Quotes About Anglo-Saxons

Adenauer was no less German, but infinitely more adroit. He, too, was irritated by the 'moralising' of the Anglo-Saxons, but he was aware of the deep distrust in which they held the Germans and, in particular, of their fear of Prussian domination

Italians tend to be less rigidly moral and law-abiding than do Anglo-Saxons. They also have a profound suspicion of the state and most of its agencies.

And it should be remembered that before the coming of the Anglo-Saxons in the sixth and seventh centuries, dialects of Old Welsh were spoken the length of Celtic Britain.

For the Anglo-Saxons, meat was the main meal of the day, which revolved around 'before-meat' and 'after-meat.' But it has ended up as the metaphor for the most basic: 'meat and potatoes' is as far from sassy - from 'sauce' - as you can get.

For the Anglo-Saxons, food determined a person's position in society.

Anglo-Saxons have a view that history is ordered and chronological, and I think that fed into the development of the realist middle-class novel. You know, the ones you read on your sofa with a nice cup of tea.

... the common law existed while the Anglo-Saxons were yet pagans, at a time when they had never yet heard the name of Christ pronounced or knew that such a character existed.

Only people, especially Anglo-Saxons, are so afraid lest joyfulness may somehow be reprehensible that they will never admit it as a lawful and laudable end in itself.

Some people think that English poetry begins with the Anglo-Saxons. I don't, because I can't accept that there is any continuity between the traditions of Anglo-Saxon poetry and those established in English poetry by the time of, say, Shakespeare. And anyway, Anglo-Saxon is a different language, which has to be learned.

Not only were the Anglo-Saxons relatively uncultured, they were also pagan, a fact rather quaintly preserved in the names of four of our weekdays, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, which respectively commemorate the gods Tiw, Woden, and Thor, and Woden's wife, Frig. (Saturday, Sunday, and Monday, to complete the picture, take their names from Saturn, the sun, and the moon.)

Forgetting the existence of Celts, African-Americans and many other branches of the Anglophone world, the French will blame 'les Anglo-Saxons' for whatever is irking them.fn8

Hanging had been introduced by the Anglo-Saxons during the fifth century as a punishment for murder, theft and treason.

When they came to shore they would sweep together all the horses of the neighbourhood and move themselves and their plunder on horseback across the land. It was with no intention of fighting as cavalry that they collected the horses, but only for swift marching. The first mention of this practice in England comes in the year 866, when "a great heathen army came to the land of the East Angles, and there was the army a-horse".

The background was the peculiarly egalitarian nature of Germanic social structure and political values which the Anglo-Saxons brought with them to Britain.

Generalisations about 'the Anglo-Saxons' are consequently difficult,

before the earliest Saxon settlers had arrived.

The Picts poured over Hadrian's Wall in the north; Scottish tribes harried the coasts from their homes in Northern Ireland. The Saxons, or Anglo-Saxons, came from the coast of Denmark and Germany to ravage England's eastern shores, and finding the land good, established permanent settlements.