Читать книгу The Danes in Lancashire and Yorkshire - S. W. Partington - Страница 5

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As a maritime race the Danes brought to our county not only a knowledge of the sea, how to navigate its perils, and the secret of successful trading, but also possessed the art and craft of shipbuilding to a higher degree than any then known. We still have the old Danish name in Liverpool of David Rollo and Sons, shipbuilders and engineers. The following Danish maritime terms have become part of our language: Vrag, a wreck; flaade, fleet; vinde, windlass; skibsborde, shipboard; mast, mast; seile, sails; styrmand, steersman.

From the fact that "Thingwall" in Cheshire and "Tynwald" in the Isle of Man afford the memorial of the assizes, and that "wald" or "vold" signifies a "bank" or "rampart," where these courts were held in order to be safe from surprise, may we not presume the local name "The Wylde," in Bury, to be derived from the same source, as the "bank" or "rampart" would be used previous to the building of the old castle? The Danish "byr," or "by," means a settlement, town, or village, and as the word "berg" means a hill, and "borough," "bury," "brow," and "burgh" are similar terms for a fortified hill, we may suppose "Bury" to be taken from this source, instead of from the Saxon "byrig," a bridge, when no bridge existed.