[ 17]

It is interesting to note that, while the Anglo-Saxons viewed the British as a dragon, the British viewed them as lions. Gildas (d. 570) writes in a style reminiscent of the style of the Beowulf-poet: Then a brood of whelps, breaking forth from the lair of barbaric lioness ... borne in three ships ...under favorable sails, with omen and divinations wherein it was being foretold ...that for three hundred years [see Beowulf 2278-79] they should occupy the fatherland ... first infixed their terrible claws in the eastern part of the island. ... To whom the aforesaid mother (of the brood) ... sends a second and larger jail-gang of accomplices and curs, who ... attach themselves to their bastard comrades. Then the seed of iniquity ... sprouts in our soil" (Wade-Evans 147-48).