Page:Origin of the Anglo-Saxon Race.djvu/376

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
362
Origin of the Anglo-Saxon Race.

probably of a darker complexion, owing to their descent more largely from an ancient darker stock. The same process that went on in Devon and Cornwall went on, apparently, in South Wales, but with a difference. In the south-western counties the Teutonic element absorbed the Celtic to a great extent. In South Wales the Teutonic element was to some extent absorbed in the Celtic. There is a considerable percentage of people in Cornwall who have red hair, and among the country people of South Wales there are some with red hair. It is certain that this is not a common characteristic of either the Cornish or the Welsh. It probably came in through settlers of another race in each case.

The custom of junior right prevailed on the three manors of Braunton, near Barnstaple. The place was no doubt originally one settlement, and the Domesday name Brungarstone may refer to it. In the mediæval period it became parcelled out, apparently, into three manors, all having the same custom of inheritance. The widow of a tenant had her customary dower of the whole of her husband’s land for her life, if she remained chaste and single, and the youngest son succeeded. If there were no sons, the daughters shared equally.[1] This custom was not Welsh; it was not Saxon or Jutish; it was not Anglian. Unless the settlers at Braunton invented it—a most unlikely proceeding—they must have brought it with them, and as it did not prevail among the Britons or Scandinavians, or generally among the Frisians, it must have been brought into Devonshire by Wendish settlers, or perhaps in this instance by settlers from the hinterland of Frisia, or by a migration from the vale of Taunton. The common name, used locally, of Barum for Barnstaple,[2] points, in reference to the common Frisian termination -um, to Frisian settlers in this neighbourhood.

Of all the counties in England at the present time, Cornwall has the darkest people. Its pre-Saxon inhabi-

  1. Devonshire Association, Report and Transactions, xx. 278, 255.
  2. Gribble, J. B., ‘Memorials of Barnstaple,’ pp. 1, 2.