Johnathan Shaw quotes the historian Michael McCormick who
says that by the eighth century, English civilisation considered itself
completely Anglo-Saxon, spoke only Anglo-Saxon and thought that everyone had
"come over on the Mayflower as it were." [35] To all intents and purposes since that time
the English have not generally acknowledged any descent from the Britons and
characterise the indigenous Britons as "Welsh" who have been
subjected to centuries of racial abuse and derision. Shaw reports findings from a DNA study that
explored DNA from Y chromosomes, i.e. those passed from father to son, and
found that on a line from east to west, British men had not passed down their Y
chromosomes and instead the Y chromosomes were Germanic. English town dwellers
were "indistinguishably
genetically" from the inhabitants of the Dutch province of Friesland. However, the persistence of mitrochondrial
DNA suggests the survival of British females. The study concluded that there
had been a massive replacement of native men. The article also talks about the
lower status of Britons and Anglo-Saxons in early English law.
As a comparison, the Y chromosomes of part of Colombia are
95% European, but the mitochondrial DNA (inherited from the mother) is 95%
native American. This supports a view of conquering men taking the local women
they want. This is not surprising, we
see it to this day where conquering fighters take the local women.
The British monk Gildas writes of the savage attacks of the
Anglo-Saxons on the Britons and paints a picture of the genocide of the Britons
at the hands of the Anglo-Saxons [36]. Nennius presents the Anglo-Saxon conquest and
the British resistance very much as an ethnic conflict [37]. Bede is critical of the Britons and virulent
against some of them. He is clearly an English writer and the Britons are a
foreign people of low regard. He builds a case for the supremacy of his own
English people [38] Bede referring to the
Northumbrian king Aethelfrith says that he ravaged the Britons more cruelly
than any other English leader [28].
The Anglo-Saxon chronicle has repeated entries on how the
Anglo-Saxons slew thousands of the Britons (or Welsh) and took their land . One
entry for 607 says "If the Welsh will not have peace with us, they shall
perish at the hands of the Saxons".
The poetry cycle called Canu Heledd talks about how the
Lloegrwys (the English) come and
despoil. Owain ab Urien in the battle of Gwen Ystrad talks about how the
Lloegrwys sleep with a light in their eyes (i.e. are dead). Armes Prydein Vawr
talks about a battle to be fought between the Cymry and the Saxons. In
retrospect, this has always been presented as an ethnic conflict.
Though some authors have played down the ethnic nature of
the conflict between Briton and Saxon that led eventually to the almost total
Anglicisation of the once British island, I think to do so is to see it with an
Anglocentric eye. The Welsh have never forgotten that the island was theirs and
the continued erosion of their language and culture is a continuation of a
struggle that has gone on for 1500 years. It began in Anglo-Saxon times,
continued with the Acts of Unions and the Victorian attempt to eradicate Welsh
through the education system. Bedwyr Lewis Jones, professor of Welsh at Bangor,
and expert on place-names, when asked by a newspaper in the 1990s, what his greatest regret was said the Coming
of the Saxons.
In terms of the survival of the Britons, O'Sullivan, using
possibl out of date information on place-name distributions makes the still
valid observation that in Devon, which came under Anglo-Saxon control around
the same time as our region came under Northumbrian control in the 7th Century,
British place-names are only about 1% of the total. She notes that in the
modern county of Cumbria they are common in the north but rare in the south - around
the same as Devon in south Cumbria. She quotes Kenneth Jackson's view that the
names in the north of Cumbria date from the expansion of Strathclyde in the
10th Century and I infer from that she is suggesting that without the
re-conquest of Cumberland by the Strathclyde Britons, the number of British
names, and therefore the extent of British linguistic survival in Cumbria would
be about the same as in Devon [39]
There is more to ethnicity than language and Angus
Winchester looked at the pattern of multiple estates in Cumbria. He said that
the multiple estate which has its administrative core around the mother church
and lord's dwelling in the lowland fringe, then had large area of upland to
exploit. He identifies the church at Brigham and the later castle at
Cockermouth with the Derwent Fells as the common upland, then St Bees as the
church with the later castle at Egremont
and lord's holdings at Coulderton with uplands into Ennerdale. Then at Millom
with uplands in Dunnerdale. He finds the same pattern around Furness and says it
is repeated across Cumbria and Southern Scotland [40]. The tenants held the land
with tributes in cornage - a tax paid in cattle - and seawake on the Cumberland
coast, which he argues is an ancient practice of watching the coast - we could
fantasise how ancient - back to Roman times maybe? Winchester talks about the duty of tenants to
work on bordland - which seems to be a translation of the Welsh tir bwrdd - with the identical purpose
of proving food for the lord's table [40]. Winchester cites G W S Barrow, who believed
that these multiple estates found throughout Northern England and Southern
Scotland were Celtic in origin, and thus the Anglo-Saxons had taken them over,
with or without their original Britons.
Cornage - the payment of cattle tribute is the
distinguishing features of Cumberland, Westmorland, Northumberland and Durham
and North Lancashire. It is equivalent to the Welsh commorth and was known in
Northumbria as metreth de vacca - that is the Cumbric word metreth apparently meaning cow tax (Welsh bu treth though mu
for bu "cow, head of
cattle" can occur so a possible Cumbric/Welsh mu trethF- ) of cows [41]. There is little doubt that
this is a survival of British practices into Anglo-Saxon times. In North Lancashire the beltancu was the May Cow -
equivalent to the Welsh treth Calan Mai.
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