The ethnologist of England has to deal with a specific section of those numerous Germans, who, in different degrees of relationship to each other, have been known, at different times, under the name of Saxon; a name which has by no means a uniform signification, a name which has been borne by every single division and subdivision of the Teutonic family, the Proper Goths alone excepted. At present, however, he only knows that the counties of Es-sex, Sus-sex, and Middle-sex are the localities of the East-Saxons, the South-Saxons, and the Middle-Saxons, respectively; that in the sixth and seventh centuries there was a Kingdom of Wes-sex, or the West-Saxons; that Angle and Saxon were nearly convertible terms; and that Anglo-Saxon is the name of the English Language in its oldest known stage. How these names came to be so nearly synonymous, or how certain south-eastern counties of England and a German[166] Kingdom on the frontier of Bohemia, bear names so much alike as Sus-sex and Sax-ony, are questions which he has yet to solve.

The German Kingdom of Saxony may be disposed of first. It is chiefly in name that it has any relation to the Saxon parts of England. In language and blood there are numerous points of difference. The original population was Slavonic, which began to be displaced by Germans from the left bank of the Saale as early as the seventh century; possibly earlier. The language of these Slavonians was spoken in the neighbourhood of Leipsic as late as the fourteenth century, and at the present time two populations in Silesia and Lusatia still retain it—the Srbie, and Srskie. Sorabi, Milcieni, Siusli, and Lusicii, are the designations of these populations in the time of Charlemagne; and, earlier still, they were included in the great name of Semnones. It is only because they were conquered from that part of Germany which was called Saxonia or Saxenland, or else because numerous colonies of the previously reduced Saxons of the Lower Weser were planted on their territory, that their present name became attached to them. Slavonic in blood, and High German in language, the Saxons of the Upper Elbe, or the Saxons of Upper Saxony, are but remotely connected with the ancestors of the Anglo-Saxons of Britain.[167]

In Upper Saxony, at least, the name is not native.

Lower Saxony was the country on the Lower Elbe, and also of the Lower Weser, and until the extension of the name to the parts about Leipsic and Dresden, was simply known as Saxonia, or the Land of the Saxones; at least, the qualifying adjective Lower made no part of the designation. Saxony was what it was called by the Merovingian Franks, as well as the Carlovingians who succeeded them. Whether, however, any portion of the indigenÆ so called itself is uncertain. In the latter half of the eighth century it falls into three divisions, two of which are denoted by geographical or political designations, and one by the name of a native population.

The present district of West-phalia was one of them; its occupants being called West-falahi, West-falai, West-fali. These were the Saxons of the Rhine. Contrasted with these, the East-phalians (Ost-falai, Ost-falahi, Ost-fali, Oster-leudi, Austre-leudi, Aust-rasii), stretched towards the Elbe.

Between the two, descendants of the Angri-varii of Tacitus, and ancestors of the present Germans of the parts about Engern, lay the Angr-arii, or Ang-arii.

An unknown poet of the eighth century, but[168] one whose sentiments indicate a Saxon origin, thus laments the degenerate state of his country:

The conquest of Charlemagne is the reason for the language being thus querulous; for, unlike Upper Saxony, the Saxony of the Lower Weser, the Saxony of the Angrivarii, Westfalii, and Ostfalii, was truly the native land of an old and heroic German population, of a population which under Arminius had resisted Rome, of a population descended from the Chamavi, the Dulgubini, the Fosi, and the Cherusci of Tacitus, and, finally, the land of a population whose immediate and closest affinities were with the Angles of Hanover, and the Frisians of Friesland, rather than with the Chatti of Hesse, or the Franks of the Carlovingian dynasty.

How far are these the Saxons of Sus-sex, Es-sex,[169] and Middle-sex? Only so far as they were Angles; and, except in the parts near the Elbe, they were other than Angle. This we know from their language, in which a Gospel Harmony, in alliterative metre, a fragmentary translation of the Psalms, and a heroic rhapsody called Hildubrant and Hathubrant have come down to us.

The parts where the dialects of these particular specimens were spoken are generally considered to have been the country about Essen, Cleves, and Munster; and, although closely allied to the Anglo-Saxon of England, the Westphalian Saxon is still a notably different form of speech. It was the Angle language in its southern variety, or (changing the expression) the Angle was the most northern form of it.

We have seen that Saxony and Saxon were no native terms on the Upper Elbe. Were they so in the present area—in Westphalia, Eastphalia, and the land of the Angrivarii? Tacitus knows no such name at all; and Ptolemy, the first writer in whom we find it, attaches it to a population of the Cimbric Peninsula. Afterwards, in the third and fourth centuries it is applied by the Roman and Byzantine writers in a general sense, to those maritime Germans whose piracies were the boldest, and whose descents upon the Provinces of Gaul and Britain were most dreaded. Yet nowhere can we find a definite tract of country[170] upon which we can lay our finger and say this is the land of Saxons, saving only the insignificant district to the north of the Elbe, mentioned by Ptolemy. From the time of Honorius to that of Charlemagne, Saxo is, like Franc, a general term applied, indeed, to the maritime Germans rather than those of the interior, and to those of the north rather than the south, yet nowhere specifically attached to any definite population with a local habitation and a name to match. Whenever we come to detail, the Saxons of the Roman writers become Chamavi, Bructeri, Cherusci, Chauci, or Frisii; while the Frank details are those of the Ostphali, Westphali, and Angrivarii.

But the Frank writers under the Merovingian and Carlovingian dynasties are neither the only nor the earliest authors who speak of the Hanoverians and Westphalians under the general name of Saxon. The Christianized Angles of England used the same denomination; and, as early as the middle of the eighth century, Beda mentions the Fresones, Rugini, Dani, Huni, Antiqui Saxones, Boructuarii.—Hist. Eccles. 5, 10. Again—the Boructuarii, descendants of the nearly exterminated Bructeri of Tacitus, and occupants of the country on the Lower Lippe, are said to have been reduced by the nation of the Old Saxons (a gente Antiquorum Saxonum). In other records we find the epithet Antiqui translated by the native[171] word eald (=old) and the formation of the compound Altsaxones—Gregorius Papa universo populo provinciÆ Altsaxonum (vita St. Boniface). Lastly, the Anglo-Saxon writers of England use the term Eald-Seaxan (=Old-Saxon). And this form is current amongst the scholars of the present time; who call the language of the Heliand, of the so-called Carolinian Psalms and of Hildebrant and Hathubrant, the Old-Saxon, in contradistinction to the Anglo-Saxon of Alfred, CÆdmon, and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. The authority of the Anglo-Saxons themselves justifies this compound; yet it is by no means unexceptionable. Many a writer has acquiesced in the notion that the Old-Saxon was neither more nor less than the Anglo-Saxon in a continental locality, and the Anglo-Saxon but the Old-Saxon transplanted into England. Again—the Old-Saxons have been considered as men who struck, as with a two-edged sword, at Britain on the one side, and at Upper Saxony on the other, so that the Saxons of Leipsic and the Saxons of London are common daughters of one parent—the Saxons of Westphalia.

The exact relations, however, to the Old-Saxons and the Anglo-Saxons seem to have been as follows:—

The so-called Old-Saxon is the old Westphalian[172]—

The so-called Anglo-Saxon the old Hanoverian population.

Their languages were sufficient alike to be mutually intelligible, and after the conversion of the Angles of England, who became Christianized about A.D. 600, the extension of their own creed to the still Pagan Saxons of the Continent became one of the great duties to the bishops and missionaries of Britain; who, although themselves of Hanoverian rather than Westphalian extraction, looked upon the whole stock at large as their parentage, and called their cousins (so to say) in Westphalia, and their brothers in Hanover, by the collective term Old-Saxon.

All the Angles, then, of the Saxonia of the Frank and British writers of the eighth century were Saxon, though all the Saxons were not Angle.

Eastphalia, the division which must have been the most Angle, reached as far as the Elbe.

But there was, also, a Saxony beyond Eastphalia, a Saxony beyond the Elbe; the country of the Saxones Transalbiani; other names for its occupants being Nord-albingi (=men to the north of the Elbe), and Nord-leudi (=North people). The poet already quoted, writes—

[173]In this case as before, Saxon is a generic rather than a particular name. The facts that prove this give us also the geographical position of the Nordalbingians. They fell into three divisions:

1. The Thiedmarsi, Thiatmarsgi, or Ditmarshers, whose capital was Meldorp—primi ad Oceanum Thiatmarsgi, et eorum ecclesia Mildindorp—

2. The Holsati, Holtzati, or HoltsÆtan, from whom the present Duchy of Holstein takes its name—dicti a sylvis, quas incolunt.[20] The river Sturia separated the Holsatians from—

3. The Stormarii, or people of Stormar; of whom Hamburg was the capital—Adam Bremens: Hist. Eccles. c. 61.

These are the Nordalbingians of the eighth century. Before we consider their relations to the Westphalian and Hanoverian Saxons the details of the present ethnology of the Cimbric Peninsula are necessary. At the present moment Holstein, Stormar, and Ditmarsh are Low German, or Platt-Deutsch, districts; the High German being taught in the schools much as English is taught in the Scotch Highlands. Eydersted also is Low German, and so are the southern and eastern parts of Sleswick. Not so, however, the western. Facing the Atlantic, we find an[174] interesting population, isolated in locality, and definitely stamped with old and original characteristics. They are as different from the Low Germans on the one side as the Dutch are from the English; and they are as little like the Danes on the other. They are somewhat bigger and stronger than either; at least both Danes and Germans may be found who own to their being bigger if not better. They shew, too, a greater proportion of blue eyes and flaxen locks; though these are common enough on all sides. That breadth of frame out of which has arisen the epithet Dutch-built, is here seen in its full development; with a sevenfold shield of thick woollen petticoats to set it of. So that there are characteristics, both of dress and figure, which sufficiently distinguish the North-Frisian of Sleswick from the Dane on one side and the German on the other.

It is only, however, in the more inaccessible parts of their country that the differentiÆ of dress rise to the dignity of a separate and independent costume. They do so, however, in some of those small islands which lie off the coast of Sleswick; three of which are supposed to have been the three islands of the Saxons, in the second and third centuries. A party, which the writer fell in with, from FÖhr, were all dressed alike, all in black, all in woollen, with capes over[175] the heads instead of bonnets. "Those," says the driver, who was himself half Dane and half German, "are from FÖhr. They have been to Flensburg to see one of their relations. He is a sailor. They are all sailors in FÖhr. Some of them, perhaps, smugglers—they all dress so—I can't speak to them—my brother can—he has been in England, and an Englishman can talk to them—they talk half Danish and half Platt-Deutsch, and half English—more than half. They were Englishmen once—a good sort of people—took no part in the war—did not much care for the Danes, though the Danes took pains to persuade them—so did the Germans, but they did not much care for the Germans either—strong men—good soldiers—good sailors—Englishmen, but not like the Englishmen I've seen myself. My brother's been in London and America, and can talk with them."

What is thus said about their English-hood is commonly believed by the Danes and Germans of the Frisian localities. They are English in some way or other, though how no one knows exactly. And many learned men hold the same view. It is a half-truth. They are more English, and, at the same time, more Dutch, than any of their neighbours; more so than either Dane or German, but for all that they are something that is neither English nor Dutch. They are Frisians[176] of the same stock as the Frisians of Friesland, whom they resemble in form, and dress, and manners, and speech, and temper, and history. But from the Frisians of the south they have been cut off for many centuries, partly by the hand of man, partly by the powers of Nature, partly by invasions from Germans, and partly by overwhelming inbreaks of the Ocean. There is a Frisian country in the south (the present Province of Friesland), and there is a Frisian country in the north (the tract which we are speaking of); and these are parts of the terra firma. But the Friesland that lay between the two is lost—lost, though we know where it is. It is at the bottom of the sea: forfeited, like the lava-stricken plains of Sicily, of Campania, and of Iceland, in the great game of Man against Nature—for it is not everywhere that Man has been the winner. The war of the Frisians against the sea has been the war not of the Titans against Jove, but of the Amphibii against Neptune.

Every Frisian—Friese as he calls himself—is an agriculturist, and it is only in the villages that the Frisian tongue is spoken. In the towns of Ripe, Bredsted, and Husum, small as they are, there is nothing but Danish and German. But in all the little hamlets between, the well-built old-fashioned farm-houses, with gable-ends of vast breadth, and massive thatched roofs that make[177] two-thirds of the height of the house, and a stork's nest on the chimney, and a cow-house at the end, are Frisian; and, if you can overhear what they say amongst themselves, you find that, without being English it is somewhat like it. Woman is the word which sounds strangest to both the German and the Dane, and, it is generally the first instance given of the peculiarity of the Frisian language. "Why can't they speak properly, and say Kone?" says the Dane. "Weib is the right word," says the German. "Who ever says woman?" cry both. The language has not been reduced to writing; indeed, the little that has been done with it is highly discreditable to the Sleswick-Holstein Church Establishment. It is spoken by upwards of thirty thousand individuals; and when we remember that the whole population of Denmark is less than that of London and the suburbs, we see at once that a large proportion of it has been less heeded in respect to its spiritualities than the Gaels and Welsh of Great Britain.

You may distinguish a Frisian parish as the Eton grammar distinguishes nouns of the neuter gender. It is omne quod exit in -um; for so end nine out of ten of the Frisian villages. Now, throughout the whole length and breadth of the Brekkelums, and Stadums, &c., that lie along the coast, from Ripe north to Husum[178] south, there is not one church service that is performed in Frisian, or half-a-dozen priests who could perform it. No fraction of the Liturgy is native; nor has it ever been so. Danish there is, and German there is; German, too, of two kinds—High and Low. The High German is taught in the schools, and that well; so well, that nowhere are the answers of the little children more easily understood by such travellers as are not over strong in their language than in the Friese country. Nevertheless, it is but a well-taught lesson; and by no means excuses the neglect of the native idiom.

As things are at present, this is, perhaps, all for the best. The complaint lies against the original neglect of the Frisian; and its gravamen is the sad tale it so silently tells of previous centralization—by which is meant arbitrary and unjustifiable oppression; for at no distant time back, the Frisians must have formed a very considerable proportion of the Sleswickers, and, at the beginning of the Historical period, the majority. And yet it was not thought of Christianizing them through their own tongue; a tongue which, because it has never been systematically reduced to writing, conscientious clergymen say is incapable of being written. As if the Frisian of Friesland, the Frisian of the south, had not been the language of law and poetry for more than eight[179] hundred years, and, as if it were a bit harder to write, or print, the northern dialect of the same, than it was for Scotland to have a literature. For the tongue is no growth of yesterday. It may, possibly, be as much older as any other tongue of the Peninsula as the Welsh is older than the English. That it is older than some of them is certain. Amateur investigators of it there are, of course. Outzen, the pastor of Brekkelum, was the father of them; and honourable mention is due to the present clergyman in Hacksted. As a general rule, however, the religion of Sleswick has been centralized.

The literature, as far as it has been collected, consists of a wedding-song of the fifteenth century, to be found in Camerarius, with addition of, perhaps, a dozen such morceaux as the following approaches to song, epigram, and ballad, respectively.

1

2

[180]

3
DER FREYER VOM HOLSTEIN.

Translated.
1.

2.

3.

This was what became of Peter; who is, perhaps, the most legendary and heroic of the North-Frisians—so that the development in this line lies within a small compass.

The Isle of Nordstand is Low German (Platt-Deutsch) in language, but in blood and pedigree is Frisian; as, indeed, it was in speech up to A.D. 1610. Then came a great inundation, which destroyed half the cattle of the island, and beggared its inhabitants; who were removed by their hard-hearted lord the Count of Gottorp to the continent, and replaced by Low Germans.

The island of Pelvorm is in the same category with Nordstand, the population being essentially Frisian though the Platt-Deutsch form of speech has replaced the native dialect; which was spoken in both islands A.D. 1639.[182]

Amrom partially preserves it; though the Frisian character is less marked than in—

FÖhr.—Here all the names which in English would end in -ham, in High German in -heim, in Low German in -hem, and in Danish in -by (as Threking-ham, Mann-heim, Arn-hem, Wis-by) take the form in -um, the vowel being changed into u-, and the h- being omitted, as Duns-um, Utters-um, Midl-um, &c.—and this is a sure sign of Frisian occupancy. In FÖhr, too, the language is still current.

Of Sylt, the southern part has its names in the Frisian form; as Horn-um, Mors-um, &c. The northern half, however, is Danish, and the villages end in -by.

Such is the present area of North-Frisians; which we shall see lies north of that of the Nordalbingians.

Nevertheless, the present writer believes that, either there was no difference whatever between the Angles and the Saxons, or that the Saxons were North-Frisians.

Let us, for a while, allow the name Saxon to be so little conclusive as to the ethnological position of these same Nordalbingians as to leave the question open.

The first fact that meets us is the existence of the Frisians of Holland not only south of the Elbe but south of Weser.[183]

East Friesland, as its name shews, is Frisian also; although, with a few exceptional localities in the very fenny districts, the language has been replaced by the German.

Notwithstanding, too, its sanctity in the eyes of the Angle worshipper of the Goddess Hertha, Heligoland at the beginning of the Historical period was not exactly Angle. It was what the opposite coast was—Frisian. And Oldenburg was Frisian as well; indeed the whole area occupied by the two great nations of antiquity—the Frisii and Chauci—was neither Old-Saxon nor Angle-Saxon. It differed from each rather more than they differed from each other, and, accordingly, constituted a separate variety of the German tongue.

So that there were, and are, two Frisian areas, one extending no farther north than the Elbe, and the other extending no farther south than the Eyder.

And between these two lies that of the Nordalbingians. This alone is prim facie evidence of their being Frisian; for we should certainly argue that if Norfolk and Essex were English, Suffolk was English also. Of course, it might not be so: as intrusion and displacement might have taken place; but intrusion and displacement are not to be too lightly and gratuitously assumed. The Frisian of Oldenburg can be traced[184] up to the Elbe, and the Frisian of Sleswick can be followed down to the Eyder.

Eydersted, however, and Holstein are Low German. Were they always so? Of Eydersted, Jacob Sax, himself a Low German of the district, writes, A.D. 1610, that "the inhabitants besides the Saxon, use their own extraordinary natural speech, which is the same as the East and West Frisian."

For Ditmarsh the evidence is inconclusive. But one or two names end in -um.

As early as A.D. 1452 the following inscription which was found on a font in Pelvorm was un-intelligible to the natives of Ditmarsh, who carried it off—"disse hirren DÖpe de have wi thÖn ewigen Ohnthonken mage lete, da schollen Össe Berrne in kressent warde"="this here dip (font) we have let be made as an everlasting remembrance: there shall our bairns be christened in it." Clemens translates this into the present Frisian of Amrom, which runs thus—"thas hirr dÖp di ha wi tun iwagen Unthonken mage leat, thiar skell Üs Biarner un krassent wurd." Still, Clemens thinks that the dress and domestic utensils of the present Ditmarshers are more Frisian than Platt-Deutsch. Now whatever the ancient tongue of Ditmarsh may have been, it was not the present Platt-Deutsch; yet, if it were Frisian, it had become obsolete before A.D. 1452.[185]

That we are justified in assuming an original continuity between the North and South Frisian areas may readily be admitted. There are, of course, reasonable objections against it—the want of proof of Frisian character of the language of Ditmarsh being the chief. Still, the principle which would lead us to predicate of Suffolk what we had previously predicated of Norfolk and Essex, induces us to do the same with the district in question, and to argue that if Eydersted, to the North, and the parts between Bremen and Cuxhaven, to the South, were Frisian, Ditmarsh, which lay between them, was Frisian also.

But this may have been the case without the Nordalbingians being Frisian; since an Angle movement, northward and westward, may easily have taken place in the sixth, seventh, or eighth centuries; in which case the Stormarii, Holtsati, and Ditmarsi were Angle; intrusive, non-indigenous, and, perhaps, of mixed blood—but still Angle.

I am not prepared, however, to go further at present upon this point than to a repetition of a previous statement, viz.: that if the Saxons of Anglo-Saxon England were other than Angles under a different name, they were North-Frisians.

Saxony and Saxon we have seen to be, for the most part, general names for certain populations[186] of considerable magnitude, populations which when investigated in detail have been Ostphali, Angrarii, Stormarii, &c., &c. Ptolemy alone assigns to the word a specific power, and in Ptolemy alone is the country of the Saxons the definite circumscribed area of a special population. Ptolemy, as has been already shewn, places the Saxons on the neck of the Chersonese to the north of the Chauci of the Elbe, and to the East of the Sigulones—there or thereabouts in Stormar. He also gives them three of the islands off the coasts of Holstein and Sleswick; though it is uncertain and unimportant which three he means. Hence, the Saxons of Ptolemy, truly Nord-albingian, coincide in locality with the subsequent Stormarii, the Sigulones being similarly related to the Holsatians. Yet neither the Saxones nor the Sigulones may have been the ancestors to their respective successors, any more than the Durotriges, or Iceni of England were the ancestors to the Anglo-Saxons of Dorsetshire and Norfolk.

Before this point comes under consideration we must ask a question already suggested as to the Saxons of the ninth century. Were they Frisians or Angles?

Strongly impressed with the belief that no third division of the Saxon section of the Germans beyond that represented by the Angles of Hanover and the Old Saxons of Westphalia can[187] be shewn to have existed or need be assumed, I have thus limited the problem, although the third question as to the probability of their having been something different from either may be raised. I also believe that the Frisians reached Sleswick by an extension of their frontier, this being the reason why the original continuity of their area is assumed,—at the same time admitting the possibility of their having come by sea, in which case no such continuity is necessary. What we find on the Eyder, and also on the Elbe may fairly be supposed to have once been discoverable in the intermediate country.

Assuming, then, an original continuity of the Frisian area from Sleswick to the Elbe anterior to the conquest of Ditmarsh and Holsatia by the present Low German occupants to be a fair inference from the present distribution of the North Frisians, and the history of their known and recorded displacements, we may ask how far it follows that this displacement was effected by the ancestors of the present Holsteiners; in other words, how far it is certain that the present Holsteiners succeeded immediately to the Frisians. There is a question here; since the continuity may have been broken by a population which was itself broken-up in its turn. It may have been broken by Angle inroads even as early as the time of Tacitus. If so, the order of succession[188] would not be 1. Frisian, 2. Low German, but 1. Frisian, 2. Angle or Anglo-Saxon, 3. Low German.

The Holsati, Stormarii, and Ditmarsi were, most probably, Angle. That they were not the ancestors of the present Low-Dutch is nearly certain. The date is too early for this. It was not till some time after the death of Charlemagne that the spread of that section of the German family reached Holstein. That they were not Frisian is less certain, but it is inferred from the manner in which they are mentioned by the native poet already quoted; who, if he had considered the Frisians to have been sufficiently Saxon to pass under that denomination, would have carried his Nordalbingian Saxony as far as the most northern boundary of the North-Frisians.

The evidence, then, is in favour of the Nordalbingians having been Anglo-Saxon in the ninth century, and that under the name Stormarii, Holsati, and Ditmarsi. Were they equally so in the third, i.e., when Ptolemy wrote, and when the names under which he noticed them were Saxones and Sigulones? I should not like to say this. The encroachment upon the Frisian area—the continuity being assumed—may not have begun thus early. Nay, even the northward extension of the Frisian area may not have begun. I should not even like to say positively that the Saxons of Ptolemy were German at all.[189] They may have been Slavonians—a continuation of the Wagrian and Polabic populations of Eastern Holstein and Lauenburg.

To say, too, that Ptolemy's term Saxon was a native name would be hazardous. We can only say that when we get definite information respecting the districts to which it applied it was not so. It was no Nordalbingian name to the Stormarians, no Nordalbingian name to the Holsatians, no Nordalbingian name to the men of Ditmarsh, no Nordalbingian name to any of the islanders. It was no native name with any specific import at all. It was a general name applied to the countries in question, as it was to many others besides; and it was the Franks who applied it. It had been specific once; but, when it was so, no one knew who bore it, or who gave it. It may have been Slavonic applied to Slavonians, or German applied to Germans, or German applied to Slavonians, or Slavonic applied to Germans. Which was it?

Who bore it? In the first instance the occupants of the northern bank of the Elbe, and some of the islands of the coast of Holstein and Sleswick; men of the wooded districts of Holt-satia, whose timber gave them the means of building ships, and whose situation on the coast developed the habit of using them to the annoyance of their neighbours. This is all that can be said.[190]

Who spread it abroad? The Romans first, the Franks afterwards. They it was who called by the name of Saxon men who never so called themselves, e.g., the Angrivarians, the Westphalians, the Saxons of Upper Saxony.

How did the Romans get it? From the Kelts of Gaul and Britain.

How came the Kelts by it? The usual answer to this: that they got it from the Saxons themselves, the Saxons being, of course, Germans. But the main object of the present chapter has been to shew the extremely unsatisfactory nature of the evidence of any Germans having so called themselves. Assuredly, if they stopped at the present point, the reasons for believing the name to have been native would be eminently unsatisfactory. The best fact would be in the language of Beda, who, as we have seen, called the Westphalians Old-Saxons. But Beda often allowed himself to use the language of his authorities, most of whom wrote in Latin, and some of whom were Gauls or Britons.

But four fresh ones can be added—

1. There is the element -sex in the names Es-sex, Wes-sex, Sus-sex, and Middle-sex.

2. The name Sax-neot was that of a deity, whom the Old Saxons, on their conversion to Christianity, were compelled to foreswear. This gives us the likelihood of its being the name of an eponymus.[191]

3. The story about nimeÞ eowre Seaxas=take your daggers, and the deduction from it, that Saxons meant dagger-men, is of no great weight; with the present writer, at least. Still, as far as it goes, it is something.

4. The Finlanders call the Germans Saxon.

The necessity of getting as far as we can into the obscure problems connected with this word is urgent. One part of England is more evidently Saxon than another; at least, it bears certain outward and visible signs of Saxonism which are wanting elsewhere. What are we to say to this? That Es-sex is Saxon, and, as Saxon, something notably different from Suffolk which is Angle? It may have been so; yet the minutest ethnology ever applied has failed in detecting the differentiÆ. They have, indeed, been assumed, and an unduly broad distinction between the dialect of Angle and the dialects of Saxon origin has been drawn; but the distinction is unreal. Angle Northumberland and Saxon Sussex differ from each other, not because they are Angle and Saxon, but because they are northern and southern counties. And so on throughout. The difference between Angle and Saxon Britain has ever been assumed to be real, whereas it may be but nominal.

Let us suppose it to be the latter, and Saxon to have been the British name of the Angle—nothing[192] more. What do names like Sus-sex, &c., indicate? Not that the population was less Angle than elsewhere, but that it was more Roman or British—an important distinction.

Again—certain Frisians are stated by Procopius to have dwelt in Britain; though Beda makes no mention of them. Assume, however, that the Saxons of the latter writer were the Frisians of the former, and all is plain and clear. But, then, they should be more unlike the Angles than they can be shewn to have been.

But why refine upon these points at all? Why, when we admit the Nordalbingians to have been Angle, demur to their having called themselves Saxons? I do this because I cannot get over the fact of the king who first decreed that his kingdom should be called Angle-land having been no Angle but a West-Saxon. That he should give the native German name precedence over the Roman and Keltic is likely; but that, by calling himself and his immediate subjects Saxon, he should change the name to Angle, is as unlikely as that a King of Prussia should propose that all Germany should be known as Austria. Of course, if the evidence in favour of the word Saxon being native was of a certain degree of cogency, we must take the preceding improbability as we find it; but no such cogent evidence can be found. Saxon is always a name that some[193] one may give to some one else, never one that he necessarily bears himself.

Were the conquerors, then, of Sus-sex, &c., other than Nordalbingian? I do not say this. I only say that the evidence of their coming from the special district of Holstein does not lie in their name. Germans from the south of the Elbe would—according to the preceding hypothesis—have been equally Saxon in the eyes of the degenerate Romans and the corrupted Britons whom they conquered.

We are still dealing with the origin of the name. The Franks and Romans diffused and generalized, the Kelts suggested, it. That the name was Keltic is undenied and undeniable. The Welsh and Gaels know us to the present moment as Saxons, and not as Englishmen. The only doubt has been as to how far it was exclusively Keltic—i.e., non-Germanic.

Will the supposition of its being Keltic account for all the facts connected with it? No. It will not account for the Finlanders using it. They, like the Kelts, call the Germans Saxon. This, then, is a fresh condition to be satisfied. The hypothesis which does this is, that the name Saxo was applied by the Slavonians of the Baltic as well as by Kelts of the coasts of Gaul and Britain to the pirates of the neck of the Chersonese,—the Slavonic designation being[194] adopted by the Finlanders just as the Keltic was by the Romans.

And this supplies an argument in favour of the name having been native, since a little consideration will shew that, when two different nations speak of a third by the same name, the prim facie evidence is in favour of the population to whom it is applied by their neighbours applying it to themselves also.

Yet this is no proof of its being German: nor yet of the men of Wes-sex, &c., being Nordalbingian. All that we get from the British counties ending in -sex is, that in certain parts of the island, the British name for certain German pirates prevailed over the native, whereas, in others, the native prevailed over the British.

If this be but a trifling conclusion in respect to its positive results, it is one of some negative value; inasmuch, as when we have shewn that Angle and Saxon are, to a great extent, the same names in different languages, we have rid ourselves of the imaginary necessity of investigating such imaginary differences as the difference of name, at the first view, suggests. We have also ascertained the historical import of the spread of the names Saxon and Saxony. They spread, not because certain Saxons originating in a district no bigger than the county of Rutland, bodily took possession of vast tracts of country in Germany,[195] Britain, and Gaul, but because a great number of Germans were called by the name of a small tribe, just as the Hellenes of Thessaly, Attica, and Peloponnesus were called by the Romans, Greeks. The true GrÆci were a tribe of dimensions nearly as small in respect to the Hellenes at large as the Saxons of Ptolemy were to the Germans in general (perhaps, indeed, they were not Hellenic at all); yet it was the GrÆci whom the Romans identified with the Hellenes. No one, however, believes that the GrÆci extended themselves to the extent of the term GrÆcia. On the contrary, every one admits that it was only the import of the name which became enlarged. And this I believe to have been the case with the word Saxon.

Saxon, then, like Greek, was a general name. Nevertheless, they were specific Saxons just as they were specific GrÆci. These were the Saxons of Ptolemy. When that author wrote, I believe them to have been either Frisian or Slavonians, without saying which—Frisians, if we look for their affinities to the south of the Elbe; Slavonians, if we seek them to the east of the Bille.

Between the time of Ptolemy and the end of the fourth century, the name grew into importance, and became a name of terror to the Romans, Gauls, and Britons, who applied it to the northern Germans of the sea-board in general.[196]

The spread of the name along the sea-coast began in the fourth century. Claudian alludes to a naval victory over them

This gives them a robbing-ground as far north as the Orkneys.

Ammianus notices their descent upon Gaul; and writes that in the reign of Valentinian "Gallicanos vero tractus Franci et Saxones iisdem confines, quo quisque erumpere potuit, terra vel mari, praedis acerbis incendiisque et captivorum funeribus hominum violabant."

Again—"Valentinianus Saxones, gentem in Oceani litoribus et paludibus inviis sitam, virtute et agilitate terribilem, periculosam Romanis finibus, eruptionem magna mole meditantes, in ipsis Francorum finibus oppressit." Oros. 7, 32.

A victory over the Saxones at Deuso (Deutz, opposite Cologne) is referred by more than one of the later writers to the same reign.

The banks of the Loire are their next quarters, Anjou being their chief locality, and their great captain bearing a name of which the Latin form was Adovacrius—"igitur Childericus Aurelianis pugnas egit: Adovacrius vero cum Saxonibus Andegavos venit ... (Aegidio) defuncto Adovacrius de Andegavo et aliis locis obsides accepit ... Veniente vero Adovacrio Andegavis, Childericus rex[197] sequenti die advenit; interemtoque Paulo Comite, civitatem obtinuit." Greg. Tur. 2, 18; "his itaque gestis, inter Saxones atque Romanos bellum gestum est, sed Saxones terga vertentes multos de suis, Romanis insequentibus, gladio reliquerunt: insulae eorum cum multo populo interemto a Francis captae atque subversae sunt ... Adovacrius cum Childerico foedus iniit, Alamannosque subjugarunt." id. 2, 19.

Of Saxons who joined the Lombards in the invasion of Italy we also hear from the same author—"Post hÆc Saxones qui cum Langobardis in Italiam venerant, iterum prorumpunt in Gallias, ... scilicet ut a Sigiberto rege collecti in loco, unde egressi fuerant, stabilirentur ... Hi vero ad Sigibertum regem transeuntes, in locum, unde prius egressi fuerant, stabiliti sunt." 4, 43.

The best measure, however, of the Saxon piracies is to be found in two terms, each of which has always commanded the attention of investigators—the names Saxones Bajocassini and Littus Saxonicum.

1. Saxones Bajocassini or the Saxons of Bayeux are mentioned under that name by Gregory of Tours (§. 27. 10. 9); and in a charter of Charles the Bald there is the notice of a pagus in the same district called Ot linguÆ. Zeuss reasonably suggests, as an emended reading, Otlinga; in which case we have one of the numerous equivalents[198] of those local names which, in the modern English, end in -ing, and in the Anglo-Saxon, in -ingas—Palling, Notting, Horbling, Billing—Æsclingas, Gillingas, &c., &c. Who were these? When we hear of Bayeux again, i.e., in the tenth century, it is alluded to as the most Scandinavian or Norse town of Normandy, the only one indeed where the Norse language and customs were decidedly retained. These Saxons, then, may have been Norsemen. But they may equally easily have been Angles, or Frisians; since a Norse conquest in the tenth is perfectly compatible with a German in the fifth century; and, in Britain, such was actually the case.

2. The Littus Saxonicum is a term in the Notitia Dignitatum, which appears in three places. In chapter xxxvi, where we have the details of the sea-coast of Gaul, under the denomination of the Tractus Armoricanus, the first officer—

[§. 1.] Sub dispositione viri spectabilis Ducis Tractus Armoricani et Nervicani—

Is—

[A] [1.] Tribunus Cohortis PrimÆ NovÆ ArmoricÆ Grannona in Littore Saxonico.

b. Cap. xxxvii. [§. 1.] Sub Dispositione viri spectabilis Ducis BelgicÆ SecundÆ—

[1.] Equites DalmatÆ Marcis in Littore Saxonico.

c. These but give us a Littus Saxonicum in[199] Gaul. The 25th chapter supplies one for Britain, and that with considerable detail—

[§. 1.] Sub dispositione viri spectabilis comitis Littoris Saxonici per Britanniam:

[1.] PrÆpositus Numeri Fortensium OthonÆ.

[2.] PrÆpositus Militum Tungricanorum Dubris, &c.

It is not necessary to go through the detail. It is sufficient to say that we find stations at the following undoubted localities—Brancaster, Yarmouth, Reculvers, Richborough, Dover, Lymne, and the mouth of the Adur. Putting this together it is safe to say that the whole line of coast from the Wash to the Southampton water was, in the reign of Honorius, if not earlier, a Littus Saxonicum—whatever may have been the import of that term.

Looking over the preceding details we find how hazardous it would be to predicate concerning the several populations designated as Saxons any single statement beyond that of their having been pirates from the north-German sea-board. Some may have been Angle, some Frisian, some Platt-Deutsch, some Scandinavian. Nay, the name Adovacrius=Odoacer=Ottocar, may have belonged to a Slavonian captain, whatever may have been the country of the crew.

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