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"Cardeu and Combedeyfoch" (Cumdivock). The
use of the word "beck" for a stream in Scandinavian
districts and in combination with words of distinctly
Scandinavian origin is itself a proof of early settlement,
before the age of the colonisation of Iceland,
where the word is not unknown (as Kvíabekkr in
Landnáma) but is usually replaced by Lækr. In
Icelandic poetry the word bekkr was preserved, as
many archaic words survive in verse ; showing that it
was not merely the Danish "test-word" which it has
been supposed to be : and this suggests that the
language of those who gave Cumbrian as well as
Northumbrian place-names must be earlier than
tenth-century Icelandic : a fact which has been already
(p. 56) noted of Shetland.
The monuments also favour this view of an early
settlement. In Cumberland there are many pre-Norman
grave-stones which belong to the series of
Anglian works carved throughout Northumbria, to
which Cumberland belonged under the great kings of
the seventh and eighth centuries. Of these the cross-heads
at Carlisle can be traced to a school of art
centering in Northallerton ; obviously this style came
in along the Roman road over Stainmoor : and all
along that road as far as the coast near the great
ancient ports of Ellenborough, Workington and
Ravenglass these Anglian monuments can be seen.
But these are quite as obviously imitated in a series
of crosses which glide into works with distinctly
Norse motives and occasional Irish characteristics, in
the boss-and-spine cross-heads with scroll-work
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