§ 93. The first wave of the invaders, the Jutes or the Frisians, oc­cupied the extreme south-east: Kent and the Isle of Wight.

The second wave of immigrants was largely made up of the Saxons, who had been expanding westwards across Frisia to the Rhine and to what is now known as Normandy. The final stage of the drift brought them to Britain by way of the Thames and the south coast. They set up their settlements along the south coast and on both banks of the Thames and, depending on location, were called South Saxons, West Saxons and East Saxons (later also Mid Saxons, between the western and eastern groups). The Saxons consolidated into a number of petty kingdoms, the largest and the most powerful of them being Wessex, the kingdom of West Saxons.

Last came the Angles from the lower valley of the Elbe and southern Denmark; they made their landing on the east coast and moved up the rivers to the central part of the island, to occupy the districts between the Wash and the Humber, and to the North of the Humber. They found­ed large kingdoms which had absorbed their weaker neighbours: East Anglia, Mercia, and Northumbria.

5.

§ 97. The relative weight of the OE kingdoms and their inter-influence was variable. Four of the kingdoms at various times secured superiority in the country: Kent, Northumbria and Mercia — during the Early OE, pre-written period, and Wessex — all through the period of Written OE.

The supremacy of Kent to the south of the Humber lasted until the early 7th c; it is attributed to the cultural superiority of Kent and its close contact with the mainland. The 7th and the 8th c. witnessed the temporary rise of Northumbria, followed by a period of balance of power of the three main rivals (Northumbria, Mercia, and Wessex) and the dominance of Mercia, large and prosperous kingdom in the rich Midland plains. Yet already during Mercia's supremacy Wessex had secured the control of Sussex and Kent, and was growing more influen­tial. The conquest of Mercia by Wessex in the early 9th c. reversed the position of the two kingdoms: Wessex was brought to the fore and ac­quired the leadership unsurpassed till the end of the OE period (11th c). Wessex was a kingdom with good frontiers and vast areas of fertile land in the valley of the Thames; the control of London and the lower Thames valley (formerly part of Essex) as well as the growing contacts with the Franconian Empire contributed to the rise of Wessex. Apart from inter­nal reasons the unification of England under the leadership of Wessex was speeded up by a new factor: the pressure of a common enemy.

§ 100. The Germanic tribes who settled in Britain in the 5th and 6th c. spoke closely related tribal dialects belonging to the West Ger­manic subgroup. Their common origin and their separation from other related tongues as well as their joint evolution in Britain transformed them eventually into a single tongue, English. Yet, at the early stages of their development in Britain the dialects remained disunited. On the one hand, the OE dialects acquired certain common features which distinguished them from continental Germanic tongues; on the other hand, they displayed growing regional divergence. The feudal system was setting in and the dialects were entering a new phase; tribal dialectal division was superseded by geographical division, in other words, tribal dialects were transformed into local or regional dialects.

The following four principal OE dialects are commonly distinguished: Kentish, a dialect spoken in the area known now as Kent and Surrey and in the Isle of Wight. It had developed from the tongue of the Jufes and Frisians.

West Saxon, the main dialect of the Saxon group, spoken in the rest of England south of the Thames and the Bristol Channel, except Wales and Cornwall, where Celtic tongues were preserved. Other Saxon dialects in England have not survived in written form and are not known to modern scholars.

Mercian, a dialect derived from the speech of southern Angles and spoken chiefly in the kingdom of Mercia, that is, in the central region, from the Thames to the Humber.

Northumbrian, another Anglian dialect, spoken from the Humber north to the river Forth (hence the name — North-Humbrian).

The distinction between Mercian and Northumbrian as local OE dialects testifies to the new foundations of the dialectal division: region­al in place of tribal, since according to the tribal division they represent one dialect, Anglian.

The boundaries between the dialects were uncertain and probably Movable, The dialects passed into one another imperceptibly and dialectal forms were freely borrowed from one dialect into another; however, information is scarce and mainly pertains to the later part of the OE period. Throughout this period the dialects enjoyed relative equality; none of them was the dominant form of speech, each being the main type used over a limited area.

6.

Runic Inscriptions

§ 102. The records of OE writing embrace a variety of matter: they are dated in different centuries, represent various local dialects, belong to diverse genres and are written in different scripts. The earliest written records of English are inscriptions on hard material made in a special alphabet known as the runes. The word rune originally meant ‘secret’, ‘mystery’ and hence came to denote inscriptions believed to be magic. Later the word "rune" was applied to the characters used in writing these inscriptions.

There is no doubt that the art of runic writing was known to the Germanic tribes long before they came to Britain, since runic inscrip­tions have also been found in Scandinavia (see §38). The runes were used as letters, each symbol to indicate a separate sound. Besides, a rune could also represent a word beginning with that sound and was called by that word, e.g. the rune denoting the sound [θ] and [ð] was called "thorn" and could stand for OE porn (NE thorn); the runes stood for [w] and [f] and were called wynn ‘joy’ and feoh ‘cattle’ (NE fee).