CHAPTER I THE ANGLO-SAXON PERIOD 449?-1066 THE PEOPLE HE Englishman of to-day is the descendant of a TH number of races which have invaded, inhabited, and practically vanished from the British Isles. So far as can be learned, the Celts were the first historic race to take possession of the island of Britain. This is the same Aryan people who spread over Europe before the great migrations. It is believed that they actually maintained a vast empire in northern and eastern Europe at the time when they came into conflict with those peoples who pressed westward from their Asiatic home toward their ultimate dwelling place upon the continent of Europe. When Julius Cæsar first landed in England in 55 B. C., he found a Celtic tribe, known to history as the Britons, in possession of the midlands and the north. The Gaels had settled further west in Wales; and the Picts and Scots, long a constant menace to the Roman frontier, extended over the border of Scotland. Various Celtic tribes had migrated across the Irish Channel into Ireland. It is in the far corners of the nations of western Europe that the Celts have survived, pushed there by successive migrations of other races. The Celts in Spain, the Bretons in France, and the Welsh, Highland Scotch, and Irish in the British Isles are the chief survivors of the early inhabitants of the continent of Europe. MAIN CURRENTS OF ENGLISH LITERATURE These Celtic forerunners of the English people were an impressionable and sensitive race, at least if we may judge by their characteristics in modern times. A love of brightness and color and a delight in natural beauty, in sentiment and exaggeration, distinguished them. As they faced the mystery of the vast, unknown world before them, their imaginations peopled the spaces beyond their vision with fairies and demons, elves and giants, who performed outlandish deeds and kept the countryside in terror. The Celtic imagination created a dream world grotesque and unreal, and this romantic element of mystery and enchantment has exerted a formative influence upon the life of modern Europe. Indeed, the warmth and color and mystery which have crept into the literature of modern times are derived from the pervasive Celtic strain in most of the nations of the western portion of the Continent. The Roman occupation of Britain had no appreciable influence upon the development of the people, a few remains of walls and baths, and a number of names of towns like Chester or -caster or -cester, testifying to the nature of the life which the conquerors had led. During the fifth century, when the Imperial City was threatened by the barbarians, the Romans withdrew their legions and left the island to the mercy of any new conqueror who might be tempted by the prize of a defenseless land. For some time, indeed, before the reputed expedition of Hengist and Horsa in 449, bands of marauders from the Baltic had been making forays along the British shores. These German tribesmen from the low-lying marshes at the mouth of the Elbe and the Weser and the Scandinavian coast represent in language, customs, and institutions the Low-German branch of the great Germanic family of races. They bear a nearer relationship to the Dutch than to the High-Germans who were the ancestors of the modern German. The present-day Englishman and the present-day German are but distant cousins. Of the tribes making up the different expeditions, the Jutes settled in the southwest of what is now Kent; the Saxons possessed the southern counties or Wessex; and the Angles occupied the midlands and the north. The Celts, pushed back by the newcomers, remained in possession of Cornwall, Wales, and Ireland. Our first authentic report of these German bands comes from the Roman historian Tacitus, who gives a circumstantial account of their character and their customs. Drifting down from the frozen regions of Scandinavia, they at first lived as hunters and fishers on the bleak German coast. Fair-haired, blue-eyed, and ruddy, they brought with them something of the hard endurance that had resulted from a life in continual contact with cruel winters and terrors of the sea. As they developed into tribes, they established a stable society, the basis of which was the freeman, who never bowed his head before a master, but gave his service freely and willingly for the protection of his rights. The family became the social unit; it dispensed a rudimentary form of justice, and kinsmen avenged the wrongs done to their people. In this manner law and order established themselves. As social life crystallized, villages were organized and a community life established, the families congregating in these villages for intercourse and protection. About the villages they built a stockade or tun, and called the whole a township. Each village had surrounding it a belt of forest or marsh land, the abode of the pixie or will-o'-the-wisp that led travelers astray. A mark or |