ragment of antiquity[1]; and I am sorry that
I can commend little more than the pains taken by his translators,
the celebrated Daines Barrington and Dr. Ingram, to make it available
to ordinary readers. The learned judge had very good intentions, but
his knowledge of Anglo-Saxon was not equal to the task. Dr. Ingram
professedly applied himself to correct both Alfred's text and
Barrington's version, so far as relates to the description of Europe;
but in two instances, occurring in one passage, he has adopted the
judge's mistake of proper names for common nouns. I do not call
attention to the circumstance merely as a literary curiosity, but
to preserve the royal geographer from liability to imputations of
extraordinary ignorance of his subject, and also to show the accuracy
of his delineation of Europe at that interesting epoch, whence the
principal states of Europe must date their establishment.

King Alfred, mentioning the seat of the Obotriti, or Obotritae, as
they are sometimes named, a Venedic nation, who, in the 9th century,
occupied what is now the duchy of Mecklenburg, calls them _Apdrede_,
and says--"Be nor than him is apdrede, and cast north wylte the man
aefeldan haet."[2]

Barrington translates the words thus:--"To the north is Aprede, and to
the north east the wolds which are called AEfeldan."[3]

Dr. Ingram has the following variation:--"And to the east north are
the wolds which are called Heath Wolds."[4] To the word _wolds_
he appends a note:--"_Wylte_. See on this word a note hereafter."
Very well; the promised note is to justify the metamorphosis of the
warlike tribe, known in the annals and chronicles of the 9th century
as the Wilti, Wilzi, Weleti, and Welatibi, into heaths and wolds.
Thirty pages further on there is a note by J. Reinhold Forster,
the naturalist and navigator, who wrote it for Barrington in full
confidence that the translation was correct:--"The AEfeldan," he says,
"are, as king Alfred calls them, _wolds_; there are at present in
the middle part of Jutland, large tracts of high moors, covered with
_heath_ only."

Of _wylte_, Dr. Ingram writes:--"This word has never been correctly
explained; its original signification is the same, whether written
felds, fields, velts, welds, wilds, wylte, wealds, walds, walz, wolds,
&c. &c." And on _heath_, he says:--"Mr. Forster seems to have read
Haefeldan (or Haethfeldan), which indeed, I find in the Junian MS.
inserted as a various reading by Dr