Source Material for the Myth of 'Saxon' England, continued Shore, Thomas William, Origin of the Anglo-Saxon Race, A Study of the Settlement of England and the Tribal Origin of the Old English People, edited by his sons T. W. Shore and L. E. Shore, (Port Washington, New York/London: Kennikat Press, first published in 1906, reissued in 1971). The author writes: "We have so long been accustomed to call some of the English settlers Saxons that it is with some surprise we learn none of them called themselves by this name. As far as England was concerned, this was the name by which they were commonly called by the Britons, and it was not generally used by the people themselves until some centuries later." Langford, Paul, Englishness Identified, Manners and Character, 1650 -1850,(Oxford, 2000). On 19th century beliefs about England's racial ancestry, the author writes:  "By mid-century it was possible to believe that the English were racially pure.  In his famous appeal to the 'youths of England' Ruskin described them as 'undegenerate in race' and 'of the best northern blood.'  This had certainly not been the eighteenth-century view.  The mixture of German and Scandinavian tribes which had erupted into Britain between the fifth and eleventh centuries were then thought of as having created a mongrel people." These views about our pre-Conquest ancestors were expressed in especially virulent ways:  "As the antiquary Sir John Spelman put it, they were the 'promiscuous Vent of all Germany, and for the most part the Refuse-Scumm of all the Maritime Parts thereof'.  The successive invasions of those times he called 'five great Plagues or Scourges.'" Thomas Carlyle, the late Victorian author, wrote:  A gluttonous race of Jutes and Angles, capable of no grand combinations; lumbering about in potbellied equanimity; not dreaming of heroic toil and silence and endurance, such as leads to the high places of this Universe, and the golden mountain-tops where dwell the Spirits of the Dawn. Right. On the other hand:  "In England there was a well-established view that mongrelism might be no bad thing. Indeed it was precisely the charge against the Celts, that as the remnants of the once proud race of Ancient Britons they were too racially pure for their own good."......"Racial mixing was thought to have many advantages, including the legendary beauty of English women." Laing, Lloyd Robert, Anglo-Saxon England - (Britain before the Conquest), (London: Routledge & Keegan Paul Ltd, 1979). The author writes: "The terminology situation is further complicated by the use of the words 'Angle' and 'Saxon' by the people themselves. It seems that the incomers regarded themselves as Angles the minute they set foot on British soil, despite their origins. The Celts and Romano-Britons on the other hand used the word 'Saxon' to refer to the incomers. This term survives to this day in fairly common use as 'sassanach' in Scottish parlance, which has come to be a relatively derogatory title for those British people who are not Celts. A similar term is used in Welsh and Irish......Recently some scholars have favoured referring to the newcomers as English from the moment they arrived, and to their forefathers on the Continent as the ancestral English." Smith, Goldwin, A History of England, (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1974), p.14. The author writes: "The term 'Saxon' itself was apparently used by the Romano-British as a general term of abuse; it included all the invaders." The Oxford Illustrated Prehistory of Europe, edited by Barry Cunliffe: "The name of the Saxons figures most prominently in our written sources, but it is likely that this was a name applied to any raider or migrant who came across the north seas." Lappenberg, J. M., A History of England Under the Anglo-Saxon Kings, Vol I, translated by Benjamin Thorpe, (London: George Bell and Sons, 1884). This English translation is 117 years old, but the original German edition was much older! Lappenberg wrote: "...the Angles are chiefly conspicuous...they were undoubtedly more numerous than even the Saxons, and sufficiently powerful to impart their name, as a national denomination, to the whole new Germanic land, to the exclusion of that of the Saxons......The territories occupied by the Saxons were small in comparison with those of the Angles......Both Bede and Alfred distinctly mention the district of Angeln as the original seat of this people, a name now confined to the country between the Slie, or Schley, and Flensburg, but which anciently must have comprised a much larger territory. The former predominance of the people of Angeln seems to derive confirmation from the ancient Danish saga, which represents Angul and Dan as the founders of their nation......The old British tradition makes Hengest and his companions embark for Britain from the Isle of Angul, although they are otherwise spoken of as Saxons..." Yorke, Barbara, The Origins of Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms: The Contribution of Written Sources. The author tells us that the ancient chroniclers Gregory of Tours and Sidonius Apollinaris used the word 'Saxon' as "...a term which embraces all non-Frankish Germans from the North Sea zones." Previous Page......Next Page