it indicates a Danish origin. Hence Kirkby, Formby, Ormskirk, and Kirkdale are places appertaining to the early Anglo-Danish history. Dale is likewise a genuine appellative, as in Kirkdale as already noticed. Besides, in this hundred we find: Skelmersdale, Ainsdale, Cuerdale, and Birkdale. The only two places which the Danes seem to have noticed in their navigation of the Ribble were Walton-le-dale and the more important Cuerdale, now renowned in archæology for the richest find of ancient coins recorded in history. The Danes brought a treasure of 7,000 pieces to Cuerdale. Mingled with the coins were bars of silver, amulets, broken rings, and ornaments of various kinds, such as are recorded by Scandinavian Sagas. Many countries had been rifled for this treasure. Kufic, Italian, Byzantine, French, and Anglo-Saxon coins were in the booty; besides 3,000 genuine Danish pieces, minted by kings and jarls on the Continent. Another discovery of Danish treasure was made at Harkirke, near Crosby. The coins here found were of a more recent deposit, and contained but one of Canute the Great. From the Mersey to the Ribble was a long, swampy, boggy plain, and was not worth the Romans' while to make roads or to fix stations or tenements. From the Conquest until the beginning of the 18th century this district was almost stagnant, and its surface undisturbed. The Dane kept to the shore, the sea was his farm. He dredged the coast and the estuary, with his innate love of danger, till Liverpool sprang up with the magic of Eastern fable, and turned out many a rover to visit every region of the world. The race of the Viking are, many of them, the richest merchants of the earth's surface.A

About half of England—the so-called "Danelag," or community of Danes, was for centuries subject to Danish laws. These laws existed for 200 years after the Norman Conquest. The Normans long retained a predilection for old Danish institutions and forms of judicature, and their new laws bear the impress and colour of the older time. This is established beyond doubt, in spite of the boast of the famous Sir Robert Peel in Parliament, that he was proud "The Danes tried in vain to overcome the institutions of England instead of securing them."

The English word "by-law" is still used to denote municipal or corporate law, which is derived from the Danish "By-Lov." This shows they must have had some share in developing the system of judicature in English cities. The "Hustings" were well known in the seven cities under Danish rule.

The earliest positive traces of a "jury" in England appear in the "Danelag," among the Danes established there; and that long before the time of William the Conqueror. The present village of Thingwall, in Cheshire, was a place of meeting for the "Thing" or "Trithing," a court held in the open air to settle laws and disputes in the same manner as that existing at Tynwald, Isle of Man. The division of "Ridings" in Yorkshire is also derived from this Danish custom.

The "Trithing" was a Danish institution, so also was the wapentake. What are called "hundreds" in some counties, are called "wapentakes" in others, thus from the Norse "taka," which means a "weapon grasping." Tacitus says the ancients used to "express assent by waving or brandishing their weapons." If the sentence pleased they struck their spears together, "since the most honourable kind of assent is to applaud with arms." From this practice the word came to mean the sentence or decree had been thus authenticated. "Vapantak" in the grafas of Icelandic parliament means the breaking up of the session, when the men resumed their weapons which had been laid aside during the assembly. (Cleasby.)

Local Names.

As a maritime race the Danes brought to our county not only a knowledge of the sea, how to navigate its perils, and the secret of successful trading, but also possessed the art and craft of shipbuilding to a higher degree than any then known. We still have the old Danish name in Liverpool of David Rollo and Sons, shipbuilders and engineers. The following Danish maritime terms have become part of our language: Vrag, a wreck; flaade, fleet; vinde, windlass; skibsborde, shipboard; mast, mast; seile, sails; styrmand, steersman.

From the fact that "Thingwall" in Cheshire and "Tynwald" in the Isle of Man afford the memorial of the assizes, and that "wald" or "vold" signifies a "bank" or "rampart," where these courts were held in order to be safe from surprise, may we not presume the local name "The Wylde," in Bury, to be derived from the same source, as the "bank" or "rampart" would be used previous to the building of the old castle? The Danish "byr," or "by," means a settlement, town, or village, and as the word "berg" means a hill, and "borough," "bury," "brow," and "burgh" are similar terms for a fortified hill, we may suppose "Bury" to be taken from this source, instead of from the Saxon "byrig," a bridge, when no bridge existed.

Settlements

CHAPTER II.
Settlements.

From the year 876 the Danes became colonists and settlers. Raid and plunder gave place to peaceful pursuits. The English Chronicle says that in "this year Halfdene apportioned the lands of Northumbria; and they henceforth continued ploughing and tilling them." This colonisation of Deira by the Danes was soon followed in other districts. The greater part of central Britain with the whole of the north and east came entirely under Scandinavian rule.

THE VIKING SETTLEMENTS

In 877 trading is recorded by the Sagas from Norway, in a shipload of furs, hides, tallow and dried fish, which were exchanged for wheat, honey, wine and cloth. Thus early was established the increase in comfort and wealth, as evidenced by the erection of Christian monuments early in the tenth century.

The origin of "long-weight" and "long-hundred" count is traceable to the Danish settlements. This peculiar reckoning survives in the selling of cheese 120 lbs. to the cwt., and in the counting of eggs, 120 to the hundred. The timber trade counts 120 deals to the hundred. On the East Coast fish are counted 132 to the hundred. Six score to the hundred is still popular in Westmorland measure of crops and timber. This Danish method of count was derived from the Icelandic term "hundred" which meant 120.

Professor Maitland, in his "Domesday Book and Beyond," says that the number of sokemen or free men, owing certain dues to the Hundred Court, or to a lord, who were masters of their own land, like the customary tenants of Cumberland, was greater in Norfolk and Suffolk than in Essex, and that in Lincolnshire they formed nearly half the rural population. At the time of Domesday the number of serfs was greatest in the West of England, but none are recorded in Yorkshire and Lincolnshire. In the manors bearing English names the sokemen numbered two-fifths of the population, while in those manors with Danish names they formed three-fifths of the population. (Boyle.)

In the Danelaw they represent the original freeholders of the settlement and owed obedience