A book of the west. Volume 1, Devon : $b being an introduction to Devon and Cornwall — John Shaqi
A book of the west. Volume 1, Devon : $b being an introduction to Devon and CornwallBaring-Gould, S. (Sabine)
History
A book of the west. Volume 1, Devon : $b being an introduction to Devon and Cornwall
Baring-Gould, S. (Sabine)
Devon (England)
It is possible--I do not say that it is more than possible--that the
dark men and women found about Land's End, tall and handsome, found
also in the Western Isles of Scotland and in West Ireland, may be
the last relics of this infusion of blood.
But next to this doubtful element comes one of which no doubt at all
exists. The whole of England, as of France, and as of Spain, was
at one time held by a dusky, short-built race, which is variously
called Iberian, Ivernian, and Silurian, of which the Basque is the
representative so far as that he still speaks a very corrupted
form of the original tongue. In France successive waves of Gaul,
Visigoth, and Frank have swept over the land and have dominated it.
But the fair hair and blue eyes and the clear skin of the conquering
races have been submerged by the rising and overflow of the dusky
blood of the original population. The Berber, the Kabyle are of the
same race; dress one of them in a blue blouse, and put a peaked cap
on his head, and he would pass for a French peasant.
The Welsh have everywhere adopted the Cymric tongue, they hug
themselves in the belief that they are pure descendants of the
ancient Britons, but in fact they are rather Silurians than Celts.
Their build, their coloration, are not Celtic. In the fifth century
Cambria was invaded from Strathclyde by the sons of Cunedda;
fair-haired, white-skinned Britons, they conquered the North and
penetrated a certain way South; but the South was already occupied
by a body of invading Irish. When pressed by the Saxons, then the
retreating Britons poured into Wales; but the substratum of the
population was alien in tongue and in blood and in religion.
It was the same in Dumnonia--Devon and Cornwall. It was occupied
at some unknown time, perhaps four centuries before Christ, by the
Britons, who became lords and masters, but the original people did
not disappear, they became their "hewers of wood and drawers of
water."
Then came the great scourge of the Saxon invasion. Devon remained
as a place of refuge for the Britons who fled before the weapons of
these barbarians, till happily the Saxons accepted Christianity,
when their methods became less ferocious. They did not exterminate
the subject people. But what had more to do with the mitigation of
their cruelty than their Christianity, was that they had ceased to
be mere wandering hordes, and had become colonists. As such they
needed serfs. They were not themselves experienced agriculturalists,
and they suffered the original population to remain in the land-the
dusky Ivernians as serfs, and the freemen, the conquered Britons,
were turned into tenant farmers.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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