Time-traveling back to Medieval Britain

Let's time-travel back to the six century (500s) in Medieval Britain. And if you're wondering why I'm not calling it England, it wasn't called England yet, because the group of Germanic people who settled there, called the Angles, hadn't really arrived yet. Yes, Angle-land in the future, but Britain where we're going. It was named by the Romans, who called it Brittany. And yes, that's how it works with tribes of people, to themselves they're just "the people", and it's outsiders who give them names. Let's go visit the Britons in the days of King Arthur.

At this point I'm really not clear what language was being spoken there at the time so we'll need to bring along our "automatic translators". No, it's not Old English, which was Germanic, and came over with the Angles, Jutes and Saxons, and since there are no written records in Britain at the time right after the Romans left, I'd say that it's a mix of Celtic with some of the Latin that they had learned during the Roman occupation.

There's also little left of what their religion was before Christianity took over, but it seems like it was the typical indigenous people's belief system, spirits in the woods, that kind of thing. I'm not entirely clear what they called their gods and goddesses, except the goddess Easter, which is a term that we still use today when we celebrate in the spring.

And let's be clear here, there's no historical evidence for a king named Arthur, it's just wonderful fiction, and if you're like me, who has read "The Sword in the Stone", you can't be blamed for getting the chronology wrong (T.H. White was writing a cheerful story, not a boring history), because whatever people in power there in Britain were called at the time, they weren't Anglo-Saxons. In fact, at the time the Britons would be fighting against the Anglo-Saxons. Of course once the fighting was all over, love and marriage took over, and the cultures melded, because that's how it works. Love triumphs!

OK, here are some coconuts cut in half to clump together - I'm sorry, but we forgot to bring horses. Look, over there, is that Camelot? Let's ride on! Clump-clump-clumpity-clump!

Thank you for the encouragement! If you want to see daily pics of my adventures on my recumbent trike in suburban Phoenix (just for fun, of course!) you can follow me on buymeacoffee.com/bradhall, and you can buy me a coffee if you'd like to!

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