Great Britain

There is grete plente of small fische ~ Polychronicon

Great Britain is an island in the North Atlantic Ocean off the north-west coast of continental Europe, consisting of the United Kingdom of England, Scotland and Wales.

Quotes

• Look at England, whose mighty power is now felt, and for centuries has been felt, all around the world. It is worthy of special remark, that precisely those parts of that proud island which have received the largest and most diversified populations, are to day the parts most distinguished for industry, enterprise, invention and general enlightenment. In Wales, and in the Highlands of Scotland the boast is made of their pure blood, and that they were never conquered, but no man can contemplate them without wishing they had been conquered. They are far in the rear of every other part of the English realm in all the comforts and conveniences of life, as well as in mental and physical development. Neither law nor learning descends to us from the mountains of Wales or from the Highlands of Scotland. The ancient Briton, whom Julius Caesar would not have as a slave, is not to be compared with the round, burly, amplitudinous Englishman in many of his qualities of desirable manhood.
  • Frederick Douglass, "Our Composite Nationality" (7 December 1869), Boston, Massachusetts

• To illustrate how dramatically populations can displace each other over time, the historian E.M. Kulischer once reminded his readers that in A.D. 900 Berlin had no Germans, Moscow had no Russians, Budapest had no Hungarians, Madrid was a Moorish settlement, and Constantinople had hardly any Turks. He added that the Normans had not yet settled in Great Britain and before the sixteenth century there were no Europeans living in North or South America, Australia, New Zealand, or South Africa.
  • Neil Howe, Richard Jackson (2008) The Graying of the Great Powers: Demography and Geopolitics in the 21st Century. p. 15

• As Fraunce passeth Bretayne, so Bretayne passeth Irlond in faire weder and nobilte, but nought in helthe. For this llond is best and bringeth forth trees and fruyt and retheren and other bestes, and wyn groweth there in som place. The lond hath plente of foules and of bestes of dyvers manere kynde; the lond is plenteous and the see also. The lond is noble, copious, and riche of nobil welles and of nobil ryveres with plente of fische; there is grete plente of small fische, of samon, and of elys. So that cherles in som place fedith sowes with fische. . .
• There beeth schepe that bereth good wolle; there beeth meny hertes and wylde bestes and fewe wolves; therfore the schepe beeth the more sikerliche without kepynge i-lefte in the folde. In this ilond also beeth many cities and townes, faire and noble and riche; many grete ryveres and stremes with grete plente of fische; many faire wodes and grete with wel many bestes, tame and wylde. The erthe of that lond is copious of metal ore and of salt welles; of quarers of marbel; of dyuers manere stones, of reed, of whyte; of nesche, of hard; of chalk and of whyte lyme. There is also white cley and reed forto make of crokkes and stenes and other vessel, and brent tyle to hele with hous and cherches, as hit were in the other Samia, that hatte Samos also. Flaundres loveth the wolle of this lond, and Normandie the skynnes and the velles; Gasquyn the iren and the leed; Irlond the ore and the salt; Europa loveth and desireth the white metal of this lond.
  • John Trevisa. From the translation of Higden's Polychronicon