THE foundation of Britain was the goddess Diana’s fault. At least, so says the monastic historian Geoffrey of Monmouth in his The History of the Kings of Britain (about 1136). He relates how a Trojan called Brutus, great-grandson of the great Aeneas, was exiled from Rome after killing his father. Reaching a Greek island, Brutus finds a temple of Diana and makes an offering. She instructs him to seek an island called Albion, uninhabited but for a few giants, where he will become king and build a new Troy.
Brutus and his men set sail, locating the island and docking near the later site of Totnes. They ultimately kill all the giants save their leader, Gogmagog, who is made to wrestle Corineus, Brutus’s friend. After a rib-cracking struggle, Corineus hurls Gogmagog into the sea and Brutus renames Albion ‘Britain’, after himself and builds the New Troy, ‘Trinovantum’, later renamed London. Geoffrey calls the site of the match​ Gogmagog’s Leap—this was assumed to be Plymouth Hoe, on the Devon coast, by at least the late Middle Ages. Before being destroyed in the 17th century, an image of two wrestlers was carved into the turf of the Hoe, picked out in chalk like the thrusting Cerne Abbas Giant.
In the latter part of the 13th century, a prequel to the Gogmagog legend emerges. It begins in the vaporous past, with a ship bearing 33 Syrian migrants. They are the Princess Albina and her sisters, cast adrift by their father for planning a matriarchal coup. Crammed into a rudderless boat, the​ princesses wash up on the shores of an empty island. There, Albina seizes a handful of earth, claiming the land as her own. She names it Albion.
Having trapped animals for food and grown quite plump, the sisters’ thoughts turn to sex. Ever the opportunist, the Devil ascends with his legion to the fertile archipelago. Nine months later, the race of giants is born.
Denne historien er fra January 08, 2020-utgaven av Country Life UK.
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Denne historien er fra January 08, 2020-utgaven av Country Life UK.
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Save our family farms
IT Tremains to be seen whether the Government will listen to the more than 20,000 farming people who thronged Whitehall in central London on November 19 to protest against changes to inheritance tax that could destroy countless family farms, but the impact of the good-hearted, sombre crowds was immediate and positive.
A very good dog
THE Spanish Pointer (1766–68) by Stubbs, a landmark painting in that it is the artist’s first depiction of a dog, has only been exhibited once in the 250 years since it was painted.
The great astral sneeze
Aurora Borealis, linked to celestial reindeer, firefoxes and assassinations, is one of Nature's most mesmerising, if fickle displays and has made headlines this year. Harry Pearson finds out why
'What a good boy am I'
We think of them as the stuff of childhood, but nursery rhymes such as Little Jack Horner tell tales of decidedly adult carryings-on, discovers Ian Morton
Forever a chorister
The music-and way of living-of the cabaret performer Kit Hesketh-Harvey was rooted in his upbringing as a cathedral chorister, as his sister, Sarah Sands, discovered after his death
Best of British
In this collection of short (5,000-6,000-word) pen portraits, writes the author, 'I wanted to present a number of \"Great British Commanders\" as individuals; not because I am a devotee of the \"great man, or woman, school of history\", but simply because the task is interesting.' It is, and so are Michael Clarke's choices.
Old habits die hard
Once an antique dealer, always an antique dealer, even well into retirement age, as a crop of interesting sales past and future proves
It takes the biscuit
Biscuit tins, with their whimsical shapes and delightful motifs, spark nostalgic memories of grandmother's sweet tea, but they are a remarkably recent invention. Matthew Dennison pays tribute to the ingenious Victorians who devised them
It's always darkest before the dawn
After witnessing a particularly lacklustre and insipid dawn on a leaden November day, John Lewis-Stempel takes solace in the fleeting appearance of a rare black fox and a kestrel in hot pursuit of a pipistrelle bat
Tarrying in the mulberry shade
On a visit to the Gainsborough Museum in Sudbury, Suffolk, in August, I lost my husband for half an hour and began to get nervous. Fortunately, an attendant had spotted him vanishing under the cloak of the old mulberry tree in the garden.
