[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
safeguard of their lives to mountains, crags, thick forests, and rocky
isles, though with trembling hearts, remained in their fatherland."
These passages certainly suggest that a Welsh remnant survived in two
ways within the English pale, first as slaves, and secondly as isolated
outlaws.
Bæda stands on a very different footing. His authenticity is undoubted;
his language is simple and straightforward. He was born in or about the
year 672, only two hundred years after the landing of the first English
colonists in Thanet. Scarcely more than a century separated him from the
days of Ida. The constant lingering warfare with the Welsh on the
western frontier was still for him a living fact. The Celt still held
half of Britain. At the date of his birth the northern Welsh still
retained their independence in Strathclyde; the Welsh proper still
spread to the banks of the Severn; and the West Welsh of Cornwall still
owned all the peninsula south of the Bristol Channel as far eastward as
the Somersetshire marshes. Beyond Forth and Clyde, the Picts yet ruled
over the greater part of the Highlands, while the Scots, who have now
given the name of Scotland to the whole of Britain beyond the Cheviots,
were a mere intrusive Irish colony in Argyllshire and the Western Isles.
He lived, in short, at the very period when Britain was still in the
act of becoming England; and no historical doubts of any sort hang over
the authenticity of his great work, "The Ecclesiastical History of the
English people." But Bæda unfortunately knows little more about the
first settlement than he could learn from Gildas, whom he quotes almost
_verbatim_. He tells us, however, nothing of extermination of the Welsh.
"Some," he says, "were slaughtered; some gave themselves up to undergo
slavery: some retreated beyond the sea: and some, remaining in their own
land, lived a miserable life in the mountains and forests." In all this,
he is merely transcribing Gildas, but he saw no improbability in the
words. At a later date, Æthelfrith, of Northumbria, he tells us,
"rendered more of their lands either tributary to or an integral part of
the English territory, whether by subjugating or expatriating[1] the
natives," than any previous king. Eadwine, before his conversion,
"subdued to the empire of the English the Mevanian islands," Man and
Anglesey; but we know that the population of both islands is still
mainly Celtic in blood and speech. These examples sufficiently show us,
that even before the introduction of Christianity, the English did not
always utterly destroy the Welsh inhabitants of conquered districts. And
it is universally admitted that, after their conversion, they fought
with the Welsh in a milder manner, sparing their lives as
fellow-Christians, and permitting them to retain their lands as
tributary proprietors.
[1] The word in the original is _exterminatis_, but of
course _exterminare_ then bore its etymological sense of
expatriation or expulsion, if not merely of confiscation,
while it certainly did not imply the idea of slaughter,
connoted by the modern word.
The English Chronicle, our third authority, was first compiled at the
court of Ælfred, four and a-half centuries after the Conquest; and so
its value as original testimony is very slight. Its earlier portions are
mainly condensed from Bæda; but it contains a few fragments of
traditional information from some other unknown sources. These
fragments, however, refer chiefly to Kent, Sussex, and the older parts
of Wessex, where we have reason to believe that the Teutonic
colonisation was exceptionally thorough; and they tell us nothing about
Yorkshire, Lincolnshire, and East Anglia, where we find at the present
day so large a proportion of the population possessing an unmistakably
Celtic physique. The Chronicle undoubtedly describes the conflict in the
south as sharp and bloody; and in spite of the mythical character of the
names and events, it is probable that in this respect it rightly
preserves the popular memory of the conquest, and its general nature. In
Kent, "the Welsh fled the English like fire;" and Hengest and Æsc, in a
single battle, slew 4,000 men. In Sussex, Ælle and Cissa killed or drove
out the natives in the western rapes on their first landing, and
afterwards massacred every Briton at Anderida. In Wessex, in the first
struggle, "Cerdic and Cynric offslew a British king whose name was
Natanleod, and 5,000 men with him." And so the dismal annals of rapine
and slaughter run on from year to year, with simple, unquestioning
conciseness, showing us, at least, the manner in which the later
English believed their forefathers had acquired the land. Moreover,
these frightful details accord well enough with the vague generalities
of Gildas, from which, however, they may very possibly have been
manufactured. Yet even the Chronicle nowhere speaks of absolute
extermination: that idea has been wholly read into its words, not
directly inferred from them. A great deal has been made of the massacre
at Pevensey; but we hear nothing of similar massacres at the great Roman
cities at London, at York, at Verulam, at Bath, at Cirencester, which
would surely have attracted more attention than a small outlying
fortress like Anderida. Even the Teutonic champions themselves admit
that some, at least, of the Celts were incorporated into the English
community. "The women," says Mr. Freeman, "would, doubtless, be largely
spared;" while as to the men, he observes, "we may be sure that death,
emigration, or personal slavery were the only alternatives which the
vanquished found at the hands of our fathers." But there is a vast gulf,
from the ethnological point of view, between exterminating a nation and
enslaving it.[2]
[2] In this and a few other cases, modern authorities are
quoted merely to show that the essential facts of a large
Welsh survival are really admitted even by those who most [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
zanotowane.pl doc.pisz.pl pdf.pisz.pl chiara76.opx.pl
safeguard of their lives to mountains, crags, thick forests, and rocky
isles, though with trembling hearts, remained in their fatherland."
These passages certainly suggest that a Welsh remnant survived in two
ways within the English pale, first as slaves, and secondly as isolated
outlaws.
Bæda stands on a very different footing. His authenticity is undoubted;
his language is simple and straightforward. He was born in or about the
year 672, only two hundred years after the landing of the first English
colonists in Thanet. Scarcely more than a century separated him from the
days of Ida. The constant lingering warfare with the Welsh on the
western frontier was still for him a living fact. The Celt still held
half of Britain. At the date of his birth the northern Welsh still
retained their independence in Strathclyde; the Welsh proper still
spread to the banks of the Severn; and the West Welsh of Cornwall still
owned all the peninsula south of the Bristol Channel as far eastward as
the Somersetshire marshes. Beyond Forth and Clyde, the Picts yet ruled
over the greater part of the Highlands, while the Scots, who have now
given the name of Scotland to the whole of Britain beyond the Cheviots,
were a mere intrusive Irish colony in Argyllshire and the Western Isles.
He lived, in short, at the very period when Britain was still in the
act of becoming England; and no historical doubts of any sort hang over
the authenticity of his great work, "The Ecclesiastical History of the
English people." But Bæda unfortunately knows little more about the
first settlement than he could learn from Gildas, whom he quotes almost
_verbatim_. He tells us, however, nothing of extermination of the Welsh.
"Some," he says, "were slaughtered; some gave themselves up to undergo
slavery: some retreated beyond the sea: and some, remaining in their own
land, lived a miserable life in the mountains and forests." In all this,
he is merely transcribing Gildas, but he saw no improbability in the
words. At a later date, Æthelfrith, of Northumbria, he tells us,
"rendered more of their lands either tributary to or an integral part of
the English territory, whether by subjugating or expatriating[1] the
natives," than any previous king. Eadwine, before his conversion,
"subdued to the empire of the English the Mevanian islands," Man and
Anglesey; but we know that the population of both islands is still
mainly Celtic in blood and speech. These examples sufficiently show us,
that even before the introduction of Christianity, the English did not
always utterly destroy the Welsh inhabitants of conquered districts. And
it is universally admitted that, after their conversion, they fought
with the Welsh in a milder manner, sparing their lives as
fellow-Christians, and permitting them to retain their lands as
tributary proprietors.
[1] The word in the original is _exterminatis_, but of
course _exterminare_ then bore its etymological sense of
expatriation or expulsion, if not merely of confiscation,
while it certainly did not imply the idea of slaughter,
connoted by the modern word.
The English Chronicle, our third authority, was first compiled at the
court of Ælfred, four and a-half centuries after the Conquest; and so
its value as original testimony is very slight. Its earlier portions are
mainly condensed from Bæda; but it contains a few fragments of
traditional information from some other unknown sources. These
fragments, however, refer chiefly to Kent, Sussex, and the older parts
of Wessex, where we have reason to believe that the Teutonic
colonisation was exceptionally thorough; and they tell us nothing about
Yorkshire, Lincolnshire, and East Anglia, where we find at the present
day so large a proportion of the population possessing an unmistakably
Celtic physique. The Chronicle undoubtedly describes the conflict in the
south as sharp and bloody; and in spite of the mythical character of the
names and events, it is probable that in this respect it rightly
preserves the popular memory of the conquest, and its general nature. In
Kent, "the Welsh fled the English like fire;" and Hengest and Æsc, in a
single battle, slew 4,000 men. In Sussex, Ælle and Cissa killed or drove
out the natives in the western rapes on their first landing, and
afterwards massacred every Briton at Anderida. In Wessex, in the first
struggle, "Cerdic and Cynric offslew a British king whose name was
Natanleod, and 5,000 men with him." And so the dismal annals of rapine
and slaughter run on from year to year, with simple, unquestioning
conciseness, showing us, at least, the manner in which the later
English believed their forefathers had acquired the land. Moreover,
these frightful details accord well enough with the vague generalities
of Gildas, from which, however, they may very possibly have been
manufactured. Yet even the Chronicle nowhere speaks of absolute
extermination: that idea has been wholly read into its words, not
directly inferred from them. A great deal has been made of the massacre
at Pevensey; but we hear nothing of similar massacres at the great Roman
cities at London, at York, at Verulam, at Bath, at Cirencester, which
would surely have attracted more attention than a small outlying
fortress like Anderida. Even the Teutonic champions themselves admit
that some, at least, of the Celts were incorporated into the English
community. "The women," says Mr. Freeman, "would, doubtless, be largely
spared;" while as to the men, he observes, "we may be sure that death,
emigration, or personal slavery were the only alternatives which the
vanquished found at the hands of our fathers." But there is a vast gulf,
from the ethnological point of view, between exterminating a nation and
enslaving it.[2]
[2] In this and a few other cases, modern authorities are
quoted merely to show that the essential facts of a large
Welsh survival are really admitted even by those who most [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]