COUNTRIES
Wessex, Mercia, Northun;lbria. Often they were bitter enemies; but at last, at the beginning of the ninth century, they all acknowledged one overlord, Egbert. He has been called the first King of England. There have been more than fifty rulers since his time. The shires, or divisions into which the country is cut up, so that each part can govern its own affairs, were formed by . h ld' I . . degrees m t ose 0 tImes. t IS mterestjng to remember here that the." word shire comes from a word like shears, meaning cut off. Sometimes the shire was one of the old kingdoms, or a part of one; sometimes it was named after a town of importance, such as Derby-shire. Our family treasures, as we can see in the Anglo-Saxon Room at the British Museum, are dug up from all parts of these shires. In Lincolnshire a railway cutting goes right through a large cemetery. On the breezy downs of the Isle of Wight many warriors were laid to rest, with their weapons and ornaments beside them. Numbers come from Kent.
T
HE MISSIONARIES WHO CAME TO PREACH TO THE WILD NORTH
How beautiful those swords and knives must have looked when they were new. It was the mother who gave the weapons to the lad when the time came for him to follow his father to battle or the chase, bidding him keep them and to treasure them till the time came when death should take them from him. The names of the children of those days, such as Edith, Edgar, Edwin, and Edward, have come down to us. Sculptured stone crosses remind us that missionaries came over from Ireland to preach to the wild North; others came from Rome to the South to persuade men to give up the gods of their forefathers and become Christians. There was a long, fierce struggle before they succeeded. Woden, the god of war; Thor, the god of thunder; Freya, the goddess of peace and plenty, still come to mind as we speak of Wednes-day, Thurs-day, Fri-day. A fine cross was put up some years ago near Minster, in the Isle of Thanet, to mark the spot where Augustine, the Roman missionary, landed toward the end of the sixth century. Headed by a . painted cross and waving banners, he and his clergy set out for Canterbury from 594
here, chanting hymns and prayers as they went along. The pillow-stones which were found under the heads of nuns make one think of the numbers of women, as well as men, who were often thankful to retire in those rough times to the quiet of a religious house, to read and write, to think and pray. EDWIN, THE GREAT KINO WHO FOUNDED EDINBURGH, OR EDWIN'S TOWN
Edwin was one of the greatest of the first Christian kings. I t was he who founded Edinburgh-Edwin's burgh, or town. He needed a strong fort to protect the fertile lands to the south of the Forth -our Lothians of today-and to hold the roads from the North. The castle rock gave the needed protection to the town which grew up round its base. About this time arose Caedmon, the first English poet, from a religious house or monastery on the cliffs above Whitby in Yorkshire, to which he had retired when his great gift of song was discovered. On the same coast, a little farther north, where now i$ heard the great noise of iron shipbuilding, there lived and died the great scholar and writer Bede, often called the Venerable Bede. He spent his wh01e life learning and teaching, and translating and writing books for the pupils who gathered round him. His chief work, perhaps, is the history of the Church of the country, which has gained him the title of the first English historian. THE BOOK OF THE" OLD SCHOLAR BEDE AND THE STORY IT TELLS
There is still a copy of Bede's book to be seen, written in Latin, in one of the most precious cases in the British Mu~eum. Bede's book is open at the page which tells the old story of how Augustine came to be sent to preach to the English. The handsome, fair, blue-eyed boys, being sold for slaves in the market at Rome, attracted the pity of a young monk, afterwards Pope Gregory. He made a joke on their name when it was told him. "Not Angles, but Angels," he said, "they are so beautiful." As soon as he had the power he sent Augustine and a band of missionaries to carry Christianity into the boys' country. Many another story does Bede tell. He sent all over the country to gather all the information he could, and as one