Young Folks' History of EnglandYonge, Charlotte M. (Charlotte Mary)
History
Young Folks' History of England
Yonge, Charlotte M. (Charlotte Mary)
Great Britain -- History -- Juvenile literature
The Britons used to call the blue-eyed men Saxons; but they called
themselves Angles, and the country was called after them Angle-land.
Don't you know what it is called now? England itself, and the people
English. They spoke much the same language as we do, only more as
untaught country people, and they had not so many words, because they
had not so many things to see and talk about.
As to the Britons, the English went on driving them back till they
only kept their mountains. There they have gone on living ever since,
and talking their own old language. The English called them Welsh, a
name that meant strangers, and we call them Welsh still, and their
country Wales. They made a great many grand stories about their last
brave chief, Arthur, till, at last, they turned into a sort of fairy
tale. It was said that, when King Arthur lay badly wounded after his
last battle, he bade his friend fling his sword into the river, and
that then three lovely ladies came in a boat, and carried him away to
a secret island. The Welsh kept on saying, for years and years, that
one day king Arthur would wake up again, and give them back all
Britain, which used to be their own before the English got it for
themselves; but the English have had England now for thirteen hundred
years, and we cannot doubt they will keep it as long as the world
lasts.
It was about 400 years after our Lord was born that the Romans were
going and the English coming.
CHAPTER III.
THE ANGLE CHILDREN A.D. 597.
The old English who had come to Britain were heathen, and believed in
many false gods: the Sun, to whom they made Sunday sacred, as Monday
was to the moon, Wednesday to a great terrible god, named Woden, and
Thursday to a god named Thor, or Thunder. They thought a clap of
thunder was the sound of the great hammer he carried in his hand.
They thought their gods cared for people being brave, and that the
souls of those who died fighting gallantly in battle were the happiest
of all; but they did not care for kindness or gentleness.
Thus they often did very cruel things, and one of the worst that they
did was the stealing of men, women, and children from their homes, and
selling them to strangers, who made slaves of them. All England had
not one king. There were generally about seven kings, each with a
different part of the island and as they were often at war with one
another, they used to steal one another's subjects, and sell them to
merchants who came from Italy and Greece for them.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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