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ANCIENT Britons, Romans,
Angles, Saxons, Norwegians, Danes, and Normans, were well shaken together
and compounded to form the English nation. In rural and inland districts
that composition remained substantially unaltered from the death of King
Henry, the Conqueror's youngest son, in 1136, to 1800.
The mixture varied in different localities. From
Kent to Leith on the whole of the east coast of Great
Britain, the Teutonic, Scandinavian, Frisian, and
Danish element undoubtedly so markedly predominated that the aboriginal British element almost
appeared to have been eliminated, which, however,
could scarcely have been the case. Wessex also
was pretty thoroughly Saxonised, and its kings
were able to extend their sway over nearly all
modern England, and to impose their language, by
degrees, on their whole dominions. But Wales
remained independent, and Devonshire, Cornwall,
and Cumberland, and Westmoreland and Lancashire
also, did not lose their native British population.
On the West side, from the Channel to the rock of
Dumbarton, the British element remained as predominant as the non-Celtic element was on the
island's other side. How was it that the ancient
Britons of the west side of the country so early
adopted the language of their Saxon rulers, when
they themselves continued to be the people of these
districts much as they had been under the higher
civilisation of Roman domination? Well, it is a
characteristic of all the large branches of the
Celtic stock to be able to acquire foreign languages
with much facility, and to be proud of that gift of
theirs, while it is otherwise with more stolid and
stable descendants of the followers of Hengist and
Horsa. During the Roman domination many of
the ancient Britons had, no doubt, learned to speak
and write the language of their rulers, and to
neglect their own. A Saxonised Church was at
the back of King Alfred, and of his less civilised
and very truculent predecessors. But here it is to
be noted that Alfred's language, once nationalised,
held its ground firmly against a further overwhelming
change. Although after the Conquest Norman
French was, for upwards of three centuries, the
language of court, feudal nobility, and legislation,
Saxon stolidity, with its immovable tenacity, has
to be thanked for giving the British Empire the
language of Shakespeare. Upon Saxon stability,
solidly resting upon limited practical aims and upon
Celtic restlessness, backed by boundless imagination
and initiative potentialities, the Norman Conquest
deeply impressed the seal of cementing feudal order.
Before, their common faith more than secular
organisation, was the bond of union between badly
amalgamated races with discordant traditions. The
Church founded by Augustine and Paulinus was
arrogant from the beginning. It absorbed the
work of the lona missionaries in Northumbria, and trampled on the feelings
and rights of the bishops and clergy of the old British Church, but it
breathed into the races possessing England a sort of consolidating unity.
Setting aside the numerous
and widely variegated
incomers of recent time, and excepting the dalesmen
of old Danish descent who still retain marked
ancestral characteristics, there are not many among
the native people of the West Riding of Yorkshire
belonging to the white-skinned, fair-haired, blue-
eyed type that Pope Gregory said should not be
called Angles but Angels. The prevalent type
everywhere is that of medium-sized, dark-eyed,
brown or black-haired, alert and energetic people.
This is particularly the case in the district which
includes Leeds, Bradford, and Halifax, with their
dependent townships, villages, and glens. Charlotte
Bronte has embalmed, in her wonderful stories, the
dialect of the English language which was spoken
over that whole district in her time, and is
yet spoken pretty largely, although board school
teaching is killing it by degrees. It retained on
the face of it marks of high antiquity. But
language can pass from race to race like the bird
from bush to bush; and, as said already, the Celtic
races have always been ready learners of new
languages. They have proved this in Great Britain
and Ireland. Race types are a very different thing.
The Brigantes of Yorkshire, who sent a colony
called the "lan Breogan" to Ireland, probably in
the time of Agricola, were submerged under Latin
domination, Saxon rule, and Norman feudalism, but
if one can judge from the looks of the native inhabitants of the West Riding, descendants of the
submerged Brigantes always retained their position
as the people of that part of the country, and in
last century became masterfully resurgent. |
