Re: Breton, Cornish & French

John Cartmell wrote:
> In article <BMorj.3671$R_4.2780@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>, Alan Crozier
> <name1.name2@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>>> They call themselves Anglo-Saxons in order to distinguish
>>> themselves from the Continental Saxons in Germany.
>
>> I wonder if they really called themselves Anglo-Saxons back in what
>> WE call Anglo-Saxon times. There might have been an occasional
>> learned writer who used this compound term, but I doubt if many
>> ordinary people would have identified themselves as such.
>
> I've jumped in part way so this may already have been aired, but:
>
> You seem to assume the validity of some rather dubious history. There
> is no evidence that what we call Anglo-Saxons (ie the people and the
> language) are post-Roman - and plenty of evidence that they are
> pre-Roman. There is no evidence that what we call Celts ever lived in
> SE England - and plenty of evidence to say that they didn't, and that
> the 'Anglo-Saxons' of that area were overwhelmingly the original
> post-glacial settlers in the area.
>
> What *we* call Celtic and Anglo-Saxon cultures and people and
> language is hopelessly confused with utterly false and fictional 19th
> and 20th century mythology. Does it matter whether 1st millennium
> people used the same words; they almost certainly had different
> understanding of the concept - just as we (should) have shrugged off
> the confused ideas of the 2nd millennium.

So, we could broadly sum up your view as "History is Bunk"?
-- 
John Briggs