A HISTORY OF NORTHAMPTONSHIRE population. The Peterborough district and the whole of Rutland are connected by dialect with Cambridgeshire ; while the lower Nene valley, forming the centre of the county, is grouped with Huntingdon- shire, Bedfordshire, Hertfordshire and Essex. The line joining the two historic castles of the Welland and Nene valleys is only an approximate frontier, and an equally convenient and perhaps a more logical one is to be found here, as further westward, in a Roman highway. The Leicester road fairly parts the mixed cemeteries of the centre from the north-east of the county, and is virtually the same as the linguistic boundary on the dialect map. In the light of these two instances it may not be out of place to suggest that Roman roads may have played an important part as boundaries in the early days of the Anglo-Saxon conquest. Conditions had no doubt changed by the time that the midlands came to be parcelled out and stretches of Roman highway used as the border of kingdoms and counties ; but even during the pagan period these monu- ments of Roman civilization may have exercised considerable influence. It has often been remarked that the Romanized Britons took to the towns or chose sites within easy reach of the highways that connected the larger towns. After the withdrawal of the legions the Teutonic immigrants, who studiously avoided such localities, spread far and wide over the country ; and it is just possible that for a period long enough to leave its mark in varieties of dialect, the Romano-Britons along these lines served to isolate one group of settlers from another till a social amalgamation was finally completed under the influence of Christianity. Whether the coincidences above mentioned between linguistic and archaeological areas are more than accidental may in the present state of knowledge be doubted, but should not be overlooked as a possible explanation of the diverse burial customs noticed within the county. Archaeological discoveries are but seldom recorded in detail, but the objects to some extent speak for themselves ; and the presence of radiated brooches, for instance, in the north of Huntingdonshire,^ in Cambridge- shire,^ in Essex and Lincolnshire^ would be easily accounted for by supposing that the kindred inhabitants of these counties, through which runs the Ermine Street, kept up some connection with the southern shore of the Thames estuary ; for there is little doubt that the brooch in question belongs to a continental type, numbers of which were imported into Kent. Further, without asserting that the dialect noticed in the strip of country between Wisbeach and Oakham is directly descended from the tongue of the Fenmen, it is more than probable that this area with Cambridgeshire formed a considerable portion of the territory in which the isolated Gyrwa so long maintained their independence and no doubt their peculiarities of language. Among the miscellaneous discoveries of which the accounts are ' Journal of British Archteolo^cal Auociatm, 1899, p. 346.
- Neville, Saxon Obsejuies, pi. 8. ^ Both in British Museum.
252
