The Irish standard. [volume] (Minneapolis, Minn. ;) 1886-1920, 1902-08-23

The existence of such a race as the I
Anglo-SaXon has been denied by some.
but its existence is generally believed
in by majority Of those who speak
the English language, writes Z. o.
Russell in the New York independent.
In trying to find out tile extent Of |
the Anglo-SaXon element among us.
it will be necessary first to turn Our |
attention to the British isles; and it |
is here, at the very beginning, that al |
most insuperable difficulties meet us.
The difficulties arise from the almost |
impenetrable darkness of early Eng
lish history. We know that the first
Inhabitants Of Britain We're Celts; that
they were conquered by the Romans,
that the Romans abandoned Britain
toward the end Of the fourth century.
and that the SaXons, or some Ger
manic tribes, became masters Of Eng
land and of small part of Scotland
about the ear 500 of our era OF short
ly after This is about all we really
know Of early English history, if such
meager records can be called by that
nanra. We know nothing about the
population of England at the time it
was abandoned by the Romans, and
if we would know the extent of the
Saxon element or the Celtic element
in England when it was possessed by
the Saxons, we must find out these
things from sources other than history.
The great difficulty that meets us
at the outset is to account for the
seemingly total disappearance of the
Celtic nation that existed in England
been eXtirpated by the SaNons. There
may have been vast numbers of Eng
lish Celts slain in battle by the Sax
ons, and in some parts of the east Of
England the Brtons may have been
all killed; but their total eXtirpation
was an impossibility; the wars be-
tween the Britons and Saxons did not
last long enough for that. The fact
seems to be that the Britons made
very poor stand against their invaders:
and that instead of having been eX
terminated by them, they were alb
sorbed by them. In less than a cell
tury after the first invaders from the
shores of the Baltic appeared on Eng
lish soil we find them masters of all
England proper, With the exception Of
Cornwall
Britain enjoyed nearly three centu-
1ies of profound peace under the
Romans. Its population must have
greatly increased during those three
centuries, and at the time of the first
Saxon invasion could hardly have been
less than 100000 or 100000. 1t is
impossible to believe that the invading
Saxons could have been one-twentieth
part as numerous as the Britons; ana
we are driven to the conclusion that
the Britons, from whatever cause,
made very bad fight for their liberty.
submitted easily to their conquerors.
became almost completely absorbed
by them, and lost their language al
most as quickly as they lost their lib
erty. We need not wonder at the sud-
den disappearance of the British Ian
guage in England; an almost similar
disappearance Of a Celtic language has
taken place nearly in our times. a
hundred years ago there were about
100000 of people in Ireland who
spoke Irish; today there is not over
half million The English-speaking
Irishman of today is as Celtic in blood
as We're his exclusively Celtic-speaking
ancestors. Language is not always
test of race.
We know not only from history, but
from the names of rivers, towns
mountains, ETC., in England, that its
first inhabitants in historic times We're
Celts. But place-ames are not Of
great weight in questions o. ethnology;
for they often survive when the lace
that bestowed them has disappeared
When, however, we examine the
names of the English people and find
so many of them translatable, only
through the medium of Celtic, our be-