The Auldest Tung

In Conclusion

So here we are at the drawing together of the threads of something that started as a simple, personal question in first COVID lockdown, i.e. why is the Scots of our country's North-East called Doric. And then topsy happened. It took on a life of its own. It became an admittedly slightly obsessive attempt at an examination of the linguistic history, indeed, the history per se of the same and much more, by default almost a complete exploration of six hundred years of Germanic colonisation not just in England but of the island of Britain in its entirety and in getting there that which is said and I hope is accepted perhaps to have taken place in Scotland. 

And to track that colonisation there are markers drawn from what written historical records exist, indeed survive, Anglo-Saxon certainly but also, and perhaps more importantly in terms of verification, Celtic. They tell us that the first of the recognised colonisers, named as led by Hengest and Horsa, arrived specifically on the island of Thanet in East Kent perhaps before but no later than about 450 AD from when there is a chronology, that can be considered as reasonably reliable not least for its step-by-step continuity. It sees originally small groups arriving in England and Scotland, indeed a little later to Ireland also, followed over the next six hundred years or so to the first of the trio by larger groups. It points to where they went. It in some but not all cases tells us who they were. And it even hints at from where they came. However, the chronology operates only on a macro-scale when micro-detail would for our purposes be helpful. And for that the proposition is that we have to turn to other sources, specifically, if the possibility of some, albeit limited, trans-North Sea place- and other name replication is accepted, then to it.

There the evidence might point to the first settlement of much of East Kent, on Thanet itself and immediately beyond, appearing to have had several initial sources. It also points to the new arrivals coming in what look like small groups as Flems from Flanders, via Saxonia, to lower and upper Jutland and points in-between. And they did it seemingly by almost entirely clearing, be it by force or their choice, those who had been there, Britons, and then by each new group first settling what they found and then by slotting between whatever had come before.

Then the newcomers seem to have come to England's shores to an extent in larger concentrations, notably Jutes to the north-east of Canterbury and the Hastingas, but still on the same basis of slotting in in small implantations into Central Kent and skipping Pevensey perhaps as far along the south coast as the River Ouse. And by this time peoples, who seem perhaps to have had as their initial source the River Treene, both its upper reaches and once it joins the Eider had arrived in Lindsay in Lincolnshire and what are posited as Old Frisians to have taken themselves to various, disparate points further north still including what is Scotland north and south of the Firth of Forth.

And it was that point that what is little more than a trickle that continued to be incremental increasingly far up the Thames and its tributaries seems also to have become movement tribally en bloc. In Southern England,  southern Brittania first Jutes settled on the Isle of Wight and the Solent shore, Angles landed in East Sussex more or less as one group of Saxons came to the north bank of the Thames Estuary and probably but not necessarily another to East Hampshire. Moreover, there was similar, if tribally more limited, largely Anglic incursion into East Anglia, into Bernicia in central Brittia, North-East England and at least Anglic expansion in northern Britannia into the Mercian Midlands.

It would result in a divide between northern and southern England linguistically and otherwise that despite apparent in-fill from other tribal groups including those predominant in the south could be agued continues to today. However, it did not produce any obvious correlation between locations on this side of the North Sea and on the other. There are similarities but no more than could be expected from chance. There are indications of certain peoples settling in certain places, perhaps the association from the Isle of Wight to Yorkshire of "tone" rather than "ton" with Jute being the most interesting, but none in heavy concentration. It seemed a dead-end had been reached.   

However, in spite of what is said elsewhere location is not everything. And here topography might come to the rescue and in the form of the word mainly used by different tribal groups for perhaps the most obvious of landscape features, the hill or mountain. For the penultimate of the Germanic arrivals, the Norse, it was the "fell" or "val". For the Saxons it was the "down". Then there were the "wold" and to a lesser extent the "barrow". And finally there were the "hill" itself and what begins in the south as the "loe" and the "low" and from the Tees to the Moray Firth and perhaps beyond becomes the "law", by Anglo-Saxon elimination the Anglic "hill" and what might be seen by elimination as the Frisian, the Old Frisian "law".        

Indeed now there might be a topographical pattern that even reflects the story of reported Germanic immigration of Britain at a macro scale but also what Kent as a first attempt perhaps already has told us on a micro one. Hills, downs, wolds, lows and laws, even fells are there both in distinct, localised concentrations and also as still distinctive but much smaller accumulations, indicating both arrival en bloc and in smaller groups. Yet there are differences. England has the former in all hill types and the latter are clusters or strands, suggesting in-fill. In contrast in Scotland north of the Forth the law dominates and what there is the other hills types, ate least those that are not Gaelic, suggest imbedding whilst south of the same law and hill share largely equal billing with little in the way of alternative. It is a situation, which, having translated from feature to people and now doing the same for people to language, suggests a multi-regional, polyglot England, which required a merging of tongues over time to produce first Anglo-Saxon and the English contrasted to a Germanic Scotland formed of just two regions with two languages, Anglic and Old Frisian, which in one region combined to morph into one form of Scots, whilst in the other Old Frisian arrived undiluted and set out on a different path.   

And at this point fate, history and a certain native cunning conspired. For twelve hundred years politics both north and south of the border, from Lerwick to London and many points in between, were somehow kept at bay. No great battles were fought in Calefrisia as accommodations were made and moved as required and the one thing that mattered economically and by default linguistically was retained, continuity.