See, earlier, by James Fulford: "Actually, There Has Always Been Migration"—But In Those Days They Called It Invading!
Today, as we have been told incessantly, is Cinco de Mayo, a minor holiday in Mexico that has been turned into a celebration of American dispossession in the U.S. My modest proposal: Let’s start our own #Resistance by celebrating Hengist & Horsa on May 5—a Day Of The Race for Legacy Americans.
Spring in Europe is a green time, a time of planting and rebirth of the earth. It was also, for thousands of years, the start of the campaigning season when armies which had been closed in by the brutal European winter could break out, raid, conquer and take new lands.
The spring of 449 AD brought the campaigning season with perhaps the longest lasting impact in human history. Two German brothers, Hengist (“stallion”) and Horsa (“horse”), chiefs of the tribe of the Jutes, sailed for the devastated Roman province of Britain after being hired by the Romanized Celtic British leader, Vortigern, to fight his Celtic opponents, the Picts and the Scots. For their service, Vortigern offered them monetary rewards and the island of Thanet.
According to tradition, the brothers and their band landed at Ebbsfleet. Within years, they had outgrown their island fiefdom and, with constant new waves of Jutish, Saxon, Anglish, Friesian and other kinsman arriving from Germany, needed more land and still more, until the native Celtic British realized their mistake too late, and tried to resist.
That first landing in 449, 1570 years ago this spring, led to the landtaking of the Anglo-Saxons, and the birth of the English nation. Britain, in the early Dark Ages, was to the North Germanic tribes what North America would be to their descendants a thousand years later—a land to be conquered, tamed and remade in their own image. They were proud to be a nation of conquerors, proud to have settled a new land and to have made it their own. They had a healthy sense of self and no feelings of guilt towards those who they had conquered. They went so far as to refuse even to live in Celto-Roman settlements, leaving them to rot.
Within several years after the landing, the brothers were at war with Vortigern. Horsa died in battle against him in 455, at a place recorded as Aegelsthrep, which is possibly present-day Aylesford in Kent. According to the early British historian the Venerable Bede, there was at one time a monument to Horsa in east Kent, and the modern town of Horstead may be named for him.
The newcomers, according to their own history, conducted their own version of the Great Replacement. DNA evidence shows that in Eastern England at least, the traditions are true, since most Eastern English DNA is the same as North German, Dutch and Friesian DNA.
The native British were so terrified that they left Britain in large numbers as refugees and settled in the areas that are now Wales, Ireland and Brittany, France, giving the region its name and the Celtic dialect that survives to this day.
The Saxons also used treachery to gain the upper hand, and were not in the least ashamed of that fact, since all is fair in love and war, and their main God, Woden, was a treacherous God. According to Gildas, after Horsa was killed in battle with the Celts, “The remaining Saxon leader, Hengist, called for a peace conference, which took place on Salisbury Plain. In an event known as 'the Night of the Long Knives,' on their arrival the Celts were treacherously massacred:
And Hengistus ordered the whole of his household that each one should hide his knife under his foot in the middle of his shoe. 'And when I shall call out to you and say "Eu nimet saxas" (draw your swords!), then draw your knives from the soles of your shoes, and fall upon them, and stand strongly against them. And do not kill their king, but seize him for the sake of my daughter whom I gave to him in matrimony, because it is better for us that he should be ransomed from our hands.' And they brought together the conference, and the Saxons, speaking in a friendly way, meanwhile were thinking in a wolfish way, and sociably they sat down man beside man. Hengistus, as he had said, spoke out, and all the three hundred elders of King Vortigern were slaughtered, and only he was imprisoned, and was chained, and he gave to them many regions for the ransom of his soul, that is Est Saxum, Sut saxum, Middelseaxan, with other districts under his control which they named.”
In a normal world, inhabited by people with a healthy sense of identity, the two brothers that made the conquest and settlement of what became England possible would be well known. There would be a major holiday named after them, commemorating their deeds and the gift they gave to their people. There would be annual festivals reenacting their landing and their deeds (perhaps even a reenactment of the “eu nimet saxas”).
But nowhere in the Anglosphere is there a “Hengist and Horsa Day,” a day equivalent to the “Dia de la Raza” in Latin America, which commemorates the coming of Columbus and the Spanish. In the almost 16 centuries since their great deeds, not even one postage stamp has been issued to commemorate the coming of Hengist and Horsa and those who became the English to the shores of Roman Britain. Not in the UK, Australia, Canada—or in the USA.
In a strange quirk of history, it is not the actual ancestors of the English people who are celebrated, but the Romanized Celtic British losers. The reverence shown to King Arthur and his band of Celtic resisters has become a core part of UK identity, while the true English heroes are forgotten.
Has there ever been a film made about the coming of Hengist and Horsa? Do Englishmen, Americans, Canadians or Australians name their children after their founding leaders? Arthur is common English first name, but are there modern English names derived from the names of the two hero-brothers? Perhaps Hank and Ross?
As traditional English England shows all signs of following in the path of the Celto-Roman British, one wonders if the new immigrants from Jamaica, Pakistan, India, Nigeria etc. will honor the English losers to their invasion as the English now honor Arthur. Will there be books, movies and plays about the prophecies of Enoch Powell. How about Tommy Robinson’s fight for the UK?
One doubts that. Much more likely, the newcomers will find a date in Britishstan history that was key to their coming, a date that sealed the fate of English England. The invaders are psychologically healthy. They will feel no guilt for taking new land and making it their own, or for bringing their culture, religion, traditions and language to new shores.
A new awakening of the unbreakable Germanic spirit of Hengist and Horsa, an honoring of the heroes who conquered and stayed without guilt, could help save England and the Anglosphere for their posterity. A good spark to such an awakening would be to set aside a day in spring, the beginning of the campaigning season in old Europe, to commemorate the coming of the English race to Britain.
May 5 will do just fine.
A people with a pride in their history, with an identity, cannot be conquered or bred out of existence. That pride starts with recognizing who our real heroes are, who we owe a debt to—one that can never be repaid. Two such heroes were Hengist and Horsa.
Anthony Boehm [Email him] is a federal civil servant.
