Pictured: Hadrian's Wall
The Brythons
As the Roman Empire saw its declining years, its military occupation of what is now Great Britain created a new race of people known as the Brythons as Roman soldiers married Celtic women. Julius Caesar claimed "England" for Rome in 53 B.C. Over the centuries, the Romans occupied what is now England, building roads, other infrastructure, and cities such as Londinium. Of course, a tribe of people already lived on the land when the Romans came, and those people were known as the Celts. The Celts had their own poetry, religion, and rich history.
Settled in antiquity by the Indo-Europeans, the first people in England and Ireland thousands of years before the Celts arrived were dark-skinned. No one knows what happened to these people. At some point, a fairer-skinned people arrived with a well-established religion, skilled at farming and war. Spiritually, they followed a belief in animism, the idea that nature was divine, and the spirits of gods and various sprites lived in the trees. This is where many familiar fairy tales of enchanted forests and forest-dwelling spirits originated. The word animation is related to animism.
It is difficult to measure the influence of the Celts, from their myriad stories of woodland sprites and elves to the origins of Halloween. The Celts differed from later invaders in that their women served as warriors and could legally own land. Boadicea was one of the most famous Celtic woman-warriors. A story of Queen Maeve reveals that Maeve ruled her kingdom without a king and inherited land from her father as the oldest of the family. This was very rare in primitive cultures.
When the Anglo-Saxons came down from the area now known as Scandinavia, they met up with the Romanized Celts, who fought them over the rich farm land. The Anglo-Saxons were actually several tribes living in close proximity in present-day Denmark, Sweden, Jutland, and the island of Frisia. They brought with them a male-dominated warrior society with a love of honey wine or "mead," but they were tired of fighting other tribes for frigid lands with short growing seasons. They coveted the land to the south. Britain, and brought with them their agricultural skills and a sophisticated religious system. Our names for days of the week are taken from Anglo-Saxon gods. Wednesday is Woden's Day, and Thursday is Thor's Day. Although the Anglo-Saxons drove the Romanized Celts west into present-day Cornwall, both distinct groups converted to Christianity. When the Anglo-Saxons arrived, they found the ruins of great Roman-built coliseums, bridges, aqueducts, crumbling, paved roads, fountains, and baths. From the 400's A.D. to nearly 1170 A.D., the Anglo-Saxons dominated the island of Britain, uniting the kingdoms and helping to usher in Christianity and literacy to English-speaking people through kings such as Alfred the Great who prized education above all. An epic poem, Beowulf, was finally written down after centuries of storytelling tradition and is one of the most famous poems in history. The Dream of the Rood (Cross) is a poem written expressly to convert pagans In the British north to Christianity. You can read this poem here:
http://lightspill.com/poetry/oe/rood.html
Watch The History of English here
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kIzFz9T5rhI
http://lightspill.com/poetry/oe/rood.html
The Epic of Gilgamesh Flood Narrative
http://www.historywiz.com/primarysources/sumerianflood.html
Beowulf the Grumere translation
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/p
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kIzFz9T5rhI
http://lightspill.com/poetry/oe/rood.html
The Epic of Gilgamesh Flood Narrative
http://www.historywiz.com/primarysources/sumerianflood.html
Beowulf the Grumere translation
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/p