ven the popular ballads revived and glorified the
victories of the English. Down to the very latest times was heard in
Holmesdale, in Surrey, on the borders of Kent, a song about a battle
which the Danes had lost there in the tenth century.'

In our own northern land, the Northmen committed as many devastations,
and made nearly as many settlements, as in England. The Orcadian
Islands formed, indeed, a Norwegian kingdom, which was not entirely at
an end till the thirteenth century. In that group, and on the adjacent
coasts of Caithness and Sutherlandshires, the appearance of the
people, the names of places, and the tangible monuments, speak
strongly of a Scandinavian infusion into the population. Sometimes,
between the early Celtic people still speaking their own language, and
the descendants of the Norwegians, a surprisingly definite line can be
drawn. The island of Harris is possessed for the most part by a set of
Celts, 'small, dark-haired, and in general very ugly;' but at the
northern point, called 'the Ness,' we meet with people of an entirely
different appearance. 'Both the men and women have, in general,
lighter hair, taller figures, and far handsomer features. I visited
several of their cabins, and found myself surrounded by physiognomies
so Norwegian, that I could have fancied myself in Scandinavia itself,
if the Gaelic language now spoken by the people, and their wretched
dwellings, had not reminded me that I was in one of those poor
districts in the north-west of Europe where the Gaels or Celts are
still allowed a scanty existence. The houses, as in Shetland, and
partly in Orkney, are built of turf and unhewn stones, with a wretched
straw or heather roof, held together by ropes laid across the ridge of
the house, and fastened with stones at the ends. The houses are so
low, that one may often see the children lie playing on the side of
the roof. The family and the cattle dwell in the same apartment, and
the fire, burning freely on the floor, fills the house with a thick
smoke, which slowly finds its way out of the hole in the roof. The
sleeping-places are, as usual, holes in the side-walls.

'It is but a little while ago that the inhabitants of the Ness, who
are said to have preserved faint traditions of their origin from
Lochlin--called also in Ireland, Lochlan--or the North, regarded
themselves as being of better descent than their neighbours the Gaels.
The descendants of the Norwegians seldom or never cont