TH 



THE PEOPLE AND THE FARMS 105 



and grey-blue eyes. The " recognised authorities " 

 are not, I imagine, wholly to be trusted on the ques- 

 tion of colour : the southern half of Hampshire 

 appears to me more of a dark or black province than 

 Cornwall. Probably the author of the noble epic, The 

 Dawn in Britain, was misled by the anthropologists 

 when he made his Cornishmen who came to the war 

 against the Roman a dark people : 



Who came, strange island people, to the war, 

 Men bearded, bearing moon-bent shields, unlike, 

 Of a dark speech, to other Britons are 

 Belerians, workers in the tinny mines 

 Of Penrhyn Gnawd, which Bloody Foreland named, 

 Decit their king upleads them, now in arms. 



At Calleva, in which the Romans were besieged by 

 the Britons, in Book xiii, and again in Books xv 

 and xvi, after the tremendous battle of the Thames, 

 when the army of Claudius was opposed in its march 

 to Verulam, and, finally, at Camulodunum, we meet 

 with this contingent : 



When swart Belerians, on blue Briton's part . . . 



Who midst moon-shielded swart Belerians rides 

 Is Decit. . . . 



Halts swart Belerian king, lo, on his spear . . . 



Therefore have swart Belerians crowned his brow 

 With holy misselden. 



This is odd in one to whom the Celts were a tall, 

 fair-skinned, god-like people, and who, worshipping 

 their memory, abhors and hurls curses at all the 





