Another set of wild people used to come over in boats across the North Sea and German Ocean.  These people had their home in the country that is called Holstein and Jutland.  They were tall men, and had blue eyes and fair hair, and they were very strong, and good-natured in a rough sort of way, though they were fierce to their enemies.  There was a great deal more fighting than any one has told us about; but the end of it all was that the Roman soldiers were wanted at home, and though the great British chief we call King Arthur fought very bravely, he could not drive back the blue-eyed men in the ships; but more and more came, till, at last, they got all the country, and drove the Britons, some up into the North, some into the mountains that rise along the West of the island, and some into its west point.

The Britons used to call the blue-eyed men Saxons; but they called themselves Angles, and the country was called after them Angle-land.  Don’t you know what it is called now?  England itself, and the people English.  They spoke much the same language as we do, only more as untaught country people, and they had not so many words, because they had not so many things to see and talk about.

As to the Britons, the English went on driving them back till they only kept their mountains.  There they have gone on living ever since, and talking their own old language.  The English called them Welsh, a name that meant strangers, and we call them Welsh still, and their country Wales.  They made a great many grand stories about their last brave chief, Arthur, till, at last, they turned into a sort of fairy tale.  It was said that, when King Arthur lay badly wounded after his last battle, he bade his friend fling his sword into the river, and that then three lovely ladies came in a boat, and carried him away to a secret island.  The Welsh kept on saying, for years and years, that one day king Arthur would wake up again, and give them back all Britain, which used to be their own before the English got it for themselves; but the English have had England now for thirteen hundred years, and we cannot doubt they will keep it as long as the world lasts.

It was about 400 years after our Lord was born that the Romans were going and the English coming.

CHAPTER III.

The Angle children A.D. 597.

The old English who had come to Britain were heathen, and believed in many false gods:  the Sun, to whom they made Sunday sacred, as Monday was to the moon, Wednesday to a great terrible god, named Woden, and Thursday to a god named Thor, or Thunder.  They thought a clap of thunder was the sound of the great hammer he carried in his hand.  They thought their gods cared for people being brave, and that the souls of those who died fighting gallantly in battle were the happiest of all; but they did not care for kindness or gentleness.