eral important traditional particulars:
while with the romantic Geoffrey of Monmouth, A.D. 1152, they assume the
character of full and circumstantial tales. The less men knew about the
conquest, the more they had to tell about it.

Among the most sacred animals of the Aryan race was the horse. Even in
the Indian epics, the sacrifice of a horse was the highest rite of the
primitive religion. Tacitus tells us that the Germans kept sacred white
horses at the public expense, in the groves and woods of the gods: and
that from their neighings and snortings, auguries were taken. Amongst
the people of the northern marshlands, the white horse seems to have
been held in especial honour, and to this day a white horse rampant
forms the cognisance of Hanover and Brunswick. The English settlers
brought this, their national emblem, with them to Britain, and cut its
figure on the chalk downs as they advanced westward, to mark the
progress of their conquest. The white horses on the Berkshire and
Wiltshire hills still bear witness to their settlement. A white horse is
even now the symbol of Kent. Hence it is not surprising to learn that in
the legendary story of the first colonisation, the Jutish leaders who
led the earliest Teutonic host into Thanet should bear the names of
Hengest and Horsa, the stallion and the mare. They came in three
keels--a ridiculously inadequate number, considering their size and the
necessities of a conquering army: and they settled in 449 (for the
legends are always most precise where they are least historical) in the
Isle of Thanet. "A multitude of whelps," says the Welsh monk Gildas,
"came forth from the lair of the barbaric lioness, in three cyuls, as
they call them." Vortigern, King of the Welsh, had invited them to come
to his aid against the Picts of North Britain and the Scots of Ireland,
who were making piratical incursions into the deserted province, left
unprotected through the heavy levies made by the departing Romans. The
Jutes attacked and conquered the Gaels, but then turned against their
Welsh allies.

In 455, the Jutes advanced from Thanet to conquer the whole of Kent,
"and Hengest and Horsa fought with Vortigern the king," says the English
Chronicle, "at the place that is cleped AEglesthrep; and there men slew
Horsa his brother, and after that Hengest came to rule, and AEsc his
son." One year later, Hengest and AEsc fought once more with the Welsh at
Crayford, "and offslew 4,000 men; and the