In consequence of the question as to the correctness of the statement respecting the Portlanders, I asked my brother, the Rector of Weymouth about them and he told me that they were a very remarkable race; and peculiar for their size, the beauty of their dark eyes and their loud voices; but more especially for the great readiness with which they can turn their hands to anything they undertake ; and he referred me to the Rev. D. Hogarth, the Rector of Portland, for further information; and, through his great courtesy, I am enabled to make the following statement:-

Twenty four years ago the population of Portland was 2,650; and at that time a man died there at the age of 90, who was said to have been the one-thousandth person in the island when he was born. Though there was a continued intermarriage among the families of the island, and rarely beyond its limits, yet Mr Hogarth thinks that with such a population it was very different from a continued family or blood intermarriage: so that the same effects are not to be looked for in so marked a form; but one disease of a terrible character is more prevalent there than in any place in Scotland or England with which Mr Hogarth is acquainted. Cancer occurs in the breast, throat, tongue, lips, and stomach; and Mr Hogarth has been in the habit of attributing it to the intermarriages, but perhaps erroneously.

The stature is exaggerated. There are many men above six feet high, but by no means approaching an average. When the Portland Volunteers lately met those around Weymouth , the remark was that they were half a head taller, and that there was a step of some inches up where the line of Portlanders joined in.

They are a fine strong healthy race, greatly superior to the ordinary agriculturists, both in person and intelligence; but Mr Hogarth thinks that the former must be partly attributed to fine air and comparatively good living; their wages averaging a pound a week, instead of ten shillings.

Mr Hogarth feels clear from his own observation, during the twenty four years he has been in the island, that they have diminished in stature as a race. He doubts their being of Saxon origin; for they have the law of gavelkind, which tradition says was given to them by the Conqueror when he landed, in gratitude for having joined him in a body against their Saxon oppressors; and Mr Hogarth thinks them more likely to be of Danish extraction, like the noble men still to be found at Pakefield, near Lowestoff; Spital, near Berwick-on-Tweed ; Dundee and Montrose.

As a great change has taken place in the inhabitants of Portland in the last few years in consequence of government works there, Mr Hogarth's information seems peculiarly valuable. I may however add that gavelkind was a Saxon tenure, which was continued in Kent through the importunity of the Kentish men ; and this rather leads to the inference, that Saxons inhabited the island at the Conquest. On the other hand, Lewis (Topog. Dict.) states that "a party of Danish marauders landed here in 787, and, having killed the governor, obtained possession of the place ; " but no authority is referred to in support of this statement.

C. S. GREAVES

Notes and Queries Vol. 3 3rd S. (54) Jan 10 1863 Page 32
Notes and Queries Vol. 3 3rd S. (54) Jan 10 1863 Page 33

(3rd S. iii. 33.) - As a rule the compilers of Topographical Dictionaries are not very exact as to their historical facts. Mr. Lewis certainly is not so in the extract given by your correspondent. The circumstance referred to is, without doubt, the following fact, which is recorded in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, P 118 of Mr Thorpe's new edition, under the year 837. The ancient chronicler thus narrates it:-

"�thelhelm, the ealdorman (of Dorsetshire), fought the Danes in Portland, with the posse of his shire, and was slain, and the Danes were masters of the field of battle."

H.C.C.

Notes and Queries Vol. 3 3rd S. (56) Jan 24 1863 Page 77

The following abstract of a long note may further elucidate the question of the fine race of the inhabitants. It is from Smeaton's "Account of the Building of the Eddystone Lighthouse, second edit. Fol. 1793, p. 65:

Having observed that by far the greatest number of the quarrymen were of a very robust, hardy form� they are all born upon the island; many of them have never been further upon the main land than to Weymouth�. The air, though very sharp, from our elevated situation, is certainly very healthy to working men�..all our marriages here are productive of children �They intermarry with one another, very rarely going to the main land to seek a wife; and it has been the custom of the island from time immemorial, that they never marry will the woman is pregnant."

The arrangement is thus described: Some of the men sent from London at that time (17__) were obliged to marry some of the Portland ladies: "Since then, matters have gone on according to the ancient custom."

W.P.

Notes and Queries Vol. 3 3rd S. (54) Jan 10 1863 Page 33

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