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Tanka #7: Angle

The Fat Mum Slim Photo a Day prompt the other day was 'angle', and it set me thinking about the Angles who once invaded Britain, transforming it into the divided nation it is today. They did this by pushing out the Britons - the Celtic peoples living on the island, to the north, south, and west, to form the various Gaelic speaking nations, while they themselves took over the land which took their name (later England with a wee vowel shift). The Angles used a really good weapon called a seax - they were so well known for using this weapon that they got known as the Saxons (people of the seax). It wasn't an axe, although I've made it one with a little poetic licence, but a sword or dagger, whose name came from a word meaning to cut. The word scissors comes from the same source.

 Anyway, my family probably has mixed origins - don't we all - but as I was born in England I'm assuming for the sake of this poem that I'm an Angle (but secretly imagining I'm part Celt, part Viking):

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