Early Britain - Anglo-Saxon Britain Anglo-Saxon Influences In Modern Britain byAllen, Grant (B.A.)
Perhaps the best way of summing up the results of the present inquiry
will be by considering briefly the main elements of our existing life
and our actual empire which we owe to the Anglo-Saxon nationality. We
may most easily glance at them under the five separate heads of blood,
character, language, civilisation, and institutions.
In blood, it is probable that the importance of the Anglo-Saxon
element has been generally over-estimated. It has been too usual to
speak of England as though it were synonymous with Britain, and to
overlook the numerical strength of the Celtic population in Scotland,
Wales, Cornwall, and Ireland. It has been too usual, also, to neglect
the considerable Danish, Norwegian, and Norman element, which, though
belonging to the same Low German and Scandinavian stock, yet differs in
some important particulars from the Anglo-Saxon. But we have seen reason
to conclude that even in the most purely Teutonic region of Britain, the
district between Forth and Southampton Water, a considerable proportion
of the people were of Celtic or pre-Celtic descent, from the very first
age of English settlement. This conclusion is borne out both by the
physical traits of the peasantry and the nature of the early remains. In
the western half of South Britain, from Clyde to Cornwall, the
proportion of Anglo-Saxon blood has probably always been far smaller.
The Norman conquerors themselves were of mixed Scandinavian, Gaulish,
and Breton descent. Throughout the middle ages, the more Teutonic half
of Britain—the southern and eastern tract—was undoubtedly the most
important: and the English, mixed with Scandinavians from Denmark or
Normandy, formed the ruling caste. Up to the days of Elizabeth, Teutonic
Britain led the van in civilisation, population, and commerce. But since
the age of the Tudors, it seems probable, as Dr. Rolleston and others
have shown, that the Celtic element has largely reasserted itself. A
return wave of Celts has inundated the Teutonic region. Scottish
Highlanders have poured into Glasgow, Edinburgh, and London: Welshmen
have poured into Liverpool, Manchester, and all the great towns of
England: Irishmen have poured into every part of the British dominions.
During the middle ages, the Teutonic portion of Britain was by far the
most densely populated; but at the present day, the almost complete
restriction of coal to the Celtic or semi-Celtic area has aggregated the
greatest masses of population in the west and north. If we take into
consideration the probable large substratum of Celts or earlier races in
the Teutonic counties, the wide area of the undoubted Celtic region
which pours forth a constant stream of emigrants towards the Teutonic
tract, the change of importance between south-east and north-west, since
the industrial development of the coal country, and the more rapid rate
of increase among the Celts, it becomes highly probable that not
one-half the population of the British Isles is really of Teutonic
descent. Moreover, it must be remembered that, whatever may have been
the case in the primitive Anglo-Saxon period, intermarriages between
Celts and Teutons have been common for at least four centuries past; and
that therefore almost all Englishmen at the present day possess at least
a fraction of Celtic blood.
"The people," says Professor Huxley, "are vastly less Teutonic than
their language." It is not likely that any absolutely pure-blooded
Anglo-Saxons now exist in our midst at all, except perhaps among the
farmer class in the most Teutonic and agricultural shires: and even this
exception is extremely doubtful. Persons bearing the most obviously
Celtic names—Welsh, Cornish, Irish, or Highland Scots—are to be found
in all our large towns, and scattered up and down through the country
districts. Hence we may conclude with great probability that the
Anglo-Saxon blood has long since been everywhere diluted by a strong
Celtic intermixture. Even in the earliest times and in the most Teutonic
counties, many serfs of non-Teutonic race existed from the very
beginning: their masters have ere now mixed with other non-Teutonic
families elsewhere, till even the restricted English people at the
present day can hardly claim to be much more than half Anglo-Saxon. Nor
do the Teutons now even retain their position as a ruling caste. Mixed
Celts in England itself have long since risen to many high places.
Leading families of Welsh, Cornish, Scotch, and Irish blood have also
been admitted into the peerage of the United Kingdom, and form a large
proportion of the House of Commons, of the official world, and of the
governing class in India, the Colonies, and the empire generally. These
families have again intermarried with the nobility and gentry of
English, Danish, or Norman extraction, and thus have added their part to
the intricate intermixture of the two races. At the present day, we can
only speak of the British people as Anglo-Saxons in a conventional
sense: so far as blood goes, we need hardly hesitate to set them down as
a pretty equal admixture of Teutonic and Celtic elements.
In character, the Anglo-Saxons have bequeathed to us much of the
German solidity, industry, and patience, traits which have been largely
amalgamated with the intellectual quickness and emotional nature of the
Celt, and have thus produced the prevailing English temperament as we
actually know it. To the Anglo-Saxon blood we may doubtless attribute
our general sobriety, steadiness, and persistence; our scientific
patience and thoroughness; our political moderation and endurance; our
marked love of individual freedom and impatience of arbitrary restraint.
The Anglo-Saxon was slow to learn, but retentive of what he learnt. On
the other hand, he was unimaginative; and this want of imagination may
be traced in the more Teutonic counties to the present day. But when
these qualities have been counteracted by the Celtic wealth of fancy,
the race has produced the great English literature,—a literature whose
form is wholly Roman, while in matter, its more solid parts doubtless
owe much to the Teuton, and its lighter portions, especially its poetry
and romance, can be definitely traced in great measure to known Celtic
elements. While the Teutonic blood differentiates our somewhat slow and
steady character from the more logical but volatile and unstable Gaul,
the Celtic blood differentiates it from the far slower, heavier, and
less quick or less imaginative Teutons of Germany and Scandinavia.
In language we owe almost everything to the Anglo-Saxons. The Low
German dialect which they brought with them from Sleswick and Hanover
still remains in all essentials the identical speech employed by
ourselves at the present day. It received a few grammatical forms from
the cognate Scandinavian dialects; it borrowed a few score or so of
words from the Welsh; it adopted a small Latin vocabulary of
ecclesiastical terms from the early missionaries; it took in a
considerable number of Romance elements after the Norman Conquest; it
enriched itself with an immense variety of learned compounds from the
Greek and Latin at the Renaissance period: but all these additions
affected almost exclusively its stock of words, and did not in the least
interfere with its structure or its place in the scientific
classification of languages. The English which we now speak is not in
any sense a Romance tongue. It is the lineal descendant of the English
of Ælfred and of Bæda, enlarged in its vocabulary by many words which
they did not use, impoverished by the loss of a few which they employed,
yet still essentially identical in grammar and idiom with the language
of the first Teutonic settlers. Gradually losing its inflexions from the
days of Eadgar onward, it assumed its existing type before the
thirteenth century, and continuously incorporated an immense number of
French and Latin words, which greatly increased its value as an
instrument of thought. But it is important to recollect that the English
tongue has nothing at all to do in its origin with either Welsh or
French. The Teutonic speech of the Anglo-Saxon settlers drove out the
old Celtic speech throughout almost all England and the Scotch Lowlands
before the end of the eleventh century; it drove out the Cornish in the
eighteenth century; and it is now driving out the Welsh, the Erse, and
the Gaelic, under our very eyes. In language at least the British empire
(save of course India) is now almost entirely English, or in other
words, Anglo-Saxon.
In civilisation, on the other hand, we owe comparatively little to the
direct Teutonic influence. The native Anglo-Saxon culture was low, and
even before its transplantation to Britain it had undergone some
modification by mediate mercantile transactions with Rome and the
Mediterranean states. The alphabet, coins, and even a few southern
words, (such as "alms") had already filtered through to the shores of
the Baltic. After the colonisation of Britain, the Anglo-Saxons learnt
something of the higher agriculture from their Romanised serfs, and
adopted, as early as the heathen period, some small portion of the Roman
system, so far as regarded roads, fortifications, and, perhaps
buildings. The Roman towns still stood in their midst, and a fragment,
at least, of the Romanised population still carried on commerce with the
half-Roman Frankish kingdom across the Channel. The re-introduction of
Christianity was at the same time the re-introduction of Roman culture
in its later form. The Latin language and the Mediterranean arts once
more took their place in Britain. The Romanising prelates,—Wilfrith,
Theodore, Dunstan,—were also the leaders of civilisation in their own
times. The Norman Conquest brought England into yet closer connection
with the Continent; and Roman law and Roman arts still more deeply
affected our native culture. Norman artificers supplanted the rude
English handicraftsmen in many cases, and became a dominant class in
towns. The old English literature, and especially the old English
poetry, died utterly out with Piers Plowman; while a new literature,
based upon Romance models, took its origin with Chaucer and the other
Court poets. Celtic-Latin rhyme ousted the genuine Teutonic
alliteration. With the Renaissance, the triumph of the southern culture
was complete. Greek philosophy and Greek science formed the
starting-point for our modern developments. The ecclesiastical revolt
from papal Rome was accompanied by a literary and artistic return to the
models of pagan Rome. The Renaissance was, in fact, the throwing off of
all that was Teutonic and mediæval, the resumption of progressive
thought and scientific knowledge, at the point where it had been
interrupted by the Germanic inroads of the fifth century. The unjaded
vigour of the German races, indeed, counted for much; and Europe took up
the lost thread of the dying empire with a youthful freshness very
different from the effete listlessness of the Mediterranean culture in
its last stage. Yet it is none the less true that our whole civilisation
is even now the carrying out and completion of the Greek and Roman
culture in new fields and with fresh intellects. We owe little here to
the Anglo-Saxon; we owe everything to the great stream of western
culture, which began in Egypt and Assyria, permeated Greece and the
Archipelago, spread to Italy and the Roman empire, and, finally, now
embraces the whole European and American world. The Teutonic intellect
and the Teutonic character have largely modified the spirit of the
Mediterranean civilisation; but the tools, the instruments, the
processes themselves, are all legacies from a different race. Englishmen
did not invent letters, money, metallurgy, glass, architecture, and
science; they received them all ready-made, from Italy and the Ægean, or
more remotely still from the Euphrates and the Nile. Nor is it necessary
to add that in religion we have no debt to the Anglo-Saxon, our existing
creed being entirely derived through Rome from the Semitic race.
In institutions, once more, the Anglo-Saxon has contributed almost
everything. Our political government, our limited monarchy, our
parliament, our shires, our hundreds, our townships, are considered by
the dominant school of historians to be all Anglo-Saxon in origin. Our
jury is derived from an Anglo-Saxon custom; our nobility and officials
are representatives of Anglo-Saxon earls and reeves. The Teuton, when he
settled in Britain, brought with him the Teutonic organisation in its
entirety. He established it throughout the whole territory which he
occupied or conquered. As the West Saxon over-lordship grew to be the
English kingdom, and as the English kingdom gradually annexed or
coalesced with the Welsh and Cornish principalities, the Scotch and
Irish kingdoms,—the Teutonic system spread over the whole of Britain.
It underwent some little modification at the hands of the Normans, and
more still at those of the Angevins; but, on the whole, it is still a
wide yet natural development of the old Germanic constitution.
Thus, to sum up in a single sentence, the Anglo-Saxons have contributed
about one-half the blood of Britain, or rather less; but they have
contributed the whole framework of the language, and the whole social
and political organisation; while, on the other hand, they have
contributed hardly any of the civilisation, and none of the religion. We
are now a mixed race, almost equally Celtic and Teutonic by descent; we
speak a purely Teutonic language, with a large admixture of Latin roots
in its vocabulary; we live under Teutonic institutions; we enjoy the
fruits of a Græco-Roman civilisation; and we possess a Christian
Church, handed down to us directly through Roman sources from a Hebrew
original. To the extent so indicated, and to that extent only, we may
still be justly styled an Anglo-Saxon people.
