25. =THE SCANDINAVIAN ELEMENT= (i).--In the year 787, the Northmen, Norsemen, or Normans of Scandinavia, began to make descents on the east coast of England. These attacks were so dreaded by the English that prayers were regularly used in the churches against them; and a part of the Litany of the time contained the utterance: ‘From the incursions of the Normans, good Lord, deliver us!’ These attacks went on for three centuries. In the ninth century, these Danes obtained a permanent footing in the northern and eastern parts of England; and by the eleventh century they had become so strong that Danish kings sat upon the throne of England from 1016 to 1042. These Norsemen were Teutons. They were Teutons who had migrated to the north. As northern people generally do, they preferred hard sounds to aspirates. They preferred a _k_ to a _ch_; a _p_ to an _f_. The probable reason is that, in the cold mists of the north, they had learned not to open too much their mouths and throats; and thus they formed the habit of using a shut sound like _k_ to a sound like _ch_ (in _loch_), which requires a stream of air to be passed through the throat. We must not forget that it was the _spoken_ language of England that was affected by the Danes; not the _written_ language; for the simple reason that, in these times, not more than one man in a thousand--either among Danes or Englishmen--could read and write. 26. =THE SCANDINAVIAN ELEMENT= (ii).--The Danish contribution is, like the Keltic, of two kinds: (_a_) Names of places; and (_b_) Common words. (_a_) The most remarkable example of the place-name is the noun _by_, which means _town_. There are in England more than six hundred names ending in _by_. Almost all of these lie to the north and east of Watling Street; to the south of it, there is scarcely one. Thus we have _Whitby_, the _White Town_; _Tenby_, in Wales, _Dane’s town_; and _Grimsby_, _the town of Grim_. We find the word _by_ also in the compound _by-law_. The following words are also derived from the Danes: =Thorpe=, a village Althorpe (old); Bishopsthorpe; (_Drup_ in Jutland, where Burnham-Thorpe (where Nelson there are scores of was born). towns with this ending.) =Fell=, a hill or table-land Scawfell, Crossfell, Goat Fell. =Dale=, a valley Ribblesdale, Grimsdale. =Thwaite=, a forest clearing Applethwaite. =Toft=, a homestead Lowestoft (the form in Normandy is _tôt_). =Wick=, a creek or bay Ipswich, Greenwich, Berwick. (Viking = a creeker.) =Oe= or =ea=, an island Faroe, Chelsea (= _chesel ea_, the shingle island). =Ness=, a nose or cape Sheerness, Caithness, Fife Ness; the Naze (in Essex, etc.).