Nooks and Corners of English Life, Past and PresentTimbs, John
History
Nooks and Corners of English Life, Past and Present
Timbs, John
England -- Social life and customs
Ebusa, brother of Hengist, with his brother Octa, landed on the Frith of
Forth with an armament of five hundred vessels. The Britons flew to
arms. A conference was proposed by Hengist, and accepted by Vortigern.
It was held at Stonehenge (Hengist's Stones), and attended by most of
the nobility of Britain. On the sixth day, at the high feast, when the
sun was declining, was perpetrated the "Massacre of the Long Knives,"
the blackest crime, with the exception of that of St. Bartholomew, in
the annals of any nation. The signal for the Saxons to prepare to plunge
their knives, concealed in their boots and under their military cloaks,
into the breasts of their gallant, unsuspicious conquerors was, "Let us
now speak of friendship and love." The signal for action were the words,
"Nemet your Saxas," ("Out with your knives,") and the raising of the
banner of Hengist--a white horse on a red field--over the head of
Vortigern. Four hundred and eighty of the Christian chivalry of Britain
fell before sunset by the hand of the pagan assassins; three only of
name--Eidol Count of Gloucester, and the Princes of Vendotia and
Cambria--escaping, the first by almost superhuman courage and presence
of mind. Priests, ambassadors, bards, and the boyish scions of many
noble families, were piled together in one appalling spectacle on the
site of the banquet, "Moel OEore"--the Mound of Carnage, about three
hundred yards north of the great Temple.
A learned band of inquirers are induced to consider Stonehenge as a
Druidic temple, reared on the solitary plain long before Roman, Dane, or
Saxon had set foot within the country. Still, Stonehenge was the work of
two distinct eras: the smaller circles are attributed to the Celtic
Britons, and the other to the Belgæ. There is a common notion that the
stones cannot be counted twice alike; but when Charles II. visited
Stonehenge in 1651, he counted and re-counted the stones, and proved to
his satisfaction the fallacy of this notion.[4]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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