Lecture #2-3 The Old English period. The main historical events in oe period.

The island of Britain has not been successfully invaded since 1066 AD. Before that date, however, the island had been occupied by Rome, the Anglo-Saxons and the Danish. The first incursions by lulius Caesar into Britain in 55 and 54 RC. The dominant group in Britain were a Celtic people whose language is the ancestor of modern Welsh and Breton. When the British Celts were finally subdued by the Roman Emperor, Claudius, 43 A.D. ; Britain nominally became part of the Roman Empire, though it was not fully brought in line until 78 AD. under the governor Agricola. Roman influence never penetrated the culture of the British Celts the way it did their continental neighbors, and Rome's influence was negligible in the Pictish north and Celtic west.

When Rome found itself under attack in the early fifth century the legions were recalled. Britain, after more than three centuries of dependence on Rome's military might, found herself vulnerable, first to the northern Picts, then to the Saxon mercenaries hired to defeat the Picts. According to legend, in 449 AD. the British overlord, Vortigern, invited the lutish brothers Hengist and Horsa into Britain to fight the Picts, offering them land in Kent as payment. A daughter of Hengist's was given in marriage to Vortigern, as part of the alliance. Although the lutes kept their bargain, insofar as they beat back the Picts, they also recognized the opportunity offered in the fertile soil and military weakness of Britain. In what was part invasion, part migration, the lutes sent across the sea to their families, and along with invading tribes of Angles and Saxons, the Germanic people managed to kill or displace the natives and occupy the country. Over the next one hundred years the invasions gave way to a period of settlement. The Celtic view of this period is immortalized in literature as the Arthurian cycle.

The native Celts were either killed by the invaders, or pushed back into Wales, Cornwall, and across the English channel into Brittany, taking their Celtic language with them. The dominant language of southern Britain (now England, from Angle-land) came to be that spoken by the Anglo-Saxons. The three main dialects, Northumbrian, Mercian, and West Saxon, corresponded with the three major kingdoms that vied for ascendancy. The first to exert its influence was Northumbria, followed by Mercia and finally Wessex. It is the West Saxon dialect that is most often referred to as Old English and that was the most prominent dialect at the time ofthe Norman conquest in 1066. At the time ofthe original Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain in the fifth century, the language contained approximately 100 Latin words that had been taken into the language before the Anglo-Saxons left the continent, mainly terms dealing with trade or the military. By the time ofthe Norman Conquest, Old English had been further enriched by words drawn from ecclesiastical Latin brought in by the conversion of the English to Christianity by St. Augustine in 597 A.D

In the mid eighth century a new wave of Northmen turned their attention toward England, this time the Danish Vikings. What began first as coastal raids developed into a full scale invasion by the middle of the ninth century during the ascendancy of the kingdom of Wessex. Although the Danes made great headway into England, they were pushed back into what became known as the Dane law by the West Saxon king, Alfred the Great, by the end of the ninth century.

Partly because of the political supremacy of Wessex and partly due to the higly literate court of Alfred, the West Saxon dialect was the strongest English dialect at the opening of the tenth century. Much, but not all, of the Old English literature which survives, such as, Beowulf and The Anglo-Saxon Chronicles is in the West Saxon dialect. This trend continued until 1066 when Edward the Confessor died childless and William, Duke of Normandy landed in England to press.

It was about mid-5th century that Britain was conquered by Germanic tribes. An old saying names the year 449 as the year of the conquest, and Hengest and Horsa as the two leaders of the invaders.

The Britons fought against the conquerors for about a century and a half-till about the year 600. It is to this epoch that the legendary figure of the British king Arthur belongs. The conquerors settled in Britain in the following way. The Angels occupied most of the territory north of the Thames up to the Firth of Forth; the Saxons, the territory south of the Thames and some stretches north of it; the Jutes settled in Kent and in the Isle of Wight.

Since the settlement of the Anglo-Saxons in Britain the ties of their language with the continent were broken, and in its further development it went its own ways. It is at this time, the 5th century that the history of the English language begins.

Its original territory was England (in the strict sense) except Cornwall, Wales, and Strathclyde (a region in the north-west). These western regions the Britons succeeded in holding, and they were conquered much later: Cornwall in the 9th, Strathclyde in the 11 th, and in the 13th century.

The Scottish Highlands, where neither Romans nor Teutons had penetrated, were inhabited by Picts and Scots. The Scots language, belonging to the Celtic group, has survived in the Highlands up to our own days.

Ireland also remained Celtic: the first attempts at conquering it were made in the 12th century.