Ond tha feng Æthelbald his sunu to rice and heold v gear. Tha feng Æthelbryht his brother to and heold v gear. Tha feng Æthered hiera brothur to rice and heold v gear. Tha feng Ælfred hiera brothur to rice and tha wæs agan his ielde xxiii wintra, and ccc and xcvi wintra thæs the his cyn ærest Wessexana lond on Wealum geodon.
And then Æthelbald his son took to the realm and held it 5 years. Then succeeded Æthelbryht his brother, and held 5 years. Then Æthered their brother took to the realm, and held 5 years. Then took Alfred their brother to the realm, and then was agone of his age 23 years; and 396 years from that his race erst took Wessex from the Welsh.
These Chronicles are remarkable for a certain unconscious ease and homeliness. Even when, in the course of their progress, they grow more copious and mature, they hardly discover any consciousness of literary dignity. Of the Latin writings of the Anglo-Saxon period this could not be said. This _naïveté_ is naturally more observable in the earlier parts, which seem like rescued antiquities, which might have been built into their place when, in the latter end of the eighth or beginning of the ninth century, the importance of the national and vernacular chronicle began to be realised.
Some of the brief entries concerning the various settlements on the coasts and the early contests with the Britons have the appearance of traditional reminiscences that had been preserved in popular songs. Such is that of 473, that the Welsh flew the English like fire; 491, that Ælle and Cissa besieged Andredescester, and slew all those that therein dwelt--there was not so much as one Bret left; 584, how that Ceawlin, in his expedition up the Vale of Severn, where his brother fell, took many towns and untold spoils, and, angry, he turned away to his own.
Mingled with these are entries which, though ingenious, are hardly less spontaneous. Such are those in which there is a manifest rationalising upon the names of historical sites, and a fanciful discovery of their heroes or founders. Thus, in 501, we read that Port landed in Britain at the place called Portsmouth. Now, we know that the first syllable in Portsmouth is the Latin _portus_, a harbour, and it seems plain that here we have a name made into a personage. In 534 we read how Cynric gave the Isle of Wight to Stuf and Wihtgar, and how Wihtgar died in 544, and was buried at Wihtgaraburg, also called Wihtgaræsburh. Here the person of Wihtgar has been made out of the name of the place, because that name was understood as meaning Castle of Wihtgar. But it meant the Burgh "of" Wihtgar only in the sense of the Burgh which was called Wihtgar. The last syllable, _gar_, is the British word for burg, fortress, castle, which the Welsh call _Caer_ to this day. And the Saxons, having often to use the word _gar_ in this sense--much as our reporters of New Zealand affairs have to speak of a _pa_--distinguished the _gar_ that was in Wiht, as Wihtgar, and then they added their own word, _burh_, as the interpretation of _gar_, and after a time the historian, finding the name of Wihtgarburh, took Wihtgar for a man, and called it Wihtgar's Burg, Wihtgaresburh, a genitive form which still lives in "Carisbrooke."