Englishness

There was already a consciousness of Englishness and England before the Danish onslaught in the ninth century; before Alfred and even before Bede. However, England, as we have come to know it, and Englishness as a given identity, was formed, it might be said, by a gradual process of cultural and historical sedimentation. A loose identity was given a definite shape and direction by adversity; by war and the threat of war; by victory, and yes, by defeat. The successive victories of Alfred, of Ethelfleda and Edward the Elder established England on a new and more lasting basis, one that could not be threatened by the fresh wave of Norse invasions in the tenth and eleventh centuries, when the country was absorbed into a Danish empire.

Even so, this England, and once Anglo-Saxon and Viking, effectively came to an end with the Norman Conquest in 1066. No longer part of a Germanic and Scandinavian world, the country was drawn into the mainstream of European feudal civilization; no more than an appange, it might be said, of a trans-continental empire. And there it might have remained, no more politically significant than Provence, but for one man: good old, bad old King John. An unusual 'hero' of Englishness, I know; but it was his loss of Normandy and the bulk of the Angevin Empire that threw England back on itself; that gave the country a new sense of its political importance, notwithstanding the fact that there was still a huge cultural divide between an English-speaking peasantry and a French-speaking aristocracy. The victory of William Marshal over the invading force of Prince Louis was also an important step in safeguarding this new political independence and sense of self-reliance.

In considering the whole question of the formation of modern England by far the most significant figure of all, as far as I am concerned, has to be Edward III. It was he who began the political and cultural transformation of the nation; he who embarked on a War that helped form a new national consciousness; a war that consolidated and defined some of the country's most enduring political institutions. It was his patronage that turned St. George into a national saint, and his policy that, in 1362, saw English recognised as the 'tongue of the nation.' It was during his time that the old divisions between Norman-French and Anglo-Saxon became less and less distinct, and Englishness, the Englishness of Chaucer and others, emerged on its modern path

Freedom for Scotland; Independence for England

I should say, to begin with, that I love Scotland as a country: I even love some of the people! My family has a cottage in Easter Ross in the north of the country, and we went there just about every August when I was growing up. There was so much that I absorbed, so much of the history, the culture and the folklore of the place; tales of seers, and of witches; of heroes and of villains: people like Alexander Stewart, the wonderfully named Wolf of Badenoch.

I imagine that most English people really don’t know all that much about our closest neighbour and oldest partner. Well, let me begin by saying that if it wasn’t for England Scotland would not exist. Yes, I can hear those Caledonian roars! What exactly do I mean? Just this: it was medieval English aggression, most forcefully expressed during the reign of Edward I, the anti-hero of that awful Braveheart movie, which began the process of forging a specific Scottish identity, something that hardly existed before the thirteenth century.

Ever since that time the Scots have continued to define themselves less by what they are than what they are not: and what they most assuredly are not is English. But they need us, oh my goodness how they need us, and not just as a source of subsidy. For, you see, the aforesaid Scottish identity also contains a deep mood of inferiority, almost of helplessness. I simply don’t believe that the Scots will ever take that final step and break with the Union. They need us to do it for them. Let me explain.

Scotland now has its own parliament; it has for some years now. It even has an administration headed by the Scottish National Party (SNP), dedicated to something called ‘Independence in Europe’. Independence in Europe-is that not a wonderful contradiction, casting off London to embrace Brussels?! This administration is also committed to holding a referendum on the question of independence, though it seems doubtful that it will be able to press the point for the present, given that it does not hold a majority of seats and given the opposition of the other parties.

But even if there was a referendum I do not believe that the majority of Scots would vote in favour because they would then be left to face themselves; and, as I have already said, Scotland has depended too long on England for its sense of what it is and where it stands. Scotland will remain in the house, almost like an unruly and surly teenager. So, there is no other way: England has to declare independence; England has to throw the cuckoo from the nest.

Personally I would be sorry to see the end of Britain because I believe the whole has been so much greater than the sum of its parts. But think of the benefit for both nations. The Scots would at last be able to find a true identity, not one that is simply anti-English. They would, one hopes, bit by bit loose that deeply ingrained sense of national inferiority. They would have to live on their own resources-and subsidies from Brussels. They can do this, at least the SNP believes so; and who am I to argue with that?

For England it would mean that our tax subsidies would no longer flow north. Our resources would be just that-our resources. There would no longer be a danger of a Labour administration propped up in the south by votes from the north. We would no longer have the invidious situation whereby Scottish MPs can vote on English domestic policy, whereas English MPs have no say whatsoever on that of Scotland. The situation as it stands is quite intolerable. Oh, yes, we could also send Joker Brown and Eyebrows Alistair back home, where I feel sure they will make a welcome contribution to the affairs of their native land. Indeed, is there any better argument than that for English independence?

Yes, lets part as friends: freedom for Scotland and independence for England.

Power and Potency: the Cerne Abbas Giant

It’s possible to see, most effectively from the air, a great English giant, a giant who threatens, on the one hand, and-how shall I say?-promises on the other! He is to be found carved in the chalk near Cerne Abbas in Dorset, and is this known simply as the Cerne Abbas Giant or the Rude Man. He’s huge, in more ways than one! Standing one hundred and eighty feet tall, his club alone is one hundred and twenty feet. No, the other thing is forty feet in length. :-))

He looks ancient, he may be ancient, but there is no record of his existence prior to the seventeenth century. The speculation is, and I do stress that this is speculation, that he represents the figure of Hercules and was cut to lampoon Oliver Cromwell, the one-time dictator of England, sometimes mocked by his royalist enemies as the ‘English Hercules.’

We simply don’t know for certain how and why the dear-old giant arose, clubbed and prepared. I personally favour an ancient origin, and Iron Age earthworks have been found in the location. It may indeed be Hercules, most often depicted in classical art carrying a club; that his presence in Dorset may indicate that the Romans brought the cult of the demigod to the area, possibly linked, in the way these things happened, with a local Celtic deity. The fact that the earliest written record goes no further back than 1694 may simply indicate that he was lost and overgrown for centuries, only to be rediscovered by accident. Still, as I say, there is no definitive conclusion to the matter.

Whatever his origins the Giant became, for obvious reasons, the site of a local fertility cult. Women, hoping to conceive, took to spending the night with the Giant! The Victorians, prudish as ever, covered his manly pride, which was also reduced at different times to more seemly lengths. He now stands unadorned and in his full glory. Childless couples, so it is claimed, still come to do the, ahem, the wild thing on the grass inside his penis!

England and Saint George

Traces of the cult of Saint George can be dated right back to Anglo-Saxon times. He appears as early as the ninth century in rituals at Durham, and in a tenth century martyrology. There is evidence, moreover, of pre-Conquest foundations dedicated to St. George: at Fordingham in Dorset, at Thetford, Southwark and Doncaster. So he was already familiar to the English well before the Crusades, though it is not until the reign of Edward III that emerges as the most important national saint, replacing Edward the Confessor. It is probably more accurate to say that the cult was identified specifically with the monarchy, rather than England as a whole. Edward I was the first king to display St. George's banner alongside those of Edmund the Martyr and St. Edward.

By the reign of Edward III he had definitely emerged as a 'god of battles', in much the same fashion as Saintiago Matamoros in Spain. In 1351 it was written "The English nation...call upon Saint George, as being their special patron, especially in war."

In this regard he was certainly more appealing than the unwarlike Confessor or St. Edmund, who had been defeated and subsequently killed by the Danes. But with the succession of Richard II George once again slipped down the ranks. Richard had little of his grandfather's warlike ambitions, and returned to the veneration of the two native saints.

George was called back to national prominence during the Wars of the Roses, when his name was invoked by both sides in the contest. It was also at this time that his cult spread across the nation at large. Almost a hundred wall paintings featuring the saint date from the fifteenth century, almost always showing him in combat with the dragon. He also survives in pilgrim badges. His secular importance was finally confirmed by the English Reformation; for he alone survived the suppression of the cult of saints, which not even the Virgin herself had been able to do.