Rev. T. Ellwood's papers on the subject in Cumb. and West. Antiq. Soc. Transactions, vol. iii.)
During the ninth century the Anglian power declined. Welsh Cumbria regained some measure of independence with kings or kinglets of its own, under the dominant over-lordship of the Scottish crown. But the Anglian settlers still held their tuns, though their influence and interests so diminished that it was impossible for them to continue and complete the colonization of Lakeland. It remained a no-man's-land, a debateable border country, hardly inhabited and quite uncivilised.
Norse Period.
Who then settled the dales, cleared the forest, drained the swamps, and made the wilderness into fields and farms?
Let us walk to-day through the valleys to the north of the village, and ask by the way what the country can tell us of its history.