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Early Britain - Anglo-Saxon Britain
Heathen England
by Allen, Grant (B.A.)
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We can now picture to ourselves the general aspect of the country after
the English colonies had established themselves as far west as the
Somersetshire marshes, the Severn, and the Dee. The whole land was
occupied by little groups of Teutonic settlers, each isolated by the
mark within their own township; each tilling the ground with their own
hands and those of their Welsh serfs. The townships were rudely gathered
together into petty chieftainships; and these chieftainships tended
gradually to aggregate into larger kingdoms, which finally merged in the
three great historical divisions of Northumbria, Mercia, and Wessex;
divisions that survive to our own time as the North, the Midlands, and
the South. Meanwhile, most of the Roman towns were slowly depopulated
and fell into disrepair, so that a "waste chester" becomes a common
object in Anglo-Saxon history. Towns belong to a higher civilisation,
and had little place in agricultural England. The roads were neglected
for want of commerce; and trade only survived in London and along the
coast of Kent, where the discovery of Frankish coins proves the
existence of intercourse with the Teutonic kingdom of Neustria, which
had grown up on the ruins of northern Gaul. Everywhere in Britain the
Roman civilisation fell into abeyance: in improved agriculture alone did
any notable relic of its existence remain. The century and a half
between the conquest and the arrival of Augustine is a dreary period of
unmixed barbarism and perpetual anarchy.
From time to time the older settled colonies kept sending out fresh
swarms of young emigrants towards the yet unconquered west, much as the
Americans and Canadians have done in our own days. Armed with their long
swords and battle-axes, the new colonists went forth in family bands,
under petty chieftains, to war against the Welsh; and when they had
conquered themselves a district, they settled on it as lords of the
soil, enslaved the survivors of their enemies, and made their leader
into a king. Meanwhile, the older colonies kept up their fighting spirit
by constant wars amongst themselves. Thus we read of contests between
the men of Kent and the West Saxons, or between conflicting nobles in
Wessex itself. Fighting, in fact, was the one business of the English
freeman, and it was but slowly that he settled down into a quiet
agriculturist. The influence of Christianity alone seems to have wrought
the change. Before the conversion of England, all the glimpses which we
get of the English freeman represent him only as a rude and turbulent
warrior, with the very spirit of his kinsmen, the later wickings of the
north.
An enormous amount of the country still remained overgrown with wild
forest. The whole weald of Kent and Sussex, the great tract of Selwood
in Wessex, the larger part of Warwickshire, the entire Peakland, the
central dividing ridge between the two seas from Yorkshire to the Forth,
and other wide regions elsewhere, were covered with primæval woodlands.
Arden, Charnwood, Wychwood, Sherwood, and the rest, are but the relics
of vast forests which once stretched over half England. The bear still
lurked in the remotest thickets; packs of wolves still issued forth at
night to ravage the herdsman's folds; wild boars wallowed in the fens or
munched acorns under the oakwoods; deer ranged over all the heathy
tracts throughout the whole island; and the wild white cattle, now
confined to Chillingham Park, roamed in many spots from north to south.
Hence hunting was the chief pastime of the princes and ealdormen when
they were not engaged in war with one another or with the Welsh. Game,
boar-flesh, and venison formed an important portion of diet throughout
the whole early English period, up to the Norman conquest, and long
after.
The king was the recognised head of each community, though his position
was hardly more than that of leader of the nobles in war. He received an
original lot in the conquered land, and remained a private possessor of
estates, tilled by his Welsh slaves. He was king of the people, not of
the country, and is always so described in the early monuments. Each
king seems to have had a chief priest in his kingdom.
There was no distinct capital for the petty kingdoms, though a principal
royal residence appears to have been usual. But the kings possessed many
separate hams or estates in their domain, in each of which food and
other material for their use were collected by their serfs. They moved
about with their suite from one of these to another, consuming all that
had been prepared for them in each, and then passing on to the next. The
king himself made the journey in the waggon drawn by oxen, which formed
his rude prerogative. Such primitive royal progresses were absolutely
necessary in so disjointed a state of society, if the king was to govern
at all. Only by moving about and seeing with his own eyes could he gain
any information in a country where organisation was feeble and writing
practically unknown: only by consuming what was grown for him on the
spot where it was grown could he and his suite obtain provisions in the
rude state of Anglo-Saxon communications. But such government as existed
was mainly that of the local ealdormen and the village gentry.
Marriages were practically conducted by purchase, the wife being bought
by the husband from her father's family. A relic of this custom perhaps
still survives in the modern ceremony, when the father gives the bride
in marriage to the bridegroom. Polygamy was not unknown; and it was
usual for men to marry their father's widows. The wives, being part of
the father's property, naturally became part of the son's heritage.
Fathers probably possessed the right of selling their children into
slavery; and we know that English slaves were sold at Rome, being
conveyed thither by Frisian merchants.
The artizan class, such as it was, must have been attached to the houses
of the chieftains, probably in a servile position. Pottery was
manufactured of excellent but simple patterns. Metal work was, of
course, thoroughly understood, and the Anglo-Saxon swords and knives
discovered in barrows are of good construction. Every chief had also his
minstrel, who sang the short and jerky Anglo-Saxon songs to the
accompaniment of a harp. The dead were burnt and their ashes placed in
tumuli in the north: the southern tribes buried their warriors in full
military dress, and from their tombs much of the little knowledge which
we possess as to their habits is derived. Thence have been taken their
swords, a yard long, with ornamental hilt and double-cutting edge, often
covered by runic inscriptions; their small girdle knives; their long
spears; and their round, leather-faced, wooden shields. The jewellery is
of gold, enriched with coloured enamel, pearl, or sliced garnet.
Buckles, rings, bracelets, hairpins, necklaces, scissors, and toilet
requisites were also buried with the dead. Glass drinking-cups which
occur amongst the tombs, were probably imported from the continent to
Kent or London; and some small trade certainly existed with the Roman
world, as we learn from Bæda.
In faith the English remained true to their old Teutonic myths. Their
intercourse with the Christian Welsh was not of a kind to make them
embrace the religion which must have seemed to them that of slaves and
enemies. Bæda tells us that the English worshipped idols, and sacrificed
oxen to their gods. Many traces of their mythology are still left in our
midst.
First in importance among their deities came Woden, the Odin of our
Scandinavian kinsmen, whose name we still preserve in Wednesday (dies
Mercurii). To him every royal family of the English traced its descent.
Mr. Kemble has pointed out many high places in England which keep his
name to the present day. Wanborough, in Surrey, at the
heaven-water-parting of the Hog's Back, was originally Wodnesbeorh, or
the hill of Woden. Wanborough, in Wiltshire, which divides the valleys
of the Kennet and the Isis, has the same origin; as has also
Woodnesborough in Kent. Wonston, in Hants, was probably Woden's stone;
Wambrook, Wampool, and Wansford, his brook, his pool, and his ford. All
these names are redolent of that nature-worship which was so marked a
portion of the Anglo-Saxon religion. Godshill, in the Isle of Wight, now
crowned by a Christian church, was also probably the site of early Woden
worship. The boundaries of estates, as mentioned in charters, give
instances of trees, stones, and posts, used as landmarks, and dedicated
to Woden, thus conferring upon them a religious sanction, like that of
Hermes amongst the Greeks. Anglo-Saxon worship generally gathered around
natural features; and sacred oaks, ashes, wells, hills, and rivers are
among the commonest memorials of our heathen ancestors. Many of them
were reconsecrated after the introduction of Christianity to saints of
the church, and so have retained their character for sanctity almost to
our own time.
Thunor, the same word as our modern English thunder, was practically,
though not philologically, the Anglo-Saxon representative of Zeus. We
are more familiar with his name in its clipped Norse form of Thor.
Thursday is Thunor's day (Thunres dæg: dies Jovis) and the thunderbolt,
really a polished stone axe of the aboriginal neolithic savages, was
supposed to be his weapon. Thundersfield, in Surrey; Thundersley, in
Essex; and Thursley, in Surrey, still preserve the memory of his sacred
sites. Thurleigh, in Bedford; Thurlow, in Essex; Thursley, in
Cumberland; Thursfield, in Staffordshire; and Thursford, in Norfolk, are
more probably due to later Danish influence, and commemorate namesakes
of the Norse Thor rather than the English Thunor.
Tiw, the philological equivalent of Zeus, answered rather in character
to Ares, and had for his day Tuesday (dies Martis). Tiw's mere and Tiw's
thorn occur in charters, and a few places still retain his name. Frea
gives his title to Friday (dies Veneris), and Sætere to Saturday (dies
Saturni). But the Anglo-Saxon worship really paid more attention to
certain deified heroes,—Bældæg, Geat, and Sceaf; and to certain
personified abstractions,—Wig (war), Death, and Sige (victory), than to
these minor gods. And, as often happens in Polytheistic religions, there
is reason to believe that the popular creed had much less reference to
the gods at all than to many inferior spirits of a naturalistic sort.
For the early English farmer, the world around was full of spiritual
beings, half divine, half devilish. Fiends and monsters peopled the
fens, and tales of their doings terrified his childhood. Spirits of
flood and fell swamped his boat or misled him at night. Water nicors
haunted the streams; fairies danced on the green rings of the pasture;
dwarfs lived in the barrows of Celtic or neolithic chieftains, and
wrought strange weapons underground. The mark, the forest, the hills,
were all full for the early Englishman of mysterious and often hostile
beings. At length the Weirds or Fates swept him away. Beneath the earth
itself, Hel, mistress of the cold and joyless world of shades, at last
received him; unless, indeed, by dying a warrior's death, he was
admitted to the happy realms of Wælheal. As a whole, the Anglo-Saxon
heathendom was a religion of terrorism. Evil spirits surrounded men on
every side, dwelt in all solitary places, and stalked over the land by
night. Ghosts dwelt in the forest; elves haunted the rude stone circles
of elder days. The woodland, still really tenanted by deer, wolves, and
wild boars, was also filled by popular imagination with demons and imps.
Charms, spells, and incantations formed the most real and living part of
the national faith; and many of these survived into Christian times as
witchcraft. Some of them, and of the early myths, even continue to be
repeated in the folk-lore of the present day. Such are the legends of
the Wild Huntsman and of Wayland Smith. Indeed, heathendom had a strong
hold over the common English mind long after the public adoption of
Christianity; and heathen sacrifices continued to be offered in secret
as late as the thirteenth century. Our poetry and our ordinary language
is tinged with heathen ideas even in modern times.
Still more interesting, however, are those relics of yet earlier social
states, which we find amongst the Anglo-Saxons themselves. The
production of fire by rubbing together two sticks is a common practice
amongst all savages; and it has acquired a sacred significance which
causes it to live on into more civilised stages. Once a year the
needfire was so lighted, and all the hearths of the village were
rekindled from the blaze thus obtained. Cattle were "passed through the
fire" to preserve them from the attacks of fiends; and perhaps even
children were sometimes treated in the same manner. The ceremony,
originally adopted, perhaps, by the English from their Celtic serfs,
still lingers in remote parts of the country, as the lighting of fires
on St. John's Eve. Tattooing the face was practised by the noble
classes. It seems probable that the early English sacrificed human
victims, as the Germans certainly did to Wuotan (the High Dutch Woden);
and we know that the practice of suttee existed, and that widows slew
themselves on the death of their husbands, in order to accompany them to
the other world. Even more curious are the vestiges of Totemism, or
primitive animal worship, common to all branches of the Aryan race, as
well as to the North American Indians, the Australian black fellows, and
many other savages. Totemism consists in the belief that each family is
literally descended from a particular plant or animal, whose name it
bears; and members of the family generally refuse to pluck the plant or
kill the animal after which they are named. Of these beliefs we find
apparently several traces in Anglo-Saxon life. The genealogies of the
kings include such names as those of the horse, the mare, the ash, and
the whale. In the very early Anglo-Saxon poem of Beowulf, two of the
characters bear the names of Wulf and Eofer (boar). The wolf and the
raven were sacred animals, and have left their memory in many places, as
well as in such personal titles as Æthelwulf, the noble wolf. The boar
was also greatly reverenced; its head was used as an amulet, or as a
crest for helmets, and oaths were taken upon it till late in the middle
ages. Our own boar's head at Christmas is a relic of the old belief. The
sanctity of the horse and the ash has been already mentioned. Now many
of the Anglo-Saxon clans bore names implying their descent from such
plants or animals. Thus a charter mentions the Æscings, or sons of the
ash, in Surrey; another refers to the Earnings, or sons of the eagle
(earn); a third to the Heartings, or sons of the hart; a fourth to the
Wylfings, or sons of the wolf; and a fifth to the Thornings, or sons of
the thorn. The oak has left traces of his descendants at Oakington, in
Cambridge: the birch, at Birchington, in Kent; the boar (Eofer) at
Evringham, in Yorkshire; the hawk, at Hawkinge, in Kent; the horse, at
Horsington, in Lincolnshire; the raven, at Raveningham, in Norfolk; the
sun, at Sunning, in Berks; and the serpent (Wyrm), at Wormingford,
Worminghall, and Wormington, in Essex, Bucks, and Gloucester,
respectively. Every one of these objects is a common and well-known
totem amongst savage tribes; and the inference that at some earlier
period the Anglo-Saxons had been Totemists is almost irresistible.
Moreover, it is an ascertained fact that the custom of exogamy (marriage
by capture outside the tribe), and of counting kindred on the female
side alone, accompanies the low stage of culture with which Totemism is
usually associated. We know also that this method of reckoning
relationship obtained amongst certain Aryan tribes, such as the Picts.
Traces of the ceremonial form of marriage by capture survived in England
to a late date in the middle ages; and therefore the custom of exogamy,
upon which the ceremony is based, must probably have existed amongst the
English themselves at some earlier period. Even in the first historical
age, a conquered king generally gave his daughter in marriage to his
conqueror, as a mark of submission, which is a relic of the same custom.
Now, if members of the various tribes—Jutes, English, and Saxons,—used
at one time habitually to intermarry with one another, and to give their
children the clan-name of the father, it would follow that persons
bearing the same clan-name would appear in all the tribes. Such we find
to be actually the case. The Hemings, for instance, are met with in six
counties—York, Lincoln, Huntingdon, Suffolk, Northampton, and Somerset;
the Mannings occur in English Norfolk and in Saxon Dorset; the
Billings, and many other clans, have left their names over the whole
land, from north to south and from east to west alike. It has often been
assumed that these facts prove the intimate intermixture of the invading
tribes; but the supposition of the former existence of exogamy, and
consequent appearance of similar clan-names in all the tribes, seems far
more probable than such an extreme mingling of different tribesmen over
the whole conquered
territory.[1] Part
of the early English ceremony of
marriage consisted in the bridegroom touching the head of the bride with
a shoe, a relic, doubtless, of the original mode of capture, when the
captor placed his foot on the neck of his prisoner or slave. After
marriage, the wife's hair was cut short, which is a universal mark of
slavery.
Thus we may divide the early English religion into four elements. First,
the remnants of a very primitive savage faith, represented by the
sanctity of animals and plants, by Totemism, by the needfire, and by the
use of amulets, charms, and spells. Second, the relics of the old common
Aryan nature-worship, found in the reverence paid to Thunor, or Thunder,
who is a form of Zeus, and in the sacredness of hills, rivers, wells,
fords, and the open air. Third, a system of Teutonic hero or
ancestor-worship, typified by Woden, Bældæg, and the other great names
of the genealogies, and having its origin in the belief in ghosts.
Fourth, a deification of certain abstract ideas, such as War, Fate,
Victory, and Death. But the average heathen Anglo-Saxon religion was
merely a vast mass of superstition, a dark and gloomy terrorism,
begotten of the vague dread of misfortune which barbarians naturally
feel in a half-peopled land, where war and massacre are the highest
business of every man's lifetime, and a violent death the ordinary way
in which he meets his end.
[1]
owe this ingenious explanation to a note in Mr. Andrew
Lang's essays prefixed to Mr. Holland's translation of
Aristotle's Politics. He has there also suggested the
analysis of the clan names for traces of Totemism, whose
results I have given above in part.
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