Pagans in AS England, etc.

[David L. White]

> One should also note that on the Continent, Christianity survived.
> Anglo-Saxon England became as purely pagan as Scandinavia.

        This is actually a serious problem for the traditional
"Germanophilic" interpretation of the AS conquest, since though pagan
burials are common in the SE, they are rare to non-existent in most of what
later became Wessex, Mercia, and Northumbria, despite the fact that these
areas were, at least nominally, pagan.  It seems then that most of the
population of these areas consisted of Christian Britons, which would also
explain why there were no violent popular pagan relapses in these areas,
though there were in the SE.  These are precisely the areas where apparent
Celticisms (more precisely Brittonicisms), which are often very difficult to
explain as internally motivated, appear during the Middle English period.
        On a related point, it is not a problem for my views, or a surprise,
that the population of eastern England should appear to be genetically
closer to the Danes than to the Welsh (even if this is not to some extent
due to the Danes themselsves).  As I have noted before, Celticisms in ME
appear in the North and West (broadly defined so as to include a good part
of the Midands), and there is absolutely no significant linguistic evidence
for "Celtic survival" in the SE and East Anglia.  Also, it shoud be noted
that the idea that the inhabitants of England should, if I am right, show
genetic similarity to the Welsh involves a subtle circularity, since it is
only true if the modern inhabitants of Wales are descendants of "English"
Britons driven off to Wales during the AS conquest, which is precisely what
is (among other things) at issue.
        I should also make it clear that I do not regard the Anglo-Saxons as
being like the Normans in being only a land-owning aristocracy spread thinly
across the land.  It is clear that even in the North and West there were
Anglo-Saxon colonies, which is to say that the Anglos-Saxons exerted control
over the land in much the same way that the Romans did, through a
combination of land-owning aristocracy and colonizing peasantry. This does
not mean, in either case, that the original inhabitants were exterminated or
expelled, or even numerically dominated.

                                                        Dr. David L. White