Re: OT: NB as Xy

["Robert Holmgren" holmgren@xxxxxxxx]

** Reply to message from Frank Brownlow 
on Fri, 14 Sep 2007 21:09:52 -0400


> Well, modern English is a descendant of Old Western Germanic. So's
> Frisian. Day to day our spoken English speech is something like 80%
> Germanic. What we're now learning, though, is that what moved westward
> into Britain in the 5th century were the war-bands, and the numbers were
> fairly small. Hence the people who were pushed westwards were the
> displaced warrior aristocracies.

This all sounds quite right. Sedentary landed populations stay
put and are subjugated and absorbed. We hear nothing more about
the Angles in Germany after the 5th century -- the people with
the biggest investment in tribalism are indeed the aristocrats,
and they have the biggest incentive to move on (or disincentive
to stay) when facing a conquest. Still, their numbers
(howsoever small) must have been sufficient to impose their writ
in eastern and southern Britain. Frankly, I have always been
much more interested in the other side of the story, the
Arthurian "legends", which essentially tell the tale of the
Romanized local elites who tried to sustain certain notions of
culture after Rome withdrew, who opposed these "barbarians", and
who became increasingly demoralized. It's a tale that ends
badly, but that controlled the British folkloric imagination for
a thousand years, so powerful was its message about principles,
justice, duty, faithfulness.

-----------------------------
Robert Holmgren
holmgren@xxxxxxxx
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