Re: qui s'excuse
AntiUtopia@aol.com
Sat, 07 Feb 1998 07:06:34 -0500 (EST)
In a message dated 98-02-07 00:31:24 EST, you write:
<< Irish,Brits,and Scots.all the same race.right?I know the above post was a
joke.but I always find it funny like in how in The Sun Also Rises on how a
character says"I hope you're not British?Can't stand them.I'm a Scotch
myself."
>>
oh lord...poor guy :) THAT'll piss em all off more than anything I ever said
:)
No, they are not all the same race :) And this goes back, well, probably a
couple thousand years. I will probably screw this up a bit, but...
First we have the Island's inhabitants at the beginning of the Roman Empire
and their conquest of the island. Those inhabitants were pushed out from the
center of the island to the perimeter--Ireland, Scotland, Wales, the Cornish,
and intermixing with them as well....then about 600 ADish Germanic tribes--the
Angles, Saxons and Jutes--started conquering the island. King Arthur would
have been of Roman descent fighting off these Germanic invaders. The Germanic
tribes took the center of the Island, pushing the previous inhabitants out to
the perimeter. Then the Normans came--Germanic tribes that had conquered a
good bit of France about the same time they conquered England--around
1100ADish. These spoke French...Well, you get the picture. These are the
people who actually became the British as we know them now...
Anyways, you read stuff like the Arthurian tales of Chretien de Troyes, from
around this last period, attributing some, well, colorful characterisitics to
the Scottish and Irish. You see the same thing in Shakespeare a few hundred
years later. Usually ignorance, superstition, hot-blooded temperaments, etc.
As for now, well....I don't think things have changed that much.
But no, they are not all the same--not because they are all white :)
Jim