Lhunithiliel said:
May I "boast" a li'l and show you this:
Of the seven invasions 
I feel as a student handing in her paper to her professor at the University!
Well, there’s not much use in speaking of what I agree with.
You point out:
Saxons were not the last invaders of the British Isles. The Normans followed later with a persistent and forcefull settlement, following the event in 1007, when Ethelread – King of England, married Emma, who was the sister of King Richard of Normandy. (see further details on the Norman invasion).
The Anglo-Saxons would have been the last invaders of Britain in
Ælfwine’s day (as considered by
Tolkien at that time) which explains why they were so listed. The Danish raids were just beginning in Tolkien’s later Ælfwine story. Probably the Forodwaith would have counted as an eighth invasion in a later listing and the Normans under some name or other as a ninth invasion.
In the
tales, however, it is clearly implied that there was a number of other invasions to Luthany in - between those of the Rumhoth and the Ingwaiwar (Romans and Anglo – Saxons resp.).
I don’t see that there need be a number of invasions between Roman and Ingaevonic.
Historically one might fit only an invasion of the Irish Goidels/Gaels, called
Guiðlin by Tolkien. Fergus mac Mor traditionally expanded Irish Dalriada to include part of southwestern Scotland sometime soon after the year 500 and we also have numerous references to Irish Gaelic control of Gwynedd (North Wales) in the early 5th century. It was the new British Gaelic kingdom of Dalriada that gradually expanded to become the kingdom of Scotland at the expense of the native northern Britons and Picts and later Scandinavian settlers in Lothian
Therefore the invasion of the Guiðlin might well count as a major invasion.
Accordingly the order of invasions might be:
- ?
- ?
- ?
- Brithonim (Brythons)
- Rumhoth (Romans)
- Guiðlin (Goidels/Gaels from Ireland)
- Ingwaiwar (Ingaevones, specifically Angles, Saxons and Jutes)
Actually in a complete list Tolkien would likely have added the Picts somewhere. At the time he was writing this material the Picts were generally imagined as earlier inhabitants of Britain, at least earlier than many of the Celts, and quite likely non-Celtic, even though legend speaks of the Picts as arriving in Britain from elsewhere relatively late.
But Tolkien may have had no specific list of the earlier of seven invasions in mind, content not to invent details for all of British prehistory. The Swarthy
Men whom
Morgoth settles in Hithlum in Tolkien’s later writings would perhaps fit as the first invasion.
What is maddening about Tolkien’s notes on this is that he does not explain how it can be that
Eriol could be the father of the fifth century chieftains Hengest and Horsa, the legendary beginners of Ingaevonic settlement in Britain and Britain, and that the Lonely Island was floated back to the continent of Europe at that time.
By that tale there could be no invasion of Britain by the Romans or anyone earlier because Britain wasn’t even there. All I can make out of it is that Tokien was changing his ideas radically in the very act of writing.
Two, the tales claim that the Ingwaiwar were not hostile to the
Elves and the Men’s population of Luthany. However, if the people of Ingwe were the Anglo – Saxons from real history, there is obviously a difference between Tolkien’s interpretation of
events and real history, because the Anglo – Saxon invasion was quite bloody and forceful (as will be shown further). It will be interesting to try to find out why such a different interpretation exists!
I think Tolkien means only that the Ingwaiwar are more friendly to the Elves. Remember, the people of each invasision are less friendly to the Elves, until the coming of the Ingwaiar. That means the Britons as a whole must be only a little less unfriendly to the Elves than were the Romans.
Probably in respect to the native Britons Tolkien is imagining something like Israelite versus Canaanite ... that is the invaders are supposed to be a better people and the Elf-unfriendly Britons deserved what they got. Tolkien dropped such chauvinistic attitudes in his later writing.
Also, the Ingwaiwar are said to be “coming back to their own”, while in real history the Anglo – Saxons stepped on the British Isles for the very first time during their invasion and were far from being “friendly”.
Compare the Biblical account of Jacob and his seventy descendants going down to Egypt from Canaan and the return of later descendants to Canaan as a great people. In Tolkien’s thought at one time Ingwë King of Luthany seems to have had a similar role. Ingwë’s descendants accordingly can put forth a rightful claim to lordship of the island. For example:
Ingwë and Eärendel who dwelt in Luthany before it was an isle and was [sic] driven east by Ossë to found the Ingwaiwar.
Presumably only Ingwë is here driven east, not Eärendel.
In Greek tradition Heracles had a claim to the kingdom of Mycene, the chief state in Hellas. But Heracles died and his sons failed to make good their claim. Heracles’ sons fled in exile to Thessaly and dwelt among the Dorians there. Generations later the Dorians invaded Hellas led by descendants of Heracles. So the Dorian invasion was justified by this supposed origin of the Dorian
kings and because many Dorian families could include a son of Heracles among their ancestors.
The Anglo – Saxons historically had a weak (if any) genealogical connection with the population of the isles (see Notes 2,3 and 6) and as the historical records show, their coming onto British lands was definitely not "friendly".
As I have indicated, I think that Tolkien means only that his Anglo-Saxons were friendly to the Elves. You are right that no genuine tradition, at least so far as I know, indicates any ancient geneological connection of the Ingaevonic
peoples or families within them to Britain. Of course Celtic names in the Wessex genealogy are noted. But that genealogy still traces Cerdic, the supposed first king of Wessex, directly back to the
god Woden, just as with the other royal lineages. Cerdic traditionally is an outsider who comes to Britain.
The common language of the Ingwaiwar and the inhabitants of Luthany and further on – of Tol Eressëa, may be based upon the fact that the language dialects spoken by the Anglo – Saxon tribes and those of the local population (Celts, Irish, Scots mainly) had a common origin – the Indo – European ancient proto – language of those people who populated the lands of today’s Europe in the depths of time.
That English is known in Tol Eressëa is explained:
... and since some have fared ...... to Tol Eressëa that tongue is there understood, and all those who wish to speak to the Elves, if they know not and have no means of learning Elfin speaches, must converse in the ancient tongue of the English.
Earlier English travellers have come to Eressëa and so an older form of the English language is known there. There is no suggestion of a common origin for
Elvish and English or for Elvish and Proto-Indo-European in Tolkien except in some writings which suggest that all
Mannish speech is derived from forms of Elvish.
This idea could be also understood in the light of the fact that the Germanic
languages, being closer to the Celtic, Welsh etc., were quite different when opposed to the Latin language spoken by the former invaders – the Romans.
If anything the opposite is true. Tolkien himself felt that way. In Tolkien’s essay “English and Welsh” Tolkien notes that both Latin and British were apparently more archaic in form in the 5th century (both closer to their common ancestor Proto-Indo-European) than was the earliest known English. Tolkien also notes:
... but the language of southern Britain would appear to have been one whose sounds and words were capable of representation more Romano in Latin letters less unsatisfactorily than those of other languages with which the Romans came in contact.
Later Tolkien comments on the Germanic word
walh, wealh (which in adjectival
wealisc becomes modern
Welsh) that this was used only of those who spoke either Latin or or who spoke a P-Celtic tongue. Tolkien continues:
That may be due, as it is usually assumed, to the fact that Latin eventually occupied most of the areas of Celtic speech within the knowledge of Germanic peoples. But it is, I think, also in part linguistic judgement, reflecting that very similarity of style of Latin and Gallic-Brittonic that I have already mentioned. It did not occur to anyone to call a Goth a
walh even if he was long settled in Italy or in
Gaul. Though ‘foreigner’ is often given as the first gloss on
wealh in Anglo-Saxon dictionaries this is misleading. The word was not applied to foreigners of Germanic speech, nor to those of alien tongues, Lapps, Finns, Esthonians, Lithuanians, Slaves, or Huns, with whom the Germanic-speaking peoples came into contact in early times. (But borrowed in Old Slavonic in the form
vlachu it was applied to the Roumanians.) It was, therefore, basically a word of linguistic import; and in itself implied in its users more linguistic curiosity and discrimination than
the simple stupidity of the Greek
barbaros.
In short, Tolkien believed (I feel rightly) that Latin and the British language more closely resembled each other than either resembled the Germanic languages.
Also, of Tolkien’s Elvish tongues,
Quenya is in part modeled on Latin (though more on Finnish) and
Sindarin is modeled on Welsh in style. Old English doesn’t come into it at all.
