And now let us see what we can make of this wholly unhistorical and
legendary tale. Whether there ever was a South Saxon king named AElle we
cannot say; but that the earliest English pirate fleet on this coast
should have landed near Selsea is likely enough. The marauders would
not land near the Romney marshes or the Pevensey flats, where the great
fortresses of Lymne and Anderida would block their passage; and they
could not beach their keels easily anywhere along the cliff-girt coast
between Beachy Head and Brighton; so they would naturally sail along
past the marshland and the chalk cliffs till they reached the open
champaign shore near Chichester. Cymenes-ora, where they are said to
have landed, is now Keynor on the Bill of Selsea; and Selsea itself, as
its name (correctly Selsey) clearly shows us, was then an island in the
tidal flats. This was just the sort of place which the English pirates
loved, for all tradition represents their first settlements as effected
on isolated spots like Thanet, Hurst Castle, Holderness, and
Bamborough. Thence they would march upon Regnum, the square Roman town
at the harbour head, and reduce it by storm, garrisoned as it doubtless
was by a handful of semi-Romanised Welshmen or Britons. The town took
the English name of Cissanceaster, or Chichester. Moreover, all around
the Chichester district, we still find a group of English clan
villages, with the characteristic patronymic termination _ing_. Such
are East and West Wittering, Donnington, Funtington, Didling, and
others. It is _vraisemblable_ enough that the little strip of very low
coast between Hayling Island and the Arun may have been the first
original South Saxon colony. Nor is it by any means impossible that the
names of Keynor and Chichester Cymenes-ora and Cissanceaster--may still
enshrine the memory of two among the old South Saxon freebooters.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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