soil of the Fylde, which under the wood-levelling and marsh-draining Romans had lost much of its swampy and forest characters and been transformed into a more habitable locality. We need have little hesitation in conjecturing that the valour displayed by the inhabitants of our county was greatly increased, and often rendered almost desperate, by the knowledge that if their land were subdued and occupied by the Saxons the key, if it may so be called, to their mountainous strongholds would be lost, and the line of communication between them impassably and irretrievably obstructed; for the venerable Bede[1] tells us that a portion of the Britons fled to the hills and fells of Furness, and we are aware that a much larger share sought refuge amongst the mountains of Wales, lying to the south-west, and visible from the shores of the Fylde. Others escaped over to Armorica in France, and from them it acquired the name of Brittany. Additional evidence that Furness was peopled by the Britons, even for more than two centuries after the arrival of the Saxons, is to be found in the writings of Camden, who says:—"The Britons in Furness lived securely for a long time, relying upon those fortifications, wherewith nature had guarded them; for that the Britons lived here in the 228th year after the coming of the Saxons, is plain from hence; that at that time Egfrid, the king of the Northumbrians, gave to St. Cuthbert the land called Cartmell, and all the Britons in it; for so it is related in his life."
The Saxons were great idolaters, and soon crowded the country with their temples and images. The deities they worshipped have furnished us with names for the different days of the week, thus Sunday is derived from Sunan the sun, Monday from Monan the moon, Tuesday from Tuisco a German god, Wednesday from Woden, Thursday from Thor or Thur, Friday from Friga, and Saturday from Seater.
When the nation was once more at peace, all the towns and castles which had been damaged during the wars were repaired, and others, which had been destroyed, rebuilt. The Britons were brought by degrees to look with less disfavour on their conquerors, and as time progressed adopted their heathenish faith and offered up prayer at the shrines of the same idols, drifting back into
- ↑ Bede died in A.D. 734. His chief work was an Ecclesiastical History.
