Young Folks History of England | Page 3

be known from the
Romans. Only the wild ones beyond the wall, and in the mountains,
were as savage as ever, and, now and then, used to come and steal the
cattle, and burn the houses of their neighbors who had learnt better.
Another set of wild people used to come over in boats across the North
Sea and German Ocean. These people had their home in the country
that is called Holstein and Jutland. They were tall men, and had blue
eyes and fair hair, and they were very strong, and good-natured in a
rough sort of way, though they were fierce to their enemies. There was
a great deal more fighting than any one has told us about; but the end of
it all was that the Roman soldiers were wanted at home, and though the
great British chief we call King Arthur fought very bravely, he could
not drive back the blue-eyed men in the ships; but more and more came,
till, at last, they got all the country, and drove the Britons, some up into
the North, some into the mountains that rise along the West of the
island, and some into its west point.
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.
Some English children were made slaves, and carried to Rome, where
they were set in the market-place to be sold. A good priest, named
Gregory, was walking by. He saw their fair faces, blue eyes, and long
light hair, and, stopping, he asked who they were. "Angles," he was
told, "from the isle of Britain." "Angles?" he said, "they have angel
faces, and they ought to be heirs with the angels in heaven." From that
time this good man tried to find means to send teachers to teach the
English the Christian faith. He had to wait for many years, and, in that
time, he was made Pope, namely, Father-Bishop of Rome. At last he
heard that one of the chief English kings, Ethelbert of Kent, had
married Bertha, the daughter of the King of Paris, who was a Christian,