Thus from a mixture of all kinds began,
That het'rogeneous thing, an Englishman:
In eager rapes, and furious lust begot,
Betwixt a painted Britain and a Scot.
Whose gend'ring off-spring quickly learn'd to bow,
And yoke their heifers to the Roman plough:
From whence a mongrel half-bred race there came,
With neither name, nor nation, speech nor fame.
In whose hot veins new mixtures quickly ran,
Infus'd betwixt a Saxon and a Dane.
While their rank daughters, to their parents just,
Receiv'd all nations with promiscuous lust.
This nauseous brood directly did contain
The well-extracted blood of Englishmen. ("The True-Born Englishman," ll. 1-14)

Basic set up:

In this excerpt from Defoe's poem, we find out just how mixed up these "True-Born" Englishmen are.

What does it mean to be a "true-born" Englishman? Well, according to Daniel Defoe, there is no such thing as a true-born Englishman. And why is that? Well, it's because English people are totally mutts. They're made up from all kinds of different peoples: Saxons and Danes and Scots and Romans and Hobbits and who knows what else.

Defoe is totally making fun of all these lofty, exalted ideas about English identity. English people, he's saying, should shut up about some race of high and mighty special people. They're not just one race of people; they're many.

The wit of this poem is all in its style. There's the humor of the rhyming couplets, such as: "In eager rapes, and furious lust begot / Betwixt a painted Britain and a Scot." Where's the pure English blood here? Well, according to Defoe, the Englishman comes from a Brit and a Scot and some nasty, old-fashioned rape.

Defoe also gives us a heavy dose of irony here. For example, when the speaker says, "This nauseous brood directly did contain / The well-extracted blood of Englishmen," the point is that the "well-extracted" Englishman (you know, the pure Englishman) isn't descended from other Englishmen: he's descended from a whole bunch of different groups of people. And not just any kind of people: a "nauseous brood" of people.

The English may think they're all high and mighty, says Defoe, but biologically, they're just the same as anyone else.