Burh

“ INTRODUCTION A great burh, Lundunaborg, which is the greatest and most famous of all burhs in the northern lands.—Ragnar Lodbrok Saga.
Of the hundreds of books concerning London, there is not one which treats of its ancient topography as a whole. There are, it is true, a great number of studies dealing in an accurate way with details, and most of the general histories incidentally touch on questions of reconstruction. ”

“ Here once more we see the burh co-ordinated with the hundred. A by-motive favours this establishment of markets. Those who traffic in the safety of the king’s burh may fairly be asked to pay some toll to the king. They enjoy his peace ”

“ Where they raised permanent dwellings within the enceinte, the burh grew out of the geweorc, just as a Roman station developed out of a mere camp. However, it is unsafe to push the phraseology of the Chronicle too far, or to fasten a too technical meaning upon its words; and the fact remains that the term geweorc may be very well applied to a wrought burh. The Danish burhs at Huntingdon and Tempsford, the landmarks of their progress up the Ouse to recover Bedford in 921, are called indiscriminately burh and geweorc. ”

“ Attached to the castle, both in England and abroad, we frequently find an additional enclosure, much larger than the comparatively small area of the bailey proper. This was the burgus or borough, which inevitably sprang up round every castle which had a lengthened existence. Our older antiquaries, finding that the word burgenses was commonly used in Domesday in connection [Pg 86] with a site where a castle existed, formed the mistaken idea that a burgus necessarily implied a castle. But a burgus was the same thing as a burh, that is, a borough or fortified town. ”

“ Burgh, Borough, Bury (Teut.) , 'a fortified place,' 'a town;' as Edinburgh, Peterborough, Shrewsbury, Hamburg, Cherbourg, Carisbrook, Burgos. [A.S. burg, burh (see Borough in Dict.) , Ger. burg.]
Burn (Northern Eng. and Scotch, A.S. burna) , 'a brook.;' as Burnfoot, Blackburn, Tyburn, Eastbourne.
By (Scand.) , 'a dwelling,' 'a town;' as Derby, Rugby, Whitby, Elbœuf. [Cf. Bylaw in Dict.]
Caer, Cader (W.) , Caher (Ir.) , 'fortified enclosure;' as Caerleon, Caernarvon, Cardigan, Carlisle, Cader-Idris, Sanquhar, Carlingford. ”

“ County borough, a borough of above 50,000 inhabitants, constituted by the Local Government Act of 1888; Rotten borough, one which still returned members to parliament although the constituency had disappeared—all abolished in 1832.—The Scotch terms are grouped under Burgh. [A.S. burg, burh, a city, from beorgan; Ger. bergen, to protect.]
Borrel, bor′el, adj. (Spens.) rustic, clownish. [O. Fr. burel, coarse cloth worn by peasantry.]
Borrow, bor′ō, v.t. to obtain on loan or trust: to adopt from a foreign source: to derive one's authority from another (with from, of) .—p.adj. ”

“ To judge from the material evidence afforded by an inspection of the works, it would appear that the castle represents the Saxon or Danish earthwork, probably the earliest strong place, and was composed of a truncated mound, its circular ditch, and a bank of earth encircling an area, of which the mound or a moiety of it made part: the whole forming a burh of the first class. ”

“ They will often invest several thousand trangkas with some village, and in return for this money the village will supply them with food, barley, milk, eggs and fuel. Higher up the valley there was a smaller monastery, and dotted along the hillside were numerous cells and caves where monks or nuns had retired to meditate. Every animal that we saw in this valley was extraordinarily tame. In the mornings we watched the burhel coming to some hermits' cells not a hundred yards away from the camp, to be fed, and from there they went on to other cells. ”

“ Ignorant of the country, and with no other object than to leave the city far behind him, he traversed the rough and winding path, on one side of which lay a vast lake [*] and the ruins of a convent; on the other, fields marked in the ancient fashion (when draining was unknown) by high rigs, having between deep balks or ditches, where the water lay glistening in the moonlight. Then he entered upon the vast common muir of the burgh, that in the gloom of the night appeared to be bounded only by the distant hills.
[*] The Burgh loch. Mag. Absalom. ”

“ It was long past midnight when the lights of the town appeared directly ahead of the little party. They rode at a trot along the road which passes through the village to wind upward again toward the ancient feudal castle that looks down from its hilltop upon the town. ”

“ A path leads off the road, down through the vines, and up to the cottages at the castle foot, where you can climb, by another steep stony way, to the great, double-towered gate, guarded by machicolations and portcullis, and bearing the coat-of-arms of the house of Berzé. ”

“ For these are the living memorials of a poet—the wide, green meadow of the valley, the undulating boughs, and gray and silver glimpses of the breeze-swung poplars, the red tiles of the ancient village, the stream willow-fringed, the creamy cattle browsing in upland pastures, the gracious contours of woodland hill, touched by Autumn's mellowing hand, the blue dome above, whose silver islands float on the wings of a warm, south wind. ”

“ In the plains, upon the summits of the hills, by the banks of river and stream, in the depths of the forests, in the solitude of the valley, even in remote and silent places, were springing up little communities of monks, whose clocher, was, for the peasants, a symbol of charity, of refuge, of God come down among men; [73] and every year, nobles, not a few, gave lands in the neighbouring comtés to the Abbey of Cluny. ”

“ But at least in this last case, the burgesses may be new-comers, or rather perhaps we may see that an old idea is giving way to a newer idea of a borough, and that if men engaged in trade or handicraft settle round a market-place and pay money-rents to a lord they will be called burgesses, though the town is no national fortress. ”

“ For myself, the little town will always be associated with happy souvenirs, and with gracious pictures of country life, as it has been since first I rode there, on a warm September afternoon, along a pleasant, undulating road, through typical, low-lying lands of fertile Burgundy, sometimes running quite straight for several kilometres, sometimes curving slightly through golden vineyards, and fields of bearded maize, and crimson clover. ”

“ For instance, some have made it out that the name signifies the tower or castle on Morfe, and that it was originally Burgmorfe, the first syllable of which, “Burg,” being derived from the Greek word πυργος, ‘a tower’, the other being [Pg 2] the Saxon name of the neighbouring forest, which extended over the large district still so called. But it is not easy to conceive, how “Burg” should have been transmuted into “Bridge,” and still less so, how “Morfe” should have been corrupted into “North.” The name is a very plain one, and just as plain is its etymology; Bridgnorth i. e. ”

“ Those that Skor left here are the servants. They remain in a room on the first floor on the other side of the castle. When he is away they just sit. After a while two of them will bring food for us; and we should get away before they come, for sometimes they forget to go back to their quarters; then they sit around outside my door for hours. You will notice that there is a grille in the door; they would see us if we attempted to escape while they were there. ”

“ From the habits of the people who frequently assemble in large or small parties at the house of the schoolmaster, or chief person in the village, to listen to some one reading from a religious book, it appears to me that to deposit the Bible at the principal place of resort in every village is the least we can do for Burmah ”

“ To his left, clustering roofs round a church tower, was a village, so silent that none but the dead might have been its inhabitants. Not a labourer plodded homewards from his toil in the fields; not a horse, freed from its harness, grazed in the fields. ”

“ It was not a village that once was there, it was a hillside whose pale bones are like those of a village. The other people—mine—have scooped fragile holes, and traced disastrous paths with their hands and with their feet. Their faces are strained forward, their eyes search, they sniff the wind. ”

“ Trust firmly in the Father in heaven; he is both good and powerful. Although you know so little about him, he [153] will take care of you, and manifest himself at the proper hour. But the night is rapidly approaching, and I must go back to the town. Here, my son, is enough to pay for your night's lodging. If you would like to see me again, do not mingle with the people who attend the Fair,—the organ-grinders, puppet-show men, and the like,—but come to the town in the morning, and inquire for the house of Mr. Burg, the clock-maker ”

“ Presently I descried what I took to be a village, and pointing it out to Xodar asked him what it might be.
"It is a village of lost souls," he answered, laughing. "This strip between the ice barrier and the mountains is considered neutral ground. Some turn off from their voluntary pilgrimage down the Iss, and, scaling the awful walls of its canyon below us, stop in this valley. Also a slave now and then escapes from the therns and makes his way hither. ”

“ I was thinking of the little bush township and the little brick church, with its shingle roof and its bell tinkling cheerily from the limb of a gum-tree, wondering whose buggy would appropriate the particular corner of the fence where ours used to stand, and who would sit in the choir instead of me, and how my dear love was bearing the dreadful new solitude that had come to him. ”

“ I asked her if we were far from the city of London, but she did not know what I meant. When I tried to explain, describing mighty buildings of stone and brick, broad avenues, parks, palaces, and countless people, she but shook her head sadly.
"There is no such place near by," she said. "Only the Camp of the Lions has places of stone where the beasts lair, but there are no people in the Camp of the Lions. ”

“ One's glance rests long upon those stones, where, above the slender colonettes, among the waving grasses, wild flowers, ferns, and soft moss of the slag roof, the stone corner-heads of a thousand years ago watch silently over a tree-embowered, weed-entangled, dreamy garden of the dead. ”

“ The chief of the village welcomes us at the door of his hut, and we descend the dark passage, blinded by the smoke of the dried camel-dung fire. We sit on strips of felt, thankful to be out of the wind and the rain, and stretch our frozen hands and feet in the direction of the thickest fumes. ”

“ I have called the building a city in itself, and if a census were made of its silent population, there might seem some reason in such a simile. Who can doubt that these sculptured saints, archangels, kings, apostles, and monks without, these bleeding Christs, Virgins, infants, and martyrs within, would equal in number the living, moving world of Burgos? And this multitude, stony, silent, dead, though it seems, is not without a power and force that stand in good stead of vitality. ”

“ The world-builders must have had their foundry up in this neighborhood, and the bed of this river was doubtless the channel through which the molten granite flowed. Some mischief-loving god has let in the sea while things were yet red-hot, and there has been a time here. ”

“ The Burg, Bury, or ‘Berry’ as they call it, 175of St. Edmund is still a prosperous brisk Town; beautifully diversifying, with its clear brick houses, ancient clean streets, and 20,000 or 15,000 busy souls, the general grassy face of Suffolk; looking out right pleasantly from its hill-slope towards the rising sun: and on the eastern edge of it still runs, long, black, and massive, a range of monastic ruins.... Here stranger or townsman, sauntering at his leisure amid these vast grim venerable ruins, may persuade himself that an Abbey of St. ”

“ The old man, calm and majestic as before, standing motionless upon the opposite peak, casts upon the peasants a compassionate glance. Terror-stricken, they acclaim him a divine being. Then, swarming down the mountain path to the valley, they climb the opposite peak, and again surround him. ”

“ From the moment, when, on the way from the station, you see the ancient towers raising, one by one, their hoary heads above the roofs, as they have raised her past from oblivion, till, having climbed the cobble-stoned street that winds upwards through the town, you look down through the ruined gateway that once gave passage to kings and abbots, from every street corner, from every church, and dwelling-house, Cluny calls to you out of the past. ”

“ But the flour and wheat and wine, and all the neat and sheep, ye shall leave behind; for the folk of this country-side and the good town have occasion for them. But as to mine own matters which are of mine own person, as arms and raiment and jewels and the like, ye shall bring them unto me here in the good town, where I am minded to abide two or three days that I may hold counsel about weighty matters with the Porte and the Burgreve. ”

“ As I say, Burke, it was something that soothed me like beautiful music after the rotten, miserable, wretched conditions I had seen in the city. It does a fellow good once in a while to get away from the grip of the tenements, the shades of the skyscrapers, the roar of the factories, and the shuffling, tired footsteps of the crowds, the smell of the sweat-shops. ”