[69] Gascony, called Wascan in the Teutonic or Saxon orthography and
pronunciation. Thus the Saxons changed Gauls to Wales, and the Gauls
changed War-men into Guer-men, hence our modern English, Germans.
- Forst.
[70] Scotland is here assuredly used to denote Ireland. - E.
[71] Probably in relation to Rome, the residence of Orosius. - E.
[72] Alfred includes the whole island, now called Great Britain, under one
denomination of Brittannia, taking no notice whatever of any of its
divisions. Orcadus is unquestionably Orcades, or the islands of Orkney
and Shetland. - E.
[73] The Thila or Thule of Alfred, from its direction in respect of
Ireland, and its great distance, is obviously Iceland. - E.
[74] This seems to have some obscure reference to an idea, that the sea had
disjoined Europe and Africa. But the sense is extremely perplexed and
even unintelligible. - E.
[75] It must be noticed, that Alfred was unacquainted with any more of
Africa than its northern coast, along the Mediterranean, which
explains this erroneous idea of its size being inferior to Europe. - E.
[76] Syrenaica. - E.
[77] The Red Sea, or Ethiopic Gulf. In this part of the geography of
Alfred, his translator has left the sense often obscure or
contradictory, especially in the directions, which, in this version,
have been attempted to be corrected. This may have been owing to
errors in the Anglo-Saxon MS. which Barrington professes to have
translated literally, and he disclaims any responsibility for the
errors of his author.