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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.
The name "England" is a memorial of this; for though Egbert himself was a Saxon, he advised that to please the Angles the country should be called An'gli-a, that is, Angleland or England, the land of the Angles, instead of Sax-on-i'a, or Saxonland.
Never were sweeter nooks, wherein to spend Maytide, than around the villages and hamlets of the Andredsweald, whither the action of our tale betakes itself again around Chiddinglye, Hellinglye, Alfristun, Selmestun, Heathfeld, Mayfeld, and the like not, as now, accessible by rail and surrounded by arable lands; but settlements in the forest, with the mighty oaks and beeches which had perchance seen the coming of Ella and Cissa, long ere the Norman set foot in Angleland; and with solemn glades where the wind made music in the tree tops, and the graceful deer bounded athwart the avenue, to seek refuge in tangled brake and inaccessible morass.
That may be so, but what is sure is that these tales are very old, and that they were sung and told for many years in the old homes of the English across the sea before they came to Britain and named it Angleland. Yet, as with the old Gaelic and Cymric tales, we have no very old copy of this tale. But unlike these old tales, we do not find Beowulf told in different ways in different manuscripts.
Hence to the west-north is that land which is called Angleland, Sealand, and some part of Den- marc; to the north is Apdrede, and to the east-north the wolds, which are called the Heath-wolds.
In like manner, two German tribes became the master races in Spain. The island now known as Great Britain, which was inhabited two thousand years ago by the Britons and Gaels, Celtic peoples, was overrun and conquered in part about 450 A.D. by the Saxons and Angles, Germanic tribes, after whom part of the island was called Angleland.
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