. The Cinque Ports; a historical and descriptive record. e, &c., are exposed to the surprise of any before, but no purchaser came forward,ill-affected or malignant person, &c. Captain 122 THE CINQUE PORTS. those young in years or mind, but he has provided splendid ones. Assuch, the place is educational. One understands the uses of castles andfortresses when one has employed them in this way; one sees the kingsand queens and personages of history so much better after one has breath-lessly crouched in a half-earthed-up tunnel, whilst the footsteps of a pursuerbrought down fragments of stone roun
. The Cinque Ports; a historical and descriptive record. e, &c., are exposed to the surprise of any before, but no purchaser came forward,ill-affected or malignant person, &c. Captain 122 THE CINQUE PORTS. those young in years or mind, but he has provided splendid ones. Assuch, the place is educational. One understands the uses of castles andfortresses when one has employed them in this way; one sees the kingsand queens and personages of history so much better after one has breath-lessly crouched in a half-earthed-up tunnel, whilst the footsteps of a pursuerbrought down fragments of stone round one. Or one can lie on the slopesof earth in the shelter of the outer walls, and one can read a lazy book andbe beguiled into thinking that, after all, life is good. One has the oldstones all round one, one is sheltered from the wind that always blowsthere, one hears it rustling in the wall-flowers, and one catches a glimpseof the lush marsh-pastures framed in the grey stone of a dismantled door. » * *» *» > s %^ < << I * , e t. 123 CHAPTER VIII. ROMNEY AND ITS NEIGHBOURHOOD. The central Port can hardly lay claim to the greatest of antiquities asfar as foundation eoes. Where one has no records, no mention in theworks of ancient topographers, to guide one, one must, perforce, fallback upon the philologist who examines place-names, upon the exca-vating archaeologist, the man who burrows in barrows. Traditionalphilology asserts that Romney signifies Roman Island, equals Roman eyin Saxon parlance. The more scientific philology of to-day declaresin favour of the reading Rumen ca — the large watery place. Thisversion is not vastly modern. Lambarde affects it, adding: It iswritten in the records, corruptly, Rumenal and Romual. Twyne dothlatine it Romanorum mare, as if it had been Sea in their time. One finds in Romney itself no traces of Roman occupation, nopieces of crockery, no coins of the Caesars; yet they are plentiful enoughat Dymchurch,^ and in other places o
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