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our own day. Most of them are not far from the Welsh border, as in the
case of the two Caer Caradocs, in Shropshire, crowned by ancient
British fortifications. Others, however, lie further within the true
English pale, though always in districts which long preserved the Welsh
speech, at least among the lower classes of the population. The
earthwork overhanging Bath bears to this day its ancient British title
of Caer Badon. An old history written in the monastery of Malmesbury
describes that town as Caer Bladon, and speaks of a Caer Dur in the
immediate neighbourhood. There still remains a Caer Riden on the line
of the Roman wall in the Lothians. Near Aspatria, in Cumberland, stands
a mouldering Roman camp known even now as Caer Moto. In Carvoran,
Northumberland, the first syllable has undergone a slight contraction,
but may still be readily recognised. The Carr-dyke in Norfolk seems to
me to be referable to a similar origin.

Most curious of all the English Caers, however, is Carlisle. The
Antonine Itinerary gives the town as Luguvallium. Baeda, in his
barbarised Latin fashion calls it Lugubalia. 'The Saxons,' says
_Murray's Guide_, with charming _naivete_, 'abbreviated the name into
Luel, and afterwards called it Caer Luel.' This astounding hotchpotch
forms an admirable example of the way in which local etymology is still
generally treated in highly respectable publications. So far as we
know, there never was at any time a single Saxon in Cumberland; and why
the Saxons, or any other tribe of Englishmen, should have called a town
by a purely Welsh name, it would be difficult to decide. If they had
given it any name at all, that name would probably have been Lul
ceaster, which might have been modernised into Lulcaster or Lulchester.
The real facts are these. Cumberland, as its name imports, was long a
land of the Cymry--a northern Welsh principality, dependent upon the
great kingdom of Strathclyde, which held out for ages against the
Northumbrian English invaders among the braes and fells of Ayrshire and
the Lake District. These Cumbrian Welshmen called their chief town Caer
Luel, or something of the sort; and there is some reason for believing
that it was the capital of the historical Arthur, if any Arthur ever
existed, though later ages transferred the legend of the British hero
to Caerleon-upon-Usk, after men had begun to forget that the region
between the Clyde and the Mersey had once been true Welsh soil. The
Eng