namesake, Isca Silurum, Usk of the Silurians,
now Caerleon-upon-Usk. In the west country, to this day, _ask_ always
becomes _ax_, or rather remains so, for that provincial form was the
King's English at the court of Alfred; and so Isca became on Devonian
lips Exan ceaster, after the West Saxon conquest. Thence it passed
rapidly through the stages of Exe ceaster and Exe cester till it
finally settled down into Exeter. At the same time, the river itself
became the Exe; and the Exan-mutha of the _Chronicle_ dropped into
Exmouth. We must never forget, however, that Exeter, was a Welsh town
up to the reign of Athelstan, and that Cornish Welsh was still spoken
in parts of Devonshire till the days of Queen Elizabeth.

Wroxeter is another immensely interesting fossil word. It lies just at
the foot of the Wrekin, and the hill which takes that name in English
must have been pronounced by the old Celtic inhabitants much like
Uricon: for of course the awkward initial letter has only become silent
in these later lazy centuries. The Romans turned it into Uriconium; but
after their departure, it was captured and burnt to the ground by a
party of raiding West Saxons, and its fall is graphically described in
the wild old Welsh elegy of Llywarch the Aged. The ruins are still
charred and blackened by the West Saxon fires. The English colonists of
the neighbourhood called themselves the Wroken-saetas, or Settlers by
the Wrekin--a word analogous to that of Wilsaetas, or Settlers by the
Wyly; Dorsaetas, or Settlers among the Durotriges; and Sumorsaetas, or
Settlers among the Sumor-folk,--which survive in the modern counties of
Wilts, Dorset, and Somerset. Similar forms elsewhere are the Pecsaetas
of the Derbyshire Peak, the Elmedsaetas in the Forest of Elmet, and the
Cilternsaetas in the Chiltern Hills. No doubt the Wroken-saetas called
the ruined Roman fort by the analogous name of Wroken ceaster; and this
would slowly become Wrok ceaster, Wrok-cester, and Wroxeter, by the
ordinary abbreviating tendency of the Welsh borderlands. Wrexham
doubtless preserves the same original root.

Having thus carried the _Castra_ to the very confines of Wales, it
would be unkind to a generous and amiable people not to carry them
across the border and on to the Western sea. The Welsh corruption,
whether of the Latin word or of a native equivalent _cathir_, assumes
the guise of Caer. Thus the old Roman station of Segontium, near the
Menai Straits, is now ca