ENGLISHNESS

Is there such a thing? If there is, is it definable? Hard to say if your answer to the question "Country of birth?" is England. I don't feel UK, that's for sure. My view on Kingdom was made pretty clear in last week's post. United? In what sense united? A sharing of the mire so many are in? A common mistrust of bankers and politicians? Maybe, but these are unifying globally rather than nationally. Great Britain then? 'Great' strikes me as either aspirational or egotistical and in either case laughable. Britain? Has that been a useful term since the Romans found nothing more in Britannia to interest them? The British Isles, then, who could object to that? What? Check out an Irish view? Oh, I see what you mean. Whilst I'm about it, maybe I should check out a Scots and a Welsh view, maybe a Cornish too. Tell you what, how about "The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland"? No? No, it doesn't work. You are always drawn back to the dark heart of centuries of strife, war, compromise and conquest.


My intuition tells me you would be hard pushed to find someone who is able to define themselves as English by reference to generations rather than geography and that if you found them, key characteristics might well be large estates and small gene pools. To the best of my knowledge, and with ancestors with little to preserve through accurate record keeping, most of that knowledge is from oral history, I can claim (if that's the right word) English, Irish, Scots, Welsh and a smattering of Dutch ancestry. A bigger gene pool then, but a lost sense of place.


So what is Englishness? I think Calloway has it. Calloway, a further chapter of Cowboy Heart for week 16. Good egg.




pip-pip