re Reference on Numbers of Saxons

[Gordon Selway]

There have been related threads before.  I posted along the following lines to
them, and have not until now felt it worthwhile to submit the same material,
especially because I have still not unpacked relevant papers and books, and I
do not have a copy of Jackson to hand.

The Germanic/Celtic boundary on the western side of England seems to have
become fairly stable by the ninth or tenth century CE, and remained so for a
thousand years and more (apart from the Archenfield and Radnorshire).  There is
some evidence (toponyms exclusively, iirc, and based on earliest charter
records) that a Brittonic tongue was still being spoken in Worcestershire in
the eighth and ninth centuries.  One place-name is 'Walton', which might
suggest the language being Welsh, but 'Pensax' (nearer to the present
Anglo-Welsh border) [and not 'Pennersax'] suggests a Cumbric (or Cornish)
article.  There is a passing reference to some of this in a book on Hanbury
edited by Prof Christopher Dyer (arising from a class run in the village),
which amongst other things reports extensive Roman remains discovered by field
walking in an area where such things are allegedly uncommon.

Another approach (which has been brought forward in popular archaeological
programmes on TV in the UK) has to do with our skeletons (!).

One of the (now retired to Gloucestershire) local chiropodists identified
differences in bone structure among her patients.  Families which were long
established locally (she claimed) showed characteristics shared with people in
areas traditionally regarded as 'Celtic'.  More recent arrivals showed
characteristics which might be treated as 'Germanic' - there has been a large
shift in the distribution of surnames, as judged by the phone book, over the
last fifty years: even in Worcestershire 'Jones' was proportionately to 'Smith'
much more common than in most areas of England, while in Herefordshire typical
Welsh surnames are often the rule rather than the exception.

[A personal discursion: I now live in Worcestershire, but used to live in a
parish straddling the Herefordshire border, where as it happens there have been
people with a form of my surname for at least six hundred years.  The two
counties were bundled together under a single council in 1974, but separated
again for most local government purposes in 1998.

Whan an article on the bone signs appeared in the 'Hereford Times', I pointed
out at one meeting in Hereford, where the presence of a Worcestershire resident
might have been made political use of, that my own externally visible skeletal
characteristics (to do with finger and toe length) were 'local' rather than
'incomer'.  My surname is indeed one commonest in the lower Severn and Wye
valleys, and quite a bit of my recent ancestry is from that region, but as it
happens rather more of my recent forebears were from around the North Channel,
including from the areas in Galloway and north Antrim where Gaelic was most
recently spoken.

Most of this is, on my part, somewhat tongue in cheek, as no-one has so far as
I know examined my DNA (mitochondrial or otherwise).  And it may be that the
physical characteristics reflect different waves of incomers.  I mention that
because there are also apparently detectable differences between 'Germans' and
'Vikings'* (and as it happens my mother had a surname which might be of
'viking' origin, though definitely Scots).]

Back to the lower Severn, however.  Traditionally, the region became a
sub-kingdom of Wessex as a result of the battle of Deorham (north of Bath) in
577 CE, and was conquered by Penda of Mercia some two to three generations
later.  Joseph Wright's dialect investigations in the 19th century suggested
though that the boundary between south-western/western and midland forms of
English remained roughly the same as the pre-Penda boundary!

There seems to have continued to be some form of ecclesiastical organisation in
the region into the seventh century, and there is no evidence of any cultural
changes as revealed by the currently available archaeological record.  One of
the archaeological programmes already mentioned was about a 5th or 6th century
grave in Wiltshire (just outside the Severn catchment, but definitely in
Wessex), where the skeleton had 'Celtic' characteristics.  In any case, it has
been suggested that Cerdic might be Welsh (rather than Saxon), or at least hace
a Welsh mother, and that Wessex was culturally rather than genetically Saxon
(iirc).

And on the language following the mother, is there not mtDNA evidence of the
settlers of Iceland taking Irish/Scottish women with them, yet the language is
still north Germanic, and very conservatively so?

Sorry this has been much more anecdotal than I would wish.

* - skeletons from a post-battle burial at Repton (Derbyshire) can apparently
be distinguished by form, and not just by the pit they were buried in.

Gordon Selway
<gordonselway at gn.apc.org>