Page:The Evolution of British Cattle.djvu/51

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
THE ANGLO-SAXONS
39

provinces of the Jutes and the Saxons, are descended the East-Angles, the Midland-Angles," and so on, while John Richard Green, who might almost be said to have lived in this part of history, writes thus—[1]

"It was the slowness of their advance, the small numbers of each separate band in its descent upon the coast, that made it possible for the invaders to bring with them, when the work was done, the wives and children, the laet and the slave, even the cattle they had left behind them. The wave of conquest was thus but a prelude to the gradual migration of the whole people. For the settlement of the conquerors was nothing less than a transfer of English society to the shores of Britain. It was England that settled down on English soil."

But these quotations may not be sufficiently convincing that nearly the whole of the English part of England was wholly populated with English cattle, more especially as the cattle of Northumbria, which was one of the parts occupied by the Angles who, according to Bede, made the most complete migration, were still of the old black Celtic colour down to the beginning of the eighteenth century. But that is the only discrepancy, and it is not inexplicable; for in the days of the English invasion it was a far way to carry cattle from Schleswig to Yorkshire,

  1. "The Making of England," p. 153.