Monday, July 30, 2018

London - After the Romans (part two)

By Walter Besant

The following are the facts related by the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle:

A.D. 443 - This year Britons sent over sea to Rome, and begged for help against the Piets; but they had none, because they were themselves warring against Atilla, King of the Huns. And then they sent to the Angles, and entreated the like of the Ethelings of Angles.

A.D. 449 - Hengist and Hora, invited by Verigern, King of the Britons, landed in Britain on the shore called Wippidsfleet, at first in aid of the Britons, but afterward they fought against them. King Vortigern gave them land in the southeast of this country on condition that they should fight against the Piets. Then they fought against the Piets, and had the victory wheresoever they came. Then they sent to the Angles, desired a larger force tob e sent, and caused them to be told the worthlessness of the Britons and the excellence of the land. Then they soon sent thither a larger force in aid of the others. At that time came men from three tribes in Germany - from the Old Saxons, from the Angles, and from the Jutes. From the Jutes came the Kentish men and the Wightwarians, that is, the trib which now dwells in Wight, and that race among the West Saxons which is still called the reace of Jutes. From the Old Saxons came the men of Essex and Sussex and Wessex. From Anglia, which has ever since remained waste, betwixt the Jutes and Saxons, came the mend of East Anglia, Middle Anglia, Merica and all Northumbria.

A.D. 455 - THis year Hengist and Horsa fought against King Voritgern at the place called Aegelsthrep (Aylesford) and his brother Horsa was slain, and after that Hengist obtained the kingdom and Aese , his son.

A.D. 456 - This year Hengist and Aese slew four troops of Britons with the edge of the swaord in the place which is named Creeganford (Crayford).

A.D. 457 - This year Hengist and Aese his son fought against the Britons at a place called Creegan ford, and there slew 4000 men. And the Britons then forsook Kent, and in great terror fled London.

A.D. 465 - This year Hengist and Aese fought against the Welsh near Wippidsfleet, and there slew twelve Welsh ealdermen, and one fo their own thanes was slain there, whose name was Wippid.

A.D. 473 - This year Hengist and Aese fought against the Welsh, and took spoils innumerable; and the Welsh fled from the Angles like fire.

A.D. 477 - This eyar Aella and his three sons, Cymen and Wlemcing and Cissa, came to the land of Britain with their ships at a place called Cymenes-ora, and there slew many Welsh, and some they drove in flight into the wood that is named Andreds-lea. (Probably the landing was on the coast of Sussex.)

A.D. 485 - This year Aella fought against the Welsh near the bandk of Meareraedsburn.

A.D. 491 - This year Aella and Cissa besieged Andredscester (Pevensey), and slew all the dwelt therein, so that not a single Briton was left.

A.D. 495 - This year two ealdermen came to Britain, Cerdic and Cynric, his son, with five ships, at the place which is called Cerdicsore (probably Calshot Castle, on Southampton Water), and Stuf and Whitgar fought against the Britons and put them to flight.

A.D. 519 - This year Cerdic and Cynric obtained the kingdom of the West Saxons; and te smae year they fought against the Britons where it is now name Cerdies-ford (Charford on the Avon, near Fordingbridge), and from that time forth the royal offspring of the West Saxons.

A.D. 527 - This year Cerdic and Cynric fought against the Britons at the place called Cerdics-lea.

A.D. 530 - This year Cerdic Cynric conquered the Island of Wight, and slew many men at Whit-garas-byrg (Carisbrook, Isle of Wight).

A.D. 547 - This year Ida began to reign, from whom came the royal race of Northumberland.

The conquest of England was now vertually completed.

In the next installment we shall examine why there is no mention whatsoever of the capture of London in the Chronicle.

Friday, April 20, 2018

London - After the Romans (part one)

By Walter Besant

The only authorities for the events which took place in Britain during the fifth and sixth centuries are Gildas and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. There are other writers - Etherwerd, for instance, who copied the Chronicle, and adds nothing; Nennius, whose work, edited by on Mark the Hermit, in the tenth century, was found in the Vatican. The first edition was published in London in the year 1819, in the original Latin, by Rev. William Gunn. Nennius gives a brief account of King Arthur and his exploits, but he affords little or no information that is of use to us. The work of Richard of Cirencester is extremely valuable on acccount of its topography; it is also interesting as the work of the first English antiquary. But he belonged to the fourteenth century, and has added nothing to the history, of which he knew no more that we ourselves can discover. The book named after Geoffrey of Monmouth is not worth a moment's serious consideration. In Bede's Ecclesiastical History passages may be found which throw side lights onto this period but they are few.

St. Gildas, called Badonicus, is supposed to have been born about the year 520, in Wales. He wrote about the year 560 and is therefore contemporary with the events of which he speaks. His book contains a vast quantity of rhetoric to a very small amount of history. Unfortunately for him, he was called by his admiring fellow-monks in his lifetime, Sapiens - the Sage or Sapient. Perhaps in order to live up to this designation, he was fain to regard himself with so much respect as to assume the garb and language of a prophet, and with what he thought prophectic force, which we now perceive to be ecclesiastical inflation and exaggeration, he proceeded to admonish princes and people of their sins. Every age, to the ecclesiastical prophet, as to the secular satirist, is an age of unbounded profligacy; of vice such as the world has never before witnessed; of luxury advanced to heights hitherto untrodden; of license, wantonness, riot unbridled and unparalleled, insomuchas that Jerusalem, even under the soft influences of Ahola and Aholibah, was righteous and pure in comparison.

No doubt Gildas lived in a most trying and disappointing time. Things went wrong and things went from bad to worse. His own people were defeated and driven continually westward; they couldn not even hold together and fight side by side against the common enemy; religion was forgotten in the fierce struggles for life, and in the fiercer civil dissensions; Saxon, Angle, or Jute, all were alike in that none had any reverence for priest or for Church; the worst passions were aroused. Yet one cannont but think that a lower note might have been struck with greater advantage; and now that it is impossible to learn how far the prophet's admonitions brought repentance to the kings, one regrets that a simple statement of the events in chronological order as they ocurred was not thought necessary to complete a historical work.

As regards the alleged luxury of the time, the monk wrote from a dismal cell, very likely wattled, draughty and cold; his food was poor and scanty; his bed was hard; life to him was mere endurance. The roasted meats (and vegetables), the soft pillows and cushions, the heated rooms of the better sort, seemed wicked luxury, especially when he thought of the conquering Saxon and his ruined country. Of course in every age the wealthy will surround themselves with whatever comforts can be procured. We are in these days, for instance, advanced to an inconceivable height of luxury. One would like to invite the luxurious Cuneglass to spend a day or two with a young man of the present day. Those who were neither rich nor free lived hardly, as they do to this day; those who were young and strong, even though they were not perhaps trained to the use of arms, easily learned how to use them, and when it came to victory or death, they soon recovered the old British spirit.

This is not the place, otherwise it would be intersting to show what a long and gallant stand was made by these people, whom it is customary to call cowardly and luxurious - these ancestors of the gallant Welsh. It is manifest that a period of two hundred yeaers and more of peace almost profound, their frontiers and their coasts guarded for them by the legions of Rome, must have lowered the British spirit. But they quickly recovered. The Arthurian epic, it s certain, has some foundation in fact, and perhaps poor King Cuneglass himself, the bear and butcher, wielded a valiant sword.

In our next installemnt - the facts related by the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.

Saturday, January 20, 2018

The Awakening

An editorial by James Frances Cooke

Prudery an Injury

Nothing could be more disastrous to American music and American drama than an ear of prudery. The kill-joy earnestness of the zealots continually seeking a Cromwell, to exchange bloody rebellion for some other form of mental and bodily activity, rarely lead to permanent forms of art. Every instance of narrow Puritanism, however necessary it may have been at the time, has been suffocating to higher artistic development. Contrast the products of our own picturesque William Billings, with those of his European contemporaries, Haydn and Mozart.

The enemies of prudery do not plead for licentiousness. They seek to secure decency coupled with common sense. They do not seek to evade the broad human problems that discipline the mind and fortify the soul. They do not strive to escape the vital sociological questions which since the time of Euripides and Aristophanes have been answered in the theater with the greatest possible force. The canyon between Ibsen's Ghosts, Pinero's Second Mrs. Tanqueray, Hauptmnann's Hanele, Henry Arthur Jones' Mrs. Dane's Defence, or even Brieux's unnecessarily clinical Les Avaries, and some of the hopelessly degrading musical shows of the last five or ten years is as wide and as deep as the Colorado.

How the Objectionable Song Is Popularized

How does the infamous song come into existence? Harry B. Smith, author of the libretto of Robin Hood, and dozens of other pieces, has given us a hint. The composer and the librettist hand in their completed work to the manager. The rehearsals commence and the stage door is besieged by representatives of microscopic publishers, all fighting like vandals to get a hearing for their songs. Sometimes the songs have real merit, sometimes they are absolutely worthless products of the cheapest kind of untrained intellect. Sometimes they are filled with the venomous virus of the social ulcers of the megalopolis. Never does the song have any direct bearing upon the subject of the libretto, or bear any relations to the composer's musical scheme. The manager is either moved by the personal persuasion of the publisher, the whim of one of his singer, a bribe or his own belief that the song may "carry" the piece. In the last point he has good precedent because some pieces have been "carried" by particularly taking songs. Even Robin Hood owed a lot to Oh, Promise Me.

False Success

The song gets on. The galley is packed with whistlers, claquers, etc., etc., all of them Hessian hirelings of the song publisher. The song is greeted with a kind of uproar from the gallery. It is demanded again and again. The people in the lower part of the house have little idea that they are being buncoed into taking part in making a worthless song a valuable property for some trifling publisher - soon lend themselves to the psychological influence of the mob and find themselves applauding sentiments they would be ashamed to think about in their own homes. The songs has a run - some publishers report that the run rarely survives six months. If the song is merely illiterate, meaningless, bathos or sickly sentiment it can do but little harm, but when it is reeking with the offensive allusions found in some of the songs of the day, it is time that a musical Board of Health be appointed to disinfect the whole nauseous matter. We do not believe that the people of this country want songs of the pestilential kind. We believe that the so-called hits of this order are entirely artificial. We are confident that the offensive musical numbers do not exist because of the genuine demand, but because they are pounded into the people with theatrical sledge hammers by the panderers that the respectable publishers of New York and every other city are all anxious to annihilate.

How You May Help

Reaching the eyes of many people, Manor Selby Journal may become a great force in safe-guarding the spirit of decency. Its readers may take an active part in exterminating the bad influence of the questionable song. How is it to be done? Certainly it cannot be accomplished by muck-raking. Denouncing special songs advertises them. Their publishers count such notoriety. In England audiences have a custom of booing and hooting anything which does not meet popular approval. In this country we resort to the deadly silence. Theatrical performers virtually live upon applause. Let self-respecting people lose no opportunity to show their attitude toward music and plays surrounding suggestive ideas and the managers will soon have their ears to the ground.

- edited by Boulevard Denim