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IV.—EARLY HISTORY.

Roman Period.

There are no Roman remains at Coniston; but a great Roman road passed just to the north of the township from the camp, still visible, at Ambleside, through Little Langdale, over Wrynose and Hardknott to the camp at Hardknott Castle, and so down Eskdale to the port of Ravenglass, where at Walls Castle there are the site of a camp and the ruin of a Roman villa. It is possible that a trackway used in Roman times passed through Hawkshead, for fragments of Roman brick have been found at Hawkshead Hall and a coin at Colthouse (see Mrs. H. S. Cowper's Hawkshead and its Neighbourhood: Titus Wilson, Kendal, sixpence).

There is a tradition that the Coniston coppermines were worked by the Romans; but there is no evidence to prove it. One point that tends to suggest the possibility of such a belief is that about the year 85 A.D., soon after Agricola had overcome all this part of the country, a certain savant, Demetrius of Tarsus, fellow-townsman of St. Paul and not much his junior, was sent by the Emperor Domitian to Britain, it would seem for the purpose of enquiring into its products, especially in metals (Canon Raine, York, p. 17). Two bronze tablets, dedicated by this Demetrius to the gods Oceanus and Tethys, were found at York, and are now in the museum there; and on his return from these savage regions he went to Delphi and told his traveller's tales to Plutarch, who mentions the fact in his treatise On the Cessation of Oracles. It might be said that these rich copper mines could hardly fail to attract the notice of the conquerors; of whom their own Tacitus says, speaking of their disappointment in the pearl fishery of Britain—"I could more easily believe that the pearls are amiss, than that we Romans are wanting in 'commercial enterprise.'" Avaritia is the old cynic's word, in the life of Agricola, chap. 12.

British Period.

After the Romans left, until the middle of the seventh century this district remained in the hands of the Cumbri or Welsh, who probably dwelt in some of the ancient moorland settlements we have already visited. They have perhaps left traces in the language, but less than is often asserted.

Some have thought "Old Man" to be a corruption of the Welsh Allt Maen, "high stone" or "stone of the slope." But even if it be more reasonably explained as we have suggested, the word "man" for a stone or cairn is Welsh. Dow Crags are sometimes dignified into Dhu Crags; but though both "dow" and "crag" have passed into our dialect, both are of Celtic origin. The mountain crest over Greenburn called Carrs cannot be explained as Norse Kjarr, a "wood;" but being castle-like rocks, may be from the Welsh caer. There are many "combes" and "tors," "pens" and "benns" (the last Gaelic, for some of the hill tribes may well have been survivors of the kindred race of Celts). Of the rivers hereabouts—Kent, Leven, Duddon, Esk, and perhaps Crake are Celtic.

Anglian Period.

When the Angles or English settled in the country, as they did in the seventh century, they came in by two routes, which can be traced by their place-names and their grave monuments. One was by Stainmoor and the Cumberland coast, round to Ravenglass; and the other by Craven to the coast of Morecambe Bay. There is no evidence of their settlement in the Lake District fells, except in the Keswick neighbourhood, where the story of St. Herbert gives us a hint that though the fell country might not be fully occupied, it was not unexplored in the seventh century. The mention of the murder of Alf and Alfwine, sons of King Alfwald, in 789 at Wonwaldremere cannot be located at Windermere with any certainty; but still it is possible that the Angles penetrated to Coniston.

The Anglian settlements are known by their names—Pennington, the tun of the Pennings in Furness; Workington, the tun of the Weorcingas, and so on. Among the mountains there is only one ton—Coniston, or as it was anciently spelt Cuninges-tun, Koninges-ton. Conishead in Low Furness was Cunninges-heved, the headland of the King, where perhaps Ecgfrith or his successors had a customs-house to take toll of the traders crossing the sands to the iron mines. So Cynings-tun (the y pronounced like a French u, and making in later English Cunnings-tun) might mean King's-town; in Norse, Konungs-tun, whence we get the alternative pronunciations of the modern spelling, Coniston or Cuniston. What the Norse had to do with it we shall soon see.

Now it is unlikely that kings lived in so out-of-the-way a place; but possible that they appropriated the copper mines. The ancient claim of kings to all minerals is still kept in mind by the word "royalty." And if the king's miners lived here under his reeve or officer, their stockaded village would be rightly known as Cynings-tun, the King's-town.

It is right to add that some antiquaries make the names beginning with Coning-or Coni-to mean the Rabbits'-town, Rabbits'-head, Rabbits'-garth, and so forth, and yet even in Iceland, which was always republican, there is a Kongsbakki, King's-bank, at which no king ever lived. In ancient times, as now, sentiment counted for something in the naming of places; and many names, otherwise without meaning, may have been simply given by the settler in remembrance of his old home. We cannot say for certain that Coniston was not so called by an immigrant of the Viking Age, much later than the invasion of the Angles; possibly he came from a place of similar name in Craven or Holderness or elsewhere and brought the name with him.

The Welsh appear to have remained under Teutonic (or later, Scandinavian) masters, and one relic of their tongue seems to show how they were treated. They seem to have been employed as shepherds, and they counted their flocks:—