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[Before I begin this new series, a bit of news for those who like to keep up with me. I am flying to Texas tomorrow for the 3^rd time this month. So far in 2012 I’ve spoken at Pleasant Valley in Little Rock (my stop in TX was just 3hrs in DFW), at Winterfest in Arlington, and this weekend I am doing a men’s retreat for the Bridgeway Church, a plant of The Hills. And next week, I fly to Texas again, this time to Houston where I’ll rent a car and head 3hrs east to Jennings, Louisiana. I’ll do a youth rally and a seminar there, an informal seminar for healthcare providers, and a couple of meetings with other small churches there.  Two weeks later… I’m off to do Winterfest at Gatlinburg. Shortly after that, I head to Ohio State to teach a day. Life is busy, but good. If you want to help me, pray that I will have the energy, health, and safety to continue to do what I do for the Kingdom]

A new series! I grew up with the legend of Robin Hood. I was no older than six when I saw Errol Flynn in his finest performance as the lead in “The Adventures of Robin Hood.” By the time I was 12, I’d read Walter Scott’s “Ivanhoe” where Robin Hood makes an important appearance. The BBC had a few TV programs in the 1950s about Robin Hood and reran them frequently in the 60s and 70s. The most popular by far was Richard Greene in “The Adventures of Robin Hood.” I heard about – but never saw – the spoof on the legend starring Frank Sinatra called “Robin and the 7 Hoods.” There was even a naughty version (in a schoolboy way) of the legend filmed by the crew that did a ton of the “Carry On” and “Up The…” movies in Britain. You are forgiven for not hearing about those films for they did not age well and almost never traveled outside the UK.

Disney did a few takes on the legend. It’s most successful one was the animated feature “Robin Hood” in 1973. At the same time, the BBC did yet another mini-series on the same subject which was later aired on PBS in America. Two years later, Mel Brooks wrote a TV series spoof on Robin Hood called “When Things Were Rotten.” It didn’t last long. A new version – a big time rewriting of the story – was filmed with Sean Connery and Audrey Hepburn called “Robin and Marian” in 1976. Another attempt at a TV spoof version was broadcast in 1984 with George Segal in the title role. In fact, I could list about a dozen versions made in Russia, Sweden, France, and other European countries as well as a few attempts at telling the story in Asian films. For every three or four serious attempts, there was at least one more spoof tried. Mel Brooks tried again semi-successfully with a movie called “Robin Hood – Men in Tights” but his work was already dated and fading because Hollywood had finally filmed a version that hit pay dirt – Kevin Costner in “Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves.” While critics hated the movie (they actually just hated Costner and still do, regardless of how well he handles a role), and excoriated him for not even attempting an English accent, movie goers ate it up. It still holds up well. By the way, critics, had he spoken in the English of his time (pre-1200) you would not have been able to understand six words in the whole movie so… let it go.

Russell Crowe took a run at telling the “how he became Robin Hood” story in a 2010 movie that, again, didn’t capture the critics’ hearts but was a decent tale told well.

My wife and I enjoyed the BBC version of the tale told in the early 1980s – “Robin, the Hooded Man.” The music was done by the fantastic Irish group Clannad (Enya was part of that family/group) and the legend was retold as a mystical one. Robin would often speak to the gods of the forest whose leader appeared as an antler crowned animal-man cross that could never be clearly seen. It was a lot better than I am making it sound. Recently, the BBC has made another very successful TV series on Robin Hood but this time he has modern English sensibilities so he never actually kills anyone and, in fact, violence is muted and rarely used. I hated it but it seems that women took to it and it lasted several seasons.

But what of the original Robin Hood? Where did he come from? Did he even exist? And why is his story told again and again not only in modern films and TV but also in medieval texts where he appears in several guises from 1200 on? Something in this story resonates with us and with our ancestors… and even in non-western nations. We are going to look at the facts behind the legend as well as why the legend endures. I will be getting my information from 10 books, none of which are in print today but which I have found over the years searching in used books stores in the US, Canada, England, and Scotland. I won’t be getting my facts from Disney, Mel Brooks, or Kevin Costner so the picture that emerges might not look like the legend you know.

Robin Hood and his story changes in every appearance, not only in modern films but also in every medieval manuscript that mentions him. He is never the same person twice, though some characteriological scaffolding remains constant and some of his companions appear more often than not. Each generation took him and used him to make a point about the political structure of their time, a cultural or societal crisis, or about the injustices experienced by the common man. In Russian films, he is a Marxist. In English films, he was generally a libertarian though, later, they would make him New Age or comical according to the whims of the time. Western dime novel writers would take some of Robin’s story and graft it on to that of Jesse James. And some people to this day have confused those stories and still say that Jesse was a friend to the poor… because the famous folk song says so!

In the earliest appearances of Robin in the historical record, he was a yeoman – a peasant, in other words. He wouldn’t become noble until later. Still later, he was a social rebel, not a thief. In almost every appearance, he is an outlaw, a defeated knight, a dispossessed, powerless person who has to take refuge with a band of others in the same situation. But, instead of accepting his lot, he takes his battle for justice to the oppressors and their households. He was, as one scholar says, the prototype for Superman and other comic book heroes of our present age. He was strong, incorruptible, and talented at war. Yet, he led with a light hand and with humor and did not return evil for evil… except in measured ways.

As for that whole “robbing the rich and giving to the poor” thing? That wasn’t a part of the story in the beginning nor did it show up for a long time.  He became an outlaw not because he stole but because it was easy for a person to cross the line from lawful to outlaw and not even know it. The laws were so arbitrary and the power of government or Royal officials was so absolute and capricious you could become an outlaw and forfeit your life for an action that you and your family had always viewed as lawful – such as hunting, feeding your family before paying your taxes, etc.

And the legend is darker than we might assume. In the oldest versions of the story he not only kills the sheriff and Guy of Gisborne, he beheads them and carries Guy’s head around with him and Much the Miller’s son beheads another monk just to keep him quiet.

In every version I’ve been able to find in the old literature, Robin and his men are rebels but not rebels against the king. The king is not their problem. The problem is local law enforcement and the government toadies and bureaucrats that stand between the common people and the beneficent king who rules in God’s stead and by His grace over the green and pleasant land – England.

Next time… the beginning of the legend. Hope you enjoy this one.

I’ll start a new series on a historical figure you might think you know… in a couple of days. For now, this seems an appropriate time to re-write and issue a statement on what compassion in and why what passes for compassion in political speech is really violence.

If you are well read in philosophy and politics, you know what a classic liberal is. Today, they would be called a libertarian. Not Libertarian with a big L for that refers to a party that has its own issues. No, a classic liberal was someone who wanted to live in freedom and to offer freedom to as many others as possible. Some believe their true descendants are the conservatives but I’m not sure about that. Regardless, there is a reason why I call myself a libertarian and why I have no time to pledge allegiance to either party, especially when they offer charity and care via government. Such compassion is a false compassion backed up by tanks, guns, courts, and prison bars for if you do not agree to fund their compassionate ideas, you are in violation of law.

I have published this story in one form or another twice before. I think it is time for me to do so again. I have moved to another state and office layout, but I’ll keep the original layout as it was at Rochester where I served for ten years.

My office is the first one in a long hallway of offices of ministers. Let’s imagine that a man comes in with his family. He needs a tank of gas, school clothes for his kids, and a doctor’s visit for his wife. All told, we are looking at three hundred dollars in legitimate needs. We aren’t dealing with a mooch, liar, or con-man in this story; this is a person who is just like us except a set of circumstances, or his life choices, have come back to bite him.

Let’s say I am touched by his story. I believe that all of us should help him. As the senior minister, I have some influence, but let’s imagine I have more than just my sweet and sunny personality — I have power. I pledge to give the man and his family $50. That doesn’t solve the problem, so I walk next door to our Minister for Families with Children. I tell her that she has to give the family $50, too. She tells me that she isn’t sure she should do that since the man left a good job to move back to Michigan. He could have had a paycheck, insurance, and support but made a choice that was, in retrospect, foolish. She doesn’t want to encourage that kind of foolishness. I tell her that she has no choice; she must give the money. When she kicks a little harder, I pull out a gun and tell her that she with either gives the money where and when I want it given or she will be taken to jail. She is upset, but she hands it over.

I go down to the next minister’s office, our Minister for Young Adults. I tell him that he is to give the family $50, also. He hesitates. He tells me that he agrees the family needs the money, but he has pledged to help someone else; his neighbor who has fallen on hard times. He has been taking groceries over to him, mowing his lawn, and just got done paying for a major car repair so that his neighbor has transportation to and from the doctor. I tell him I don’t care about his personal choices. I don’t care how much he gives to others. He is to give this family, right now, fifty dollars. He is frustrated and knows this means he can’t feed his neighbor whom he loves, but he hands it over. He’s heard about the gun I pulled earlier and he doesn’t want to face that.

I go to the next office, our Minister for Worship and Spiritual Transformation. I tell him to give the family $50. He asks for mercy as he is a new father and he just doesn’t have the money. It isn’t that he doesn’t want to give; he literally doesn’t have fifty dollars until next week when he gets paid. While it will be a financial hardship to him, he would be willing to pay then. I tell him that because he didn’t pay today, I will garnish his wages for the $50 plus another $50 for late penalties and fines. I leave him crying, worried about how to tell his wife.

I go to the next office and tell our Minister for Families with Youth that he is to hand over the money right now. He refuses. I pull my gun. He still refuses. I call the police and they put him in jail. By the time he gets out, he will have lost his job and much more than fifty dollars.

I go into the last office, our Equipping Minister. He bolts out the window and we never see him again, but that’s okay. We take his house and property away from his family and make them homeless so that we can give money to the family I chose to favor.

How horrible? But that is how government mandated compassion works. Let’s say we all agree that it would be great for everyone to have wonderful health care. Some people won’t pay for it, and their children suffer for that. Others won’t go to school or learn a trade that gets them a job with insurance. Others can’t get a job with benefits due to their mental or social situation. So, I decide they should all have healthcare and the government should guarantee that. Sadly, doctors and nurses can’t work for nothing, so money has to be found. The government has no money. In fact, it owes 15 trillion dollars as of this month. It has to find that money in your pocket. If you say that you would rather spend your money feeding the homeless or building clean water systems in Africa or finding a cure for AIDS or putting your child through college…or even that you don’t have the money and are struggling just trying to feed your own children, you can be fined, your property taken away from you by force (men with guns! So many who claim to be anti-guns are very willing – even eager – to give the government charge to use guns against those who wish to give to different charities or use their own money for their own purposes).

We have seen our own government send in tanks, men with guns, and court orders against those who do not want to fund the same charities and programs the government has decreed must be funded from our pockets. Republicans and Democrats alike have done this. Democrats, in particular, consider themselves compassionate and I have no reason to question the good intentions that are in their hearts. But when you mandate tax money or fees to be taken from one and given to another in the name of compassion, you are showing force, not compassion to one side of that equation. Shortly, it becomes brutality and theft and coercion masquerading as (even Christian) love.

So I will not vote for anyone who suggests taking money from one group to give to another if they are intending to use law to make it happen. If they are merely suggesting that we give willingly… I’m in! When I see a family who needs $300, it is up to me to find that money. If Idon’t have it, I can help them search for others who WANT to give to them. It is my personal responsibility to work with my hands so that I will have money and goods to give to those who have need. That is the Biblical solution. God never gave us the right to require others adjust their lives for our cause. All of us will stand before the throne of God on our own, asked what WE did, not what we made others do (or how we destroyed those who didn’t agree with us).

Of course, that’s a lot harder than seeming to be compassionate by calling for more government action; action which will be taken against one group to salve our consciences. And it is a lot harder than complaining that the government doesn’t do enough for us. That seems cold compared to those who say “we need more money for schools, healthcare, infrastructure, etc.” Here’s an idea: if the people in an area want a bridge, take money from those who agree and build it. If you need to make it a toll bridge to finish paying it off, fine, but don’t require a Wal-Mart cashier in Arkansas to subsidize your bridge in Minnesota. She might actually want to feed her children something other than mac and cheese. Let her put her money to work where she wants it to work.

Before you write in assuming that this is an anti-Democratic party screed, back up a bit. The Republicans are just as bad. They just pander to different groups and place obligations on us at different speeds. I would say they spend money like drunken sailors, but that would be wrong. I have been around drunken sailors many times and, while they spend money — it is their OWN money and not everyone else’s.

False compassion: mercy, charity, and money built on the backs of everyone, enforced by the threat of physical or financial violence, regardless of what the wishes of that individual are.

True compassion: placing yourself on the line and opening up your heart, home, and wallet for any who have need; never demanding it of others but, rather, stepping up and doing it yourself. My wife and I have been audited twice by the IRS because they didn’t believe the percentage of our income we gave away. I expect that to happen again. And I lay awake at night upset that I am not a better giver; that I hold to too much stuff and spend too much on myself. We enough retirement funds to last about six months… and that is all. Instead of “laying up treasures for yourself on earth” we believe we are to give. And we also believe – just as fervently – that it is inviting violence to demand that others do the same via law.

So who are we voting for? We don’t vote for one party but for people. And sometimes there is no one there we can vote for at all so we stay home and pray for God’s help for our nation.

When I worked and lived near Glasgow I would take every opportunity to head north of the Clyde River and into the Highlands. My young wife and I would point our 2 cylinder Citroen 2CV across the bridge and putter up alongside Loch Lomond, often spending our day around Luss on the loch’s shore or heading further north into the Rannoch Moor and the wildness that is the western reaches of the Highlands. When we did this, we crossed into the intersection of three ancient kingdoms – Pictland, Dalriada, and Strathclyde. Of the three, only Strathclyde still exists as a name; a county name.

Had we turned west just north of Luss we would have crossed the watershed known as Glen Falloch and passed the Stone of the Britons (Clach nam Breatann), a six and a half foot tall geological structure – though some say it was man made – that marked the beginning of the Old Welsh/British kingdom of Strathclyde. To travel south of that marker was to experience a language change for their language was still closely related to that of their southern cousins in Wales. Gaelic was spoken west of that stone in Dalriada, a kingdom founded by Scots from Ireland and which flourished in the western isles and Highlands. North and east of that stone was the kingdom of the Picts, a people whose language is entirely lost to us. We have some of their Ogham script (also used in Ireland and Cornwall) but that is probably an attempt to put their language into words using a foreign alphabet. The Picts remain a mystery to us when it comes to language and organization. They are the “painted ones” who are yet to be found – archaeologically and historically speaking.

Loch Lomond is named for a Welsh word for “beacon” for a large hill here (called a mountain in Scotland but my wife, raised in the Rocky Mountain west, insists on calling them hills) on which a beacon sat from ancient times. The “llumon” was lit if foreign ships were sighted entering the loch. Such beacons are found all over Scotland and formed an effective if primitive communication device.

Elizabeth Rennie and her team have found a well defined border built southwest of the Clach nam Breatann to the sea. It was the fortified border between Strathclyde and Dalriada. The stone at the far end is called Clach a Breatunnach – another way to say “Stone of the British.” Beacon rocks such as these were also located on the islands west of mainland Scotland for they were populated rather densely at this time (the depopulation of the Highlands and Islands is a relatively recent event, undertaken on purpose and with great cruelty by rich land owners and royal families starting in the late 1600’s. Before then, it was a densely populated, vibrant place full of life. Today, it is nearly empty, forlorn, and lonely).

Head east and northeast of the British Stones and you find a forty mile long border between Dalriada and Pictland marked with a series of stones, standing stones, and cairns. They line the Ridge of Britain, a quartz seam that was recognized as the line north of which the Picts lived and ruled.

The southwest of Scotland was divided between the kingdom of Rheged – which would have been also the kingdom of Strathclyde in later days – and the Bernecians who had pushed west from Northumbria. Their fortress was on the north side of the Clyde River at Dumbarton, five miles south of Loch Lomond and within sight of the line of British Stones – their border. This rock had been fortified by the Picts before the Romans ever made it to Britain. The Romans took control of it for some time but then it reverted to Rheged and then Strathclyde. I have climbed Dumbarton Rock several times, the last time in a pounding rainstorm as the wind whipped the normally sedate Clyde River into whitecapped waves. It was easy to imagine the days when British/Welsh speaking men stood watch there for ships or land incursions into their territory; ready to light the beacon fire to warn their people.

In these lands the former kingdoms – Gododdin, Alt Clut, and the Damnonii – had once reigned but they were now forgotten. Their descendants didn’t know that they, too, would soon be merged into a single national name… and they would have scoffed at such a notion. Alt Clut would hang on in some form into the 800s but Dalriada absorbed it as kings were made and unmade. It would not be until 870 that the three kingdoms would face a common enemy, for that was the year that the lookouts on Dumbarton (the Fort of the Britons) would be shaken to their core when they counted more than 200 ships entering the Clyde. The Vikings were coming led by two of their kings, Olaf and Ivar.

Attacking from their base in Dublin (remember, they had a large slave market there), the Norse besieged Dumbarton for four months before the defenders – out of food and with a dried up well – were no longer to hold the invaders off. The Norse took away a huge number of Angels, Britons, and Picts as slaves. The only way they could have managed a four month siege was if they continually resupplied their efforts from Dublin… and that they did. This would indicate that by this time the Norse were far more organized than they are usually depicted. They were not foaming at the mouth savages – their slaughter and slaving was a part of their culture, inspired and approved by their religion.

There are some who believe that Dalriada helped the Norse at least behind the scenes in order to weaken the kingdom of Strathclyde and the Picts. What we DO know is that no slaves are mentioned as being taken from Dalriada at this time and that one Norse record says that the Norse were asked by the Dalriadans to kill a Strathclyde king they held in captivity in Dublin… and the Norse complied. Shortly after this, the Bernicians retreated to Northumbria and the Dalriadans moved south, taking much of Strathclyde. Around this time the name of the kingdom of Dalriada changed. It was now Alba, the current Gaelic name for Scotland. (pronounce it AL-u-pa) Strathclyde would hang on the far south of Scotland and the northwest of England for another 200 years. During this time the chroniclers used “Strathclyde” and “Cumbria” interchangeably. Today, they live on as county names.

In 934, the English king  (king of the Angles) Athelstan, moved north into Scotland, even sending ships along the coast to the north – Caithness. He beat the Scottish king – and he was one of the first to call them Scottish rather than Alban – and forced him to state that he was now a sub-king under the rule of the English king. Four other kings who reigned over parts of Strathclyde, Dalriada/Alba, and Pictland also signed the paper. Constantine was the king of the Gaelic speaking Scots, Owain was the king of the British speaking people of Strathclyde, and the others were kings of various bits of Pictland. It seemed that Scotland and its people would soon become a part of the English… for a whole year.

Olaf, king of the Vikings based in Dublin, invaded mainland Britain with the possible (probable) collusion of the kings who had signed away their kingdoms a year before. His invasion was massive – 615 ships – and met the English in a huge, definitive battle at Brunanburh (site still unknown at present). Olaf lost and the Celts lost their last chance to drive the English/Angles back into the sea. Borders were hardened and those north of them would soon be known to history as the Scots (though many place names and many cultural influences north of that border would forever be Norse) and those south would be the English.

In 973, the division was formalized when Bernicia became a part of Scotland. Kenneth II, king of the Scots, absorbed the territory that includes Edinburgh south to the Tweed River. South of that line in the same year, Edgar was declared King of all England. In fact, Edgar took the title of King of the Island, including Scotland… but the Scots begged to differ.

They still do. From that day to this, that border has been an issue to the people on both sides of it. William Wallace would fight there as would Robert Bruce. The alliance between the two peoples would be uneasy as those south of the line insisted on ruling those north of it. The English king would take the Stone of Scone – the stone upon which Scots had crowned its king for centuries – and put it under his seat at Westminster in London. He would also take the crown jewels as a sign that he ruled the Scots whether or not they liked it. Fast forward several centuries and a group of young people would sneak down and take it back… for awhile. A recent book and movie went over that story.

In the late 1990s England finally allowed Scotland to have its own limited parliament; a body that had been dissolved by English and their lackeys in the Scottish landowning classes back in early 1700. In the 1970s the Scots voted for independence but their vote was declared invalid by the English lords. Today, the newspaper is once again mentioning the growing move toward independence for Scotland; this time, established by law and not by the sword.

We will see.

We are about done with this series. Soon, the kingdoms we are talking about enter into modern textbooks and their history is much better known. One or two more…

While the kingdom of Northumbria was producing the Lindisfarne Gospels and prospering, the north and west were more complicated. Northumbria had connections with Dalriada – a Kingdom of Scots that included many of the Hebridean islands, Argyll, and the Highlands north of Glasgow – but that kingdom also had connections with the Picts to the far north and east and those Picts were not peacefully accepting the loss of their lands and passes. As noted last time, they had moved on the Northumbrians and driven them out of Stirling and Falkirk, perhaps even out of West Lothian entirely. The Northumbrians kept Edinburgh and the massive rock that has held a castle for almost all of recorded time. They kept their control over far southeastern Scotland as well.

But the west was different. South of Dalriada was the Kingdom of Strathclyde. It was a British kingdom and had been before the Romans had come. While often imperiled and frequently splintered by war and tribal factions, it was still a kingdom with a common language (Old Welsh) that considered itself Celtic/British with some Roman tendencies when it came to organization and government. While the Northumbrians were busy consolidating their borders in Scotland they were also being harried by the rise of the Kingdom of Mercia to their south. And then death and winter came.

The great Northumbrian king, Aldfrith, was dead for over 50 years when a new king came to the throne. In the meantime, kings had come and gone in various civil wars but the Northumbrian military kept most of the land and people safe and at peace while the leaders at the top killed each other. This king, Aethelwald Moll, came from the Deiran part of the kingdom and wasn’t related to Aldfrith and had no connection with Dalriada. He led an army to defeat his enemies in northern Northumbria (all of whom were Benicians) and the battle was so definitive that it shows up in several chronicles. The Battle of Eildon was fought by the River Tweed – aka, southern Scotland – but its exact location has been lost. Before he could consolidate that victory and unite Northumbria under his rule (in order to march north and south, engaging both Dalriada and the Mercians) a terrible winter struck. The winter of 763-764 was a terrible one with snow packing the passes, choking the roads, and lingering on long after most winters had given way to Spring.

The people rose after a year of famine and disease, deposed Aethelwald Moll, forcing him to become a monk. Odd as that sounds, that was the pattern for the next twenty years. King after king rose only to be murdered or deposed and forced into lifelong service in a monastery. This was a bad time for Northumbria to be seen as weak. Mercia now controlled the southern half of England and its king, Offa, was powerful and effective. He had emissaries traveling as far as Muslim countries in the Mideast and Christian countries all over Europe. He called himself “King of the English.” As he grew old, he saw his daughter, Eadburh, marry a strong replacement for himself on the throne – King Beorhtric.

And then came 789 and the world that was getting lighter was about to be thrown back into darkness. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicles tell us that that was the year that three strange ships first appeared just off the English (Mercian) shore. The men in the ships were described not by their nation or tribe but from the direction from which they had come – North. The Northmen, or Norsemen, had arrived. The ships were forced to go to the king’s residence so that he could see who these men were and give them permission to visit his kingdom… or not. The Northmen didn’t give him that opportunity. They killed the king. Four years later, more Northmen would come, this time targeting the Northumbrians.

The medieval text “The History of the Kings of Britain” said it best and I quote it here: “IN the same year the pagans from the north-eastern regions came with a naval force to Britain like stinging hornets and spread on all sides like dire wolves robbed, tore, and slaughtered not only beasts of burden, sheep, and oxen but priest and deacons and companies of monks and nuns. And they came to the Church at Lindisfarne, laid everything waste with grievous plundering, trampled the holy places with polluted steps, dug up the altars and seized all the treasures of the holy church. They killed some of the brothers, took some away with them in fetters, many they drove out, naked and loaded with insults, some they drowned in the sea.”

And this was just the beginning. If you would like to read excellent novelizations of this time period I could direct you to no one better than Bernard Cornwell, a marvelous writer and historian. His books on this period begin with “The Last Kingdom” and if you read that one you will be hooked. The great thing about Cornwell is that not only is he expert at drawing you into the story, he is one of England’s best living historians (I was introduced to him when I read his Sharpe’s novels of the Napoleonic Wars. Many of you have probably seen him on the History Channel). Another very important book is “How the Irish Saved Civilization” by Thomas Cahill. He shows how the Irish saved the books, the Bible, and the memory of Jesus as the Northmen raided and ruined churches all over Britain and Northern Europe.

The monks called the Northmen the “Sons of Death.” But what of Scotland? It seems that the Northmen did raid there but their raids were infrequent and minor in comparison with the rest of Europe. Why? That is a mystery but there are some good theories out there. One is that the Northmen knew the Picts and had respect for them and possibly even intermarried with them. My own Scottish clan, the Gunn Clann, says that its origins were with the Norse around this same time, 780-820AD. Because the Picts controlled the north and the Scots (both from Strathclyde and Dalriada) constantly traveled in the island strewn area between Scotland and Ireland it could be that the Norsemen felt that easier, richer pickings were to the south and that the north wasn’t worth the trouble. Certainly, Norsemen sent their longships into the long lochs of Scotland but other than raiding for cattle, slaves, and wives they left little mark. In about a hundred years they would make a major attack on Scotland but it wasn’t a military one – it was a lustful one that had, as a secondary purpose, the destruction of Christianity. They sacked a nunnery in far southeast Scotland at Coldingham.

They quickly learned when feast days were held and attacked then, maximizing their take of gold and goods but also of slaves. Those slaves were then taken as far away as Moslem Europe and the Mediterranean, including North Africa. Many Africans and current or former Moslem areas (think Hungary, Slovakia, Montenegro, Dalmatia, Serbia, Croatia, etc.) have Scottish genes in them to this day. Or English. Or Irish. You see, the Vikings didn’t leave records of where they took the slaves but we know where they took them because of the records of historians in those countries. The Northmen even established a large slave market in modern day Dublin and it is thought that some of those slaves were taken with them as they went west to the unknown lands that we call today the Faeroes, Iceland, Greenland… and North America.

Northumbria was beaten backward by the victory of the Picts, but it remained a kingdom; a diminished kingdom, but still a major kingdom of its day. Nearly one fourth of the nation we now call England fell within its borders. The new king was Aldfrith and that was good news for Northumbria and Scotland. Aldfrith had been in exile in the west (in other words, Ireland and Dalriada) for many years and was fluent in Gaelic. More important, he was hungry for knowledge and is one of the first rulers of any European country that collected – and read – books. He traded vast estates for a single book and took books rather than money in trade or in diplomatic exchanges. In his own hand, we have his notes from his reading. While these statements may seem simple, remember that these were the Dark Ages and most kings were illiterate tribal leaders. Aldfrith was a scholar and a gentleman.

Learning merits respect.

Intelligence overcomes fury.

Truth should be supported.

Falsehood should be rebuked.

Iniquity should be corrected.

A quarrel merits mediation.

Stinginess should be spurned.

Arrogance deserves oblivion.

Good should be exalted.

Notice how civil these are. There isn’t the slash and burn attitude that marked almost all kings during this age. There is, instead, a call to apply patience and wisdom to problems rather than fire and sword.

Aldfrith had the support of kings from Dalriada and Ireland for he was closer to them by language and attitude than the was to the Angles whom he ruled and whose blood flowed in his veins (but not in his wife’s veins. She was Irish, married when he was in exile). He ruled from Edinburgh and Falkirk to the north down through Jedburgh and Hawick and then west to Carlisle and Penrith, south down to Wales and back up to York. This section of England has had a slight Celtic flavor to it from his day to the present. And it matters. One of the long term ministers in Scotland is an Englishman who works in the northeastern fishing town of Peterhead. When I asked one local if they were all right with an Englishman being their minister they replied, “Aye, he’s fine enough. He’s a Yorkshireman so he’s no really English.” And that, indeed, is the attitude of most Scots I’ve questioned on the matter. They differentiate between and Englishman from the south and one from the north. (I don’t want to over play this. I’m sure exceptions abound)

Northumberland eventually absorbed the kingdoms of Bernicia and Deira. Aldfrith ushered in what historians call Northumberland’s Golden Age which lasted a hundred years. Art and literature flowered, the latter especially after the death of St. Cuthbert when the people of the kingdom rushed to immortalize the one who had taught them so much about the Christ. Among these masterpieces are the Lindisfarne Gospels; not as well known as the Book of Kells but every bit as important and wonderful. We owe some of our alphabet and writing style to this book for it is here that ascenders and descenders appear – letters like p, q, d. h. and l that rise above or below the line. Instead of using all capitals – which almost all books did as “little letters” were still almost unknown – smaller, variant versions of capitals showed up in stylized writing. It also used abbreviations; a practice that was so rare as to be astonishing.

And the planning for each manuscript was beyond imagination. Not only were they artistically beautiful, they had to be planned based on the way skins were laid out, dried, and then used. Each skin would make up 16 pages when they were cut, folded, and bound into codices. That meant the other side of page one was page sixteen and so on, making the book making process a complex one. These people lived in the late 600s and it was called the Dark Ages but Northumbria was not dark.

The book also did something else – while the Book of Kells is absolutely Celtic, the Lindisfarne Gospels are a blend between Celtic and Anglian influences. We see in the pages and illustrations a blending of a people. Sometime later, perhaps still within the lifetime of Aldfrith, a translation of the text was added between the lines (interlinear) in Anglo-Saxon, generally called Old English. (by the way, it isn’t Olde English. The word “old” never had an “e” added to it until tourist shops started doing it in the late 1800s for reasons that are lost to history. So stop it, already)

All was not peaceful, though. While Dalriada and Northumbria were at peace with each other, the Picts had not declared alliances with either of them. From time to time the chroniclers tell us that the Picts killed this or that commander of Aldfrith’s forces. Most of these skirmishes took place around Stirling. While most visitors to that castle (and you should go) study the battle of Bannockburn where Robert the Bruce broke the back of the English army, this area had been a battleground since before the Romans had heard of Alba (aka Caledonia… or Scotland). No one would enter Pictland until they could control that valley and the volcanic rocks that jutted up giving the Picts the ability to see the approach of armies days before they arrived. Stirling castle is built on one of those rocks.

And on their southern border, Northumberland would find a kingdom ready to invade and take the beauty and culture they had produced. The kingdom of Mercia was about to strike.

Meanwhile, back in Dalriada…

Edwin was now king in Northumbria and the sons of Aethelfrith knew they were next for the axe. They ran northwards and were accepted by the court of the new king of Dalriada (replacing the fallen Aedan), Eochaid Buide. They were to stay there for the next 17 years, become Christians, learn Gaelic, and become thoroughly “Celticized.” During this time the kingdom of Bernecia began to splinter, but slowly. Those north of the Tweed River began to think of themselves as Celtic while those south of it thought of themselves as English (Anglish).

The gospel spread south to Northumbria and, eventually, Edwin accepted baptism and ordered his people to do the same. A missionary named Paulinus is credited by Bede as being the one who finally convinced Edwin to do the right thing. Bede says it took 36 days to do the baptisms. It was clear that Edwin thought of himself as a great king who should be emperor. He tried to copy Rome in building large grandstands and racing circles used not only for games but also for the formal reading of new laws. As Moffat says in “Lost Kingdoms” (the book that, remember, I said inspired this series and informed it as well), to this day an echo of this practice remains on the Isle of Man. There, every summer, all new laws are read out loud to the people. They cannot take effect until that reading is done. That practice came from ancient Roman Britain and has survived into the 21^st century. If Washington, DC followed that practice we wouldn’t be done reading the laws from last year before it was time to read the new laws for this year. So sad.

Dalriada and the refugee Angles who took shelter there were reached for Christ by Columba and his saints from the Isle of Iona. That meant that the Christianity they practiced was different – freer, more centered in prayer, far less elaborate and dependent upon ritual – than the Christianity in the south.

Edwin tried to take Wales but was unable to do so. While he won several battles, he lost his life at the hands of the Welsh king Cadwallon. Cadwallon moved to immediately take the throne of Northumbria for himself but he only held it for slightly over a year before war bands from the north came swooping in. The sons of Aethelfrith were back and, this time, they had a band of Scots and Picts with them. One of the sons – Eanfrith – took the throne but lost it quickly… and his life. His brother, Oswald, gathered the northern tribes together again and charged in, taking Northumbria as his own.

Oswald was different. He was a mighty warrior and he showed no mercy to Edwin’s relatives or supporters, but he also was very concerned about the state of the church in England. He imported monks from Iona to come teach the gospel throughout his kingdom. This was immediately noticed by Rome for they thought he should have asked that see or, failing that, Canterbury to supply his priests. The priest we know as Aidan came south with his brothers in Christ and established a community of faith at Lindisfarne. There are a lot of similarities between Lindisfarne and Iona and it is certain that they played a part in Aidan’s choice. He wanted a windswept island that would isolate the brothers and yet give them access to roads leading into every part of Northumbria. From there they established other monasteries in southern Scotland and northern England. Remains of these (especially Dryburgh and Jedburgh) still remain.

While sponsored by King Oswald, Aidan worked to make each of his communities entirely self sufficient. They were also centers of commerce and aide for any who lived around them. See George Hunter III’s “Celtic Evangelism” for a discussion of how these monks reached out to the common people and served them in love. The upshot of this is that during the Dark Ages Rome was not able to establish new churches and lost a lot of territory they had once held while those churches based on Celtic mannerisms and principles not only survived, but thrived and duplicated themselves all over Europe from the north of Scotland down into the middle of Italy itself!

Oswald was killed by Southumbrians (Angles in the kingdoms down below Yorkshire) in 641 AD and was followed on the throne by his brother, Oswiu (or Oswy). Prepare to be confused here for Oswiu’s greatest enemy was the Anglian who had taken control of southern areas of Northumberland – Oswin. Sorry. Eventually, Oswiu captured and killed Oswin but here he made a huge miscalculation. Rather than ruling over the southern reaches of Northumbria, he tried to be diplomatic and installed his nephew, a young man who was highly regarded in the area. Sadly, his nephew joined with pagan kings to rebel against his uncle three years later. They met at the River Winwaed where the pagans were defeated, losing 30 tribal leaders in the process. This was the beginning of the end of the pagan kingdoms that lined modern day Wales. Anglians now moved west and northwest, establishing themselves as far north as modern day Galloway in Scotland and down just south of Wales, on the east side of that border. The kingdom of Dalriada would not have contested them for two reasons. 1) they looked upon the family as Oswiu as fellows and friends after his family had stayed with them for so many years and 2) their lands were north of the Clyde River and included Argyll, lands that the Anglians never entered.

Oswiu cemented his throne by marrying a daughter of Edwin – Eanfled. Sadly – to many of us – she was a thorough believer in the Roman style of church and worship. She looked upon the Celtic priests as savages who cut their hair the wrong way (this was a big issue at the time) and – horrors! – didn’t compute the date of Easter accurately. As Oswiu’s people moved, so did her ideas of allegiance to the Roman Church. At Whitby in southern Scotland, a church was established to spread her ideas to the savage (barely) Christian north. A synod was held there and the Celts lost the argument (easy to do when your opponent is the king’s wife and the king served as translator) and were driven out of their communities. Most went north to Scotland and Pictland while others went back to Ireland.

Moving with the Roman Church was the Northumbrian language which would influence Scots and English to the present day. Of the two, it influenced Scots by far the most and is considered an ancestor of the Scots tongue and a mere contributor to the English tongue.

Even after Oswiu, the kings of Northumbria pressed their armies and church northward. They avoided Dalriada and went into Pictland against the advice of their saint and priest, Cuthbert. The Picts pretended to retreat until the Angles followed them into narrow mountain passes where they were destroyed. The battle comes down to us as the battle of Nechtansmere and it seems to have been a hugely decisive battle, but its location is still a matter of great debate among scholars. From that time on, Northumberland would reign… but south of the border.

We have to concentrate on Scotland now. The British tribes to the south would retreat into their mountain redoubts and become known as the Welsh. Their language would become unintelligible to the Scots and vice versa. Someone asked why and how English became the common tongue so quickly and that is a good question with an interesting (to me) answer.

It would seem to an outside observer that English shouldn’t have displaced the various British languages known today as Gaelic, Irish, Cornish, and Welsh. The Saxons and Angles were not terribly numerous and had the British had a common leader it is possible that they could have regained their lost lands (which explains the lingering wistfulness in their stories of Arthur). However, the Saxons and Angles were between the British and any commerce had to travel through their lands. That meant that the language of commerce became English (technically it was Anglo-Saxon but let’s not quibble). And the language of commerce becomes the language of the people.

But there was another reason why Gaelic was not ascendant: it isn’t standardized. Notice that I didn’t say “wasn’t” but “isn’t.” In the last century, Ireland decided to make Irish the official language of their young nation and they have expended a tremendous amount of money and effort into keeping their language alive but they ran into several problems. One – their language isn’t shared by other nations and the language of commerce and law and aviation and shipping is English. Two – which version of Irish were they going to use? Even in a relatively small island nation like Ireland, most people didn’t speak Irish and those who did spoke various dialects depending on their location. The Irish government has tried to make a new version of Irish by combining bits of this Irish with that Irish and changing the spelling rules to be a bit more like that other Irish… so the version found in Irish laws and in their textbooks isn’t a version you will actually hear in Kerry or Donegal or Mayo. While Irish kids have to study the language in school and most gain some fluency in it, when they walk out of the building they almost always revert to English as they play or shop. And if they don’t, they revert to the form of Irish spoken in their area.

In Scotland, the same progression occurred. Along the borders, English gained currency very quickly as the tribes and clans traded with their Angle, Jute, and Saxon neighbors. Gaelic eventually survived only in the Highlands and Islands while an old form of language known as Scots or Doric became standard in the south. We’re getting way ahead of ourselves here but those who are interested might want to check out the reign of King David (early 1100s) who ruled Scotland but whose heart and mind were heavily influenced by King Henry I of England and his Norman-French court. King David pushed the Celtic Church to the margins, hastening its extinction, and made English the legal language for all commerce, education, and law (with some room given to Latin as well). Gaelic began its downward spiral from that point on.

If time allows, we can get back to that subject, but for now we need to go back to the 600s and the rise of a large and powerful kingdom in the west of Scotland – Dalriada. We’ve already mentioned the huge rock guarding the entrance to the west of Scotland known today as Dumbarton. Before you even get that far inland or up the Clyde River you have to get past the wild lands of Argyll. And guarding those lands was a fort and castle complex at Dunadd, near the tiny village of Kilmartin.

If any of you go to Scotland you need to set aside a couple of days to get to Kilmartin. Not one out of a million tourists will ever go there. It is way off the beaten paths. I took my family there several years ago and we walked among ancient cairns, climbed duns that were fortified before Jesus was born, and spoke of the ancient kings that ruled here before Scotland was even an idea.

The first of the great leaders of Dalriada was Aedan. Some say that St. Columba himself crowned him king and that is echoed by one of our earliest historians, Adomnan, the ninth abbot of Iona. This area was ignored by archaeologists until recent decades (as much of Scottish history has been ignored and left out of textbooks used by Scottish children) but has proven to be a rich source of information about this lost kingdom. Anglo-Saxon metalwork has been found here proving that they traded with their neighbors to the south. Badges of rank that were pinned to robes have been found as well as elaborate and beautiful glass and carvings in stone.

What was once legend is now known as fact. Aedan was a great general and warrior and a wise king. He traded and fought from the Orkneys to the far north down to the Isle of Man in the Irish Sea. His fighting men were listed by name in the Senchus Fer a h’Alban (literally “the fighting Scottish men”). They struck out in seven benched boats made of stretched hide over bowed wood. Smaller versions of these boats – or curragh – are still used today in western Ireland and northern Scotland.

When not moving by sea, Aedan and his men used the old Roman roads that still sat above the marshy ground and allowed them to move vast distances in a short time. It was via those roads that they moved south and east into modern day Lothian and down to the Tweed and attacked the Bernicians who had – only three years before – thrown the Celts out of Edinburgh and the east. Aedan (sometimes written as Aidan) and his men advanced, driving the Angles ahead of them, until the greatest of all Angle kings, Aethelfrith, led a great host against them at a place known as Degsastan. The location of this battle is still in doubt but, in my opinion, the most likely place for it is Addinston in present day Lauderdale. Stones stand there that were known in the old British tongue as Aet Aegdanes Stan which means… drumroll please… Aedan’s stone. It was here that Aedan died… we think. He certainly lost the battle and wasn’t heard from again though his death wasn’t officially reported until 609, more than five years later. At the time of the battle, he was nearly 70 years old so even if he didn’t die in battle he wouldn’t have lasted much longer.

While it was a stunning defeat for the Dalriadans (Scots), the Angles were not unscathed. Aethelfrith’s brother, Theodbald, and many of his men were killed by an Irish war band leader named Mael-Umai. Had Aethelfrith decided to pursue the Dalriadans north and east history would have been rewritten. But for reasons left to us to imagine he turned south against fellow Angles in the Kingdom of Deira, defeating them and uniting the kingdoms of Deira and Bernicia into the land known today as Northumberland. Aethelfrith – a pagan – then turned west and attacked settlements of British monks at Chester, slaughtering 1200 of them according to Bede, the ecclesiastical historian of the day. He then decided to go even further south and attack the East Anglians but here his luck and time ran out. He was killed and the Anglians were united under one king – Edwin – from the south of England to the north and part of the west.

Meanwhile… back in Dalriada….

So what was life like beyond the borderlands? I know just a little about what the Angles were doing and a bit more about the Saxons… and almost nothing about the Welsh, so let’s focus on Scotland (which wasn’t Scotland yet) and Ireland (where most Scots still lived).

There were many smaller tribal kingdoms in Scotland but the three major ones were the Scots (or Scotti) who were from Ireland, Dalriada in the west and up into Argyll, and the Picts who held the vast Highland mountains and passes. In the east, the Angles had a firm hold on what would become Edinburgh.

In Ireland and among the Picts and Dalriada there was a strictly stratified system of social organization. Welsh chroniclers tell us that the same system was in place there so it must have been a British system that existed long before the Angles and Saxons separated them. You had the Well Born who were the top caste, so to speak. They were the warriors who were differentiated from other fighters by have a lineage and property. Lineage was everything – as it was to most other ancient peoples – and much of the surviving literature we have from this time is just list after list of forefathers. The Taeogion were the farmers who, unlike serfs in future days, had set rights and protections. Crops were rotated by law and land was allocated fairly (in the main). They were people of some standing but they could never become Well Born; they were locked into the caste into which they were born.

The bottom class or caste were the slaves – the Caethion. Most of them had been captured in war either with foreigners such as the Saxons or in clashes with other British tribes. Remember that St. Patrick was taken by the Irish when he was British as well (though with one Roman parent). He later excoriated Christian Irish tribes – primarily the Scotti – for taking fellow Christians captive.

Moving around within the classes as independent classes with their own ranking were bards and priests. The priests were almost all Culdee Christians who recognized Rome but had their own traditions and leaders. The bards were very important, especially for those peoples who had no written language. They were the keepers of knowledge – including those all important lists of forefathers – and bound the people together by giving them a common story. Bards were frequently also musicians, entertainers, and judges. Priests often served as judges as well, especially those who follow Patrick in Ireland.

What may surprise you is how advanced the Celtic people were when it came to rights and law. Remember that the rest of Europe was going dark – very dark. Mass slaughter and rapine was the norm. Nothing like the laws protecting men, women, and children in Scotland and Ireland would be found in mainland Europe for centuries. The English (who would arise from an amalgamation of Angles and Saxons with a huge infusion of blood from the Norman French later on) certainly didn’t have these rules. That is why the Scots were perpetually offended at their treatment at the hands of Edward and other English kings.

What kind of protections and laws? For one, the Well Born were never allowed to do what they liked to lower castes. Any killing came with a huge fine. There was a blood price written into law that certainly valued different people at different rates but the point is ALL were valued, even women. And that was a very strange thing to find in law at this point. True enough, they were only worth half as many cattle and/or other property as a man but that was a huge improvement over a woman’s standing in, say, Gaul or the Steppes.

Women had the right to end their marriage at any time. Marriage was considered a contract, not a sacrament. If a woman was beaten, she could leave the marriage and send in men to exact revenge. She had that right. And a woman who’d had two or three marriages wasn’t considered spoiled goods as she was below the border. No, she had the right to join with or end a marriage as freely as any man. Maybe this is where we got all those strong, independent women in Celtic countries!

And we need to mention the Law of the Innocents. Until the League of Nations in the 20^th century there was nothing like it anywhere else that I can find. St. Adomnan, primarily known as the biographer for the great Scottish monk and missionary St. Columba, helped the Celtic people craft a great law protecting people during war. He convened (or helped to do so) a Synod at Birr in the middle of the Irish mainland. Attending was a who’s who of Celtic leaders. Irish, Dalriadic, and Pictish kings were all there to sign the document and swear to uphold the new law in their territories. And what was that law? That women and children were not to be harmed in war. The law went into great detail about what would happen to any soldier or, indeed, any man who molested a woman, hit a child, drew a sword to threaten an innocent, etc. While the English considered it their right to rape and steal women and children, the Celts declared it unlawful and set into place punishments starting with anyone who would threaten a child or put their hand under a woman’s dress all the way to handing out the death penalty for those who actually killed or grossly harmed an innocent.

Slavery was still allowed but women and children had special status as “Cumlalaich” or “little slaves.” If you took them, you had to treat them with special kindness and dignity for they were helpless and the Celts felt a great responsibility for the weak and displaced. At least, they’d felt that way since Christianity came to them.

It wasn’t all good news for women. Since they were being given rights and protections, they also had to bear responsibility for their crimes. In the past, their husbands or male relatives had to pay the cost for their wrongs but no longer. One interesting point: women were not subject to a standard death penalty. Instead, they were put into a place where God was in charge of whether or not they lived or died. In one example, if a woman was found guilty (they got a trial!) of killing a man or another woman, they were to be taken to the shore and placed into a small boat with one paddle and set adrift. If they could make it to another area safely, fine, but they were never to come back home.

South of Scotland and east of Wales – in other words, in England – the situation was more complicated and we’ll look at it briefly. For the moment, let it be acknowledged that some Saxon and Angle kings allowed their Celtic minorities to have many of their own laws for awhile. But by the 10^th century the Celtic populations of those lands were either extinct by death, slavery, or intermarriage. And the laws of rights, dignity, property, and war still reigned in the Celtic lands of Scotland and Ireland.

It wasn’t entirely dark in the Dark Ages.

We’ll get back to the Lost Kingdoms part of this blog in a moment. For now, let’s see how the languages differ today after having been separated for the last 1400 years. Even before the Angles and Saxons pushed their way across the island from east to west separating the British/Celts there were many, many regional differences in the British tongue. If you need an example of this, read Chaucer. Chaucer was absolutely writing English but it seems very strange to us. Some even say that Chaucer standardized the language because up to that point there were no hard grammatical rules and absolutely zero spelling conventions. Whether or not he actually should get credit for standardizing English, he had a great influence on how it was written… generations later. Without printing presses, most of his contemporaries would never see his writing, much less be able to read it if they did. Look at this quote from Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. “And smale foules maken melodie, That slepen alle night with open eye, So priketh hem nature in hir corages; Than longen folk to gon on pilgrimages.” Got that? He is just saying that when the time of year comes that small birds sing and sleep with open eyes (because it is getting lighter), people feel the need to go on pilgrimages. And remember – this is English, circa 1370. This is the language of the Angles and Saxons by that time.

Before then, their language was the language of Beowulf. Because the script for that was so different I will not attempt to write it here. I studied it for a year and a half at West Virginia University and sat on a translation panel for a semester so I fell in love with it… but it looks odd. Go here for examples — http://www.omniglot.com/writing/oldenglish.htm and remember that this was the source for English (with later major adjustments due to the arrival of French via the Norman invasion).

And do we need to discuss Shakespeare and the Kings James Version to illustrate how quickly languages change? And look at how quickly it changed after the arrival of the printing press… and the printing press slowed down the creation of new streams of English because now people read from standard scripts. Even today with all of our media there are differing forms of English – a dozen or more in the US, at least six in Scotland, and more than a dozen in England… and we haven’t gotten to South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, etc.

So imagine how diverse the tongues of the Celts/British were before the invasions of the Saxons and Angles. After the invasions, when different kingdoms were blocked off from each other and communication dropped to near zero, the languages formed their own new rules and words. Irish (the form of Gaelic spoken in Ireland) is not terribly different from Gaelic (the form of Gaelic spoken in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland) and speakers of one can understand the other with effort and concentration… usually. However neither of them can understand a word of Welsh. The Welsh were locked in behind a wall of mountains that kept out the English (except for Henry and Edward) and there was little ship traffic between Wales and Ireland. The Welsh preferred to go further afield and sailed as far as America and the Mediterranean. So, let’s look at a couple of phrases in each language.

To say “How are you?” in Gaelic is “Ciamar a tha thu?”

In Irish, it is “Conas ata tu?”

In Welsh, it is “Sut wyt ti?”

To ask “Where do you live?” in Gaelic is “Cait a bheil thu a’ fuireach?”

In Irish, it is “áit a bhfuil cónaí ort?”

In Welsh, it is “ble rydych chi’n byw?”

And some British languages died. Cornish was a British language that was spoken throughout Cornwall, the southwestern extreme of England. The last known native speaker died in 1914 but it was effectively gone by the early 1700s. Wikipedia has a great article on this with examples and history. Manx is the Gaelic spoken on the Isle of Man (located between Ireland and Wales). The last native speaker died in 1974 but there is a huge effort to revive the language and a sizable minority on the island know at least a little Manx. The languages spoken in the Channel Islands (Auregnais) went extinct in the 1950s. They were closely related to Norman, a proto-French langauge.

The Scandinavian language of Norn was spoken in the Shetland and Orkney Islands located north of the Scottish mainland. It died in the 1880s and is only known to scholars today. The Pictish languages of Scotland’s northern Highlands and western regions died out by 900AD, not long after the Angles came to dominance in northern England and Scotland found itself cut off from the other British peoples. The tongue spoken in the border regions between the Scottish kingdoms and the Angles – Cumbric – was dead and gone by 1100AD and survives only in place names such as the name for the beautiful mountain region around Penrith, England – Cumbria. Dozens of other variants undoubtedly are lost but since they were spoken only and had no written form, we don’t even know that we lost them. The only reason we know about Pictish is because of their elaborate and beautiful carvings, engravings, and jewelry. Other people – Romans, Scots, etc. – wrote about them and mentioned that their langauge was unintelligible but that’s all we know. Some place names give us hints at a few of their words but that is it. What a loss.

Of course, this isn’t just something that happened in ancient and medieval Britain. The loss of Native American languages continues apace. Each year, it seems, another “last speaker” dies. And with them dies their poetry, history, and any wisdom that tribe gathered before it withered away. There is a good argument to be made for unifying languages – and the man who invented Esperanto gave it the good college try – but it is foolish to think that what we gain by all speaking one tongue comes without cost.

Next… life in the north… in what would become Scotland.

Without Roman historians to write about the period 400-700 we are reliant upon the Welsh Chroniclers, a few monks, and archaeology to piece together the tumultuous times that divided the Celts/British and drew the modern map of the British Isles. Some names come up with just enough history behind them to hint of a much more interesting history lost to us. One of those names is Morcant. His name comes down to us as Morgan and is a common last name in Wales and Scotland and a common girls name in the last few decades here in the United States. It also appears in the Arthur tales as do many of the great names of this period such as Merlin (Myrrdin).

Morcant – aka Morcant Bulc – was a king. We know that. We just can’t be sure where he served as king. It is possible that he was king of Lothian, that part of Scotland on the eastern coast that now includes the capital city of Edinburgh with its massive fortress on top of a volcanic rock that dominates the skyline. We know that forts and castles were there from the 400s and it very well may be that one of them belonged to Morcant. Some sources say he was king over Strathclyde, forty miles west in the area known as Glasgow today. A couple put him down in Northumberland, the northeast of England. That area was thoroughly Celtic/British at that time. The Angles would not make it English for quite some time and, in fact, that border swung back and forth repeatedly over the centuries making those born there Scottish or English depending upon whose king had pushed the other king backward. To this day, many Scots will warm up to an Englishman from York or Northumberland much more quickly than they will an Englishman from any other part of that nation. That kinship, though now distant, still matters. My own grandmother was a Humphries from Northumberland but was accepted as a Scot by the rest of my family. They considered the current position of the border to be irrelevant!

Another name that has come down to us greatly changed and little known is that of Germanianus’ father. Germanianus was a great tribal king or warlord but he wasn’t as great as his father and so the Welsh referred to him as “son of Coel Hen.” That father and his work is almost completely unknown to us but “Coel Hen” means “Old Cole” and who hasn’t learned the nursery rhyme about “Old King Cole was a merry old soul…”? Yep, same guy.

Cole and his son were leaders of the Votadini who by this time roamed far and wide. I don’t get into the fierce battles among academics on exactly what they considered their home (originally, they were from southern Scotland) but we know that they fought all over the British Midlands, around the southern border of Wales, and up into the bottom corners of Yorkshire. Perhaps they had no land at this time and their kings were not kings of place but kings of people.

Leading the Angles in their battles against the native British was Fflamddwyn the Firebrand. He was based around Lindisfarne, a peninsula that becomes an island twice a day when the tide comes in (and does it come in quickly! Despite signs warning of this, cars are swept out to sea regularly and walkers suddenly become swimmers). Fflamddwyn ruled from there to Bamburgh, another natural geologic formation that lended itself to fortification. Both of these outcroppings still have a castle on them to this very day. A Google search will pull up some good photos.

The British might – just might – have been able to keep the Angles on their seaside ledges and away from the mainland had they united but for reasons still in dispute, Morcant had another great tribal warlord/king murdered – Urien. It is thought that Morcant feared that after their battle, Urien would be made high king and he wanted that honor for himself. But by murdering his fellow king, he split the British forces. Most of them rode west back to their homes in Scotland, Wales, or around modern day Penrith. The Angles pushed forward all the way to Carlisle, taking it and never again giving it over to the British. They went northward and defeated the Gododdin kings of Scotland, nearly erasing their names and the name of their kingdom from history. That last, great battle was so savage that it is said only one Celt survived it, a poet named Aneirin, who then wrote an epic poem of the battle, mourning the loss of a people.

The battle took place around and on top of the castle rock that today houses Edinburgh Castle, a must see for any visitor to Scotland. From Aneirin’s poem we know that the unbaptized Picts joined the Scots in fighting the pagan Angles. But it was all for nothing. The Angles took that corner of Scotland and pressed westward, destroying the kingdoms of Deira and Bernicia. Neither would ever rise again and are almost entirely forgotten today.

The battle took place as most battles did in those days. First, the champions of both sides met in single or double combat. Then cavalry charged and feinted back and forth. Then smaller squads of infantry moved about, seeking position. When the infantry charged it was very much like that horrid scene in Braveheart when you see the two armies collide. Momentum was everything. That is why some would be ready to fall back and plant their spears in the ground at an angle – to disrupt any charge that broke their own charge and threatened to drive them from the field. The men would have fought nearly naked (or entirely so), fortified by mead – a honey wine from which my family takes its name, and with any holy relics or signs they could carry or paint on their bodies.

But the baptized fell and the pagans took the field. The center and south of England (except for parts of Cornwall) were now firmly in the hands of the Saxons – the men of the knife. And the northern third of England from coast to coast and up into the southeastern corner of Scotland was now in the hands of the Angles. Both of these were Germanic/Gaulic tribes and brought their language with them. The various forms of Gaelic would now diverge as the British were forever separated. Scottish Gaelic is now called Gaelic and Irish Gaelic is called Irish. Welsh Gaelic is called Welsh. The Germanic tongue the Saxons and Angle spoke also differed considerably according to which tribe was speaking. The language would be called English in the south and Scots (or Doric) in the north. New traditions and tales would spring up and, soon, Scots and Irish and Welsh would not consider each other even distant relatives because their history had been wiped out, their cities lost, and a great enemy stood between them as an impassable barrier. The modern map of Britain had been written in blood and in lost kingdoms.