England is a land of dreams… for several centuries the English were characterised as “seers of visions”
- Peter Ackroyd
Glory be to God, 1860s by Georgiana Houghton
…in England the reverence for the past and the affinity with the natural landscape join together in a mutual embrace.
So we owe much to the ground on which we dwell. It is the landscape and the dreamscape. It encourages a sense of longing and belonging. It is Albion.
- Peter Ackroyd, Albion The Origins of the English Imagination
There is a constant harking back to a mythical ‘perfect’ past that forms part part of the English psyche.
Peter Ackroyd expresses it thus in ‘Albion’
“Nothing excellent or distinguished can happen again. All lies in the past. It is, in truth, an intrinsic part of the English imagination.”
Albion
Albion is an ancient word for England, Albio in Celtic and Alba in Gaelic; it is mentioned in the Latin of Pliny and in the Greek of Ptolemy. It may mean 'the white land', related to the whiteness of the cliffs greeting travellers and suggesting pristine purity or blankness.
But the cliffs are also guardians and Albion was the name of the primaeval giant who made his home upon the island of Britain.
He is the 'elemental and emblematic giant' whom G. K. Chesterton observed in his study of Chaucer, 'with our native hills for his bones and our native forests for his beard... a single figure outlined against the sea and a great face staring at the sky.’
His traces can be seen in the huge white horses which populated the primitive landscape, inscribed in the chalk of the hills.
Today, like those fading memorials, Albion is not so much a name as the echo of a name.
- Peter Ackroyd