Rheged in Galloway

[Imperial Dave]

nice round up Stephen.

Am still going through Dark's book at the mo. Its a bit stop and start. In some ways I think he could have written a much more expansive book

[aligern]

No I would not have to demonstrate a difference in usage between the Anglian kingdoms and the Saxon and Jutish ones. Bede ascribes them 'nationalities' . That leads to a natural pepresumption that those with Saxon nanes for their kingdoms are in some way different from the Anglian ones.mAt some point they have to come together.nCan Duncan or anyone else show that in the Saxon areas they thought of themselves as English or speaking English before Alfred. If there is good evidence then Zi am only too happy to accept it. If not then Alfred is a natural point for the creayion of an English identity because he was incorporating Mercia.
Roy

[Anton]

Thanks Dave. 

I agree that Dark could have written a bigger book, that said he has given us something very useful which might be best digested one chapter at a time after the initial read.  It's certainly one I keep going back to.

His plebian religious revolution, if we can call it that, interests me.  Some of the subsequent bigger Christian developments like Bangor and Iona seem to me to be emulation of the Eastern Roman symbiosis between Church and State.  If Gildas (Koch thinks he was based in Bangor) is read from that perspective we have a very political cleric indeed, and Iona endlessly involved itself in politics on both islands.

[Duncan Head]

The West Saxon Laws of Ine (cap.24) mention "Engliscmon" (possibly in opposition to the "Wealh" of the previous clause) not a "Saecson"; and (cap.74), "If a Welsh slave slays an Engliscne mon". So West Saxons are "Englisc" even c. 700.

[Imperial Dave]

Thanks Dave. 

I agree that Dark could have written a bigger book, that said he has given us something very useful which might be best digested one chapter at a time after the initial read.  It's certainly one I keep going back to.

His plebian religious revolution, if we can call it that, interests me.  Some of the subsequent bigger Christian developments like Bangor and Iona seem to me to be emulation of the Eastern Roman symbiosis between Church and State.  If Gildas (Koch thinks he was based in Bangor) is read from that perspective we have a very political cleric indeed, and Iona endlessly involved itself in politics on both islands.

I think I will definitely have to go back and reread one chapter at a time (and not necessarily in the book order). The book feels like a series of essays

[aligern]

Unfirtunately the first text of the Laws of Ine is an appendix to the Laws of Alfred. Hence it is possible that they were updated to conform to the ethnogenetic project that Alfred was engaged in.

Bede is interesting, his work is a history of the English people, it is dedicated to the Mercian Ceolwulf, it is heavily concerned with the Northumbrian (Anglian) church. He equivocated between the English and calling the remote Southerners Saxons. He also makes a point about the distinct nature of the Jutes. It may be that the Germanic states all identified their language as English, or even saw their ethnicity as English, but if so Bede equivocates  and calls his West Saxons just that, West Saxons. It may be that at the time there was just  not the developed vocabulary to define West Saxons as members of a separate kingdom. Given that there was a substantial mixing of German types, including perhaps Scandinavians in East Anglia and that all the heptarchy states contained lots of Britons, some long Germanicised, some recently assimilated, then attributing kingdoms to Angle, Saxon or Jute is a brutal generalisation.
Roy

[Patrick Waterson]

What intrigues me is why Alfred would wish to redesignate his realm as 'English' when the bulk, perhaps the entirety, of ethnic Angles were left under the Danelaw.

[Duncan Head]

Unfirtunately the first text of the Laws of Ine is an appendix to the Laws of Alfred. Hence it is possible that they were updated to conform to the ethnogenetic project that Alfred was engaged in.

Not impossible, but generally considered unlikely:

... the 'appendix', which purports to have been issued two centuries before Alfred's code by King Ine of Wessex (688-726), contradicts Alfred's own law on several occasions. ... Furthermore, given the existence of these contradictions, one must question whether Alfred ever intended Ine's code to be read as an integral part of his own law-book.
...
The diction, syntax and substance of the Ine appendix all suggest an unmodified seventh century provenance ...

from Dammery's edition of Alfred's code at  https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/251507

[Andreas Johansson]

What intrigues me is why Alfred would wish to redesignate his realm as 'English' when the bulk, perhaps the entirety, of ethnic Angles were left under the Danelaw.

That seems reasonably natural to me: by presenting him as an English king - or, perhaps more to the point, as the English king - he's in effect telling those Angles/English under Danish rule that their natural allegiance is with him.

What's more interesting to me is that his Saxon subjects apparently had no objections. That's unsurprising if the West Saxons were already accustomed to thinking of themselves as a subset of a larger English nation, but if English and Saxon had previously been coordinate entities, he's in effect telling his key supporters that they should switch their ethnic/tribal identity for that of their neighbours. That seems an unlikely and dangerous route when Anglian sensu stricto fortunes were at a nadir.

[Anton]

Angles, Jutes and Saxons seem to have spoken, more or less, the same language and operated under the same social system and law codes.  Their non Germanic neighbors saw them as different parts of the same thing and named them after the first such group they had encountered.

I'm inclined to see the Angle, Jute and Saxon political units in the same way as I'd view the various Celtic ones below the Antonine Wall, there might be dynastic differences of origin(for both) but there seems to be a continuum of identity operating.

[Imperial Dave]

Angles, Jutes and Saxons seem to have spoken, more or less, the same language and operated under the same social system and law codes.  Their non Germanic neighbors saw them as different parts of the same thing and named them after the first such group they had encountered.

I'm inclined to see the Angle, Jute and Saxon political units in the same way as I'd view the various Celtic ones below the Antonine Wall, there might be dynastic differences of origin(for both) but there seems to be a continuum of identity operating.

in other words the comparison is

British (post Roman) sub groups are bundled up as 'British/Britons' and later as Welsh but when we drill down they are regionalised (as per pre and post roman tribal groupings - some of which come through the 'Roman period' intact) by some. Why should the Angles/Saxons/Jutes/Franks be any different. During the Roman period, all Germanics may have been referred to as 'Saxons' and then as the Post Roman period progressed other tribal/regional groupings may have come through more strongly.   

[Erpingham]

During the Roman period, all Germanics may have been referred to as 'Saxons' and then as the Post Roman period progressed other tribal/regional groupings may have come through more strongly. 

Or the Roman nomenclature continues among the Britons/Welsh but we see on the other side the concepts bought from the other side of the sea - that they identified collectively as Angles rather than Saxons  but within that preserved tribal groupings of Saxons, Jutes and maybe Frisians (who Procopius, we recall, thought were involved in the channel settlements).

[Andreas Johansson]

Do we have any positive evidence that the Saxons (in Britain) didn't think themselves English/Anglian at any period?

[Anton]

I was thinking about what happened to that other group of successful intruders-the Irish.  We tend to think of Dal Riada when the Irish are mentioned in this context but there is much more to it. 

Various Irish dynasties established themselves below the Wall leaving behind monumental and textual evidence that proclaimed their identity.  Within a couple of generations they had become British mainly because there was no language barrier, and also a shared legal code and the same social structure and due to the British missionary effort they were fellow Christians. I'm also minded to think that the large areas of former Roman Garrison land available enabled accommodation without displacement.

For the British these people were soon seen as us, not them. As Gildas says of an Irish dynasty "bad son of a good king". Yet its clear their origin was not just forgotten, a stone proclaiming Ordovician identity on behalf of a man with an Irish name shows both identities in play.  Also we have Koch's intriguing mention of Irish battle coats among the loot taken by Cynan in a raid on an Irish established polity.

If this perception of similarity worked between the incoming Irish and British then I'd say it would would work equally well among the incoming German peoples for pretty much the same reasons barring Christianity obviously.

[Imperial Dave]

I agree. Obviously as the 'heroic' period comes to a close, such diversification of tribal origins has started to fade away a little and it starts to become more 'us and them' by the 8th C ie Welsh/British vs Angles/Saxons vs Scots vs Irish in a polity sense not necessarily from a historical/ethnic sense