Vortigern in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: Text & Translation

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Vortigern in The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle

Edited and Translated by John William Sutton

Introduction
    The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle is a generic term for the disparate collection of annals that record the centuries-long history of the Anglo-Saxons, extending in some cases even beyond the Norman Conquest of 1066. The Chronicle seems to have originated from a body of historical writings now known as the "common stock." Even the common stock is relatively late, however, and certainly does not extend back to the arrival of the Anglo-Saxon peoples to England; this material dates back only to the late ninth century, and was perhaps written at the request of King Alfred the Great (r. 871-99). The authors of the common stock retroactively devised entries for the dates before their own time; for these entries, the authors mined existing sources like Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People and various local annals. The common stock spread quickly throughout England, and Chronicles in different places took on a more local color. Michael Swanton aptly summarizes: "[The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle] does not consist of one uniform text, but a number of individual texts which have a similar core, but considerable local variations; each has its own intricate textual history."¹
    The two Chronicle entries included on this website deal with the Adventus Saxorum, the traditional account of the coming to Britain of the Germanic tribes. This account indicated that the Germanic peoples came to Britain in a sweeping invasion that defeated and displaced the Romano-Celtic Britons; the British cleric Gildas, writing in the sixth century, popularized this tale in his treatise On the Ruin of Britain.² Two centuries later, the Anglo-Saxon historian Bede borrowed Gildas' account when he added this episode to his Ecclesiastical History.³ The compilers of the common stock of the Chronicle borrowed their text from Bede. Thus the Chronicle reiterates the Adventus Saxorum tradition,⁴ but the truth is that the Germanic settlement of Britain was less a full-scale invasion and more a gradual migration over the course of the fifth century.

Vortigern

    According to the chronicles, Vortigern was the fifth-century British king who reigned at the time of the Adventus Saxorum. Vortigern is said to have invited warriors from Germanic tribes to Britain in order to help defeat the Picts and various other groups that were harrassing the British people. After defeating the Britons' enemies, the story goes, these Germanic mercenaries turned against their former employers and sent word to their kinsmen that the island of Britain was ripe for the taking; the Germanic peoples then came to Britain and seized the island for themselves, driving the Britons into the land now called Wales. The Welsh, linguistic and cultural heirs of the Britons, blamed Vortigern for the Germanic conquest of Britain.
    Ultimately Vortigern became incorporated into the Arthurian legends because many tales indicate that Arthur, the national hero of the Welsh, battled against the Saxons who had seized the island from Vortigern. Writers in the High Middle Ages and afterwards explicitly linked the story of Vortigern to the rapidly-expanding Arthurian mythos; see, for instance, Geoffrey of Monmouth's History of the Kings of Britain (c. 1138).

Notes on the Edition

    My base text is the Winchester Manuscript (also known as The Parker Chronicle, or MS A of The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle): Cambridge, Corpus Christi College MS 173, ff. 1^v-32^r. This is the oldest surviving MS of the Chronicle and the only one in which the dialect was not updated into Late West Saxon.⁵ The Vortigern entries are contained on ff. 4^v-5^r. For some passages not included in the Winchester MS, I have examined the Peterborough Manuscript (also known as The Laud Chronicle, or MS E of The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle): Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Laud 636. This is the latest version of the Chronicle, and the one that was maintained the longest. See the Select Bibliography for the MSS, editions, and translations I have consulted.
    I have strived to be simple and straightforward in my editorial conventions. My guiding principle was to present an Old English text that was as close to the MS as possible. To that end, I have also preserved most of the original orthography, including u for v, the symbol 7 for "and," and the well-known Anglo-Saxon characters thorn (þ), eth (ð), and ash (æ). On the other hand, I have replaced the character yogh (3) with g,⁶ and I have changed the runic character wynn to a modern w because the form of the wynn is nearly indistinguishable from the letter p. As for other editorial decisions, I have followed standard Old English editorial practice in modernizing punctuation, capitalization, and word division so as to avoid confusion (e.g., Vortigern's name in the MS is written as follows: wyrt 3eorne). Finally, I have silently expanded common medieval MS abbreviations such as final -er, -um, etc.

Text & Translation
AN CCCCXLIX. Her Mauricius¹ 7 Ualentines onfengon rice 7 ricsodon uii winter. 7 on hiera dagum Hengest 7 Horsa, from Wyrtgeorne geleaþade, Bretta kyninge, gesohton Bretene² on þam staþe þe is genemned Ypwinesfleot³ -- ærest Brettum to fultume, ac hie eft on hie fuhton.⁴ Se cing het hi feohtan agien Pihtas, 7 hi swa dydan, 7 sige hæfdan swa hwar swa hi comon. Hi ða sende to Angle 7 heton heom sendan mare fultum, 7 heom seggan Brytwalana nahtnesse 7 ðæs landes cysta. Hy ða sendan heom mare fultum. Þa comon þa menn of þrim mægþum Germanie: of Eald Seaxum, of Anglum, of Iotum. Of Iotum comon Cantware 7 Wihtware -- þæt ys seo mæið ðe nu eardaþ on Wiht -- 7 þæt cynn on Westsexum þe man gyt hæt Iutna cyn. Of Eald Seaxon comon East Sexa, 7 Suð Sexa, 7 West Sexan. Of Angle comon, se a siððan stod westi betwyx Iutum 7 Seaxum, East Engla, Midel Angla, Mearca, 7 ealle Norðhymbra.⁵

     [Listen to the Old English text]

AN CCCCLU. Her Hengest 7 Horsa fuhton wiþ Wyrtgeorne þam cyninge in þære stowe þe is gecueden Agelesþrep, 7 his broþur Horsan man ofslog. 7 æfter þam Hengest feng ^{to 6} rice, 7 Æsc his sunu.

     [Listen to the Old English text]

449. Here Mauricius and Valentinian seized the empire⁷ and reigned for seven winters. In their days Hengest and Horsa,⁸ invited by Vortigern, king of the Britons,⁹ sought Britain on the shore called Ebbsfleet¹⁰ -- at first as protection for the Britons, but later they fought against them. The king commanded them to fight against the Picts.¹¹ They did so, and had victory wherever they went. Then they sent to Angeln¹² and called on them to send more forces, and to tell people about the worthlessness of the Britons and the merits of their land. Then they¹³ sent them more support. These men came from the three races of Germany -- from the Old Saxons, from the Angles, and from the Jutes.¹⁴ From the Jutes came the Kentish people and the Wightish people -- that is the race that now dwells on Wight¹⁵ -- and that race in Wessex that is still called the race of the Jutes. From the Old Saxons came the East Saxons, the South Saxons, and the West Saxons. From Angeln, which afterwards stood deserted between the Jutes and Saxons, came the East Angles, Middle Angles, Mercians, and all the Northumbrians.

455. Here Hengest and Horsa fought against Vortigern the king in the place that is called Ayelesthrep,¹⁶ and his brother Horsa was killed. After that, Hengest and then his son Aesc took hold of the kingdom.