The evolution of British cattle and the fashioning of breeds/The Anglo-Saxons

by James Wilson

IV

THE ANGLO-SAXONS

If we remember the point made two chapters back that, in their migrations, human races are usually accompanied by their domestic animals, we know at once to look across the North Sea into Western Germany for the cattle that came in to fill up the gap left by the departure of the Celtic and Roman cattle into the west and the north. The nature of the English migration is first indicated in Bede's " Ecclesiastical History." The English were eventually an amalgamation of, at least, three tribes: the Jutes from what is now Jutland, the Angles from what is now Schleswig-Holstein, and the Saxons from the country south of that and westwards towards Holland and the Frisian islands, Bede, in telling from which of these tribes the people in different parts of England are descended, says:^[1] "From the Angles, that is, the country which is called Anglia, and which is said, from that time, to remain desert to this day,^[2] between the 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—^[3]

"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, and, if only a few were carried, their colours would soon have been swamped by the dominant black of the natives.

The cattle in the rest of the English part of England were brought over by the invaders from Western Germany. To prove this statement we must show that the cattle in the south were different from those in the rest of England in Anglo-Saxon times, and also, if possible, that others of their kind had been left behind them in Germany. One fact must be borne in mind, namely, that, from the final settling down of the English till the junction of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries there was very little movement of cattle or other live stock, with the exception of horses. We may therefore assume that, if a race of cattle is found occupying any particular part of the country about the end of the seventeenth or early in the eighteenth century, it had occupied that same part for nearly a thousand years.

It is unfortunate that, although much has been written of the history of British cattle since the middle of the eighteenth century, the period immediately before that is almost without a record. We must therefore, to some extent, fill in this period by reference to what came after. Since the first half of the eighteenth century there have been no more striking phenomena than the advent and progress of two great breeds, the Longhorn and the Shorthorn. These in succession swept out many of the old local breeds and occupied their ground instead; and thus, where, say, the Longhorn was found in 1775, a totally different breed would have been found a hundred years before. What these other breeds were we can infer from the undisplaced breeds around them, and, if possible, find confirmation elsewhere. For example, the Longhorn came into prominence in the English Midlands in the first half of the eighteenth century, and spread gradually southwards as well as in other directions like a rising lake, submerging, as it were, all the existing breeds excepting those that stood high upon the banks around. The southern unsubmerged breeds, with one exception, to which we shall refer later, had many characters in common, but one in particular, that they were all red. Similarly the unsubmerged northern cattle were all black. There is no difficulty in showing that the cattle in Scotland and the North of England were black two centuries ago, for, it will be found from the agricultural and statistical surveys published at the instance of the first Board of Agriculture that they were black at a date still later, while two quotations from Gervaise Markham will show that towards the end of the seventeenth century the black race reached south into England as far as a line drawn approximately from Staffordshire to Yorkshire: "As touching the right Breed of Kine through our Nation, it generally affordeth very good ones, yet some Countries so far exceed other countries, as Cheshire, Lancashire, Yorkshire and Derbyshire for black Kine,"^[4] and "Those that were bred in York-shire, Darby-shire, Lancashire, and Staffordshire were generally all black."^[5]

That the red race possessed the rest of the country till the eighteenth, or at any rate till the seventeenth, century is practically certain, but the proof is less direct than clear. The question is complicated by several factors: by the importation of red and white flecked cattle to Lincoln and some other eastern counties in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, by the advent of the new breed—the Longhorns—in the eighteenth century, by the breaking down of the old English system of agriculture which did not encourage the movement of cattle, by the growth of London, and by "the graziers having mixed the cattle more or less in each county."^[6] We can look backwards, however, and keep these points in mind in doing so. At the present day we see the south of England encircled by a broken band of red-coloured cattle—the Lincolns, the Norfolks and Suffolks, the Sussex, the South and North Devons, and the Herefords. According to Youatt and Marshall this band was not only continuous a century ago (with one exception), but it was also broader, that is, reaching farther inland. Hale and Markham indicate that it was still broader in their day. Youatt and the writers of the Southern Agricultural Surveys refer again and again to the southern march of the Longhorns and the expulsion of the cattle that were there before them. From these considerations we may say, without doubt, that the red race of cattle, whose representatives to-day are the Lincolns, the Norfolks and Suffolks, the Sussex, the Devons, and the Herefords, were in possession of the southern half of England till towards the close of the eighteenth century. If still further evidence were required, a very interesting statement of Leonard Mascal's might be quoted: "Also for Oxen to labour, the blacke Oxe and the redde Oxe are best, and the browne or greezled Oxe nexte: the white one is worst of all colours."^[7] Among cows, "The browne colour mixt with white spots is good, with the redde and the blacke."^[7] Remembering that cattle were still valued for draught rather than for milk or beef, we cannot imagine that farmers would be ready to set aside their red or their black cattle for either the red-and-white or the white.

We have thus shown the cattle of the south of England to have been red down to the eighteenth century. Remembering that before that time cattle were seldom moved from one part to another unless their owners carried them along with them in their migrations, and remembering the history of England at the same time, we may safely say that these cattle were brought to England by the Anglo-Saxons. If still further proof were required, we have only to set a bull of any of the red south of England horned breeds alongside a bull of any of the North Germanic or Danish red Breeds.

1. "Ecclesiastical History," Bohn's edition, p. 24.
2. Bede lived from about 677 to 735.
3. "The Making of England," p. 153.
4. "The English House-Wife," 1683.
5. "Cheap and Good Husbandry," 1683, p. 69.
6. "Compleat Body of Husbandry," 1757, vol. iii. p. 36.
7. "Booke of Cattell," 1591.