Scandinavian-Britain

THE DOWNFALL OF THE DANELAWl8lwords in Middle English ;" Borrowdale gowks " is anold jest, and see p. 253 for the name of one of the runecarversin the Orkney Maeshowe). These Norse nameswere then going out of fashion. A Cumberland deedof 1397 (Mr. W. N. Thompson, Trans. Cumb. andWest. Ant. Soc., N.S., vi.) mentions RichardThomson, son of Thomas Johanson, showing the truepatronymic as still used in Iceland : of which thefeminine occurs in Elena Robyndoghter, MagotaJakdoghter, Matilda and Anabilla Daudoghters who,with Magota Daudwyfe and Johannes Daudson (Davidson),occur in Yorkshire poll-tax returns. Many moreexamples might be given from Yorkshire and Cumberland.It has been thought that the termination -sonis a mark of Scandinavian origin:and, withoutpressing this too far, it may be said that such surnamesare more common in the old Danelaw than elsewhere.Many, however, of the derivations attempted forsurnames in popular works are too fanciful to stand.Fawcett, for example, is a place-name, not fromForseti the god in the Edda ; Huggin can hardlyrepresent Odin's raven Hugin, nor Frear the godFreyr, as gravely stated in a work by a well-knownauthor of the past generation. Such wild conjectureshave too often brought the study of Norse originsinto contempt ;and yet we owe much to the earlierstudents of the subject, from de Quincey downward,for venturing into the tangled region, and perhaps wehave not even yet escaped all the illusions of theforest of error.