to a white-armed woman who can hit as hard as horses kick’. He honoured his women and he loved his home: and the spirit of the land entered into him, even more than into any of those who lived before or came after him. He never knew when he was beaten, and so he took a lot of beating. He was not quarrelsome by nature, and, indeed, when he had once settled down in Britain, he was much too apt, as his descendants are to-day, to neglect soldiering altogether. He forgot his noble trade of sailor, which had brought him to Britain, so completely that within two centuries his coasts were at the mercy of every sea-thief in Europe; and down the north-east wind the sea-thieves were always coming. England should always beware of the north-east wind. It blows her no good.
The Saxon plough-boy.Tilling the fields was the Saxons real job; he was a plough-boy and a cow-boy by nature, and like a true plough- and cow-boy he was always grumbling. He hated being governed; he always stood up for his ‘rights’, and often talked a lot of nonsense about them. He obeyed his Kings when he pleased, which was not often, and these Kings had very little power over him. But he loved his land, and he grubbed deep into it with his clumsy plough. In the sweat of his brow he ate the bread and pork and drank the beer (too much of the beer) which he raised on it.
A Saxon village.Every English village could keep itself to itself, since it produced nearly everything its people wanted, except salt, iron and millstones, which could only be found in certain favoured places. In most villages there was a sort of squire called a ‘thegn’, who paid something, either a rent or a service of some kind, to a king or to a bigger then, and owned much more
