the worse for the curses of the Druids, but, that the sun shone and
the rain fell without consulting the Druids at all, they just began
to think that the Druids were mere men, and that it signified very
little whether they cursed or blessed. After which, the pupils of
the Druids fell off greatly in numbers, and the Druids took to
other trades.
Thus I have come to the end of the Roman time in England. It is
but little that is known of those five hundred years; but some
remains of them are still found. Often, when labourers are digging
up the ground, to make foundations for houses or churches, they
light on rusty money that once belonged to the Romans. Fragments
of plates from which they ate, of goblets from which they drank,
and of pavement on which they trod, are discovered among the earth
that is broken by the plough, or the dust that is crumbled by the
gardener’s spade. Wells that the Romans sunk, still yield water;
roads that the Romans made, form part of our highways. In some old
battle-fields, British spear-heads and Roman armour have been
found, mingled together in decay, as they fell in the thick
pressure of the fight. Traces of Roman camps overgrown with grass,
and of mounds that are the burial-places of heaps of Britons, are
to be seen in almost all parts of the country. Across the bleak
moors of Northumberland, the wall of SEVERUS, overrun with moss and
weeds, still stretches, a strong ruin; and the shepherds and their
dogs lie sleeping on it in the summer weather. On Salisbury Plain,
Stonehenge yet stands: a monument of the earlier time when the
Roman name was unknown in Britain, and when the Druids, with their
best magic wands, could not have written it in the sands of the
wild sea-shore.
CHAPTER II – ANCIENT ENGLAND UNDER THE EARLY SAXONS
THE Romans had scarcely gone away from Britain, when the Britons
began to wish they had never left it. For, the Romans being gone,
and the Britons being much reduced in numbers by their long wars,
the Picts and Scots came pouring in, over the broken and unguarded
wall of SEVERUS, in swarms. They plundered the richest towns, and
killed the people; and came back so often for more booty and more
slaughter, that the unfortunate Britons lived a life of terror. As
if the Picts and Scots were not bad enough on land, the Saxons
Page 10
Dickens, Charles – A Child’s History of England
attacked the islanders by sea; and, as if something more were still
wanting to make them miserable, they quarrelled bitterly among
themselves as to what prayers they ought to say, and how they ought
to say them. The priests, being very angry with one another on
these questions, cursed one another in the heartiest manner; and
(uncommonly like the old Druids) cursed all the people whom they
could not persuade. So, altogether, the Britons were very badly
off, you may believe.
They were in such distress, in short, that they sent a letter to
Rome entreating help – which they called the Groans of the Britons;
and in which they said, ‘The barbarians chase us into the sea, the
sea throws us back upon the barbarians, and we have only the hard
choice left us of perishing by the sword, or perishing by the
waves.’ But, the Romans could not help them, even if they were so
inclined; for they had enough to do to defend themselves against
their own enemies, who were then very fierce and strong. At last,
the Britons, unable to bear their hard condition any longer,
resolved to make peace with the Saxons, and to invite the Saxons to
come into their country, and help them to keep out the Picts and
Scots.
It was a British Prince named VORTIGERN who took this resolution,
and who made a treaty of friendship with HENGIST and HORSA, two
Saxon chiefs. Both of these names, in the old Saxon language,
signify Horse; for the Saxons, like many other nations in a rough
state, were fond of giving men the names of animals, as Horse,