the Britons (sometimes Brythons or British) were the indigenous peoples inhabiting the island of Great Britain from the late Iron Age into the late Middle Ages. They were speakers of the Brythonic languages (also called P-Celtic) and shared common cultural traditions. In terms of language and culture, much of north western Europe was mainly Celtic during this period, although the island of Britain and Brittany were inhabited by Brythonic Celts. The inhabitants of Ireland, the Isle of Man and Dál Riata were Gaels or Gaelic Celts who spoke Goidelic languages.
Britons
People
Britons (Brythons – British) Ireland Isle of Man Dál Riata
In terms of culture Language
Celtic -Brythonic Celts the Brythonic languages
Gaels - Gaelic Celts
Goidelic languages
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Picts
The Picts were a confederation of tribes in what later was to become central and northern Scotland from Roman times until the 10th century.
They lived to the north of the Forth and Clyde.
The evidence of place-names and personal names argue strongly that the Picts spoke Insular Celtic languages related to the more southerly Brythonic languages. Place-names often allow us to deduce the existence of historic Pictish settlements in Scotland. Those prefixed with "Aber-", "Lhan-", or "Pit-" indicate regions inhabited by Picts in the past (for example: Aberdeen, Lhanbryde, Pitmedden, Pittodrie etc).
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The Aberlemno Serpent Stone, Class I Pictish stone
Runic alphabet
Before literacy in the vernacular Old English or Latin became widespread, the Runic alphabet, called the futhorc (also known as futhark) was used for inscriptions. When literacy became more prevalent, a form of Latin script was used with a few letters derived from the futhork: 'Eth,' 'Wynn,' and 'Thorn.'
Runic Inscriptions
Runic inscription (any character from an ancient Germanic alphabet used in Scandinavia from the 3rd century to the Middle Ages; "each rune had its own magical significance")
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"This she-wolf is a reward to my kinsman"
The first known written English sentence, "This she-wolf is a reward to my kinsman," is an Anglo Saxon runic inscription on a gold medallion (about the size of a 50› piece) found in Suffolk, dated about AD 450-480.
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Brief History of English
Celts began migrating in all directions in the 5th century BC, though it is not known when they reached Britain. They were eventually pushed back to the Scottish Highlands in the north, Wales in the west and Cornwall (most southwesterly county in England, United Kingdom) In the southwest, by the invading Anglo-Saxons who began arriving in the 5th century AD. In the 6th century a large group from South Wales and Cornwall immigrated to Brittany in northern France where they still speak Breton. In the 7th century Scottish Gaelic was introduced from Ireland. Little is known of the Picts whose language died out in the 10th century as the people merged with the Scots.
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Celts dominated southern Germany and the northern Alps in the 1st millennium BC.
The Brythonic Languages
The Brythonic languages are believed to have developed from Proto-Celtic, after it was introduced to the British Isles from the continent.
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Brythonic languages
The Brythonic Languages
British
After the Roman conquest of Britain the British language adopted some words from Latin
RomanoBritish
The first form of the Brythonic languages is believed to be British. After the Roman conquest of Britain, the British language adopted some words from Latin; hence it is sometimes termed Romano-British in this period
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The British language
Eastern (Anglo-Saxons) The Eastern dialect was largely replaced by the invading Anglo-Saxons and their language.
The British language then branched into three dialects: Eastern, Western and Southwestern.
British Language
Western (Welsh)
The Western and Southwestern developed into Cumbric, Welsh, Cornish and Breton.
Southwestern (Cornish)
While Welsh, Cornish and Breton survive today, Cumbric became extinct in the 12th Century.
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Languages in Britain
In addition to English, Scottish Gaelic is spoken in Scotland, Irish Gaelic is spoken in Ireland, Welsh is spoken in Wales, Romany has been spoken by travelling gypsies for centuries all over Europe including Britain, Manx was spoken in the Isle of Man (located in the Irish Sea at the geographical centre of the British Isles) until the middle part of this century, and Cornish was spoken in Cornwall until about the end of the eighteenth century.
Britain Area Scotland Ireland Language Scottish Gaelic Irish Gaelic
Wales
All over Europe including Britain (by gypsies) Isle of Man Cornwall
Welsh
Romany Manx Cornish
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Britain
Britain
Area
Scotland Ireland Wales All over Europe including Britain (by gypsies) Isle of Man Cornwall
Language
Scottish Gaelic Irish Gaelic Welsh Romany Manx Cornish
Scotland=
Scottish Gaelic
Ireland= Irish Gaelic Isle of Man= Manx
Wales=
Welsh
Cornwall=
Cornish
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History of the English language
One of these dialects, Late West Saxon, eventually came to dominate.
The original Old English language was then influenced by two waves of invasion.
The first was by language speakers of the Scandinavian branch of the Germanic family; they conquered and colonized parts of Britain in the 8th and 9th centuries. The second was the Normans in the 11th century, who spoke Old Norman and ultimately developed an English variety of this called Anglo-Norman
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The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
According to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, around the year 449, Vortigern (or Gwrtheyrn from the Welsh tradition), King of the Britons, invited the "Angle kin" (Angles led by Hengest and Horsa) to help him in conflicts with the Picts. In return, the Angles were granted lands in the southeast of England. Further aid was sought and in response "came men of Ald Seaxum of Anglum of Iotum" (Saxons, Angles and Jutes). The Chronicle talks of a subsequent influx of settlers who eventually established seven kingdoms, known as the heptarchy.
A page from the text of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. This entry is for 871, a year of battles between Wessex and the Vikings.
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Vortigern
Vortigern also spelled Vortiger and Vortigen, and in Welsh Gwrtheyrn), was a 5th-century warlord in Britain, a leading ruler among the Britons (Brythons). His existence is considered likely, though information about him is shrouded in legend.
He is said to have invited the Saxons to settle in Britain as mercenaries, only to see them revolt and establish their own kingdoms.
This earned him a poor reputation; he was eventually remembered as one of the worst Kings of the Britons in later legend.
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Hengist and Horsa
We can be certain that Germanic settlement in Britain was not intensified until the time of Hengist and Horsa in the Fifth Century. There are several early sources that refer to a "Hengest". The earliest clear source is Bede, whose Ecclesiastical History of the English People (written about 730) states that Hengest was brought to Britain by Vortigern as a mercenary, to fight the Picts. As it was, the Angles, Saxons and Jutes arrived as pagans, independent of Roman control.
Imaginary depiction of Hengest from John Speed's 1611 "Saxon Heptarchy".
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Germanic peoples
During the 5th century, as the Western Roman Empire lost military strength and political cohesion, numerous Germanic peoples, under pressure from population growth and invading Asian groups, began migrating en masse in far and diverse directions, taking them to England and as far south through present day Continental Europe to the Mediterranean and northern Africa. In Denmark the Jutes merged with the Danes, in Sweden the Geats merged with the Swedes. In England, the Angles merged with the Saxons and other groups as well as a large number of natives to form the Anglo-Saxons.
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Old English Period
English is primarily a Germanic language stemming from invading Angle, Saxon, Jute and Frisian tribes of northern Germany who settled in England in the 5th century, the beginning of the Old English Period.
This language derived from Proto-Germanic, which was the mother tongue of German, English, Dutch, Swedish, Danish, and Norwegian.
The Angel-Seaxans were the English Saxons, as opposed to the Ald-Seaxans. The Old Saxons of the continent.
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Old English
English is a West Germanic language that originated from the Anglo-Frisian dialects brought to Britain by Germanic settlers and Roman auxiliary troops from various parts of what is now northwest Germany and the Northern Netherlands.
Initially, Old English was a diverse group of dialects, reflecting the varied origins of the Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms of England.
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Old English 450-1150 (Germanic)
Old English is predominantly Anglo-Saxon. It also borrowed from church Latin (~450 words) and from Old Norse. 7th century Christian missions to Britain brought learning and literacy, initially entirely in Latin, but an Old English written language did emerge in the northeast and in the West Saxon kingdom of Alfred the Great in the second half of the 9th century. Alfred the Great (c. 849 – 26 October 899) was king of the southern Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Wessex from 871 to 899.
Alfred the Great is noted for his defence of the kingdom against the Danish Vikings
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Proto-English
The Germanic tribes who gave rise to the English language (the Angles, Saxons, Frisians, Jutes and perhaps even the Franks), traded with and fought with the Latin-speaking Roman Empire in the centuries-long process of the Germanic peoples' expansion into Western Europe from the East.
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Jutes
The Jutes, Iuti, or Iutae were a Germanic people who, according to Bede, were one of the three most powerful Germanic peoples of the time. They are believed to have originated from Jutland (called Iutum in Latin) in modern Denmark, Southern Schleswig (South Jutland) and part of the East Frisian coast. The Jutes, along with the Angles, Saxons, and small number of Frisians, were amongst the Germanic tribes who sailed across the North Sea to raid and eventually invade Great Britain from the late fourth century onwards, either displacing, absorbing, or destroying the native Celtic peoples there. According to Bede, they ended up settling in Kent (where they became known as the Cantuarii), Hampshire (in Wessex), and the Isle of Wight (where they became known as the Uictuarii).
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Angles
The Angles is a modern English word for a Germanicspeaking people who took their name from the cultural ancestral region of Angeln, a modern district located in Schleswig-Holstein, Germany. Ancient Angeln preceded all modern national distinctions and was, therefore, probably not coterminous with the modern culture of the same region. Modern Angeln, also known as Anglia (German: Angeln, Danish: Angel, Latin: Anglia, English: may follow German or Latin; direct translation from Latin: England), is a peninsula in Southern Schleswig in the northern SchleswigHolstein, Germany, protruding into the Bay of Kiel.
Angeln has a significance far beyond its current small area and country terrain, in that it is believed to have been the original home of the Angles, Germanic immigrants to central and northern England, and East Anglia. This migration led to their new homeland being named after them, from which the name "England" derives.
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Saxons
The Saxons, from Lower Saxony (German: Niedersachsen, Germany) The Saxons or Saxon people were a confederation of Old Germanic tribes.
Their modern-day descendants in northern Germany are considered ethnic Germans; those in the eastern Netherlands are considered to be ethnic Dutch; those in north eastern Belgium are considered to be ethnic Flemish; and those in southern England ethnic English.
Saxons participated in the Germanic settlement of Britain during and after the 5th century. It is unknown how many migrated from the continent to Britain though estimates for the total number of Germanic settlers vary between 10,000-200,000.
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Saxons in Britain
Saxons, along with Angles, Jutes, Frisians and possibly Franks, invaded or migrated to the island of Great Britain (Britannia) around the time of the collapse of Roman authority in the west. Saxon raiders had been harassing the eastern and southern shores of Britannia for centuries before, prompting the construction of a string of coastal forts called the litora Saxonica or Saxon Shore, and many Saxons and other folk had been permitted to settle in these areas as farmers long before the end of Roman rule in Britannia. In 449, however, following a particularly devastating raid in the north from the Picts and their allies, the Romano-British administration invited Jutish warlords to occupy the isle of Thanet in north Kent and to act as mercenaries against the Picts at sea. After the Jutes had completed this mission defeating the Picts, they returned with demands for more lands. When this was rejected, they rose in revolt and provoked an insurrection amongst all the settled farming folk of Germanic stock with them.
Four separate Saxon realms emerged: East Saxons: created the Kingdom of Essex. Middle Saxons: created the province of Middlesex South Saxons: led by Aelle, created the Kingdom of Sussex West Saxons: led by Cerdic, created the Kingdom of Wessex
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Gildas
Statue of Saint Gildas near the village of Saint-Gildas-de-Rhuys (France).
Historians are divided about what followed: some argue that the takeover of southern Great Britain by the Anglo-Saxons was peaceful. There is, however, only one known account from a native Briton who lived at this time (Gildas), and his description is of forced takeover:
For the fire...spread from sea to sea, fed by the hands of our foes in the east, and did not cease, until, destroying the neighbouring towns and lands, it reached the other side of the island, and dipped its red and savage tongue in the western ocean. In these assaults...all the columns were levelled with the ground by the frequent strokes of the battering-ram, all the husbandmen routed, together with their bishops, priests, and people, whilst the sword gleamed, and the flames crackled around them on every side. Lamentable to behold, in the midst of the streets lay the tops of lofty towers, tumbled to the ground, stones of high walls, holy altars, fragments of human bodies, covered with livid clots of coagulated blood, looking as if they had been squeezed together in a press; and with no chance of being buried, save in the ruins of the houses, or in the ravening bellies of wild beasts and birds; with reverence be it spoken for their blessed souls, if, indeed, there were many found who were carried, at that time, into the high heaven by the holy angels... Some, therefore, of the miserable remnant, being taken in the mountains, were murdered in great numbers; others, constrained by famine, came and yielded themselves to be slaves for ever to their foes, running the risk of being instantly slain, which truly was the greatest favour that could be offered them: some others passed beyond the seas with loud lamentations instead of the voice of exhortation...Others, committing the safeguard of their lives, which were in continual jeopardy, to the mountains, precipices, thickly wooded forests, and to the rocks of the seas (albeit with trembling hearts), remained still in their country.
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Old English
Old English is far closer to early Germanic than Middle English.
It is less Latinized and retains many morphological features (nominal and verbal inflection) that were lost during the 12th to 14th centuries.
The Germanic languages in Europe
The languages today which are closest to Old English are the Frisian languages, which are spoken by a few hundred thousand people in the northern part of the Netherlands and Germany.
Dutch (Low Franconian, West Germanic) Low German (West Germanic) Central German (High German, West Germanic) Upper German (High German, West Germanic) Anglic (Anglo-Frisian, West Germanic) Frisian (Anglo-Frisian, West Germanic) East Scandinavian West Scandinavian Line dividing the North and West Germanic languages
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