Frealafing, Frealaf Finning," and so on till it reaches "Sceafing, _id
est filius Noe_; he was born in Noe's Ark. Lamech, Mathusalem, Enoc,
Jared, Malalehel, Camon, Enos, Seth, Adam, _primus homo et pater
noster_."

The Anglo-Saxons, when they settled in Eastern and Southern Britain,
were a horde of barbarous heathen pirates. They massacred or enslaved
the civilised or half-civilised Celtic inhabitants with savage
ruthlessness. They burnt or destroyed the monuments of Roman occupation.
They let the roads and cities fall into utter disrepair. They stamped
out Christianity with fire and sword from end to end of their new
domain. They occupied a civilised and Christian land, and they restored
it to its primitive barbarism. Nor was there any improvement until
Christian teachers from Rome and Scotland once more introduced the
forgotten culture which the English pirates had utterly destroyed. As
Gildas phrases it, with true Celtic eloquence, the red tongue of flame
licked up the whole land from end to end, till it slaked its horrid
thirst in the western ocean. For 150 years the whole of English Britain,
save, perhaps, Kent and London, was cut off from all intercourse with
Christendom and the Roman world. The country consisted of several petty
chieftainships, at constant feud with their Teutonic neighbours, and
perpetually waging a border war with Welsh, Picts, and Scots. Within
each colony, much of the land remained untilled, while the clan
settlements appeared like little islands of cultivation in the midst of
forest, waste, and common. The villages were mere groups of wooden
homesteads, with barns and cattle-sheds, surrounded by rough stockades,
and destitute of roads or communications. Even the palace of the king
was a long wooden hall with numerous outhouses; for the English built no
stone houses, and burnt down those of their Roman predecessors. Trade
seems to have been confined to the south coast, and few manufactured