Scandinavian-Britain

204 SCANDINAVIAN BRITAIN"Cardeu and Combedeyfoch " (Cumdivock). Theuse of the word " beck " for a stream in Scandinaviandistricts and incombination with words of distinctlyScandinavian origin is itself a proof of early settlement,before the age of the colonisation of Iceland,where the word is not unknown (as Kviabekkr inLandndma] but is usually replaced byIcelandic poetry the word bekkr was preserved, asLcekr. Inmany archaic words survive in verse ; showing that itwas not merely the Danish " test-word " which it hasbeen supposed to be : and this suggests that thelanguage of those who gave Cumbrian as well asNorthumbrian place-names must be earlier thantenth-century Icelandic a fact which has been already:(p. 56) noted of Shetland.The monuments also favour this view of an earlysettlement. In Cumberland there are many pre-Norman grave-stones which belong to the series ofAnglian works carved throughout Northumbria, towhich Cumberland belonged under the great kings ofthe seventh and eighth centuries. Of these the crossheadsat Carlisle can be traced to a school of artcentering in Northallerton ; obviously this style camein along the Roman road over Stainmoor : and allalong that road as far as the coast near the greatancient ports of Ellenborough, Workington andRavenglass these Anglian monuments can be seen.But these are quite as obviously imitated in a seriesof crosses which glide into works with distinctlyNorse motives and occasional Irish characteristics, inthe boss-and-spine cross -heads with scroll-work be-