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land and the Isle of Man. From 55 B.C. the Britons were, for a time, more or less rigidly ruled by the Romans, who first arrived under Julius Cæsar. The British huts were replaced by orderly cities; and, as everywhere where they colonised, the Romans made magnificent roads, and gradually trade was begun.

So far as intellectual things go, we do not know very much of life in Britain before the fifth century: though we do know that Christianity was established there, because at the Council of the Western Bishops of the Catholic Church, held at Arles in 314, British bishops were present. Further, we know that the Phœnicians, who lived in the strip of coast north of Palestine, between the mountains of Lebanon and the Mediterranean Sea, were, in consequence of their position, fishermen and sailors. Later on they took to trading, and, joining the two crafts of sailor and merchant, they acted as carriers, not only of goods, but of knowledge and ideas, to all the countries round the Great Sea. Our island lay beyond their usual journeys, but about A.D. 330 a trade in tin (which has always been found in the counties of Devon and Cornwall) sprang up between Britain and the port of Marseilles, then called Massilia. Whether the Phœnicians began this trade, or whether it was started by Greek colonists in Marseilles, is not certain; anyhow, by the fourth century the Southern Britons were trading with Southern Gaul, and the long story of this country's foreign commerce had begun.

Further than all this, we know that, like all primitive races, the Britons had songs and stories about their great heroes, which persisted after the Romans had withdrawn at the beginning of the fifth century, leaving the Britons to fend for themselves. As a rule, they found this a most difficult task, since under the Roman rule they had lost some of their national feeling, because they might not manage their own affairs, nor conduct their lives in their own way. Their songs and stories survived, however, even after they were driven westwards by successive rushes of Sea-Rovers, from North-Western Europe.

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No one can hope to understand the literature of Britain unless he constantly remembers the incessant coming in, specially into England, of different races. As early as 731, the great monk of Jarrow, S. Bede, wrote in his Ecclesiastical History of this racial mixture:

Britain, an island in the ocean, formerly called Albion, is situated between the north and west, facing, though at a considerable distance, the coasts of Germany, France, and Spain, which form the greatest part of Europe. This land at present contains five nations, the English, Britons, Scots, Picts, and Latins, each in its own particular dialect cultivating the sublime study of Divine truth. The Latin tongue is, by the study of the Scriptures, become common to all the rest.1

Early in the fifth century after Christ, only a shadow of Roman power remained in Britain, for the northern races of Europe had attacked the Empire, and every soldier was brought home to protect its heart; distant colonies, like Britain, mattering very little when the Imperial City itself was in danger.

During the Roman occupation of Britain, Saxons from the mouth of the River Elbe had plundered the eastern coasts. The Romans, not being sailors, had no fleet with which to drive off invaders from the sea. When the Romans left, the Britons, who vainly appealed to them for help, were left to struggle not only with the Saxons, but with the Picts, probably of Iberian race, from Scotland, and with the "Scots" who came from Ireland. From 449 onwards, hordes of Jutes, from Jutland, reinforced by more and more Saxons, and by Angles from Schleswig, overran Britain, till eventually the Britons were driven out to the West, to Cornwall, Wales, and overseas to Ireland, and up to Strathclyde.

The conquest of a country very rarely destroys all the original inhabitants, so, by the time that the "English" settlement was complete, there was a mixture of six races in Britain: the Britons with some Scots and Picts, and the three victorious peoples-Angles, Jutes, and Saxons.

1 Bede's Ecclesiastical History, ch. i.

Henceforward till the Norman Conquest in 1066, with the further addition of some piratical Danes, who established themselves in a few spots on the East Coast, the race was principally "English," so the literature of this island from the end of the fifth to the middle of the eleventh centuries has a markedly Early English character, though it must not be forgotten that, after the re-introduction of Christianity in the South-East by S. Augustine, and in the North by S. Paulinus, all Church Services were in Latin, and educated people knew Latin. During these centuries, though the language is different enough from modern English to need translation, we find many of the regular forms of literature-e.g., the epic, the prose treatise, the ballad, and at any rate the beginning of lyrical poems.

From 1066 to 1200, during the reigns of William I and William II, Henry I, Stephen, Henry II, and Richard I, the influence of Norman-French literature can be clearly seen in our own. During this period, a very important collection of Early English poems came into the hands of Bishop Leofric of Exeter, which he gave to his Cathedral Library. So to him we owe the preservation of some of the most interesting beginnings of our literature. William I, too, ordered a "survey to be made of the whole country. The results were written in Domesday Book, which thus gives us much information about our early history and the ordinary everyday life of our ancestors.

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Then, the early part of the twelfth century saw the production at Dunstable of a "Miracle Play," founded on the life of S. Catherine of Alexandria, who was still greatly venerated in the Middle Ages. Other Miracle Plays were performed in London later in the same century. Besides all this, there were many poetic tales and chronicles written. A curious fact about the twelfth century is that while French poets were busy making lyrics, Englishmen neglected these throughout it, though they produced many in the next. The Norman-French influenced Englishmen most by story

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telling, and this was, with lyrics, the main work of the thirteenth century. The beginning of these stories, popularised at the end of the twelfth and throughout the thirteenth centuries, lies a long way back; some are certainly older than Christianity. So far as can be discovered, many of them spring from Wales. But whoever made them originally, they were borrowed and used by men of most European races, English, French, Spanish, Italian, German. Only the peoples of central and Eastern Europe, the "Slav " races, seem to have left them alone, save, oddly enough, the descendants of their makers, the Celts. They, as we know, had been driven out of the richer, more habitable parts of Europe, and in the cheerless mountain refuges, where they had found some measure of safety, they seem to have lost the will to enjoy their own old stories. One very ancient collection of such tales, not epical, because there is no really central person or event, came from Wales, and is older than Christianity. They were told or sung at feasts, and possibly on other occasions, by men called Bards. The great collection, called the Mabinogion, has been translated into English. It is quite impossible to give any idea, in a small space like this book, of the main stories; but there are sometimes little complete stories, put into the middle of the bigger ones. Two of these will give a fair notion of this very human and entrancing Romance.

A famous chief, Pwyll, Prince of Dyved, had by his courage won the kingdom of the "Underworld." He and his wife, Rhiannon, had a son, called Pryderi, and he, after Pwyll's death, arranged that his mother should marry a chief called Manawyddan, the son of Llyr. After this marriage, Pryderi and his stepfather went a-hunting, and the following strange things befell:

One morning Pryderi and Manawyddan rose up to hunt, and they ranged their dogs and went forth from the palace. And some of the dogs ran before them and came to a small bush which was

1 By Lady Charlotte Guest; published in the Everyman's Library near at hand; but as soon as they were come to the bush, they hastily drew back and returned to the men, their hair bristling up greatly. "Let us go near to the bush," said Pryderi, " and see what is in it." And as they came near, behold, a wild boar of a pure white colour rose up from the bush. Then the dogs, being set on by the men, rushed towards him; but he left the bush and fell back a little way from the men, and made a stand against the dogs without retreating from them, until the men had come near. And when the men came up, he fell back a second time, and betook him to flight. Then they pursued the boar until they beheld a vast and lofty castle, all newly built, in a place where they had never before seen either stone or building. And the boar ran swiftly into the castle and the dogs after him. Now when the boar and the dogs had gone into the castle, they began to wonder at finding a castle in a place where they had never before seen any building whatsoever. And from the top of the Gorsedd they looked and listened for the dogs. But so long as they were there they heard not one of the dogs nor aught concerning them.

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Lord," said Pryderi, "I will go into the castle to get tidings of the dogs." "Truly," he replied, "thou wouldst be unwise to go into this castle which thou hast never seen till now. If thou wouldst follow my counsel, thou wouldst not enter therein. Whosoever has cast a spell over this land has caused this castle to be here." "Of a truth," answered Pryderi, "I cannot thus give up my dogs." And for all the counsel that Manawyddan gave him, yet to the castle

he went.

When he came within the castle, neither man nor beast, nor boar nor dogs, nor house nor dwelling saw he within it. But in the centre of the castle floor he beheld a fountain with marble work around it, and on the margin of the fountain a golden bowl upon a marble slab, and chains hanging from the air, to which he saw no end.

And he was greatly pleased with the beauty of the gold, and with the rich workmanship of the bowl, and he went up to the bowl and laid hold of it. And when he had taken hold of it his hands stuck to the bowl, and his feet to the slab on which the bowl was placed, and all his joyousness forsook him, so that he could not utter a word. And thus he stood.

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And Manawyddan waited for him till near the close of the day. And late in the evening, being certain that he should have no tidings of Pryderi or of the dogs, he went back to the palace. And as he entered, Rhiannon looked at him. "Where," said she, "are thy companion and thy dogs?" Behold," he answered, “the adventure that has befallen me." And he related it all unto her. "An evil companion hast thou been," said Rhiannon, "and a good companion hast thou lost." And with that word she went out, and proceeded towards the castle according to the direction which he gave her. The gate of the castle she found open. She was

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