TURNING now to _ceaster_, I claim it, as I claim _port_, as a distinctively English word. Just as, ever on the same principle, I see in the use of _weal_ (wall)--a word etymologically derived from _vallum_--for a _stone_ wall (_murus_), an indication that the Teutonic rovers, struck by a phenomenon to them so strange as a fortification even of earth, formed for themselves, out of _vallum_, a word denoting a barrier _irrespective of its material_, so I contend that they formed for themselves, from a phenomenon so strange as that _castrum_ which faced them on the border of “the Saxon shore,” the word _ceaster_ by which to denote a walled enclosure, _irrespective of its size_. Is it not a striking thought that, in these English rovers, we have the forefathers of those to whom, as they gazed on the Norman donjon,-- “Both the name and the thing were new.... Such strongholds, strange to English eyes, bore no English name, but retained their French designation of _castles_.”[36] Thus, to return, as when they made the acquaintance of a stone wall (_murus_), they would apply their word _weal_ to it, so, when they reached the large Roman towns of the interior they would apply to them, as being walled enclosures, their own word “ceaster,” _totally independent of the proper name by which they were known to Roman or Briton_. Now here we have an instance of the striking results that may follow from minute analysis of “these interesting philological fossils.” For it follows, as a corollary from the above proposition, that the point of view from which all historians, whatever their school of thought may be, have hitherto agreed to look at “-ceaster,” is entirely erroneous and misleading. So far from being essentially a _Roman_, I shall prove it to be essentially an _English_ termination. Thus, though in no way a follower of Mr. Freeman’s sweeping theories, I go, it will be seen, in this matter of fact, even beyond the exponent of the extreme “Teutonic” view. Let us ask ourselves, in the first place, what we mean when we talk of towns with the _-ceaster_ termination having retained their “Roman names.” Mr. Pearson, for instance, who is a follower of Mr. Coote, asserts that-- “Roman local names were preserved by the conquerors as they found them.”[37] Even Mr. Allen, though an independent thinker, contends that-- “The English conquerors did not usually change the names of Roman or Welsh towns, but simply mispronounced them about as much as we habitually mispronounce Llangollen or Llandudno.”[38] And he goes, indeed, so far as to assert that-- “There are nowhere any traces of clan nomenclature in any of the cities. _They all retain their Celtic or Roman names._”[39]