Among old place-names of the same kind in various counties, some of which are met with in later, but still old, records, we find Blakeney in Gloucestershire; Blakeney in Norfolk; Blakenham in Suffolk; Blakemere[1] an ancient hamlet, and Blakesware, near Ware in Hertfordshire. This Hertford name is worthy of note in reference to what has been said concerning the brunettes in that county at the present time. Another circumstance connected with these names which it is desirable to remember is the absence of evidence to show that the Old English ever called any of the darker-complexioned Britons brown men or black men. Their name for them was Wealas. So far as I am aware, not a single instance occurs in which the Welsh are mentioned in any Anglo-Saxon document as black or brown people; on the contrary, the Welsh annals mention black Vikings on the coast, as if they were men of unusual personal appearance.[2]
There is another old word used by the Anglo-Saxons to denote black or brown-black—the word sweart. The personal names Suart and Sueart may have been derived from this word, and may have originally denoted people of a dark-brown or black complexion. Some names of this kind are mentioned in the Domesday record of Buckinghamshire and Lincolnshire. These may be of Scandinavian origin, for the ekename or nickname Svarti is found in the Northern Sagas.[3] Halfden the Black was the name of a King of Norway who died in 863. The so-called black men of the Anglo-Saxon period probably included some of the darker Wendish people among them, immigrants or descendants of people of the same race as the ancestors of the Sorbs of Lausatia on the
- ↑ Chauney, Sir H., ‘Historical Antiquities of Hartfordshire,’ 265.
- ↑ Annales Cambriæ, A.D. 987.
- ↑ ‘Corpus Poeticum Boreale,’ by Vigfusson and York Powell, Index.
