Anglo Saxon Britain Preface

8/8/2019 Anglo Saxon Britain Preface

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PREFACE.-THIS little book is an attempt to give a brief sketchof Britain under the early English conquerors, ratherfrom the social than from the political point of view.For that purpose not much has been said about thedoings of kings and statesmen j but attention hasbeen mainly directed towards the less obvious evidence afforded us by existing monuments as to thelife and mode of thought of the people themselves.The principal object throughout has been to estimatethe importance of those elements in modern Britishlife which are chiefly due to purely'English or Low-Dutch influences.

The original authorities most largely consultedhave been, first and above all, the "English Chronicle," and to an almost equal extent, Breda's"Ecclesiastical History." These have been supplemented, where necessary, by Florence of Worcesterand the other Latin writers of later date. I havenot thought it needful, however, to repeat any of thegossiping stories from William of Malmesbury, Henryof Huntingdon, and their compeers, which makeup the bulk of our early history as told in mostmodern books. Still less have I paid any attentionto the romanctls of Geoffrey of Monmouth. Gildas,


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VI PREFACE.Nennius, and the other Welsh tracts have beensparingly employed, and always with a reference byname. Asser has been used with caution, where hisinformation seems to be really contemporary. Ihave also derived some occasional hints from the oldBritish bards, from Beowulf, from the laws, and from,the charters in the "Codex Diplomaticus." Thesewritten documents have been helped out by somepersonal study of the actual early English relicspreserved in various museums, and by the indirectevidence of local nomenclature.Among modern books, l owe my acknowledg-ments in the first and highest degree to Dr. E. A.Freeman, from whose great and just authority, how-ever, 1 have occasionally ventured to differ in someminor matters. Next, my acknowledgments are dueto Canon Stubbs, to Mr. Kemhle, and to Mr. J. R.Green. Dr. Guest's valuable papers in the Transcactions of the Archreological Institute have suppliedmany useful suggestions. To Lappenberg and SirFrancis Palgrave I am also indebted for variousdetails. Professor Rolleston's contributions to"Archreologia," as well as his Appendix to CanonGreenwell's "British Barrows," have been consultedfor anthropological and antiquarian points; on whichalso Professor Huxley and Mr. Akerman have pub-lished useful papers. Professor Boyd Dawkins'swork on "Early Man in Britain," as well as thewritings of Worsaae and Steenstrup have helped inelucidating the condition of the English at the dateof the Conquest. Nor must 1 forget the aid derived


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PREFACP.. viifrum Mr. Isaac Taylor's " Words and Places," fromProfessor Henry Morley's" English Literature," andfrom Messrs. Haddan and Stubbs' "Councils." ToMr. Gomme, Mr. E. B. Tylor, Mr. Sweet, Mr.James Collier, Dr. H. Leo, and perhaps others, I amunder various obligations; and if any acknowledgments have been overlooked, I trust the injured per-30n will forgive me when I have had already to quoteso many authorities for so small a book. The popular character of the work renders it undesirable toload the pages with footnotes of reference; andscholars will generally see for themselves the sourceof the information given in the text.Personally, my thanks are due to my friend, Mr.York Powell, for much valuable aid and assistance,and to the Rev. E. McClure, one of the Society'ssecretaries, for his kind revision of the volume inproof, and for several suggestions of which I havegladly availed myself.As various early English names and phrases occurthroughout the book, it will be best, perhaps, to saya few words about their pronunciation here, ratherthan to leave over that subject to the chapter on theAnglo-Saxon language, near the close of the work.A few notes on this matter are therefore appendedelow.

The simple vowels, as a rule, have their continentalpronunciation, approximately thus: Ii as in father, iias in ask >" eas in there, l as in men " 1 as in marine,t as in./it >" 0 as in note, 0 as in nol>" u as in brute, uas in fllll; j as in griin (German)" as in hUbsch


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Vlll PREFACE.(German). The quantity of the vowels is notmarked in this work. /.E is not a diphthong, but asimple vowel sound, the same as our own short a inman, that, &c. Ea is pronounced like ya. C isalways hard, like k,. and g is also always hard, as inbegin: they must never be pronounced l ikes or j.The other consonants have the same values as inmodern English. No vowel or consonant is evermute. Hence we get the following approximatepronunciations: LElfred' and LEthelred, as if writtenAlfred and Athelred; LEthelstan and Dunstan, asAthelstahn and Doonstahn; Eadwine and Oswine,nearly as Yahd-weena and Ose-weena; Wulfsige andSigeberht, as Wolf-seeg-a and Seeg-a-bayrt; Ceolredand Cynewulf, as Keole-red and Kline-wolf. Theseapproximations look a little absurd when ' writtendown in the only modern phonetic equivalents; butthat ,is the fault of our own existing spelling, not ofthe early English names themselves.

G. A.

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Anglo Saxon Britain Preface