religions.

It will help you to understand the state of Britain in those old
days if you think of India to-day. India forms part of the
British Empire, but the people who live there are not British.
They are still Indians who speak their own languages, and have
their own customs and religions. The rulers only are British.

It was in much the same way that Britain was a Roman province.
And so our literature was never Latin. There was, indeed, a time
when nearly all our books were written in Latin. But that was
later, and not because Latin was the language of the people, but
because it was the language of the learned and of the monks, who
were the chief people who wrote books.

When, then, after nearly four hundred years the Romans went away,
the people of Britain were still British. But soon another
people came. These were the Anglo-Saxons, the English, who came
from over the sea. And little by little they took possession of
Britain. They drove the old dwellers out until it was only in
the north, in Wales and in Cornwall, that they were to be found.
Then Britain became Angleland or England, and the language was no
longer Celtic, but English. And although there are a few words
in our language which can be traced to the old Celtic, these are
very few. It is thus from Anglo-Saxon, and not from Gaelic or
Cymric, that the language we speak to-day comes.

Yet our Celtic forefathers have given something to our literature
which perhaps we could never have had from English alone. The
Celtic literature is full of wonder, it is full of a tender magic