quote:

... implying that the previous inhabitants may have been forcibly removed.

Or had abandoned the place because, every year, some group or other came and stole their harvest.

best

HA

quote:

Originally posted by BAJR:
The more I look at this the more I see that to believe in English before the Romans, one must suspend certain beliefs, ignore evidence, ignore the uniqueness of the theory, ignore the facts that the change in language has happened several times around the world, agree only with evidence that is in reality part of the theory in the first place.

BAJR, we are again beginning to encounter that swing of the pendulum back towards theories of large scale migration rather than cultural diffusion. Or so Jean tells us. I don't think anyone really doubts the reality of an Anglo-Saxon invasion. Its just the extent of it that is a problem.

We are certainly free to quibble over details regarding population size but Mick's points hold:

quote:

But let me remind you of the differences between Australia/New Zealand in the modern era and Britain in Anglo-Saxon times:
1. It was the natives, the Romano-Brits, that were the culturally more advanced
2. The two people had had millennia of contact so there can be no question of infectious diseases, alcoholism etc effecting one side and not the other
3. The natives were not a small population of hunter-gatherers or primitive slash-n-burners, they were a large (we don't know how large) settled population of advanced agriculturalists.
4. The British settlers in Australia/NZ had a functional reason for 'disposing' of the natives, they got in the way of British nineteenth century agricultural methods. The Anglo-Saxons would have been positively perverse to get rid of the British natives -- if you conquer a new country do you really want to do the backbreaking work of growing your own food?

So how did a numerically smaller, culturally inferior but militarily stronger band of mercenaries persuade the supposedly 'Celtic' speaking population of England to start speaking English? They didn't.

Let's take a look at the genetics. Capelli et al have argued for significant north European input, just like Bodmer did in Face of Britain. However, both of them found that by the time Middle England was reached this effect had contracted significantly. Capelli was keen to point out that it was impossible to distinguish Anglo-Saxon from Danish Viking influences. The line of the old Danelaw seemed to be significant here: southern England, home to Alfred and the Wessex dynasty showed a minority of Germanic Y-Chromosomes!

Both the evidence of Capelli and Bodmer could indicate a Danish Viking influx as well as, or instead of, the Anglo-Saxons! However you look at the data the point is clear, by the time we reach Middle England the Germanic input is fading quickly. With the work of Sykes and Oppenheimer the Germanic input fades even more. The answer seems to be obvious, the Anglo-Saxons came to England and were assimilated just as the Danes and the Normans were. Genetics change to some extent to the east of the Danelaw, language remains English.

What does interest me is that the reverse seems to be acceptable to this theory, whereby 'celtic' speaking groups manage to remove english in Wales, Cornwall, Scotland etc.. leaving not a trace of english..

It can't be used as evidence (ie.. the reason people speak english is because a small group of peopel could not change the language of a larger population - therefore they must speak english.. but to follow that conclusion, how does a small group of people come to the above mentioned areas and convince everyone to stop speaking english and then speak Gaelic or a form of )

Then you look at teh places which speak english and/or a form of english... hmmmm.. it seems to be the places where Saxons and Anglians settled..

Then you look at the archaeology... it seems that the previous settlement patterns and organisation changes from what we percieve to be Iron Age(ish) and start living in villages .. ah... that seems to be the areas where the ... you guessed it.. Saxons and Anglians settled. Etc etc.

As I have pointed out.. the areas and towns in the Lothians - (once the stronghold of the Votadinii / Goddodin (who write poetry in 'welsh' - have welsh sounding names, have landscapes named in welsh forms...etc) that have anglian names are ... no surprises here, only appearing in teh 6th -7th centuries AD. at exactly teh same time as the ... wait for it... Anglians appear.

All I am doing is looking at the available evidence.. and see that the most convincing model is one of english coming to these areas rather than already being there.. Otherwise how can I explain Gaelic Highlands and Islands or Wales or Cornwall? did they overwhelm a native English speaking group - but that can't be.. as that would contradict the possibility of Anglians and Saxons lingisticly overwhelming a native Romano British group speaking english already... Then I look at teh names of British tribes of Cheiftons of Queens of British soldiers in the army of Rome (from tombstones) they all look very very 'Celtic' I don't see a 2nd C AD tombstone with a soldier called Oswald or Penda, Cuðbert or Egbert... they have names such as (albeit sometimes latinized) Nectovelius, Cunobelinos, Caractacus.

I don't rest my case.. I don't know enough, but I would suggest that any theory must be able to stand against robust evidence.

Well, BAJR, surely it is self-evident that some people must over time replace other people during the course of human occupation of the earth, the question is who did what to whom and when. We rarely have definitive evidence (historical or archaeological) so all we can do is assemble best-case-scenarios. This means in the first place ignoring creation myths -- though of course the creation myths can be restored if they turn out to fit best.

The starting point must always be "what we know for sure". And what we know for sure about the language groups of the British Isles is that the vast majority, in terms of both numbers and territory, are English-speakers; and a tiny minority are (let's call them for convenience) Celtic-speakers. This gives us three possibilities
1. The English were here first and the Celts came later
2. The Celts were here first and the English came later
3. They arrived at the same time from different directions.
The first possibility is to be preferred on the simple grounds that it is inherently more likely for people to successfully occupy a particular eco-niche (the western littoral) than it is for another people to push them out of a whole territory except for that particular eco-niche.

Indeed, this is a main line of argument in The History of Britain Revealed: is it really believable that Celtic-speakers could be swiftly and surely removed from the whole of Iberia, France, England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland but somehow these Celtic-speakers WEREN'T removed from North-west Spain, Brittany, Cornwall, West Wales, the Highlands and Islands of Scotland and Western Ireland? It is either a giant set of coincidences or it never happened.

So are we saying that teh english were here first, but decided not to colonise the locations now inhabited by 'Celtic' speaking people jsut in case other people turned up to do that.... OR The Celtic speakers were already there, but had decided to stay there and leave the more fertile, open lands of England to other people ... Are you saying that Celtic people lived on the western littoral because that was the only place they could live due to a love of western littorals.. and never thought.. oh.... that farmland... I know its there... but I prefer my western littoral.

That sadly seems more implausible than the current theories. (I do still see everything as theory)

I think you have imagine what the landscape looked like when the Mesolithic hunter gatherers first came to the British Isles. The island was covered in forest and life was much easier on the fringes.The coast provided fishing, a foreshore to scavenge on and the open edge of the forest where game was likely to graze, and nuts and berries could be gathered in relative safety.At this time our ancestors were not interested in the fertility of the soil, they were not farmers.
I think they probably came from south-west europe and northern europe at the same time.
They probably had no sense of being a "people" and the extended family was the only unit that had any relevance to them. Their numbers were so small and the food supply so great that there was little chance of conflict between different groups.
I think its generally accepted that modern humans and Neanderthals coexisted for tens of thousands of years all over Europe, so why not different language groups coexisting during the mesolithic.
Conflict probably only became a problem during the Neolithic when farming made possession of the land an issue.

You seem to be willfully misundertanding what I am plainly saying, BAJR. The theory (and of course as you say, and I have already said, it can only be a theory) is that the English-speakers had long been in possession of the whole of the British Isles when the Celts turned up. Their occupation of the western seaboard of these islands was presumably due to
a) their being a trading culture and
b) retaining some kind of suzerainty over the English-speakers in the rest of the islands of the British Isles.

We know this pattern is possible because we can observe the same situation along the littoral of North Africa where the Arabic-speakers have a similar two-fold advantage over the Berber-speakers of the interior.

We also know what happens when two distinct language groups co-exist in this fashion, but the minority group loses its suzerainty: the language cline moves inexorably against them. When the English-speakers gained the political ascendancy after the last of the great Continental invasions (of the Normans) the English-speaking areas have been moving forward year-by-year. Cornish-speakers died out in the 1790's, mainland Gaelic is now (I think) defunct, and Irish is on its last legs. Only the Welsh appear to be viable.

You can see exactly the same process in France and Iberia where the Bretons and the Celtiberians have not been able to resist the advance of their respective metropolitan populations, the French- and Spanish-speakers.

Very true... but what happens in teh neolithic... is it feasible that as Neolithic farming progressed (itself and imported concept) that the farmers kindly stayed in the eco-niche suggested?

Not likely... a farmer wanted good land, and is hardly going to stop just because it won't fit a theory in 5 thousand years.

mesolithic people were slightly more - shall we say, barave than you suggest, following rivers inland, using resources as they found it... yes they were on teh coast... good place for food that... and we are a lazy people in general!

I agree about the conflict though.. its the putting up of a fence that makes life difficult.

I have recently been reporting on teh Neandertal / Modern Human story... and although I suspect they did co-exist... to waht extent they got on, bred, invited each other to dinner.. is very much still up for discussion..

Very interesting times though..

I think you under-estimate the conservative (small c) nature of farmers. If you have an environment which dictates through geography and climate what farming activity is sustainable they will stick with it.The basic geography lessons of childhood ,of livestock husbandry in the west and north , arable in the east and south still hold true today.Even today very few farmers move from area to area ,they stick with what they know.
I don't think the west coast littoral was such a bad place to farm during the neolithic.They obviously were able to live comfortably enough to have time on their hands to build stone circles and other earthworks.Pressure to move and find better land would only occur with increased population due to breeding or more likely pressure from following migrations.Once the land bridge with Europe was lost in the early neolithic the latter would have greatly reduced.
I take your point on mesolithic man following river valleys inland, I mentioned it in an earlier post when trying to take the heat out of this discussion.
Bearing this in mind I would like to forward an idea. When the land bridge still linked us with Europe the drainage system dictated that all rivers north of the Wash drained into the North sea and those further south (including the Thames,Rhine and Seine) into the Atlantic via the Channel.If mesolithic man entered Britain from the south along the coast and up the river valleys including the Thames that would bring southern England under his influence. If at the same time northern europeans were entering Britain along the northern edge of the land bridge and into the Wash river system .Would this mean the cline between the two populations was along the watershed between the Thames and Wash? Do genetic studies support this?
If so does the later southern boundary of the Danelaw have an earlier , deeper significance.

By the way I'm a farmer not an archaeologist or academic.I merely have a curiosity about who we are and where we came from.

If English is derived from Anglo-Saxon then it follows -- since the two languages are quite different in terms of vocabulary, grammar and syntax -– that a given language will change very radically in a thousand years. However, if we actually look at those languages for which we have at least a thousand-year-history (Latin, French, Irish and Welsh are the only European examples) then we can see this is not the case. In every one of these examples the earliest extant examples can still be read with a modicum of decipherment.

English/Anglo-Saxon is of course a complete exception to this rule since no English-speaker can understand Anglo-Saxon any more than he can read Dutch or German or Swedish ie he can make out the odd word, and can guess at the general meaning of the odd sentence, but ‘read’ it he cannot.

So did this language change radically over a thousand years? Fortunately we have excellent examples of the development of this ‘language’. Here are three reasonably spaced snapshots of the development:

Old English (from Caedmon c eighth century):
Nu scylun hergan hefaenricaes uard,
metudæs maecti end his modgidanc,
uerc uuldurfadur, sue he uundra gihuaes,
eci dryctin, or astelidæ.

Middle English (from Chaucer, The Prologue, fourteenth century)
A swerd and bokeler bar he by his side
A whit cote and a blew hood wered he.
A bagpipe wel koude he blow and sowne,
And therwithal he brought us out of towne.

Modern English (from the Wasteland by T S Elliot, twentieth century)
You cannot say, or guess, for you know only
A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,
And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,
And the dry stone no sound of water.

Does that look like a seamless thousand-year development? Well, yes it does at first sight but that’s because the middle extract has not been written in modern spelling. This is the same verse in modern spelling but not otherwise altered.

A sword and buckler bore he by his side
A white coat and a blue hood weared he
A bagpipe well could he blow and sound
And there with all he brought us out of town

Yes, you’ve got it. English scarcely changed at all (one past participle has shifted slightly!) from the fourteenth to the twentieth century. And since you ask, Anglo-Saxon scarcely changed from the seventh century to the twelfth. So can you, in all honesty, swallow the belief that Anglo-Saxon changed into English in two centuries?

quote:

I think you under-estimate the conservative (small c) nature of farmers. If you have an environment which dictates through geography and climate what farming activity is sustainable they will stick with it.

I think that very true and the conservative nature can even be extended to animal husbandry.

Francis Pryor has argued that sheep farming was a local development but that is not incompatible with cattle being introduced in the neolithic. Sheep farmers are highly unlikely to change what they know simply because some others are farming a new sort of beast. Moreover, they need different pastures and are likely to live in different parts anyway.

best

Harry A

quote:

So can you, in all honesty, swallow the belief that Anglo-Saxon changed into English in two centuries?

But written language is far more conservative and changes at a much slower rate than the spoken language. The problem is that we don't know what spoken old english of the 10th cent sounded like. We only know what the 10th cent written texts are and they may already be 2 or 3 centuries out of step.

Now, you can use that to say that written OE texts reflects the language of an elite and, when we return to middle english, the written language reflects more accurately the spoken language, but we still don't know what the spoken language in the 10th cent was, let alone the language of the 6th cent.

best

harry A

quote:

Originally posted by M J Harper:
English scarcely changed at all (one past participle has shifted slightly!) from the fourteenth to the twentieth century. And since you ask, Anglo-Saxon scarcely changed from the seventh century to the twelfth. So can you, in all honesty, swallow the belief that Anglo-Saxon changed into English in two centuries?

I find this extremely persuasive and really think it is incumbent upon those who still entertain the notion of a homogenous 'Celtic' speaking Britain being replaced by Anglo-Saxon mass immigration, which then leads to a radical shift in language, to clearly and carefully state their case.

As I have been saying throughout my postings the sheer logical force of the argument presented above, together with Win Scutt's work on water-based place names in the Cotswolds, Peter Forster's work on the much earlier separation of English from the Germanic group of languages and the evidence of large numbers of Germanic Y-Chromosomes in areas of Scotland that were never settled by Anglo-Saxons points to one thing. English was indeed spoken here well before the Romans arrived. This has left a genetic cline along the line of the old Danelaw which Tommy Adds persuasively refers to in his posting.

But we do know, Harry! We have the evidence written down before us. Chaucer used all the same conventions that we use to render into writing what he wished to convey in speech, and it hasn't changed very much. Never mind what the nobs spoke or how the written form lags behind or poetic conventions or the effect of printing or anything else (you'll no doubt come up with). It's there, in front of you. IT HASN'T CHANGED. IT HAS NOT CHANGED.

Ditto French, Welsh and Irish. Ditto Italian, German and every other language that has any longish history of being written down. And if the Catholic Church is to be believed, this is true of Latin as well.

Now you come along and say, "Whoa, lads, we must make a single exception for Anglo-Saxon in order to preserve my belief that it changed into English even though the written record is eloquent that it didn't."

Pshaw.

All I can say is read this fine simple reference.

WIKI Middle English

It also points out the Chaucer you quoted was in itself a dialect which assumes precedence due to the printing press and its use in London..

And to pick a piece of Chaucer and say… look how it is almost the same is perhaps a bit choosey ..

Take Whan that Aprill with his shoures sote
The droghte of Marche hath perced to the rote,
And bathed euery veyne in swich licour,
Of which vertu engendred is the flour;
Whan Zephirus eek with his swete breeth
Inspired hath in euery holt and heeth
The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne
Hath in the Ram his halfe course yronne,
And smale fowles maken melodye,
That slepen al the nict with open ye—
So priketh hem Nature in hir corages—


Not as easy.. though close to modern English.. as this is the written form that became chosen as ‘business English’


I still don’t see why the Romans when talking about natives seem to call them by non-english names..

quote:

together with Win Scutt's work on water-based place names in the Cotswolds, Peter Forster's work on the much earlier separation of English from the Germanic group of languages and the evidence of large numbers of Germanic Y-Chromosomes in areas of Scotland that were never settled by Anglo-Saxons points to one thing.

Only if you believe what you want to believe whilst ignoring those inconvenient ideas which would get in the way Duncan. It's nothing more than passion and prejudice masquerading as reason.

Let's look at Win Scutt's hydronyms.

Scutt writes:

"One area that satisfies these criteria is the Upper Thames Valley where there is a cluster of place-names with the ēg element, including Oaksey, Ampney, Meysey, Cerney and Eisey (Smith 1964; Gover et al. 1939)"

Firstly, note the early references. A great deal of progress has been made in the last 30 years which is entirely omitted. Thus, Mills (1991) gives alternatives to 'OE ēg as island' interpretation, eg. well watered land or promontory. It could refer to no more than a stream.

For Oaksey, Mills suggests an alternative, that is, well watered land.

For Ampney, Mills states that it may derive its name from Ampney Brook, stream of a man named Amma.

For Meysey, the only one I can find is Hampton Meysey which is called Hantone in the DB. The Meysey element here refers to the 12th cent de Meisi family.

For Cerney, North and South, Mills gives a celtic etymology derived a celtic river name eg. Churn.

For Eisey, Mills has no entry but it exists as Aisi in DB and may not have anything to do with OE ēg at all.

Furthermore, Scutt's hypothesis is based on those places being flooded at the time of naming and points to them being dry since. He cites a marine transgression during prehistory to support this, one which had entered its regression phase by the roman period.

However, a marine transgression is not the only reason they may have been islands, if indeed they ever were. Local flooding of rivers is quite frequent within this region. The Topographical Dictionary of England (1848) gives for Eysey:

"It comprises about 900 acres: the surface is flat, and occasionally subject to inundation; the soil is a fertile loam. The river Isis, and the Thames and Severn canal, pass through the parish."

Scutt is using some doubtful etymologies here and only one line of argument. It's tendentious and there is nothing which requires his explanation.

As far as Forster's work is concerned, as far as I recall, it does allow for a more convention date split within his range estimate. He dates the expansion of J/16231 (a "Germanic" type) in Europe to "5000 years ago, with a high standard error of 3000 years". In other words, even by Forsters own method, english and german could have split around the time of the romans.

As far as "the large numbers of Germanic Y-Chromosomes in areas of Scotland that were never settled by Anglo-Saxons" is concerned, you are presuming that, despite some archaeology, that it wasn't settled by angles during the early medieval period. Even if it wasn't, you are dismissing counter evidence, the studies which claim Capelli's findings are not valid.

It's all very weak to be honest Duncan.

best

Harry A

quote:

Originally posted by Harry Amp:
Only if you believe what you want to believe whilst ignoring those inconvenient ideas which would get in the way Duncan. It's nothing more than passion and prejudice masquerading as reason.

Ouch Harry, that hurts. If what you say is true then perhaps we need to exercise more caution in the interpretation of Scutt's arguments. Then again, he may be right.

With regard to Forster's work I think it is important to note that the man himself does not accept your conclusion. The again, he may be wrong.

Capelli's work is, I accept, questioned by Sykes and Oppenheimer. Sykes uses the name 'Wodan' to refer to yDNA from the Anglo-Saxon/Danish lands. It is also found throughout Scotland but yes, it is dwarfed by the 'Oisin' clan, which reflects the supposed 'Celtic' yDNA. Oppenheimer similarly challenges Capelli.
Again, as many have pointed out before me, population genetics is still in its infancy and as long as there are discrepencies in the results there will be errors of interpretation. Nonetheless, in this crucial sense both approaches cannot be right. It should be just a case of refining the appropriate methodology and extending the sample size.

Mick Harper's arguments are still unanswered, however. Being a reasonable man who is simply searching for the truth and having no academic theory to defend in this area (I'm an Economist) I am open to that truth. So to Mick Harper's arguments then?

quote:

Ouch Harry, that hurts. If what you say is true then perhaps we need to exercise more caution in the interpretation of Scutt's arguments. Then again, he may be right.

LOL, not you Duncan, in this case Win Scutt.

His main argument is that these places were dry during the AS period and that they were only flooded by a marine transgression in pre history. He passionately wants to show that, as it was dry during the AS period, those names must go back to an earlier date, ie the marine transgression.

But the reasoning is all wrong. They did flood during the AS period. It's not a permanent thing of course, but enough to identify islands and promontories which remained dry when it did.

It still does flood. Have a look at this link for cerney wick, which is next to north and south cerney:

http://tinyurl.com/2sx9h4

Note too, the romans knew it was open to flooding, they built their road on dry land.

Sorry for any misunderstanding too.

best

Harry A

I won't go into the iniquities of Middle English here (since it doesn't exist) but, Harry, you can take my word for the fact that I picked out my example entirely at random, maybe second stab, I can't remember, it's a long time ago -- I trust you did too. It's true your selection taxes my brain so I will stick it onto my website for more agile minds to render, and report back.

Meanwhile perhaps you can do something from your end that will help to solve the puzzle. Take every unfamiliar word, make a list and then say which of them is in any fashion Anglo-Saxon. (If you don't know Anglo-Saxon, German will do.) My prediction: probably none, maybe one or two simply because by definition the older English is the nearer it will be to the common ancestor of English/Anglo-Saxon/German.

Because of course, if this is really Middle English, if it is really a halfway house between Anglo-Saxon and English then all the words that are not English ought to be Anglo-Saxon. A good test. I say none, you say all.

1: When that April with his showers suit
2: The drought of March has pierced to the root,
3: And bathed every vein in such liquor
4: Of which virtue engendered is the flower;
5: When Zephirus eke with his sweet breath
6: Inspired has in every holt and heath
7: Tender crops, and the young Sun
8: Has in the Ram his half course a-run,
9: And small fowls make melody,
10: That sleep all the night with open eye
11: (so pricks them Nature in their courages);
12: Then long folk to going on pilgrimages,
13: And palmers for to seek strange strands,
14: To far hallows, known in sundry lands;
15: And specially from every shire's end
16: Of England to Canterbury they wend,
17: The holy blissful martyr for to seek,
18: That them has helped when that they were sick.

Credit to D. P. Crip of The Quest Group, in Canterbury Tall Tales

Now the hard question: Why has a faithful "translation" such as this been unavailable from any scholarly work?