least as late as the sixteenth century, for they are mentioned by Sir Thomas More as being in the hands of every maid-servant. The passage is so humorous as to be worth quoting. More is telling of a prototype of Crabbe's "Preceptor Husband," who would fain have taught his wife "The Treatise of the Sphere" (i.e., the Ptolemaic system of the universe), and, to show her that "the Earth hangeth in the midst of the Universe by its own weight, 'You must,' said he, 'mark well that in the Universe higher and lower mean simply outer and inner; so that, all the Spheres being each in a round compass over the other, the Earth lieth in the very midst, and is the innermost place of the Universe. Being therefore in the lowest place, its own weight keeps it there, because no heavy thing can of itself ascend upwards, and to fall out of its place on any side would be to fall from a lower place to a higher. Imagine therefore that a hole were bored through the earth, and a millstone thrown down here on this side from our feet: it would finally remain in the Centre of the Earth. It could not go further, for then it would be falling outwards or upwards.' "Now, while he was telling her this tale, she nothing went about to consider his words, but, as she was wont in all other things, studied all the while nothing else but what she might say to the contrary. And when he had, with much work and oft interrupting, brought at last his tale to an end: 'Well,' quoth she, 'I will argue like, and make you a like sample. My maid yonder hath a spinning whorl, because all your reason resteth in the roundness of the world. Come hither, thou girl; take out thy spindle, and bring me hither the whorl. Lo, sir, ye make imaginations; I cannot tell you what. But here is a whorl, and it is round as the world is; and ye shall not need imagine a hole bored through, for it hath a hole bored through indeed. But yet, because ye go by imaginations, I will imagine you. Imagine me now that this whorl were ten miles thick on every side; and this hole through it still, and so great that a millstone might well go through. Now if the whorl stood on one end, and a millstone were thrown through it from the other end, would it go no further than the midst, trow you? By God, if one threw in a stone no bigger than an egg, I ween if ye stood at the nether end of the hole, five mile beneath the midst, it would give you a pat upon the pate that it would make you claw your head, and yet should ye feel none itch at all.' "It were long to tell you of all their disputations, for words would she none have lacked, though they should have disputed the space of seven years. Her husband was fain to put up his sphere, and leave his wife with her whorl." § 11. Thus did Cambridgeshire become an English district. And meanwhile death, exile, or personal slavery, were the only alternatives open to the unhappy Britons; so that by the middle of the sixth century not a free "Welshman" (a name which, on English lips, included all Britons alike) was left in the county, save, perchance, in the recesses of the Fens. 12. For by this time the Fens, that great morass which was to be distinctive of the northern part of Cambridgeshire for the next thirteen hundred years, had fairly come into existence. Either by the destruction of the Roman dykes, or by the subsidence of the land, or, more probably, by both these causes combined, the floor of the great forest surrounding the Wash became submerged, the rivers which had flowed lazily through it could no longer flow at all, their waters were backed up and spread over all their banks at every level spot, so that half the county grew waterlogged, and was transformed into an impenetrable waste of trackless bogs and reedy meres; 1 Bridgett's "Life of Sir Thomas More," p. 449. where a few very small and low and inconspicuous islets might well provide a refuge for the hunted survivors of the conquered people. § 13. Thus, as late as the tenth century we find "British thieves" mentioned as haunting the district,1 and a warrior, bearing the distinctively Celtic name of Maccus, one of the prominent heroes at the battle of Maldon; while in the Tabula Eliensis (1078) we meet with Donald, Evan, Constantine and David. The name Girvii, by which the inhabitants of this district became known after the English conquest, may well be connected with the Welsh gwryw, manly, a title likely enough to be adopted by the heroic few who there stood at bay. Their Alderman under Queen Etheldred was, moreover, one Owen;-while their country contains various local designations quite capable of a Welsh derivation, that of Ely itself being very probably the word which meets us in the Glamorganshire river Ely and in the Denbighshire Elwy. The existence, in English, of the Welsh word "basket" points in the same direction; for, until the final draining of the Fens, this district was the special seat of the basket-making industry, for which the infinite abundance of osiers and rushes amongst its sluggish watercourses afforded exceptional facilities. British baskets were known by that name in Rome as early as the days of Martial, whose "Epigrams" (xiv. 99) introduce us to one of these articles : "Barbara de pictis veni bascauda Britannis." 14. Nor was it only along their lower course that the rivers were affected. For miles above the Fenland proper-indeed, to within half a dozen miles of its source -the meadows adjoining the Cam became marshes suffi 1 See Freeman, "Norman Conquest," vol. iv., p. 470; also "Hist. Ramsey," § 86. 2 The word grw is also found, with the meaning of "chieftain." ciently inconvenient of passage to form a decided barrier between the populations on either bank. The river accordingly formed throughout almost its entire length the boundary between the East Anglian and Mercian districts of the English Name; the remarkable difference even yet observable in dialect and local custom between adjoining parishes, separated only by so narrow a stream, bearing testimony to this day of their several origin. But the East Anglian portion of the county was so far the more important that, when at length the shire was formed, the whole of it was counted to the East English and was under the East English Alderman or Earl. And meanwhile its history is almost wholly dependent on that of the East Anglian monarchy. The dialect, however, is almost wholly Mercian, and is thus devoid of the charm of provinciality. For, as Freeman points out, it is this very speech of South-Eastern Mercia which (through the influence of the great abbeys, so thick hereabouts) has developed into "classical" English, leaving the once more important tongues of Wessex and Northumbria as localisms. A few special words are, nevertheless, still current amongst the peasantry: "stunt" for steep, "fleet for shallow, "frorn" for frozen, "meese" for mice, "horkey" for harvest-home, and "to-year" for this year (as "to-day " is ordinarily used). The thrush is known as the "maywish" (the “mavis of old English ballads), and cowslips are "paigles," a word said to be derived from Pega, the sister of St. Guthlac of Crowland (673), whose name is also to be found in Peakirk Drove, the road between Wisbech and Thorney. § 15. After upwards of a century of Christianity, Cambridgeshire thus became once more a land of heathens. The Romano-British churches (as the contemporary British historian, Gildas, tells) were everywhere razed to the ground, and their places taken by the sacred groves in which the sanguinary rites of Anglo-Saxon worship were celebrated. In some instances there is reason to believe that the very site of the ancient religion was thus dedicated to the service of the idols, and re-dedicated to Christ when the Christian faith was once more solidly established. § 16. But, before that happy consummation, many religious and political convulsions tore and devastated the land. Amongst the earliest converts brought into the fold by the Mission to the English, sent, under Augustine, from Pope Gregory the Great, in 599, was Redwald, King of East Anglia; the two divisions of which, inhabited respectively by the North-folk and the South-folk, had been for the first time brought under one sceptre by his grandfather Uffa (from whom the dynasty, down to the time of its extinction by the Danes, continued to be denominated Uffing). Redwald was converted in Kent, by Augustine himself, and succeeded its first Christian monarch in the vague hegemony amongst the Princes of Britain implied in the title " Bretwalda." By a play upon the first syllable, which originally implied mere extent of dominion (Bret = broad), this title gained the meaning of "Wielder of Britain "; and the popular voice bestowed it on various local rulers who made their influence felt beyond the limits of their own immediate kingdom. These successive Bretwaldas, as given by Bede,1 are: 1. Ella of Sussex, A.D. 477. 2. Ceawlin of Wessex, A.D. 560. 3. Ethelbert of Kent, A.D. 593. 4. Redwald of East Anglia, A.D. 616. 5. Edwin of Northumbria, A.D. 617. 6. Oswald of Northumbria, A.D. 634. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle2 adds an eighth, Egbert 1 "Eccl. Hist.," Book II., chap. v. 2 Anno 827. |