Welsh Journals

Search over 450 titles and 1.2 million pages

girclt;rcoto0iit Camlrajiis. FOURTH SERIES.—VOL. XIII, NO. III. OCTOBER 1882. THE CELTIC ELEMENT IN THE LANCA¬ SHIRE DIALECT. It is inferred by Dr.Lappenberg, from the small number of the hundreds in Lancashire, that the British popula¬ tion was more numerous there than in other counties. " The circumstance", he says, "that some of the smaller shires contain the greatest number of hundreds pre¬ sents inexplicable difficulties, though at the same time it may afford a clue to their origin if we take into con¬ sideration the fact that those small counties (viz.,Kent, containing sixty-one, Sussex sixty-five, and Dorsetshire thirty-four hundreds) were the districts first conquered, and therefore the most densely peopled by the new settlers ; while in others, as Lancashire, with six hun¬ dreds only, the British population continued more numerous, and the hundreds, on the division of the country among the Anglo-Saxon chiefs, might have been formed without any reference to the number of the subjected Britons" (ii, 329, E. Ed.). The Celtic words ,n the Lancashire dialect prove that this part of the population was certainly very numerous ; but the same element exists quite as largely in the dialect of Cum¬ berland on the north, and in that of Cheshire or Shrop¬ shire on the south. Each of these dialects oilers an mteresting field of inquiry to a Celtic scholar, for each *TH SER., VOL. XI11. 16