stranger.

The river Parret is usually considered to be the boundary of the two
dialects, and history records the reason of it. We learn from the
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, A.D. 658, that "Cenwealh in this year fought
against the Welsh at Pen, and put them to flight as far as the Parret."
"Her Kenwealh gefeaht aet Peonnum with Wealas, and hie geflymde oth
Pedridan." Upon this passage Lappenberg in his "England under the
Anglo-Saxon kings" remarks: "The reign of Cenwealh is important on
account of the aggrandisement of Wessex. He defeated in several battles
the Britons of Dyvnaint and Cernau [Devon and Cornwall] who had
endeavoured to throw off the Saxon yoke, first at Wirtgeornesburh,
afterwards, with more important results, at Bradenford [Bradford] on the
Avon in Wiltshire, and again at Peonna [the hill of Pen in
Somersetshire], where the power of the Britons melted like snow before
the sun, and the race of Brut received an incurable wound, when he drove
them as far as the Pedrede [the Parret] in A.D. 658."

The same author in another passage says (vol. i. p. 120): "In the
south-west we meet with the powerful territory of Damnonia, the kingdom
of Arthur, which bore also the name of 'West-Wales.' Damnonia at a later
period was limited to Dyvnaint, or Devonshire, by the separation of
Cernau or Cornwall. The districts called by the Saxons those of the
Sumorsaetas, of the Thornsaetas [Dorset], and the Wiltsaetas were lost to
the kings of Dyvnaint at an early period; though _for centuries
afterwards a large British population maintained itself in those parts_
among the Saxon settlers, as well as among the Defnsaetas, long after the
Saxon conquest of Dyvnaint, who for a considerable time preserved to the
natives of that shire the appellation of the _Welsh kind_."

In corroboration of Lappenberg's opinion, one in which every antiquary
will concur, I may notice in passing that many a farm in West Somerset
retains to the present day an old name that can only be explained from
the Cornish language. Thus, "Plud farm," near Stringston, is "Clay
farm," or "Mud farm," from_ plud_, mire. In a word, the peasantry of
West Somerset are Saxonized Britons. Their ancestors submitted to the
conquering race, or left their country and emigrated to Brittany, but
were not destroyed; and in them and their kinsmen of Cornouailles in
France we see the living representatives of the ancient Britons as truly
as in Devonshire and Cornwall, in