Our Ancestry.
If you were to visit England, you would hardly imagine that the people there were descended from a variety of nations, some of them as savage and wild as our American Indians. The English people have now a pretty uniform appearance, as if they all descended from one father and mother: they are generally stoutly made, with ruddy cheeks, light skin, light hair, and full blue eyes; though black eyes and brown skins are not uncommon. The people talk one language too—and at first view they seem one great family, descended from one parentage.
But if we visit different parts of the country, we shall begin to remark diversities in the appearance of the people, and especially in their mode of speech. Though they all speak English, yet in one part they use many strange words that are not used in another part, and so singular is the mode of speaking in some places that an American cannot well understand the people. Thus in Lancashire, which includes Liverpool and the vicinity, the people speak very differently from what they do in Yorkshire; and yet in both counties the speech of the common people cannot be understood, till you become accustomed to it.
All this is easily explained when we look into the early history of England; for we then find that the present English people are in fact descended from several different tribes and nations, that settled upon the island in ancient times. This subject is very interesting in itself, and it becomes more so to us from the fact that we too are descended from the English nation, as nearly all our forefathers, who settled America, came from England. Let us therefore give a little attention to this subject.
It appears that the first human beings were created in the valley of the Euphrates, in Asia. Here they increased, and soon spread themselves in various directions over the earth. About two thousand years before Christ, they began to cross the Uralian mountains, which separate Asia from Europe, and to people the latter country. Like our western settlers who are now pushing farther and farther into the wilderness, these Asiatic emigrants continued to spread to the north and west, until the whole northern and middle portions of Europe were occupied by them. The southern portions of that quarter of the globe, Spain, Italy, and Greece, were during this same period filled up by colonists from Asia and Africa.
Thus the whole of Europe was settled, but by very different classes of nations. Those who dwelt along the border of the Mediterranean sea, were acquainted with the arts of civilization; accordingly they settled down in cities, and carried on commerce. But those who entered Europe across the mountains, and who occupied Germany, France, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Russia, and Britain, were of a very different character. They were somewhat like the present Tartars of Asia, half warriors and half husbandmen. They seldom built permanent towns, but usually wandered from one place to another, taking large flocks of cattle with them, upon which they chiefly subsisted. Different tribes or nations often met each other in their migrations, and, as a matter of course, entered into conflict, the strong robbing and making slaves of the weak.
The number of these rude tribes that came from Asia into Europe appears to have been great, and the individuals must have amounted to many millions. Though of one general cast, still they were divided into separate tribes, and spoke different languages, and in some respects differed in religion, manners, and customs.
Of all these Asiatic emigrants, the Celts appear to have been the most numerous. These were the first settlers of ancient Gaul, now France, Spain, Belgium, and the British isles. When Julius Cæsar, the Roman general, made war upon Gaul, about sixty years before Christ, he found the nation to consist wholly of Celts. In general, they were a barbarous people, rude in their mode of life, superstitious in religion, and savage in their feelings. They were divided into three classes: the nobles or warriors, who were the despotic masters of the common people; the Druids or priests, whom we have described in a former number; and the mass of the nation, who performed the common labor of the community.
Among the nobles, there were many claiming to be princes, and these held the first rank; the people at large had no acknowledged rights, and were wholly dependent upon their superiors for protection. There appears to have been no other government than that of the chiefs of the several tribes, though in important expeditions they chose a common leader. The Druids, male and female, exercised supreme authority in religion, and governed to some extent in civil matters. They possessed some knowledge of astronomy and other sciences, which they used to secure their power over the minds of the people.
Among the Celts of France at the time of Cæsar, duels and drunkenness were common; there were many villages and few cities; the houses were circular in form, and made of beams, being laid upon stone, and covered with thatch; the household utensils were few and poor. Few of the people tilled the soil, the greater part subsisting upon their flocks. Their beverage was a kind of beer or mead; the cultivation of the vine was unknown. The rich had gold, obtained from mines and the sands of rivers.
In battle, the rich wore checked or plaid cloaks over their shoulders, but no other garment. The common soldiers were almost naked. They were of high stature and savage features. Their hair was yellow, long, and matted—giving them a terrible aspect. Their blind, headlong courage; their immense numbers; the stunning noise which proceeded from their numerous wild horns and trumpets; their terrible devastations in passing through a country; their sacrifice of captives to their deities; their using the skulls of the slain as trophies and as drinking-cups, all contributed to render them the terror of the western world. On one occasion, 389 B. C., the Celts or Gauls entered Italy, advanced towards Rome, sacrificed in battle the flower of the Roman youth, sacked and burnt the city, and laid siege to the capitol, which was only delivered by a Roman army under Camillus.
At the period of which we speak, Cæsar found these Gauls a most formidable people. For nine campaigns they resisted him; but their long swords of copper could not withstand the steel swords of the Romans; and besides, their soldiers wanted discipline, harmony, and unity of action. Cæsar overcame them at last; and then he turned his armies against the island of Britain.
The people there were Celts, and generally resembled the Gauls. They were, however, in a still more rude and savage state. Along the southern border of the island they were most civilized. Here they wore a dress of their own manufacture, consisting of a square mantle, which covered a vest and trowsers, or a plaited shirt or tunic. Their houses, like those of their Gallic neighbors, were of circular beams, reared upon stone foundations, and covered with straw thatch. They manured their lands with marl; raised abundance of wheat, which they kept in dry pits; and were skilful in training horses, especially for war-chariots.
Farther north, the Britons were much more wild and savage. They either went naked, or were only clothed in skins; they had no bread, and lived entirely on the milk or flesh of their flocks. Marriage was not practised, and children knew not their parents.
Agricultural operations of the Ancient Britons.
Such was the state of things in the year 55 B. C., when Cæsar first crossed the British channel from Calais, and made his descent on Britain. As he approached the cliffs of Dover and Deal, he saw them crowded with armed men, and therefore stood northward and entered Pegwell bay. He was obliged, however, to land in the face of the natives, who had watched his motions, and were here ready to receive him. They filled the air with their hostile arrows; they approached the water’s edge, and rushing into the waves, met and struggled furiously with the Roman soldiers in the sea. But their courage and strength were vain; Roman discipline prevailed, and Cæsar made good his landing. This first attack was followed by other expeditions, and Rome, having taken possession of the island, held it for nearly five hundred years.
During this long period, the manners of the Britons were greatly changed. The arts of Rome were adopted in the country; towns and cities were built; Christianity was introduced; and civilization, to a certain extent, was spread over the island. Thus the original Celtic Britons became mixed with the Romans, and were partially Romanized.
But the Roman empire at last became weakened, and tottered to its fall. The Roman soldiers were called home for the defence of the capital, and Britain was once more left to herself.
The Romans quitted England about the year 410, and for a time, the Britons continued in a feverish state of independence, divided into small republics. But soon these became subject to ambitious leaders, who involved the people in repeated struggles. Constant inroads were also made by the Scots and Picts from the north. To aid in defending the people from these, fifteen hundred Saxons, who came accidentally to the coast from Sweden and Norway, were employed by a British chief named Vortigern. In a few years more Saxons arrived, and in about one hundred and fifty years the whole island was subjected to these intruders. The Britons fought bravely for their liberties, but they were divided among themselves, and were sacrificed piece-meal by the hordes of Saxons that came like successive waves to overspread the country.
The Saxons, though a brave and warlike race, were savage and cruel in the extreme. They drove such of the Britons as resisted to the mountains of Cornwall and Wales, and the adjacent islands, making slaves of those who submitted. Thus they established their dominion, and became not only the ruling people in the country, but the stock which was to give a distinctive character to the nation ever after. They were a mixture of Angles, Picts, and Saxons, and were, taken together, called Anglo-Saxons. It is from this race, chiefly, that the English people, as well as ourselves, derive existence.
Anglo-Saxons.
The Saxons were robust in their make, tall, at least as compared with the Romans, possessed of fair complexions, blue eyes, and, in almost all instances, light or sandy hair. They were distinguished, from the earliest ages, for indomitable courage and great ferocity. In their social state they acknowledged four ranks or classes of men, among whom intermarriages rarely, if ever, occurred; namely, their nobles, their freemen, their freedmen, and their slaves. They were particularly jealous of the honor of their wives. In ordinary times they acknowledged no single chief, but were governed by an aristocracy; from among the members of which, in the event of war, they chose a king. But the authority of the sovereign lasted only while hostilities continued: at their close, he returned to his original station among the nobles.
The Saxons delighted in the perpetration of cruelties, and were themselves regardless of danger. They carried on their predatory warfare chiefly by sea; launching their vessels most cheerfully during the prevalence of the wildest storms, because they took it for granted that their intended victims would, at such moments, be least prepared to escape or to resist them. When the first of these bands arrived in England, they came under the guidance of two nobles, Hengist and Horsa, whom they had themselves elected as leaders in a piratical expedition; and whom they continued to obey, only because the war, in which they became engaged, lasted during the lifetime of those who began it.
Danes.
The religion of the Anglo-Saxons, as they imported it into Britain, was a wild and hideous polytheism, which demanded from its votaries, among other rites, the occasional offering up of human victims. Of some of their gods we retain a remembrance in the names which still attach to the days of the week. They worshipped the Sun, thence our Sunday; the Moon, thence our Monday; Tiw, thence Tuesday; Woden, thence Wednesday; Thurse, thence Thursday; Friga, thence Friday; and Saterne, whence Saturday.
About the year 800, the Danes, a nation of sea rovers and robbers, began to infest England. This country had been divided into seven kingdoms, called the Saxon Heptarchy; but these had been condensed into three, and at last the whole Saxon portion of the nation became subject to one king, for the first time. This king was Egbert. He died in 836, and the sceptre passing into feeble hands, the country was exposed to the incursions of the people whom we have mentioned above.
The Danes came from Norway, Sweden, and Denmark, and in many respects resembled the Saxons. They were pirates by profession, who took to themselves the appellation of Sea-kings; and Europe has never produced a race of men more stained with the crimes of treachery and cruelty. Not content, like the generality of savage warriors, to slay, without remorse, all by whom they were opposed in battle, the Sea-kings appeared to delight in the infliction of unnecessary torture; razing to the ground every town of which they obtained possession, and slaughtering men, women, and children indiscriminately upon its ruins.
Normans.
It would lead us beyond our present limits to detail all the struggles with these invaders of Britain. It is sufficient to say that they continued for many years, and spread desolation over the country. The wars occasioned by the Danes were replete with suffering, cruelty, and crime. They were finally checked, and many who had settled in the country were driven away; but others became mingled with the inhabitants, and made another ingredient in the compound of British blood and bone.
The last introduction of foreign people into Britain took place in 1066, when William, Duke of Normandy in France, came with an army, and triumphed over king Harold in the battle of Hastings, and established himself and his family on the throne. Many French people came over with William and settled in the country. The French language became the language of the court and the laws, and French customs were largely introduced among the people.
From this brief sketch, we can see that the English people derive their origin from five races: the Celts, Romans, Anglo-Saxons, Danes, and Normans; and we, descendants of the English, must look back for our first grandfathers and grandmothers to these various nations and tribes. It is from them we derive our blood, our language, and our customs.
It is true that the Anglo-Saxons form the basis of our ancestry: the mixture of the other races with them is not considerable. Our language may afford a pretty fair index to the proportion which the Saxon stock bears to the others. The foundation of our language is Saxon, and consisting chiefly of the short expressive words called monosyllables. To this original stock, we have added words from the Celtic Britons, the Romans, the Danes, and the Norman French. Our language may be compared to a patched garment, the main cloth of which is a Saxon texture; but the patches are furnished by the other nations that have worn it. It is, however, a pretty good language, after all.
