It is generally admitted that the Romans were most tolerant of local sensibilities, and there is no reason to assume that existing British characteristics were either attacked or suppressed. To assume that some hundreds of years later the advent of a few boat-loads of Anglo-Saxon adventurers wiped out the Romano-British inhabitants and eradicated all customs, manners, and traditions is an obvious fallacy under which the evidence of folklore does not permit us to labour. The greater probability is that the established culture imposed itself more or less upon the new-comers, more particularly in those remote districts which it was only after hundreds of years that the Saxons, by their conventional policy of peaceful penetration, punctuated by flashes of frightfulness, succeeded in dominating.
Even after the Norman Conquest there are circumstances which point to the probability that the Celtic population was much larger and more powerful than is usually supposed. Of these the most important is the fact that the signatures to very early charters supply us with names of persons of Celtic race occupying positions of dignity at the courts of Anglo-Saxon kings.[33]
The force of custom and the apparently undying continuance of folk-memory are among the best attested phenomena of folklore. It was remarked by the elder Disraeli that tradition can neither be made nor destroyed, and if this be true in general it is peculiarly true of the stubborn and pig-headed British. Our churches stand to-day not only on the primeval inconvenient hill-sites, but frequently within the time-honoured earthwork, or beside the fairy-well. On Palm Sunday the villagers of Avebury still toil to the summit of Silbury Hill, there to consume fig cakes and drink sugared water; and on the same festival the people even to-day march in procession to the prehistoric earthwork on the top of Martinshell Hill. Our country fairs are generally held near or within a pagan earthwork, and instance after instance might be adduced all pointing to the immortality of custom and the persistent sanctity of pagan sites.
In the sixth century of our era the monk Gildas referred complacently but erroneously to the ancient British faith as being dead. “I shall not,” he says, “enumerate those diabolical idols of my country, which almost surpassed in number those of Egypt, and of which we still see some mouldering away within or without the deserted temples, with stiff and deformed features as was customary. Nor will I cry out upon the mountains, fountains, or hills, or upon the rivers, which now are subservient to the use of men, but once were an abomination and destruction to them, and to which the blind people paid divine honour.”
Notwithstanding the jeremiads of poor Gildas[34] the folk-faith survived; indeed, as Mr. Johnson says, the heathen belief has been present all the time, and need not greatly astonish us since the most advanced materialist is frequently a victim of trivial superstitions which are scouted by scientific men as baseless and absurd.
The Augustine of Canterbury, who is recorded to have baptised on one day 10,000 persons in the river Swale, recommended with pious ingenuity that the heathen temples should not be destroyed, but converted to the honour of Christ by washing their walls with holy water and substituting holy relics and symbols for the images of the heathen gods. This is an illuminating sidelight on the methods by which the images of the heathen idols were gradually transformed into the images of Christian saints, and there is little doubt that as the immemorial shrines fell into ruin and were rebuilt and again rebuilt, the sacred images were scrupulously relimned.
Even to-day, after 2000 years of Christian discipline, the clergy dare not in some districts interfere with the time-honoured tenets of their parishioners. In Normandy and Brittany the priests, against their inclination, are compelled to take part in pagan ceremonials,[35] and in Spain quite recently an archbishop has been nearly killed by his congregation for interdicting old customs.[36]
The earliest British shrines were merely stones, or caves, or holy wells, or sacred trees, or tumuli, preferably on a hill-top or in a wood. The next type is found in the monastery of St. Bride, which was simply a circular palisade encircling a sacred fire. This was in all probability similar to the earliest known form of the Egyptian temple, a wicker hut with tall poles forming the sides of the door; in front of this extended an enclosure which had two poles with flags on either side of the entrance. In the middle of the enclosure or court was a staff bearing the emblem of the God.
Later came stone circles and megalithic monuments in various forms, whence the connection is direct to cathedrals such as Chartres, which is said to be built largely from the remains of the prehistoric megaliths which originally stood there. There are chapels in Brittany and elsewhere built over pagan monoliths; indeed no new faith can ever do more than superimpose itself upon an older one, and statements about the wise and tender treatment of the old nature worship by the Church are euphemisms for the bald fact that Christianity, finding it impracticable to wean the heathen from their obdurate beliefs, made the best of the situation by decreeing its feasts to coincide with pre-existing festivals.