Welsh Journals

The University of Wales O'Donnell Lecture, 1965-66 ROMAN BRITONS AND PAGAN SAXONS: AN ARCHAEOLOGICAL APPRAISAL* THE Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, sub anno 457, says: Hengest and Aesc fought against the Britons at Crayford and slew four thousand men, and the Britons forsook Kent and fled to London in great terror. Again, sub anno 491, we read: Aelle and Cissa besieged Anderida and slew all the inhabitants; not even one Briton was left there. And sub anno 508, dealing with Wessex, we find: Cerdic and Cynric slew a Welsh King and five thousand men with him. Now, for all the difficulties of accepting the early annals of the Chronicle as an accurate historical record, entries like these do seem to embody a tradition that the settlement of the Anglo-Saxons in south-eastern Britain was accompanied by the expulsion or extermination of the native Britons. This judgement on the nature of the English settlement may perhaps be reinforced by an appeal to the writings of the monk Gildas. But it was not acceptable to the late Charles J. O'Donnell. He believed that the Britons largely survived, and that if you scratch an Englishman, you will find a Briton beneath the skin. He therefore endowed lectures with the fundamental purpose of uncovering, in the language, customs and population of England, the subcutaneous Celt. In essaying this task I find myself in a situation of some irony. In 1965, reviewing some published O'Donnell lectures, I wrote: 'in our present state of ignorance and half-knowledge, more can be achieved by detailed discussions on a narrow front [than by examining] the O'Donnell theme very broadly'. This, indeed, I profoundly believe. But the Board of Celtic Studies has placed on In preparing a printed version of this paper I have benefited from the advice and comments of my colleagues in University College. Cardiff, and of Professor C. F. C. Hawkes and Mrs. S. C. Hawkes. I have. however, left the paper largely as it was delivered, in the hope that the immediacy of the spoken word might compensate for the ineluctable ephemer- ality of any archaeological generalization. For the same reason, I have not documented each statement; but a select bibliography will be found on p. 249.