Perhaps a foreigner knows more about their adopted land than the locals, because a foreigner feels more acutely the particularities of a new environment
Battles produce corpses, multitudes of them. In a mass killing such as the Battle of Hastings, almost 1,000 years ago, hosts of living humans were transformed into corpses, bodies were strewn across mud and grass. The rituals of treating the dead 1,000 years ago are not entirely known to us, but certainly, if we have to, we can visualise shapeless body parts scattered over the fields. Hacked-off legs and arms, a chunk of flesh torn from the loins, the cleaved-open skull of a soldier or disembodied guts above which dance a murder of crows with their dagger beaks.
Sixty winters ere that Christ was born, Caius Julius, emperor of the Romans, with eighty ships sought Britain. There he was first beaten in a dreadful fight, and lost a great part of his army.
AD560. This year Ceawlin undertook the government of the West-Saxons; and Ella, on the death of Ida, that of the Northumbrians; each of whom reigned thirty winters. Ella was the son of Iff, Iff of Usfrey, Usfrey of Wilgis, Wilgis of Westerfalcon, Westerfalcon of Seafowl, Seafowl of Sebbald, Sebbald of Sigeat, Sigeat of Swaddy, Swaddy of Seagirt, Seagar of Waddy, Waddy of Woden, Woden of Frithowulf.
