us rites, {1d} and the river which was so essential to their daily
existence, of these they felt the value, and therefore naturally
distinguished them by name before anything else. Thus the remark of an
eloquent writer is generally true, who says "our mountains and rivers
still murmur the voices of races long extirpated." "There is hardly
(says Dr. Taylor {2a}) throughout the whole of England a river name which
is not Celtic," _i.e._ British.

As the Briton here looked from the hill-side, down upon the valley
beneath him, two of the chief objects to catch his eye would be the
streams which watered it, and which there, as they do still, united their
forces. They would then also, probably, form a larger feature in the
prospect than they do at the present day, for the local beds of gravel
deposit would seem to indicate that these streams were formerly of
considerably greater volume, watering a wider area, and probably having
ramifications which formed shoals and islands. {2b} The particular names
by which the Briton designated the two main streams confirm this
supposition. In the one coming from the more distant wolds, he saw a
stream bright and clear, meandering through the meadows which it
fertilized, and this he named the "Bain," {2c} that word being Celtic for
"bright" or "clear," a characteristic which still belongs to its waters,
as the brewers of Horncastle assure us. In the other stream, which runs
a shorter and more rapid course, he saw a more turbid current, and to it
he gave the name "Waring," {2d} which is the Celtic "garw" or "gerwin,"
meaning "rough." Each of these names, then, we may regard as what the
poet Horace calls "nomen praesente nota productum," {2e} they are as good
as coin stamped in the mint of a Cunobelin, or a Caradoc, bearing his
"image and superscription," and after some 17 centuries of change, they
are in circulation still. So long as Horncastle is watered by the Bain
and the Waring she will bear the brand of the British sway, once
paramount in her valley.

These river names, however, are not the only relics of the Britons found
in Horncastle. Two British urns were unearthed about 50 years ago, where
is now the garden of the present vicarage, and another was found in the
parish of Thornton, about a mile from the town, when the railway was
being made in 1856. The latter the present writer has seen, although it
is now unfortunately lost. {2f}

These Britons were a pastoral race, as