Forgotten Ground Regained
From Place to Place
John Whitbourn
Winner of the Cædmon Prize, 2022
Originally published in Withowinde 200, p. 42, Winter, 2021; announced Cædmon Prize winner in Withowinde 201, p. 8, Spring 2022.
When we arrived, wind-driven ‧ water-wanderers with womenfolkHere held no welcome for us. And rightly so.Homeless home-seekers, spear-bearing land-seizersIf we could, if allowed,Anderida, as was, with walls tall, held warriors mail-clad,In ram-beaked warships, the foe-doom of our frail craftShould spear speak to spear ‧ and shield strike shield.The Count of the Saxon Shore ‧ must not note us.So spoke Aelle, our lord. And rightly so.Riverine routes, vacant valleys, were our lot. Till times change.
Times change. Old ones die, the new arrive.Such is the way of Wyrd. There is no other patternThat is proper; so Life decrees. And rightly so.We multiply to make a Folk. The Roman-Welsh less so.Without comforts, coins, and tax ‧ they wither.Perfumed patricians, togaed Tyranni, are perverse, sow sterile seed.Wealas warriors are ‘soldiers’, paid for the day.Anderida held metalled horsemen ‧ and ship-sinkers no more.High walls not for storming ‧ stood unmanned, housed only Welsh:Sheep for the shearing, ‧ mere prayers their protection.
Dread Arthur was dead. Aelle, our lord, lived,Had husbanded his breath ‧ to see this day.He took Anderida with ease, aided by Woden-vow.Keeping which we kept nothing: biting blade-edge sacrificed all.Come clear dawn, after blood-soaked nightThere were none left ‧ to call Anderida home.Ours was now the naming ‧ our strife right – and rightly so.Times change. Aelle fared forth. Today we are termed Englisc.Fireside-fastened, my head frost-helmed, I sit in sea-girt PevenseyFor our new lord, Pefen, calls here his place. And rightly so.
Author's Note
Ælle and Cissa besieged Andredsceaster and slew all that dwelt within so that not a single Briton was left alive -- The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle' entry for 491 A.D.
Andredsceaster is the Chronicle's name for Roman Anderida, renamed as Pevensey (perhaps from ‘Pefen’s eye’=Island’) by Saxon inheritors. Anderida was a ‘Saxon Shore’ fort, possibly constructed by Carausius circa 290 AD. Formerly a coastal port, subsequent shingle deposition, plus Medieval infilling, means it now sits a mile or so from the present shoreline—but still dwarves the Norman Castle tucked in one corner post 1066...
The Chronicle’s unusual, specific, stress on '.... not a single Briton was left alive', has led to speculation re a special, thoroughgoing slaughter, foregoing plunder or slaves, undertaken in fulfilment of a vow to the pagan pantheon. An article 'A Gift To Woden From Pevensey?' which appeared in Wiðowinde 88, August 1990, dwelt on this interesting-albeit-horrible theory in some detail. Modesty prevents me naming its author.
Copyright © John Whitbourn, 2021