The Anglo-Saxon Myth in the United States

Abstract

I TIS STILL possible to hear term, Our heritage, or Anglo-Saxon civilization, or the two great nations with hands across sea. Despite Mexican-Spanish zone that reaches from Los Angeles to San Antonio and leaps over to Saint Augustine, despite profound influence of American Indian on our early development, pioneering in Mississippi valley and northwest by French and French-Canadians, ten percent contribution to population made by Negro and mulatto, and all weight of 39 million Foreign white stock in country, there are still some who repeat shibboleth and call us an nation. To those who merely want some convenient way of designating English-speaking peoples on two sides of Atlantic, this inquiry may seem purely academic. It may seem academic also to Canadians who stem from British Isles in contrast to French-Canadians and immigrants from southern and eastern Europe. Among these AngloSaxon citizens, there is a certain degree of alarm over prospect of being outvoted in a generation or so by other groups in population, as Professor Hurd has shown.' As one can see in Oxford Dictionary, it is difficult to attach a definitive meaning to term Anglo-Saxon. In 885, Alfred Great used it as meaning of England. It is best used today as roughly equivalent to word English. By present writer, Scots and Welsh are not included. The amount of intermingling with Saxons on part of former is probably small and latter are present-day descendants of people who were bitterly fought by Saxons and who have ever since maintained their own identity. They were called Welshmen in those old-English times (the word Welsh meaning foreigner) and regarded as a lower caste. Welshman is virtually synonomous with Briton. The Britons were strongly Romanized when Angles, Saxons and Jutes entered island. There is a strong probability that a victory by former over latter on a certain Mount Badon is historical kernel from which we get stories of King Arthur. The medieval writer, Geoffrey of Monmouth, gave us story of Jack, Giant-killer, whose giants were mostly Welsh. Jack, who came from Saxon side, is called an Englishman (I smell blood of an Englishman). Possibly Saxon mothers said to their children,