Once upon a time, when Saint Columba was traveling through the country of the Picts to meet the Pictish King in Inverness, he had to cross the River Ness. When he reached the shore there was a group of people, Picts and Brethren both, burying an unfortunate man who had been bitten and mauled to death by a water-monster. Columba ordered one of his people to swim across the river and retrieve the man’s boat, that was adrift, so that he might cross.

On hearing this, Lugneus Mocumin stripped down to his tunic and plunged in to the water. The monster saw him swimming, and having tasted blood, broke the surface of the water and made for him. Everyone who was watching was horrified, and hid their eyes in terror.

Everyone except Columba, who raised his holy hand and inscribed the Cross in the empty air. Calling upon the name of God, he commanded the savage beast, saying: “Go no further! Do not touch the man! Go back at once!”

Lugneus brought the boat back, unharmed and everyone was astonished. And the heathen savages who were present were overcome by the greatness of the miracle which they themselves had seen, and magnified the God of the Christians.

- adapted from the Serene Dragon and Green Canticle websites.

*

Loch Ness through Fire, by Citril.

Celtic Christians valued the natural environment for its own sake. They valued times of quiet in solitary and often wild places, where they could read Scripture, meditate and pray.

Because they lived close to the natural environment, it is not surprising that Celtic Christians discovered the immanence of God. Their poetry often echoes those Psalms which speak of God in nature (Ps. 19, 89, 98 ) suggesting a similar spiritual process at work.

The following extract of a poem in the Celtic psaltery is attributed to St. Columba in Iona:

“Delightful it is to stand on the peak of a rock, in the bosom of the isle, gazing on the face of the sea.

I hear the heaving waves chanting a tune to God in heaven; I see their glittering surf.

I see the golden beaches, their sands sparkling; I hear the joyous shrieks of the swooping gulls.

I hear the waves breaking, crashing on the rocks, like thunder in heaven. I see the mighty whales…

Contrition fills my heart as I hear the sea; it chants my sins, sins too numerous to confess.

Let me bless almighty God, whose power extends over the sea and land, whose angels watch over all.

Let me study sacred books to calm my soul; I pray for peace, kneeling at heaven’s gates.

Let me do my daily work, gathering seaweed, catching fish, giving food to the poor.”

- a psalm of St Columba from Green Canticle.

*

A depiction of Saint Columba in about 565AD, urging Picts on Iona to become Christian, from The Independent.

Many legends have gathered about Columba, but there is also some historical data concerning his many works in the writings of Bede and Adamnan.  According to one story, Saint Patrick of Ireland foretold Columba’s birth in a prophecy:

He will be a saint and will be devout,
He will be an abbot, the king of royal graces,
He will be lasting and forever good;
The eternal kingdom be mine by his protection.

Columba was a man of tremendous energy with a vigorous personality. Born Colum MacFhelin MacFergus,1 in Ireland in 521 A.D., the great-great-grandson of Niall of the Nine Hostages, an Irish king, on his father’s side;2 while Columba’s mother was also descended from a king of Leinster and was related to the royalty of Scottish Dalriada.3 Columba, who had the potential to become a king in Ireland, instead, chose to give his full service to the mission of the King of heaven.4 Early in life Columba showed scholarly and clerical ability. He entered the monastic life, and almost immediately set forth on missionary travels. Even before ordination in 551, he had founded monasteries at Derry and Durrow, and is said to have founded as many as 300 churches and monasteries during his lifetime.5

Columba had a love for literature, and tradition asserts that, sometime around 560, he became involved in a dispute with his mentor, Abbot Finnian, over a manuscript Columba copied at the scriptorium—intending to keep the copy. Abbot Finnian disputed Columba’s right to keep the copy. The dispute eventually led to the Battle of Cul Dreimnhe in 561, during which many men were killed—perhaps 3000.6 As penance for these deaths, Columba suggested that he work as a missionary in Scotland to help convert as many people as had been killed in the battle.

He exiled himself from Ireland, and in 563, Columba and a dozen companions set out for northern Britain, where the 5th century Picts had lost territory to the previous Irish kings, and were still generally ignorant of Christianity. The religion of the Picts—Druidism fok law —were the beliefs which prevailed in the rest of Britain and Celtic Gaul.7 Historian Adamnan records that Columba’s efforts at conversion were strenuously opposed by the diabolical arts and incantations of the Druid priests. Fountains were particular objects of veneration, as well as heavenly bodies and oak trees, a superstitious awe which many fountains and wells are regarded with today—likely a remnant of the ancient Pictish religion. Druidism acknowledges a Supreme Being, whose name was synonymous with the Eastern Baal, and was visibly represented by the sun and sun-worship. Many of the antiquities scattered across north Scotland, such as stone circles, monoliths, sculptured stones, etc., are believed to be connected with the Druid religion.8

Columba was kindly received by Conal, king of British Scots, and allowed to preach, convert, and baptize. He was also given possession of the isle of Iona, where, according to legend, his tiny boat had washed ashore. (The island was known by the simple name “I” changed by Bede into “Hy” and Latinized by the monks into “Iova” or “Iona.”)9 Here Columba founded the celebrated monastery which became a school for missionaries and the center for the conversion of the Picts, as well as the only center of literacy and education in the region, at that time. Says the historian Bede, “The monastry of Iona, like those previously founded by Columba in Ireland, was not a retreat for solitaries whose chief object was to work out their own salvation; it was a great school of Christian education, and was specially designed to prepare and send forth a body of clergy trained to the task of preaching the Gospel among the heathen.”10 From Iona Scotland, his disciples went out to found other monasteries to the west in Ireland, and to the east the famous Lindisfarne monastery in Northumbria, among others.

As a close advisor to the Gaelic king Conal11 of Dalriada, Columba served as a diplomat to neighboring kingdoms in Ireland and Pictland. (Dalriada was a Gaelic kingdom that extended on both sides of the North Channel: in the northwest of Ireland, and western Scotland. One of the little known facts about Scotland is that the county of Argyll received extensive immigration from the Irish of northern Ireland, known as “Scoti” and had become an Irish, i.e. “Scottish” area. Despite heavy onslaughts from the Picts, the Dalriada of the Scottish mainland continued to expand. From 574 to 606, Dalriada was ruled by one of its most dynamic and successful kings, Aedan mac Gabran. In the mid-800′s, King Kenneth I. MacAlpin brought the Picts permanently under Dalriadic rule. Thereafter, the whole country was known as “Scotland;” thus was the end of the Picts of the ancient British Isles.)12

Attended by his disciples, Columba made long journeys through the Highlands of Scotland, as far as Aberdeen, spreading the light of faith in God and instructing the people in the truths of the Gospel. For thirty years, he evangelized, studied, wrote, and governed his monastery at Iona. He supervised his monks in their work in the fields and workrooms, in their daily worship and Sunday Eucharist, and their study and teaching.

There are many stories of miracles performed through Columba during his work with the Picts. Columba perceived that by converting King Brude, one of the known leaders of the ancient Picts, it would lead to the success of bringing over the whole nation to the worship of the true God. So he visited the pagan king Bridei (or Brude), king of Fortriu, at his base in Inverness,13 where it is said that the king had the gates locked against Columba. But that when he arrived at the king’s castle, Columba made the sign of the cross and the gates opened of their own accord. King Brude was so impressed that he opened his home—and soul—to Columba, becoming a devoted follower of Jesus Christ.14

Among the many accomplishments of Columba, he was also an impressive sailor.15 Columba was known for his joyous love of life.16 As well as a man of action, Columba was also a poet, whose Latin and Gaelic poems reveal a man very sensitive to the beauty of his surroundings.17 He is also credited with transcribing 300 books personally.18 At the height of the Iona monastery, it produced The Book of Kells, a masterwork of Irish Celtic symbols, art and literature. The community Columba founded at Iona became the center for an early renaissance where books, art, music and culture were preserved at the on-set of the Christian destruction in Dark Ages from Rome.19 To keep a succession of the teachers of Christianity, Columba established a monastery in every district of the Pictish territories,20 and from these monasteries, for many ages, came men of authenticity who watered and tended the good seed planted by Columba.

Columba had great influence among the neighboring princes, and they often asked for his advice. They submitted to him their quarrels, which were frequently settled by Columba.21

Columba died peacefully in 597, while working on a copy of the Psalter. He had put down his pen, rested a few hours, and at Matins was found dead before the Altar, a smile on his face. He is quoted by his biographer Adamnan as having said, “This day is called in the sacred Scriptures a day of rest, and truly to me it will be such, for it is the last of my life and I shall enter into rest after the fatigues of my labors.”22

For many years after his passing, Columba’s influence was felt in the Celtic lands and abroad. Columba’s mission at Iona led to the conversion of Scotland and of the north of England.23 Columba’s life contributed to Ireland becoming one of the monastic hubs of Europe, with the culture of Ireland dominated by monasteries and monastic leaders. Other Irish monks became missionaries and converted much of northern Europe to Christianity.24

1 Saint Columba. www.geocities.com/c_brundage/saints/col2.htm?200718
2 Columba: Early life in Ireland. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columba
3 Saint Columba. www.geocities.com/c_brundage/saints/col2.htm?200718
4 St. Columba or Columcille 521-597. www.cin.org/columba.html
5 Saint Columba. www.geocities.com/c_brundage/saints/col2.htm?200718
6 St. Columba. http://www.catholic.org/saints/saint.php?saint_id=419
7 General History of the Highlands – The Druids: www.electricscotland.com/history/genhist/hist17.html
8 General History of the Highlands – The Druids: www.electricscotland.com/history/genhist/hist17.html
9 General History of the Highlands – St. Columba: www.electricscotland.com/history/genhist/hist18.html
10 General History of the Highlands – St. Columba: www.electricscotland.com/history/genhist/hist18.html
11 General History of the Highlands – St. Columba: www.electricscotland.com/history/genhist/hist18.html
12 Dalriada. www.lyberty.com/encyc/articles/dalriada.html
13 Columba: Scotland. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columba
14 Saint Columba. www.geocities.com/c_brundage/saints/col2.htm?200718
15 St. Columba or Columcille 521-597. www.cin.org/columba.html
16 Saint Columba. www.geocities.com/c_brundage/saints/col2.htm?200718
17 St. Columba or Columcille 521-597. www.cin.org/columba.html
18 Columba: Scotland. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columba
19 Who is Saint Columba? www.columba.org/about/qanda.html#whois
20 General History of the Highlands – St. Columba: www.electricscotland.com/history/genhist/hist18.html
21 General History of the Highlands – St. Columba: www.electricscotland.com/history/genhist/hist18.html
22 Episcopal Book of Prayer on Lesser Feasts and Fasts.
23 St. Columba or Columcille 521-597. www.cin.org/columba.html
24 Medieval Sourcebook: Rule of St. Columba 6 th Century. www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/columba-rule.html

- from the St Columba Retreat House website.

Those following the political news from London recently will have been aware of the arrest of Damian Green, the Conservative MP, in relation to a police investigation into the leaks of sensitive information from the Home Office. The following article, ‘Golden Thread, National Myth‘ by Tom Holland, is published in the New Statesman -

The makers of The Devil’s Whore, Channel 4’s recently screened extravaganza set against the backdrop of the English Civil War, must have been especially excited by the arrest of Damian Green. Certainly, it is hard to know what more the Metropolitan Police could have done, short of donning floppy lace collars and pursuing parliamentarians across Marston Moor, to highlight the topicality of the drama’s themes. The centrepiece of the first episode was the notorious attempt by Charles I to seize five troublesome members from the very Parliament House itself.

“All my birds have flown,” intoned the actor Peter Capaldi, looking resplendent in a flowing Cavalier wig – for Charles, who was always a stickler for good manners, no matter what his other faults, had naturally made sure to enter the chamber without a hat. The police who arrested Damian Green seem not to have been quite so sensitive to protocol. No wonder that leading Conservatives, scarcely able to believe their luck, should have hurried to anoint their immigration spokesman a martyr for liberty, a hero in the grand tradition of John Lilburne and John Pym. “This,” warned Michael Howard portentously, “is the sort of thing that led to the start of the Civil War.”

A bit rich, it might have been thought, coming from a man whose tenure as home secretary had suggested that he would rather have relished the reintroduction of the pillory. And yet, instead of laughing at Howard’s analogy, commentators gave it so much airtime that now, several weeks on, it has become a virtual given. MPs in particular have shown themselves to be hugely keen on it – and on the left as well as the right. Perhaps this is not wholly surprising. Principle is invariably the stronger when fused with self-regard. That parliament is the guarantor of British liberties, and that an assault upon its privileges is an assault upon all the British people: here are presumptions fit to energise any member, Labour no less than Tory. A respect for history does not have to be the mark of a Conservative, after all – a truth so self-evident that already, well before the fingering of the Ashford One, it was serving to generate improbable alliances across the party divide.

Prior to Green’s arrest, the single most bizarre political event of the year was surely David Davis’s forcing of a by- election in his own constituency of Haltemprice and Howden, in protest against what he saw as the government’s infringement of civil liberties – a démarche enthusiastically backed by none other than that old leveller, Tony Benn. Both men, attempting to explain what appeared to many a thoroughly quixotic venture, made great play with abstract nouns – “freedoms”, “rights”, and so on – and yet it was evident that their truest inspiration derived not from political theory, but from their understanding of Britain’s past.

Just as the revolutionaries during the Civil Wars, even as they set about turning the world upside down, had claimed to be fighting in defence of their country’s ancient laws, so too did Davis and Benn. “This Sunday,” Davis announced in his resignation speech, “is the anniversary of Magna Carta, a document that guarantees the fundamental element of British freedom, habeas corpus.” Parliament, by tamely kowtowing to the 42-day detention plan, had shown itself to be not the defender of British liberty, but rather its jailer. As Benn, shaking his head more in sorrow than in anger, put it: “I never thought I would be in the House of Commons on the day Magna Carta was repealed.”

In January 2006, in a speech to the Fabian Society, Gordon Brown, then chancellor of the exchequer, had spelled out in language no less emotive than Benn’s what he saw as the essence of the country he would soon be leading. There was, he argued, “a golden thread which runs through British history” – and where did the thread begin, if not “that long ago day in Runnymede”? And who better to continue weaving it – by implication – than the Honourable Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath? Two years on, even as civil liberties campaigners continue to cast him as King John redivivus, the Prime Minister surely retains the invincible conviction that if anyone is the true defender of Magna Carta, it is himself.

All of which might seem to suggest, with both supporters and opponents of the government’s anti-terrorism legislation busy laying claim to the legacy of Runnymede, that one side must have it badly wrong. But this is not necessarily so – it is well to remember that Magna Carta has always been hedged by ambiguity. Indeed, that seems to have been precisely what enabled it to be sealed in the first place: the ability of both the king and his enemies to find in it what they pleased. “No free man shall be taken or imprisoned or disseised or outlawed or exiled or in any way ruined,” declared its most famous chapter, “. . . except by the lawful judgement of his peers or by the law of the land.” A teasingly Delphic statement: does the second clause serve to buttress or to qualify the first? It is not entirely clear. Either it is freedom from the oppression of unjust legislation that is being prescribed, or else it is freedom under the law, a subtly different thing, because laws may always be changed. The tension between these two interpretations has persisted ever since the tents were first packed away at Runnymede – nor, evidently, has it been settled now. The “golden thread” of British liberty remains what it has always been: a thing of glittering and tantalising ambivalence.

All of which, to many, has long been a source of frustration. What value the mystique of Magna Carta and its centuries-old inheritance, when it is capable of being interpreted in such mutually opposed ways? Yet it is possible to argue that what it may lack in clarity it more than makes up for as a myth. If it is true, as the political historian Benedict Anderson argued, that a nation is an “imagined community”, then what gives shape to a nation’s collective imaginings is inevitably what most effectively reflects the widest possible spectrum of its people’s principles and beliefs.

That is why the most potent national myths of all have invariably been those most susceptible to multiple readings – and most capable of evolving in response to change. For that, the surest evidence this year lay not in Britain, but across the Atlantic, in another democracy with an enduring taste for self-mythologisation: the United States of America.

“If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible; who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time; who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer.” So spoke President-elect Barack Obama in his victory speech. A politician of the centre left, the son of a Kenyan goat farmer, an African American, he signalled, with his very opening sentence, that he was subscribing to the time-honoured narrative which had always served to burnish his country’s elevated sense of itself. Unsurprisingly, among those hostile to the very notion of the nation state, and to the United States in particular, this served to raise the odd eyebrow. Writing in the New Statesman in November, John Pilger complained that Obama’s oratory was nothing more than the honeyed expression of the “brainwashing placed on most Americans from a tender age: that theirs is the most superior society in the world”. Even blunter was Ayman al-Zawahiri, al-Qaeda’s second-in-command. The president-elect, he sneered, was like a “house slave”. Rather than labouring in the cause of a universal caliphate, as his Muslim heritage might have inspired him to do, Obama had instead bought into the pernicious ideology of those slave-owning hypocrites, the Founding Fathers. Black he might be – but he was no less the white man’s stooge for that.

A bleak and bitter assessment. No doubt, as Obama himself has wryly acknowledged, he is indeed doomed to disappoint. And yet one can acknowledge as much while still recognising in his invocation of the venerable archetypes of American patriotism something nobler than a betrayal of the colour of his skin. After all, far from casting a veil over slavery, he opted, in his very first speech as president-elect, to make it the climax of his address.

The historical narrative Obama delivered that night, rich with allusions to Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King and the Gettysburg Address, could hardly be reckoned to have redounded un ambiguously to his country’s credit: for the achievements that it chronicled would never have been necessary without America’s original sin. Yet the speech, far from subverting the founding myths of American democracy, served ultimately to buttress them: for a myth is hardly diminished, and may even be enhanced, by being framed as a tragedy. “That’s the true genius of America, that America can change. Our union can be perfected.” Here were convictions as old as the Republic itself, and yet, coming from Obama, they hinted at darkness as well as light: of how America, having originally betrayed her own noblest ideals, must continue with her quest for expiation.

It goes without saying that there are many Americans – white, patriotic, moose-hunting Americans – who viscerally disagree with this reworking of their nation’s founding story. That, however, is precisely the measure of the narrative’s astounding potency: that it can serve to stir the souls of both Sarah Palin and Barack Obama, Republican and Democrat, evangelical and liberal. Even beyond the limits of the party system, on the radical fringes of which both Pilger, and possibly even Ayman al-Zawahiri, would presumably approve, the paradigms of American history have maintained something of their implacable grip. When Gil Scott-Heron, that bard of black militancy, eviscerated American mythology in his classic song “Winter in America”, his anger was all the more savage for being blended with such evident disappointment. The constitution, in Scott-Heron’s reading of American history, has never amounted to anything – and yet it remains, for all that, “a noble piece of paper”. Winter in America it might be – and yet always there is the ghost of the summer that should have been.

The role given to Britain in this American master-narrative has usually been an inglorious one. What King John was to Magna Carta, George III was to the constitution of the United States. Yet it is telling that Scott-Heron, in the very opening line of his great song, should have chosen to name-check the Pilgrim Fathers. If it was colonists from Britain who brought both land-hunger and slavery to the New World, then so, too, did they bring what would end up as the ideals of the infant Republic. An interpretation of Magna Carta which saw it as “such a fellow, that he will have no sovereign” served as no less of an inspiration to the Thirteen Colonies than it would to rebels against absolutism during the British Civil Wars and the Glorious Revolution. What should lie embedded within the Fifth Amendment to the US constitution, that “noble piece of paper”, is the most celebrated of Magna Carta’s chapters: a guarantee that “no person shall be . . . deprived of life, liberty or property, without due process of law”. Woven into the very fabric of American history, then, is that very same “golden thread” which Gordon Brown, in his speech to the Fabian Society, had identified as British: the “golden thread” of liberty.

No wonder the soon-to-be prime minister showed himself to be not a little jealous of Yankee grandstanding. “Even before America made it its own,” he protested plaintively in the same Fabian Society speech, “I think Britain can lay claim to the idea of liberty.” The speech itself, with its tortured analysis of “Britishness” and its proposal for a national “British Day”, was almost universally derided as a floundering expedient, a desperate ploy to stop Brown’s fellow Scots from leaving the United Kingdom, and radical Islamists from blowing themselves up on Tube trains. Yet, in truth, there was a sadness about it, and a sense of loneliness which marked it out as the very opposite of cynical. Brown’s tone was that of a man labouring to jerry-build a Skoda, who suddenly realises he has had a Rolls-Royce sitting mothballed in his garage all along.

For almost a decade, the government in which he was such a dominant figure had been promoting a vision of Britain as a blissed-out, baggage-free place, one far too hip to bother with anything so terminally un-Cool Britannia as the past. If that attitude presented new Labour with some fairly obvious targets – fox-hunting, Black Rod, and the like – it also obliged them to trash the Labour Party’s own heritage. It was not only Clause Four that had been cheerfully junked. So, too, was the venerable narrative that had enabled an old romantic such as Tony Benn to believe himself the heir of Wat Tyler, the Diggers and the Tolpuddle Martyrs. Heroes of the common people such figures may have been, but they were dead, they were white, they were European, and they were mostly male. Certainly, to the Young Turks of new Labour, it appeared hard to imagine anything less expressive of cosmopolitanism or diversity than Our Island Story. Only Gordon Brown seems to have paused, to have had second thoughts, to have wondered, in his customarily earnest way, whether there was not possibly the risk of losing something important along the way.

And he was right to wonder – as the campaign against his own anti-terror legislation, ironically enough, has served to suggest. After all, despite the best efforts of Davis and Benn, the person who has most tirelessly invoked Magna Carta over the past few years is decidedly not an Anglo-Saxon male. It is pushing things, perhaps, to cast Shami Chakrabarti as the British Barack Obama; and yet there is no question that, just like Obama, she is invoking themes and narratives that have hitherto tended to be seen as hideously white. It was the failure of our history to reflect today’s multicultural reality that originally persuaded the government to brand Britain as a “young country” – as though the thousand years and more that have passed since its constituent kingdoms were first established could simply be magicked away. Chakrabarti’s term of office at Liberty has served to emphasise just how otiose the whole manoeuvre was. By praising the “golden thread” of the nation’s inheritance in terms that would embarrass many a white liberal, she and her fellow campaigners for civil liberties have disinterred a venerable historical narrative, one that sees the flow of our traditions much as Wordsworth did, as “the Flood of British freedom”. In doing so, they are illustrating once again what has always been the key to understanding radicalism in this country: that it looks for inspiration not in the future, but in the past. As another poet, even greater than Wordsworth, once put it: “I did but prompt the age to quit their cloggs/By the known rules of antient libertie.”

Evidently, we live in a sceptical, deconstructive age. The identification of Britain’s evolution with the march of enlightenment – what Herbert Butterfield, back in 1931, termed “the Whig interpretation of history” – has long fallen from academic favour. Meanwhile, in universities and secondary schools, the teaching of history is becoming ever more modular and fragmented, while in primary schools, if the government’s senior education adviser Sir Jim Rose has his way, the subject will soon cease to be a distinctive field of study at all. And yet, against the odds, 2008 should be remembered as the year in which Our Island Story made a spectacular comeback: not as a fantasy of the heritage industry, but rather as a storm-centre of political life; not as a triumphalist narrative, but as one shaded by disappointment no less than achievement; not as a thing uncontested, but as the very stuff of urgent, furious debate. A story, in short, that might well merit a measure of reconstruction.

Come the New Year, the government will announce its decision on whether to build a third runway at Heathrow Airport. If, as expected, expansion is given the green light, a whole village will need to be obliterated: not only houses, but pubs, a school and a church dating back to the Domesday Book. Such is progress, perhaps; and yet not even the most rabid enthusiast for air travel would argue that the whole of Britain be concreted over, that the entire country be transformed into a mere transit hub with shops. Yet that is what we may well end up inhabiting, should we forget the history that has shaped us, the narratives, the themes and, yes, the myths as well.

We live in an age when the issues that have shaped the grand sweep of Britain’s past – issues of security and personal freedom, of identity and dissidence – are coming back into ever more pressing focus, of no less interest to the terrorist suspect banged up in Belmarsh than to the Eurosceptic brandishing a Union Jack.

To let the memories of Our Island Story fade is not to give a vote of confidence to a progressive and multicultural future, but to diminish it. To paraphrase 1066 and All That – it risks seeing more than History come to a.

From wikipedia -

Sub-Roman Britain is a term derived from an archaeologists’ label for the material culture of Britain in Late Antiquity. “Sub-Roman” was invented to describe the pottery in sites of the 5th century and the 6th century, initially with an implication of decay of locally-made wares from a higher standard under the Roman Empire. It is now used to denote a period of history.

The period of Sub-Roman Britain traditionally covers the history of England from the end of Roman imperial rule in the very early fifth century to the arrival of Saint Augustine in AD 597. This period has attracted a great deal of academic and popular debate, in part because of the scarcity of the source material, and in part because this period is a time in which later national identities have found their origins.

The term Late Antiquity, implying wider horizons, is finding more use in the academic community, especially when features common throughout the post-Roman West are examined, while a range of more dramatic names are given to the period in popular (and some academic) works: the Dark Ages, the Brythonic Age, the Age of Tyrants or the Age of Arthur.

Written accounts

Statue of St. Patrick at the Hill of Tara, Ireland.

There is very little extant written material available from this period. Only two contemporary British sources exist: the Confessio of Saint Patrick and Gildas‘ De Excidio Britanniae (“On The Ruin Of Britain”).^[1] Patrick’s Confessio reveals aspects of life in Britain, from whence he was abducted. It is particularly useful in highlighting the state of Christianity at the time. Gildas’ De Excidio Britanniae is a jeremiad; it is written as a polemic to warn contemporary rulers against sin, demonstrating through historical and biblical examples that bad rulers are always punished by God – in the case of Britain, through the destructive wrath of the Saxon invaders. The historical section of De Excidio is short, and the material in it is clearly selected with Gildas’ purpose in mind. There are no absolute dates given, and some of the details, such as those regarding the Hadrian and Antonine Walls are clearly wrong. Nevertheless, Gildas does provide us with an insight into some of the kingdoms that existed when he was writing, and to how an educated monk perceived the situation that had developed between the Anglo-Saxons and the British.

There are more continental sources, though these are highly problematic. The most famous is the so-called Rescript of Honorius, in which the Western Emperor Honorius tells the British civitates to look to their own defence. The first reference to this rescript is written by the sixth-century Byzantine scholar Zosimus and is located randomly in the middle of a discussion of southern Italy; no further mention of Britain is made, which has led some, though not all, modern academics to suggest that the rescript does not apply to Britain, but to Bruttium in Italy.^[2] The Gallic Chronicle provides information about St Germanus and his visit(s) to Britain, though again this text has received considerable academic deconstruction.^[3] The work of Procopius, another sixth-century Byzantine writer, makes some references to Britain though the accuracy of these is uncertain.

There are numerous later written sources that claim to provide accurate accounts of the period. The first to attempt this was the monk Bede, writing in the early eighth century. He based his account of the Sub-Roman period in his Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum (c.731) heavily on Gildas, though he tried to provide dates for the events Gildas describes. Later sources, such as the Historia Brittonum attributed to Nennius, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and the Annales Cambriae are all heavily shrouded in myth and can only be used as evidence for this period with caution.^[4]

Archaeological evidence

Archaeology provides further, though limited, evidence for this period. The study of burials and cremations, and the grave goods associated with these, has done much to expand the understanding of cultural identities in the period.^[5] Excavations of settlements have revealed how social structures might have been changing, and the extent to which life in Britain continued unaltered in certain aspects into the early medieval period. Work on towns has been particularly important in this respect. Work on field systems and environmental archaeology has also highlighted the extent to which agricultural practice continued and changed over the period.^[6] Archaeology, however, has its limits, especially in dating. Although radio-carbon dating can provide a rough estimate, this is not accurate enough to associate archaeological finds with historical events. Dendrochronology is accurate enough to do this, though few suitable pieces of wood have been uncovered. Coins would normally prove the most useful tool for dating, though this is not the case for sub-Roman Britain since no newly-minted coins are believed to have entered circulation after the very early fifth century.^[7]

There is some archaeological evidence for Anglo-Saxons and Britons living on the same site. For example, in the cemetery at Wasperton, Warwickshire, it is possible to see one family adopting Anglo-Saxon culture over a long period.^[8]

Anglo-Saxon migration

The famous Sutton Hoo helmet, 7th century

Linguistic evidence

Linguistics is a useful way of analysing the culture of a people, and to an extent political associations, in a period.^[9] Studies into Old English, P- and Q-Celtic and Latin have provided evidence for contact between the Britons, the Gaels, and the Anglo-Saxons, or suggest lack of contact. Similarly, studies of place-names give clues about the linguistic history of an area. The place-name and linguistic evidence has been explained by saying that the settlement of Anglo-Saxons being politically and socially dominant in the south and east of Britain meant that their language and culture also became dominant.

Genetic evidence

Further information: Population genetics of the British Isles

Recent work analysing the Y chromosome and mitochondrial DNA of people now living in Britain and on the continent has provided some insight into how population movements might have occurred during the sub-Roman period. A 2002 study from University College London indicated that there may have indeed been substantially large scale Anglo-Saxon migration to central and eastern England (accounting for 50–100% of the population at the time in Central England). ^[10] A more complete study in 2003 indicates that this result is regional to Central England and that there may have been substantially less Anglo-Saxon migration to other regions of England. The study also provides evidence that all areas of the British Isles have a pre-Anglo-Saxon genetic component. It was also unable to find discernible difference in the Y-chromosomes of the presumed modern day source populations of Anglo-Saxon and the later Danish Viking settlers, thus the survey registered both sets of chromosomes as belonging to the same group.^[11]

Fresh interpretation of the above genetic evidence by Stephen Oppenheimer in The Origins of the British: A Genetic Detective Story and new DNA sampling (Y-chromosome and mtDNA) by Bryan Sykes for his book Blood of the Isles suggest that the contribution of Anglo-Saxons and other late invaders to the British gene pool may have been very limited, and that the majority of English people (about two-thirds) and British people (about three-quarters) descend from palæolithic settlers that migrated from the western European Ice Age refuge,^[12] this observation may support the idea of an ancient relationship between the populations of the Atlantic façade of Europe, though the eastern and south eastern coasts of Great Britain do not belong to this zone.^[13] Sykes and Oppenheimer claim that even in the east of England, where there is the best evidence for migration, no more than 10% of paternal lines may be designated as coming from an “Anglo-Saxon” migration event and that in the same English regions 69% of male lines are still of aboriginal origin. Stephen Oppenheimer instead provides evidence for a possible pre-Anglo-Saxon genetic relationship between the modern populations of England (especially the south and east) and the people living on the opposing North Sea regions, indicating a much older pre-Roman Germanic influence in south and east England. There is some evidence that Y chromosome Haplogroup I, which occurs at similar frequencies around the North Sea coast may represent a mesolithic colonisation rather than an Anglo-Saxon migration as is contested by other researchers. This haplogroup represents a migration from the Balkan refuge that may have traveled along inland European rivers rather than by the Atlantic coast.^[14] It is also postulated that the arrival of Germanic languages in England may be considerably earlier than previously thought, and that both mainland and English Belgae may have been Germanic-speaking peoples and represented closely related ethnic groups (or a single cross channel ethnic group).^[15]

Extent of the migration

It was long held that the Anglo-Saxons migrated to Britain in large numbers in the fifth and sixth centuries, substantially displacing the British people. The Anglo-Saxon historian Frank Stenton, although making considerable allowance for British survival, essentially sums up this view, arguing “that the greater part of southern England was overrun in the first phase of the war”.^[16] This interpretation was based on the written sources, particularly Gildas, but also the later sources, such as the Anglo-Saxon historian Bede, that cast the arrival of the Anglo-Saxons as a violent event. The place-name and linguistic evidence was also considered to support this interpretation, as very few British place-names survived in eastern Britain, very few British Celtic words entered the Old English language and the migration of Brythonic language and peoples from south-western Britain to Armorica, which eventually became Brittany. This interpretation particularly appealed to earlier English historians, who wanted to further their view that England had developed differently to Europe with a limited monarchy and love of liberty. This, it was argued, came from the mass Anglo-Saxon invasions. Though fewer scholars would now utilise this argument, the traditional view is still held by some historians, Lawrence James recently writing that England was ‘submerged by an Anglo-Saxon current which swept away the Romano-British.’^[17]

The traditional view has been deconstructed to a considerable extent since the 1990s. At the centre of this is a re-estimation of the numbers of Anglo-Saxons arriving in Britain during this period. A lower figure is now generally accepted, making it highly unlikely that the existing British population was substantially displaced by the Anglo-Saxons.^[18]

End of Roman Britain

Various dates of the end of Roman Britain have been advanced, from the end of coinage in 402, to Constantine III‘s rebellion in 407, to the rebellion mentioned by Zosimus in 409, and the Rescript of Honorius in 410.^[19] It is perhaps better not to think of this in terms of modern decolonisation. The dating of the end of Roman Britain is complex, and the exact process of it is probably unknowable.

There is some controversy as to why Roman rule ended in Britain. The view first advocated by Mommsen was that Rome left Britain.^[20] This argument was substantiated over time, most recently by A.S. Esmonde-Cleary.^[21] According to this argument, internal turmoil in the empire and the need to withdraw troops to fight off barbarian armies led Rome to abandon Britain. It was the collapse of the imperial system that led to the end of imperial rule in Britain. However, Michael Jones has advanced an alternative thesis that argues that Rome did not leave Britain, but that Britain left Rome.^[22] He highlights the numerous usurpers who came from Britain in the late fourth and early fifth century, and that a supply of coinage to Britain had dried up by the early fifth century, meaning administrators and troops were not getting paid. All of this, he argues, led the British people to rebel against Rome. Both of these arguments are open to criticism, though as yet no further developments have been made in understanding why the end of Roman Britain occurred.

Fate of the Romano-Britons

Tintagel

Intrinsic to this period is the fate of the population of Britain under Roman rule. Some clearly adopted aspects of Anglo-Saxon culture and identified themselves as Anglo-Saxons. Others may have lived in separate communities from those of the Anglo-Saxons, but under Anglo-Saxon rule. The laws of King Ethelbert of Kent, probably written in the early seventh century, make reference to a legal underclass known as laets who might represent British communities. There definitely is a British (wealh) underclass referred to in Ine of Wessex’s law code, written in the late seventh or early eighth centuries.

However, the violent nature of the period should not be overlooked, and it is likely that this period was a time of endemic tension, alluded to in all of the written sources. This may have led to the deaths of a substantial number of the British population. There are also references to plagues. The evidence from land use suggests a decline in production, which might be a sign of population decline.^[23]

It is clear that some British people migrated to the continent, which resulted in the region of Armorica in northwest Gaul becoming known as Brittany. There is also evidence of British migration to Gallaecia, in Hispania. The dating of these migrations is uncertain, but recent studies suggest that the migration from southwestern Britain to Brittany may have begun as early as AD 300 and was largely ended by 500. These settlers, unlikely to be refugees if the date was this early, made their presence felt in the naming of the westernmost, Atlantic-facing provinces of Armorica, Kerne/Cornouaille (“Kernow/Cornwall“) and Domnonea (“Devon“).^[24] However, there is clear linguistic evidence for close contacts between the southwest of Britain and Brittany across the sub-Roman period.^[25]

In Galicia, in the northwest corner of the Iberian peninsula, another region of traditional Celtic culture, the Suebian Parochiale, drawn up about 580, includes a list of the principal churches of each diocese in the metropolitanate of Braga (the ecclesia Britonensis, now Bretoña), which was the seat of a bishop who ministered to the spiritual needs of the British immigrants to northwestern Spain: in 572 its bishop, Mailoc, had a Celtic name.^[26]. The settlers had brought their Celtic Christianity with them but finally accepted the Latin Rite at the Council of Toledo in 633. The diocese stretched from Ferrol to the Eo River. In Spain, the area has sometimes been dubbed “the third Britain” or “the last Britain”.^[27]

Non-Anglo-Saxon kingdoms began appearing in western Britain, which are first referred to in Gildas’s De Excidio Britanniae. To an extent these kingdoms may have derived from Roman structures.^[28] However, it is also clear that they drew on a strong influence from Hibernia, which was never part of the Roman Empire. Archaeology has helped further the study of these kingdoms, notably at sites like Tintagel or the South Cadbury hill-fort.

In the north there developed the British kingdoms of the Hen Ogledd, the “Old North”, comprising Ebrauc (probable name), Bryneich, Rheged, Strathclyde, Elmet and Gododdin. Fifth and sixth century repairs along Hadrian’s Wall have been uncovered, and at Whithorn in southwestern Scotland (possibly the site of St Ninian‘s monastery). Chance discoveries have helped document the continuing urban occupation of some Roman towns such as Wroxeter and Caerwent.^[29] Continued urban use might be associated with an ecclesiastical structure.

Western Britain has attracted those archeologists who wish to place King Arthur as a historical figure.^[30] Though there is little contemporary written evidence for this, and archaeological evidence does suggest a possibility that a Romano-British king might have wielded considerable power during the sub-Roman period, as demonstrated by the creation of sites such as Tintagel and earthworks such as the Wansdyke. Such interpretations continue to attract the popular imagination and the scepticism of academics.

Environmental change

There is evidence for climate change in the fifth century, with conditions turning cooler and wetter. This shortened the growing season and made uplands unsuited to growing grain. Dendrochronology reveals a particular climatic event in 540.^[31] Michael Jones suggests that declining agricultural production from land that was already fully exploited had considerable demographic consequences.^[32]

See also

• Mythical British Kings
• Historical Kings of the Britons
• Vortigern
• King Arthur
• Historical basis for King Arthur
• Matter of Britain
• Anglo-Saxons
• Wansdyke
• Heptarchy
• Ancient Britain
• Roman Britain
• Romano-British
• History of Britain
• History of Wales
• History of British society
• History of England
• The Celts
• Roman Empire

Notes

1. ^ Discussion in Ken Dark, Britain and the End of the Roman Empire, (Stroud: Tempus, 2000), pp.32-7
2. ^ Discussion in Martin Millett, The Romanization of Britain, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990) and in Philip Bartholomew ‘Fifth-Century Facts’ Britannia vol. 13, 1982 p. 260
3. ^ Michael Jones and John Casey, ‘The Gallic Chronicle Restored: A Chronology for the Anglo-Saxon Invasions and the End of Roman Britain’, Britannia 19, (1988), pp.367-98; R.W. Burgess, ‘The Dark Ages Return to Fifth-Century Britain: The ‘Restored’ Gallic Chronicle Exploded’, Britannia 21, (1990), pp.185-195
4. ^ David Dumville, “Sub-Roman Britain: History and Legend”, History 62, (1977), pp.173-92
5. ^ See discussion in A.S. Esmonde Cleary, “The Roman to medieval transition” in Britons and Romans: advancing an archaeological agenda. ed. S. James & M. Millett, (York: Council for British Archaeology, 2001)
6. ^ John Davey, “The Environs of South Cadbury in the Late Antique and Early Medieval Periods” in Debating Late Antiquity in Britain AD300-700. ed. Rob Collins & James Gerrard, (Oxford: British Archaeological Review, 2004)
7. ^ A.S. Esmond Cleary, The Ending of Roman Britain, (London: Batsford, 1989), pp.138-139
8. ^ Helena Hamerow, ‘The earliest Anglo-Saxon kingdoms’ in The New Cambridge Medieval History, I, c.500-c.700. ed. Paul Fouracre, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), p.265
9. ^ See Kenneth Jackson, Language and History in Early Britain: A Chronological Survey of the Brittonic Languages, (Edinburgh, 1953) for a traditional introduction
10. ^ Michael E. Weale, Deborah A. Weiss, Rolf F. Jager, Neil Bradman and Mark G. Thomas (2002), Y Chromosome Evidence for Anglo-Saxon Mass Migration, Molecular Biology and Evolution 19:1008–21. Retrieved 4 May 2006
11. ^ A Y Chromosome Census of the British IslesPDF (208 KiB) (2003), Cristian Capelli, Nicola Redhead, Julia K. Abernethy, Fiona Gratrix, James F. Wilson, Torolf Moen, Tor Hervig, Martin Richards, Michael P. H. Stumpf, Peter A. Underhill, Paul Bradshaw, Alom Shaha, Mark G. Thomas, Neal Bradman and David B. Goldstein Current Biology 13(11):979–984; DOI 10.1016/S0960-9822(03)00373-7. Retrieved 4 May 2006.
12. ^ There are thought to have been three human population “refuges” in Europe during the Last Glacial Maximum. Oppenheimer pp102–103.
13. ^ Cunliffe, 1995. Iron Age Britain p7. ISBN 0-713-48839-5
14. ^ Oppenheimer 2006:166-169.
15. ^ Oppenheimer 2006, pp268–307.
16. ^ F.M. Stenton, The Anglo-Saxons, 3rd edition, (Oxford: University Press, 1973), p.30
17. ^ Lawrence James, Warrior Race, (London: Abacus. 2002), p.30
18. ^ Michael Jones, The End of Roman Britain, pp.8-38.
19. ^ See for instance E.A. Thompson, ‘Britain, AD 406-410′, Britannia 8, (1977), pp.303-18 and P. Bartholomew, ‘Fifth-Century Facts’, Britannia 13, (1982), pp.261-70
20. ^ See discussion in Michael Jones, The End of Roman Britain, (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1996), pp.256-7
21. ^ Esmonde-Cleary, The Ending of Roman Britain, p.161
22. ^ Michael Jones, The End of Roman Britain, esp. chapters 4 and 7
23. ^ Davey, The Environs of South Cadbury, p50
24. ^ Gwenaël le Duc, “The Colonisation of Brittany from Britain: New Approaches and Questions” in Celtic Connections: Proceedings of the Tenth International Congress of Celtic Studies. Volume One. ed. Black, Gillies and Ó Maolaigh, (East Linton: Tuckwell Press, 1999), ISBN 1-898410-77-1
25. ^ Wendy Davies, “The Celtic Kingdoms” in The New Cambridge Medieval History, Volume I, c.500-c.700. ed. Paul Fouracre, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), pp255–61
26. ^ Fletcher, Saint James’s Catapult, ch. 1, note 61.
27. ^ “San Rosendo, bispo dunha Igrexa direfente nunha Galicia distinta” (Galician), La Voz de Galicia
28. ^ Ken Dark, Britain and the End of the Roman Empire, pp.150–192
29. ^ Roger White and Philip Barker, Wroxeter: Life and Death of a Roman City, (Stroud: Tempus, 1998)
30. ^ Leslie Alcock, Arthur’s Britain: History and Archaeology AD 367–634, (Harmondsworth: Allen Lane, 1971), ISBN 0-7139-0245-0; Francis Pryor, Britain AD: A Quest for Arthur, England and the Anglo-Saxons. (Harper Collins, 2004), ISBN 0-00-718186-8
31. ^ Davey, ‘The Environs of South Cadbury’, p.50
32. ^ Jones, The End of Roman Britain, pp.186-243

References

• Oppenheimer, S. (2006). The Origins of the British: A Genetic Detective Story: Constable and Robinson, London. ISBN 978-1-84529-158-7.

Further reading

• Leslie Alcock, Arthur’s Britain: History and Archaeology AD 367 – 634, Allen Lane, The Penguin Press, Harmondsworth, 1971 ISBN 0-7139-0245-0
• Rob Collins & James Gerrard (ed.), Debating Late Antiquity in Britain AD300-700, (Oxford: British Archaeological Review, 2004)
• Ken Dark, Britain and the End of the Roman Empire, (Stroud: Tempus, 2000)
• David N. Dumville, ‘Sub-Roman Britain: History and Legend’, History 62 (1977), pp. 173-92.
• A.S. Esmonde-Cleary, The Ending of Roman Britain, (London: Batsford, 1989)
• Paul Fouracre (ed.), The New Cambridge Medieval History, Volume I, c.500-c.700, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005)
• Michael E. Jones, The End of Roman Britain, (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1996).
• Arthurian Period Sources volumes 1-9, General Editor John Morris, published Phillimore & Co, Chichester (includes full text of Gildas & Nennius, St Patrick material and various annals and charters).
• Francis Pryor, Britain AD: A Quest for Arthur, England and the Anglo-Saxons. Harper Collins. 2004 ISBN 0-00-718186-8
• Robert Vermaat (ed.), Vortigern Studies website – while Vortigern-focused, it is an in-depth resource for navigating the issues in sub-Roman British history.
• Ian Wood, ‘The Fall of the Western Empire and the End of Roman Britain’, Britannia vol. 18, 1987 pp. 251-262

Romanticism is an artistic, literary, and intellectual movement that originated around the middle of the 18th century in Western Europe, during the Industrial Revolution. It was partly a revolt against aristocratic, social, and political norms of the Enlightenment period and a reaction against the scientific rationalization of nature in art and literature. It stressed strong emotion as a source of aesthetic experience, placing new emphasis on such emotions as trepidation, horror, and the awe experienced in confronting the sublimity of untamed nature. It elevated folk art, nature and custom, as well as arguing for an epistemology based on nature, which included human activity conditioned by nature in the form of language, custom and usage. It was influenced by ideas of the Enlightenment and elevated medievalism and elements of art and narrative perceived to be from the medieval period. The name “romantic” itself comes from the term “romance” which is a prose or poetic heroic narrative originating in medieval literature and romantic literature. The ideologies and events of the French Revolution and Industrial Revolution are thought to have influenced the movement. Romanticism elevated the achievements of what it perceived as misunderstood heroic individuals and artists that altered society. It also legitimized the individual imagination as a critical authority which permitted freedom from classical notions of form in art. There was a strong recourse to historical and natural inevitability in the representation of its ideas.

Characteristics

In a general sense, the term “Romanticism” has been used to refer to certain artists, poets, writers, musicians, as well as political, philosophical and social thinkers of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. It has equally been used to refer to various artistic, intellectual, and social trends of that era. Despite this general usage of the term, a specific definition of Romanticism has been the subject of debate in the fields of intellectual history and literary history throughout the twentieth century, without any great measure of consensus emerging. Arthur Lovejoy attempted to demonstrate the difficulty of this problem in his seminal article “On The Discrimination of Romanticisms” in his Essays in the History of Ideas (1948); some scholars see romanticism as completely continuous with the present, some see it as the inaugural moment of modernity, some see it as the beginning of a tradition of resistance to the Enlightenment, and still others date it firmly in the direct aftermath of the French Revolution. Another definition comes from Charles Baudelaire: “Romanticism is precisely situated neither in choice of subject nor exact truth, but in a way of feeling.”

Many intellectual historians have seen Romanticism as a key movement in the Counter-Enlightenment, a reaction against the Age of Enlightenment. Whereas the thinkers of the Enlightenment emphasized the primacy of deductive reason, Romanticism emphasized intuition, imagination, and feeling, to a point that has led to some Romantic thinkers being accused of irrationalism.

[...]

The Scottish poet James Macpherson influenced the early development of Romanticism with the international success of his Ossian [an epic on the subject of Fingal (related to the Irish mythological character Fionn mac Cumhaill) written by Ossian (based on Fionn's son Oisín)] cycle of poems published in 1762, inspiring both Goethe and the young Walter Scott.

[...]

Romanticism in British literature developed in a different form slightly later, mostly associated with the poets William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, whose co-authored book “Lyrical Ballads” (1798) sought to reject Augustan poetry in favour of more direct speech derived from folk traditions. Both poets were also involved in Utopian social thought in the wake of the French Revolution. The poet and painter William Blake is the most extreme example of the Romantic sensibility in Britain, epitomised by his claim “I must create a system or be enslaved by another man’s.” Blake’s artistic work is also strongly influenced by Medieval illuminated books. The painters J.M.W. Turner and John Constable are also generally associated with Romanticism. Lord Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Mary Shelley and John Keats constitute another phase of Romanticism in Britain. The historian Thomas Carlyle and the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood represent the last phase of transformation into Victorian culture. William Butler Yeats, born in 1865, referred to his generation as “the last romantics.”

The Fighting Téméraire tugged to her last Berth to be broken up by J. M. W. Turner, 1838, oil on canvas, 91 x 122 cm

[...]

One of Romanticism’s key ideas and most enduring legacies is the assertion of nationalism, which became a central theme of Romantic art and political philosophy. From the earliest parts of the movement, with their focus on development of national languages and folklore, and the importance of local customs and traditions, to the movements which would redraw the map of Europe and lead to calls for self-determination of nationalities, nationalism was one of the key vehicles of Romanticism, its role, expression and meaning.

Early Romantic nationalism was strongly inspired by Rousseau, and by the ideas of Johann Gottfried von Herder, who in 1784 argued that the geography formed the natural economy of a people, and shaped their customs and society.

The nature of nationalism changed dramatically, however, after the French Revolution with the rise of Napoleon, and the reactions in other nations.

(Of course, the French weren’t the only ones to draw on a legendary nature and mythical past connected with the lands to expound their ‘naturalistic’ politics… I digress.) The environmental science writer, Stephen Budiansky, in his book Nature’s Keepers, is critical of the Romantic tradition, and the majority of environmentalism that it has inspired, regarding it as elitist and escapist. He points to it having a sublime-seeking flip side, one that saw its seekers visit mines and quarries just as much as mountain views. He posits that the Romantics’ view of nature was as of something ‘separate, and awe inspiring’ (p.51). Whilst possibly viewing nature as awesome, I’m not sure what Coleridge, Turner and others, for example, in their first-hand, direct encounters with storms and the such like, would have thought of this analysis.