the names Great Holm and Flat Holm for islands at the mouth of the Severn. It occurs also in Holm Lacy, near Hereford. Some remarkable Scandinavian names are found along the lower course of the Severn. Sanagar, anciently written Sevenhangar, is that of one of the old tythings of Berkeley, and Saul, also near the river, reminds us of the Saul district and the Saulings, whose name is mentioned in a runic inscription at Glavendrup in Scandinavia.[1] The forest district of Dean between the Severn and the Wye was, apparently, named after Dene, for Dane, and not den, a wood. Giraldus Cambrensis, writing in the twelfth century, tells us that the Dean Forest was known in his time as Danubia and Danica Sylvia, or Danes’ Wood.[2] The name Danube for the country of the Danes is an old one. Asser, in his ‘Life of Alfred,’ says that in the year 866 a large fleet of pagans came to Britain from the Danube. The old name Dene for this forest district appears thus to be that of Dene, the Danish name, and it is still called Dane in the local pronunciation. The language of the ancient Northmen has survived to the present day in the name Aust, anciently Austrecliue,[3] or Aust cliff, on the east side of an ancient ferry across the Severn, near Bristol, austr being the Old Northern word for east.[4] Mona is a variation of the name of the stream called Monow, which joins the Wye at Monmouth, and Mona is the latinised form of the name of the Danish island Moen, or Mön.
Ethelweard tells us in his Chronicle that in 877 the Danes made a settlement of some kind in Gloucester. The custom of borough-English still survives there, as it did at Stamford, Nottingham, Derby, and Leicester, all of which were Danish towns, and we may reasonably connect the custom at Gloucester with some of the so-called Danes who may have settled there. The custom
