Travelling to any distance must have been rendered more uncomfortable, especially when passing through wild districts where there were no inns. The word _inn_ is itself Saxon, and signified a lodging, but it appears to have been more usually applied to houses of this kind in towns. A tavern was also called a _gest-hus_ or _gest-bur_, a house or chamber for guests, and _cumena-hus_, a house of comers. Guest-houses, like caravanserais in the East, appear to have been established in different parts of Saxon England, near the high roads, for the reception of travellers. A traveller in Bede arrives at a _hospitium_ in the north of England, which was kept by a _paterfamilias_ (or father of a family) and his household. In the Northumbrian gloss on the Psalms, printed by the Surtees Society, the Latin words of Psalm liv., _in hospitiis eorum_, are rendered by _in gest-husum heara_. This shows that Bede’s _hospitium_ was really a guest-house: these guest-houses were kept up in various parts of England until Norman times; and Walter Mapes, in his treatise de Nugis Curialium, has preserved a story relating to one of William the Conqueror’s Saxon opponents, Edric the Wild, which tells how, returning from hunting in the forest of Dean, and accompanied only with a page, he came to a large house, “like the drinking houses of which the English have one in every parish, called in English gild-houses,” perhaps an error for guest-houses (_quales Anglici in singulis singulas habebant diocesibus bibitorias, ghildhus Anglice dictas_). It seems not improbable, also, that the ruins of Roman villas and small stations, which stood by the sides of roads, were often roughly repaired or modified, so as to furnish a temporary shelter for travellers who carried provisions, &c., with them, and could therefore lodge themselves without depending upon the assistance of others. A shelter of this kind--from its consisting of bare walls, a mere shelter against the inclemency of the storm--might be termed a _ceald-hereberga_ (cold harbour), and this would account for the great number of places in different parts of England, which bear this name, and which are almost always on Roman sites and near old roads. The explanation is supported by the circumstance that the name is found among the Teutonic nations on the continent--the German _Kalten-herberg_--borne by some inns at the present day.