History of the Anglo-Saxons, from the Earliest Period to the Norman Conquest: Second Edition — John Stuart Mill — John Shaqi
History of the Anglo-Saxons, from the Earliest Period to the Norman Conquest: Second Edition
John Stuart Mill · en
Such were our forefathers--men who would startle at the stirring of
a leaf, or the shooting of a star, yet brave enough to rush upon the
point of a spear with a flushed cheek and a bright eye, and who could
look death full in the face without a feeling of fear. Nor would it be
difficult to point out, even in our own day, numbers of superstitious
signs and omens, which are as implicitly believed in by the peasantry
of the present age, as they were by the ancient Saxons during this
dark period of our history. The chattering of a magpie, the croaking
of a raven, the howling of a dog in the night, a winding-sheet in the
candle, or a hollow cinder leaping out of the fire upon the hearth,
are even now held amongst our superstitious countrymen as ominous of
ill-luck, sickness, or death. Scarcely an obscure English province
is without its wise-man, or cunning fortune-teller, those lingering
remains of the Wicca of the Saxons, which have descended to us through
the long lapse of nearly two thousand years, in spite of the burnings
and other executions which were so common in our country only two or
three centuries ago, when not to believe in witchcraft would have
been held a crime equal to Atheism, by our more enlightened and
comparatively modern forefathers.
The temple erected to their war-god, in their own country, appears
to have been spacious and magnificent. On the top of a marble column
stood this idol, in the figure of a tall, armed warrior, bearing a
banner in his right hand, on which a red rose was emblazoned, while
in his left he held a balance. His helmet was surmounted with a cock;
on his breastplate a bear was engraven, while on the shield which was
suspended from his shoulder was the image of a lion, upon a ground of
flowers. Here, women divined, and men sacrificed, and into the battle
was this warlike image borne by the priest; for as they could not trust
themselves upon the sea without a charm being first muttered, so in
the field did they require the image of their idol to countenance the
contest. To this grim deity did they offer up their captives, and even
those of their own tribe who had fled, and turned their backs upon the
fight, for they looked upon cowardice as the greatest of crimes amongst
their men, and wantonness in their women they punished with death.