Old England
Although the events of the story took place in England, readers would hardly recognize it. There were neither lanes nor tranquil meadows. There were instead “miles of desolate, uncultivated land; here and there rough-hewn paths over craggy hills or bleak moorland”. The roads left by the Romans “would by then have become broken or overgrown, often fading into wilderness”. One would hardly consider this country cozy and these landscapes picturesque. Thick and “icy fogs hung over rivers and marshes, serving all too well the ogres that ere then still native to this land”. This imagery helps readers to imagine the settings.
Everyday hazards
People back then had to deal with a large number of dangers. There were a lot of cunning and cruel creatures, “whose panting breaths could be heard long before their deformed figures emerged from the mist”. Although those monsters were dangerous, “people then would have regarded them as everyday hazards”. Frankly speaking, “in those days there was so much else to worry about”. For instance, they had to solve such problems as: “how not to run out of firewood” and “how to stop the sickness that could a dozen pigs in a single day and produce green rashes on the cheeks of children”. This imagery offers a glimpse at everyday routine of people Britons and Saxons.
The Saxon village
The Saxon village would be only one thing to remind the readers of England they knew. One of the main reasons of it was due to Saxons’ “keener sense of claustrophobia”. There “was none of this digging into hillside” so loved by Britons. If you were coming down, you would see “some forty or more individual houses, laid out on the valley floor in two rough circles”. But Saxons were not careless! “If they were happy to sacrifice a little security for the benefit of open air”, they did a lot in order to compensate. There was “a tall fence of tethered timber poles, their points sharpened like giant pencils, completely encircled the village”. This imagery helps readers to understand the difference between Saxons’ and Britons’ villages.
