) rather than
-ton, as Ash-by, Demble-by, Spills-by, Grims-by, &c.

d. The form _Kirk_ rather than _Church_.

e. The form _Orm_ rather than _Worm_, as in _Orms-head_.

In _Orms-kirk_ and _Kir-by_ we have a combination of Danish
characteristics.

s. 546. In respect to their distribution, the Danish forms are--

At their _maximum_ on the sea-coast of Lincolnshire; i.e., in the parts
about Spills-by.

Common, but less frequent, in Yorkshire, the Northern counties of England,
the South-eastern parts of Scotland, Lancashire, (_Ormskirk_, _Horn-by_),
and parts of South Wales (_Orms-head_, _Ten-by_).

In Orkney, and the northern parts of Scotland, the Norse had originally the
same influence that the Anglo-Saxon had in the south.--See the chapter of
the Lowland Scotch.

This explains the peculiar distribution of the Norse forms. Rare, or
non-existent, in central and southern England, they appear on the opposite
sides of the island, and on its northern extremity; showing that the stream
of the Norse population went _round the island rather than across it_.

s. 547. Next to the search after traces of the original differences in the
speech of the Continental invaders of Great Britain, the question as to the
origin of the _written_ language of England is the most important.

Mr. Guest has given good reasons for believing it to have arisen out of a
Mercian, rather than a West-Saxon dialect--although of the _Anglo-Saxon_
the West-Saxon was the most cultivated form.

This is confirmed by the present state of the Mercian dialects.

The country about Huntingdon and Stamford is, in the mind of the present
writer, that part of England where provincial peculiarities are at the
_minimum_. This may be explained in various ways, of which none is
preferable to the doctrine, that the dialect for those parts represents the
dialect out of which the literary language of England became developed.

Such are the chief problems connected with the study of the provincial
dialects of England; the exhibition of the methods applicable to their
investigation not being considered necessary in a work like the present.

NOTE.

That _Saxon_ was the _British_ name of the Germanic invaders of Great
Britain is certain.--See s. 45.

The reasons which induce me to consider it as _exclusively_ British,
i.e., as foreign to the Angles, are as follows,--

a. No clear distinction has ever been drawn between, e.g., an _Angle_
o