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It is only in Britain that an age of fable completely separates two ages of truth. Odoacer and Totila, Euric and Thrasimund, Clovis, Fredegunda, and Brunechild, are historical men and women. But Hengist and Horsa, Vortigern and Rowena, Arthur and Mordred are mythical persons, whose very existence may be questioned, and whose adventures must be classed with those of Hercules and Romulus.
I own I should not like to be in the place of any primeval poor brute who really went mad over her and counted her millions as so much dirt." Mount Dunstan answered with a shrug of his big shoulders: "Apparently he would seem as remote from the reason of to-day as the men who lived on the land when Hengist and Horsa came or when Caesar landed at Deal."
According to tradition, it was at Ebb's Fleet, a little side creek near Minster, that Hengest and Horsa first disembarked in Britain. As a matter of fact, there is reason to suppose that at a very early time an English colony did really settle down in peace in Thanet.
Green might begin his History of the English People with the landing of Hengest and Horsa in the Isle of Thanet. The English people of to-day is far more deeply rooted in the soil than that: our ancestors have lived here, not for a thousand years alone, but for ten thousand or a hundred thousand, in certain lines at least.
Fast over the length and breadth of the land, went the bodes and riders of the Earl; and hosts, with one voice, answered the cry of the children of Horsa, "Life or death with Earl Godwin." And the ships of King Edward, in dismay, turned flag and prow to London, and the fleet of Harold sailed on. So the old Earl met his young son on the deck of a war-ship, that had once borne the Raven of the Dane.
Humpy Hengist and dumpy Horsa, quitting ledger and coronet, might recur to their sea bowlegs and red-stubble chins, might take to their tarpaulins again; they might renew their manhood on the capture of cod; headed by Harald and Hardiknut, they might roll surges to whelm a Dominant Jew clean gone to the fleshpots and effeminacy.
In the time of Hengist and Horsa the creek was so considerable that its mouth furnished a sufficient harbor for their vessels. They landed at a town called Ebbs-fleet, which is now, however, at some distance inland. There is some uncertainty in respect to the motive which led Hengist and Horsa to make their first descent upon the English coast.
Hengist and Horsa come to us encompassed with Gothic traditions that belong to other nations. But are we therefore to deny altogether their historical existence? In following the ignis fatuus of tradition, the credulous annalists of the monastic age were lost in the treacherous ground over which it led them.
For ages after the arrival of the Saxons under Hengist and Horsa, A.D. 449, the whole western coast of Britain was possessed by the aboriginal inhabitants, engaged in constant warfare with the invaders. It has, therefore, been a favorite boast of the people of Wales and Cornwall that the original British stock flourishes in its unmixed purity only among them.
You hear these people tracing back their ancestors to English troopers that came over with Cromwell or William the Third. They have a decided look of Hengist and Horsa about them. The feeling against the Land League among the Conservative classes in the north is comparatively languid to the deeper and more intense feeling that prevails southward.
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