The Auldest Tung

Places

As with time telling any story through place does so by record but is distinctive because the recording has not been a deliberate act. It is not even strictly a human act. It has simply occurred. Just as in Eastern and South-East Kent, indeed in Kent as a whole, where place-names that remain are the records of their namers; “-combes” are the Welsh “cwm”, valley, “-thorpe” is the Germanic “dorp” or “dorf”, village; so right along the English South Coast similar mixes are replicated, albeit with localised variants. The shores of Sussex are literally lined with “-ings”, recalling the peoples, people or person, who threw up the first house, even first owned the farm or originally founded the first larger settlement. There are also “-ly”s or “-leigh”s equally recalling by whom or why the extensive wood-lands that were there at the time was first cleared. And there are also topographical references to what the land looked like then and sometimes still looks like, the “-meres, lakes, the “-hoes”, “hoo”s and “-hooes”, high points, the “-seys”, “-neys” and “-says”, islands, the “-bournes”, streams, the “-deans” and “–dens”, valleys, and more than several personal names indicating the first Germanic to claim them. Yet there are relatively few “-hams” and “-tons”, villages and towns. They tend to be more inland indicating later and perhaps distinctive incomers with Brighton the notable exception, and Friston, the “-tun” of the Frisians, by Eastbourne, Folkstone, said by some to be “Folca’s stone” but perhaps “People’s Town” or a combinaiton of the two, and interesting others, especially in the context of this book.

Moreover, many of these Germanic places-names are repeated. They are replicated throughout Britain, in some cases several times over, in diverse locations, from north to south and east to west. And whilst that might be pure serendipity it could also be indicative of tribal sub-groups, even families, naturally splitting and moving in different directions or of larger tribal groups, peoples, settling in one place initially but then in larger groupings moving on, possibly one or more times, be it by force or choice. Furthermore, the stems of those same basic place-names are also to be found, occasionally precisely replicated or more often in similar form, on the other side of the North Sea in Denmark, Germany and the Low Countries. There too are “-lund”s, “-ry”s and “-ryde”s, “-stapel”s-, “-dal”s, “-hoj”s and “ug-”s- as well as the more generic “-borg”s “-by”s, -”-toft”s, “-holm”s- and others, not least “-wold-”s- and “-loh”s-, “-lohe”s, “-lee”s, “-loo”s and “-lo”s. But they are not, of course, chance replications. On the contrary they are original elements of what in relatively short time would turn most of Britannia and a large part of Brittia into England and to have resulted in powerful influences in terms of land, language and sometimes loyalties everywhere, not least in Scotland.