[Early Britain by Grant Allen]@TWC D-Link book
Early Britain

CHAPTER II
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CHAPTER II.
THE ENGLISH BY THE SHORES OF THE BALTIC.
From the notices left us by Baeda in Britain, and by Nithard and others on the continent, of the habits and manners which distinguished those Saxons who remained in the old fatherland, we are able to form some idea of the primitive condition of those other Saxons, English, and Jutes, who afterwards colonized Britain, during the period while they still all lived together in the heather-clad wastes and marshy lowlands of Denmark and Northern Germany.

The early heathen poem of _Beowulf_ also gives us a glimpse of their ideas and their mode of thought.

The known physical characteristics of the race, the nature of the country which they inhabited, the analogy of other Germanic tribes, and the recent discoveries of pre-historic archaeology, all help us to piece out a fairly consistent picture of their appearance, their manner of life, and their rude political institutions.
We must begin by dismissing from our minds all those modern notions which are almost inevitably implied by the use of language directly derived from that of our heathen ancestors, but now mixed up in our conceptions with the most advanced forms of European civilisation.

We must not allow such words as "king" and "English" to mislead us into a species of filial blindness to the real nature of our Teutonic forefathers.

The little community of wild farmers and warriors who lived among the dim woodlands of Sleswick, beside the swampy margin of the North Sea, has grown into the nucleus of a vast empire, only very partially Germanic in blood, and enriched by all the alien culture of Egypt, Assyria, Greece, and Rome.


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