EARLY BRITAIN #1

 Early Britain #1

It will surprise you I think

   PROBABLY NOT WHAT YOU THOUGHT

      Part One

        Taken from the book 

         "Celt, Druid and Culdee"

      1973

       by

         Isabel Hill Elder

THE EARLY BRITONS

IT has been said that the only excuse for writing a book is that

one has something to say which has not been said before. That

this claim cannot be made on behalf of this little volume will be

very evident to the reader as he proceeds, since it is a

***compilation from a variety of sources,*** from which evidence

has been brought together, to support the belief that the

civilization of the early Britons was of a high standard, and

that they did not deserve that contempt with which they have been

treated by many historians, nor the odious names of 'savages' and

'barbarians' by the supercilious literati of Greece and Rome.

When evidence, admittedly fragmentary, of the real conditions in

these islands, from the earliest times, has been brought to light

throughout the centuries, it seems, almost invariably, to have

been rejected in favour of Roman teaching.

In his History of Scotland, the Rev. J. A. Wylie, LL.D., say:

     'We have been taught to picture the earliest conditions of

     our country as one of unbroken darkness. A calm

     consideration of the time and circumstances of its first

     peopling warrants a more cheerful view."

By examining the available evidence it may be possible to obtain

this more cheerful view, and to show that in the darkest eras of

our country the rites of public worship were publicly observed.

It is ever true to say that, 'The history of a nation is the

history of its religion, its attempts to seek after God.'

Wilford states that the **old Indians** were acquainted with the

**British Islands,** which their books described as the sacred

islands of the west, and called one them Britashtan, or the seat

or place of religious duty.

The popular idea that the ancestors of the British were painted

savages has no foundation in fact. It was a custom of the Picts

and other branches of the Celtic and Gothic nations to make

themselves look terrible in war, from whence came the Roman term

'savage'. The 'painting' was in reality tattooing, a practice

still cherished in all primitive crudities by the British sailor

or and soldier.

Far from these ancestral Britons having been mere painted

savages, roaming wild in the woods as we are imaginatively told

in most of the modern histories, they are now, on the contrary,

as disclosed by newly found historical facts given by Professor 

Waddell, known to have been, from the very first grounding of

their galley keels upon these shores, over a millennium and a

half before the Christian era, a literate race, pioneers of

civilization.  The universally held belief that the mixed race

has prevailed during many centuries; this  belief, however, is

now fading out of the scientific mind and giving place to the

exact opposite. Britons, Celts, Gaels, Anglo-Saxons, Danes and

Normans when warring with each other were kinsmen shedding

kindred blood.

Professor Sayce, at a later date, in one of his lectures,

observes that he misses no opportunity of uprooting the notion

that the people who form the British nation are descended from

various races, all the branches that flowed into Britain being

branches of the selfsame stock. Not a single pure Saxon is to be

found in any village, town or city of Germany. Our Saxon

ancestors rested there for a time in their wandering to these

islands.

Dr. Latham says, "Throughout the whole length and breadth of

Germany there is not one village, hamlet or family which can show

definite signs of descent from the Continental ancestors of the

Angles of England."

It was against this, race, now in possession of the whole of

Southern Britain, that Caesar led his legions. The Belgae, the

Attrebates, the Parisii and the Britanni were all British tribes,

having kinsmen on the Continent, yet moving westward, who had

fought against Caesar in the Gallic wars.

It is noteworthy that during the occupation of Britain by the

Romans the inhabitants led a life as separate as possible from

their invaders and, according to Professor Huxley, when the

Romans withdrew from Britain in A.D.410 the population was as

substantially Celtic as they found it.

Huxley in 1870, in the earlier years of the Irish agitation,

applied the results of his studies to the political situation in

Ireland in the following words in one of his lectures:

     "If what I have to say in a matter of science weighs with

     any man who has political power I ask him to believe that

     the arguments made about the difference between Anglo

     Saxons and Celts are a mere sham and delusion."

The Welsh Triads and the 'Chronicum Regum Pictorum' as well as

the 'Psalter of Cashel' give us the chief early information about

the inhabitants of Scotland, and all agree as to the racial unity

of the peoples, much, however, as they fought each other.

This unity is recognized by Thierry Nicholas, Palgrave and Bruce

Hannay.

The Britons were renowned for their athletic form, for the great

strength of their bodies, and for swiftness foot. Clean-shaven,

save for long moustaches, with fair skins and fair hair, they

were a fine, manly race of great height (Strabo tells us that

British youths were six inches taller than the tallest man in

Rome) and powerfully built. They excelled in running, swimming,

wrestling, climbing and in all kinds of bodily exercise, were

patient in pain, toil and suffering, accustomed to fatigue,

to bearing hunger, cold and all manner of hardships. Bravery,

fidelity to their word, manly independence, love of their

national free institutions, and hatred of every pollution and

meanness were their noble characteristics.

Tacitus (the Roman historian - Keith Hunt) tells us the northern

Britons were well trained and armed for war. In the battlefield

they formed themselves into battalions; the soldiers were armed

with huge swords and small shields called 'short targets', they

had chariots and cavalry, and carried darts which they hurled in

showers on the enemy. Magnificent as horsemen, with their

chargers gaily caparisoned, they presented a splendid spectacle

when prepared for battle. The cumulative evidence is of a people

numerous, brave and energetic. Even Agricola could say that it

would be no disgrace to him, were he to fall in battle, to do so

among so brave a people. Farther south similar conditions

prevailed; the Romans, led by Plautius and Flavius Vespasian, the

future Emperor and his brother, assailed the British, and were

met with the british 'stupidity' knows when it is beaten.

The British have been from all time a people apart,characterized

by justice and a love of religion. Boadicea, in her oration as

queen by Dion Cassius, observes that though Britain had been for 

centuries open to the Continent, yet its language, philosophy and

usages continued as great a mystery as ever to the Romans

themselves.

The monuments of the ancient Britons have long  since vanished

(with the exception of Stonehenge and other places of Druidic

worship), yet Nennius, the British historian who was Abbot of

Bangor-on-Dee about A.D. 860, states that he drew the greater

part of his information from writings and the monuments of the

old British inhabitants. Our early historians were undoubtedly

acquainted with a book of annals written in the vernacular tongue

which was substantially the same as the Saxon Chronicle.

Nennius disclaims any special ability for the task of historian

set him by his superiors, but is filled with a keen desire to see

justice done to the memory of his countrymen, saying, 'I bore

about with me an inward wound, and I was indignant that the name

of my own people, formerly famous and distinguished, should sink

into oblivion and like smoke be dissipated....It is better to

drink a wholesome draught of truth from a humble vessel than

poison mixed with honey from a golden goblet.'

What were once considered exaggerated statements on the part of

Nennius, Geoffrey of Monmouth and other early historians, are now

discovered to be trust-worthy. In their day these writers were

regarded as historians of repute. Many of the ancient British

writers were professed genealogists, men appointed and patronized

by the princes of the country, who were prohibited from following

other professions. It was left a later age to throw doubt on

their veracity. Since it is the nature of truth to establish

itself it seems the reverse of scholarly to disregard the

evidence of ancient reports as embodied in the Welsh Triads and

the writings of early British historians.

Milton says, 'These old and inborn names of successive kings

never to have been real persons, or done in their lives at least

some part of what so long hath been remembered cannot be thought

without too strict incredulity.'

A great deal of history, so-called has come dow to us from Latin

sources, whose one object was, from the very first to make us

believe that we owe all to Rome,  when, in fact, Rome owes a

great deal to us: so much error has been taught in our schools

concerning the ancient Britons that it is difficult for the

average student to realize that the British, before the arrival

of Julius Caesar, were, in all probability, among the most highly

educated people on the earth at that time and, as regards

scientific research, surpassed both the Greeks and the Romans - a

fact testified to by both Greek and Roman writers themselves.

In all the solid essentials of humanity our British ancestors

compare to great advantage with the best eras of Greece and Rome.

Lumisden has shown in his treatise on the 'Antiquities of Rome'

that many of the fine actions attributed by Roman historians to

their own ancestors are mere copies from the early history of

Greece.

It is unfortunate for posterity that the histories from which

modern historians have drawn their information were written by

hostile strangers. That they have been accepted all along the

centuries as true is a striking tribute to a people who, valiant

in war and fierce in the defence of their rights, think no evil

of their enemies. Truly has it been said that an essentially

British characteristic is the swift forgetfulness of injury.

(Source facts for this chapter by Isabel Hill Elder, were taken

from the following- Keith Hunt)

1 History of Scotland, Vol.I, p.31.

2 Asiatic Researches, Vol.3

3 Origin of Britons, Scots and Anglo-Saxons, p.14.4 Hibbert

  Lectures (1887).

5 Ethnology of the British Islands, p.217.

6 Gilbert Stone, England, p.9.

7 Anthrop. Rev. 1870, Vol.8, p.197, Forefathers and Forerunners

  of the British People.

8 Norman Conquest, p.20.

9 Pedigree of the English People.

10 Palgrave, English Commonwealth, Ch.I, p.85.

11 Hannay, European and other Race Origins, pp.365,470,371.

12 Pezron, Antiq, de la Nation et de la Langue Gaulaise. 

13 Vita Agricolae, c.28.

14 Historiae Brittonum of Nennius, Harleian  MS 3859 (British    

   Museum).

15 Vide Geoffrey of Monmouth, I, 1. See Cave Hist.Lit. II,18. 

16 Nennius, Hist. of the Britons, trans. J. A. Giles, Prol. p.2.

17 Gir. Camb. Cambriae Descript., Cap. XVIII. Anglica Hibernica, 

   ed. Camden, p.890.

18 History of England, Vol. 8, p. i 1.

19 Strabo, I,IV, p.197. Mela Pom., III, 2,18. N.H., I, 30. 

20 Antiq.of Rome, pp.6,7,8.

                             ................

In the next chapter by Isabel Elder we shall see what the LAWS

and ROADS were like in Early Britain....more surprises and

revelations.