There are several populations of whom, like quiet and retiring individuals, we know nothing until they move; for, in their original countries, they lead a kind of still life which escapes notice and description, and which, if it were not for a change of habits with a change of area, would place them in the position of the great men who lived before Agamemnon. They would pass from the development to the death of their separate existence unobserved, and no one know who they were, where they lived, and what were their relations. But they move to some new locality, and then, like those fruit-trees which, in order to be prolific, must be transplanted, the noiseless and unnoticed tenor of their original way is exchanged for an influential and prominent position. They take up a large place in the world's history. Sometimes this arises from an absolute change of character with the change of circumstances; but oftener it is due to a more intelligible[143] cause. They move from a country beyond the reach of historical and geographical knowledge to one within it; and having done this they find writers who observe and describe them, simply because they have come within the field of observation and description.

It is no great stretch of imagination to picture some of the stronger tribes of the now unknown parts of Central Africa finding their way as far southward as the Cape, when they would come within the sphere of European observation. On such a ground, they may play a conspicuous part in history; conspicuous enough to be noticed by historians, missionaries, and journalists. They may even form the matter of a blue book. For all this, however, they shall only be known in the latter-days of their history. What they were in their original domain may remain a mystery; and that, even when the parts wherein it lay shall have become explored. For it is just possible that between the appearance of such a population in a locality beyond the pale of their own unexplored home, and the subsequent discovery of that previously obscure area, the part which was left behind—the parent portion—may have lost its nationality, its language, its locality, its independence, its name—any one or any number of its characteristics. Perhaps, the name alone, with a vague notice of its locality, may remain;[144] a name famous from the glory of its new country, but obscure, and even equivocal in its fatherland.

How truly are the Majiars of Hungary known only from what they have been in Hungary. Yet they are no natives of that country. It was from the parts beyond the Uralian mountains that they came, and when we visit those parts and ask for their original home, we find no such name, no such language, no such nationality as that of the Majiars. We find Bashkirs, or something equally different instead. But north of the old country of the Majiars—now no longer Majiar—we find Majiar characteristics; in other words, we are amongst the first cousins of the Hungarians, the descendants not of the exact ancestors of the conquerors of Hungary, but of the populations most nearly allied to such ancestors. And it is in these that we must study the Majiar before he became European. The direct descendants of the same parents have disappeared, but collateral branches of the family survive; and these we study, assuming that there is a family likeness.

All this has been written in illustration of a case near home. The Majiar of the Uralian wilds, the Majiar of the Yaik and Oby, the Majiar, in short, of Asia, is not more obscure, unknown, and unimportant when compared with the countrymen[145] of Hunyades, Zapolya, and Kossuth, than is the Angle of Germany when contrasted with the Angle of England, the Angle of the great continent with the Angle of the small island. When we say that the former is named by Tacitus, Ptolemy, and a few other less important writers, we have said all. There is the name, and little enough besides. What does the most learned ethnologist know of a people called the Eudoses? Nothing. He speculates, perhaps, on a letter-change, and fancies that by prefixing a Ph, and inserting an n he can convert the name into Phundusii. But what does he know of the Phundusii? Nothing; except that by ejecting the ph and omitting the n he can reduce them to Eudoses. Then come the Aviones, whom, by omission and rejection, we can identify with the Obii, of whom we know little, and also convert into the Cobandi, of whom we know less. The Reudigni—what light comes from these? The Nuithones—what from these? The Suardones—what from these? Now, it is not going too far if we say that, were it not for the conquest of England, the Angles of Germany would have been known to the ethnologist just as the Aviones are, i.e., very little; that, like the Eudoses, they might have had their very name tampered with; and that, like the Suardones and Reudigni and Nuithones, they might have been anything[146] or nothing in the way of ethnological affinity, historical development, and geographical locality.

This is the true case. Nine-tenths of what is known of the Angli of Germany is known from a single passage, and every word in that single passage which applies to Angli applies to the Eudoses, Aviones, Reudigni, Suardones, and Nuithones as well.

The passage in question is the 40th section of the Germania of Tacitus, and is as follows:—

"Contra Langobardos paucitas nobilitat: plurimis ac valentissimis nationibus cincti non per obsequium sed prÆliis et periclitando tuti sunt. Reudigni, deinde, et Aviones, et Angli, et Varini, et Suardones, et Nuithones fluminibus aut sylvis muniuntur; neque quidquam notabile in singulis nisi quod in commune Hertham, id est, Terram Matrem colunt, eamque intervenire rebus hominum, invehi populis arbitrantur. Est in insula Oceani castum nemus, dicatum in eo vehiculum, veste contectum, attingere uni sacerdoti concessum. Is adesse penetrali deam intelligit, vectamque bobus feminis multa cum veneratione prosequitur. LÆti tunc dies, festa loca, quÆcunque adventu hospitioque dignatur. Non bella ineunt, non arma sumunt, clausum omne ferrum; pax et quies tunc tantum nota, tunc tantum amata, donec idem sacerdos satiatam conversatione[147] mortalium deam templo reddat: mox vehiculum et vestes, et si credere velis, numen ipsum secreto lacu abluitur. Servi ministrant, quos statim idem lacus haurit. Arcanus hinc terror, sanctaque ignorantia, quid sit id, quod perituri tantum vident."

Let us ask what we get from this passage when taken by itself, i.e., without the light thrown upon it by the present existence of the descendants of the Angli as the English of England.

We get the evidence of a good writer, that six nations considered by him as sufficiently Germanic to be included in his Germania, were far enough north of the Germans who came in immediate contact with Rome to be briefly and imperfectly described and near enough the sea to frequent an island worshipping a goddess with a German name and certain remarkable attributes. This is the most we get; and to get this we must shut our eyes to more than one complication.

a. Thus the country that can most reasonably be assigned to the Varini, is in the tenth century the country of the Varnavi, who are no Germans, but Slavonians.

b. Another reading, instead of Hertham, is Nerthum, a name less decidedly Germanic.

All we get beyond this is from their subsequent histories; and of these subsequent histories[148] there is only one—the Angle or English. Truly, then, may we say that the Angles of Germany are only known from their relations to the Angles of England.

Let us inquire into the geographical and ethnological conditions of the Angli of Tacitus; and first in respect to their geography.

1. They must be placed as far north as the Weser; because the area required for the Cherusci, Fosi, Chasuarii, Dulgubini, Chamavi, and Angrivarii must be carried to a certain extent northwards; and the populations in question lay beyond these.

2. They must not be carried very far north of the Elbe. The reasons for this are less conclusive. They lie, however, in the circumstance of Ptolemy's notices placing them in a decidedly southern direction; and, as Tacitus has left their locality an open question, the evidence of even a worse authority than Ptolemy ought to be decisive,—"of the nations of the interior the greatest is that of Suevi Angili, who are the most eastern of the Longobardi, stretching as far northwards as the middle Elbe." The same writer precludes us from placing them in Holstein and Sleswick by filling up the Peninsula by populations other than Angle, one of which is the Saxon. But these Saxons we are not at liberty to identify with the Angli of Tacitus, because, by so doing, we separate[149] them from the more evidently related Angili of Ptolemy. Ptolemy draws a distinction between the two, and writes that "after the Chauci on the neck of the Cimbric Chersonese, came the Saxons, after the Saxons, as far as the river Chalusus, the Pharodini. In the Chersonese itself there extend, beyond the Saxons, the Sigulones on the west, then the Sabalingii, then the Cobandi, above them the Chali, then above these, but more to the west, the Phundusii; more to the east the Charudes, and most of all to the north, the Cimbri."

3. They must not come quite up to the sea, since we have seen from Ptolemy that the Chauci and Saxones joined, and as the Saxons were on the neck of the Peninsula, or the south-eastern parts of Holstein, the Chauci must have lain between the Angli and the sea, probably, however, on a very narrow strip of coast.

4. They must not have reached eastwards much farther than the frontiers of Lauenburg and Luneburg, since, as soon as we get definite historical notices of these countries, they are Slavonic—and, whatever may be said to the contrary, there is no evidence of this Slavonic occupancy being recent.

These conditions give us the northern part of the kingdom of Hanover as the original Angle area.

Their ethnological affinities are simpler. They[150] spoke the language which afterwards became the Anglo-Saxon of Alfred, and the English of Milton. In this we have the first and most definite of their differential characteristics—the characteristics which distinguished them from the closely allied Cheruscans, Chamavi, Angrivarii and other less important nations.

Their religious cultus, as far at least as the worship of Mother Earth in a Holy Island, was a link which connected the Angli with the populations to the north rather than to the south of them; and—as far as we may judge from the negative fact of finding no Angles in the great confederacy that the energy of Arminius formed against the aggression of Rome—their political relations did the same. But this is uncertain.

Such was the supposed area of the ancient Angles of Germany, and it agrees so well with all the ethnological conditions of the populations around, that it should not be objected to, or refined upon, on light grounds. The two varieties of the German languages to which the Anglo-Saxon bore the closest relationship, were the Old Saxon and the Frisian, and each of these are made conterminous with it by the recognition of the area in question—the Old Saxon to the south, the Frisian to the west, and, probably, to the north as well. It is an area, too, which is neither unnecessarily large, nor preposterously[151] small; an area which gives its occupants the navigable portions of two such rivers as the Elbe and Weser; one which places them in the necessary relations to their Holy Island (an island which, for the present we assume to be Heligoland); and, lastly, one which without being exactly the nearest part of the continent, fronts Britain, and is well situated for descents upon the British coast.

During the third, fourth, and fifth centuries we hear nothing of the Angli. They re-appear in the eighth. But then they are the Angles of Beda, the Angles of Britain—not those of Germany—the Angles of a new locality, and of a conquered country—not the parent stock on its original continental home. Of these latter the history of Beda says but little. Neither does the history of any other writer; indeed it is not too much to say that they have no authentic, detailed, and consecutive history at all, either early or late, either in the time of Beda when the Angles of England are first described, or in the time of any subsequent writer. There are reasons for this; as will be seen if we look to their geographical position, and the relations between them and the neighbouring populations. The Angles of Germany were too far north to come in contact with the Romans. That we met with no Angli in the great Arminian Confederacy has already been stated. When the Romans were[152] the aggressors, the Angli lay beyond the pale of their ambition. When the Romans were on the defensive the Angli were beyond the opportunities of attack.

All attempts to illustrate the history of the Angles of Germany by means of that of the nations mentioned in conjunction with them by Tacitus, is obscurum per obscurius. It is more than this. The connexion creates difficulties. The Langobardi, who gave their name to Lombardy, were anything but Angle; inasmuch as their language was a dialect of the High German division. Hence, if we connect them with our own ancestors we must suppose that when they changed their locality they changed their speech also. But no such assumption is necessary. All that we get from the text of Tacitus is, that they were in geographical contiguity with the Reudigni, &c.

The Varini are in a different predicament. They are mentioned in the present text along with the Angli, and they are similarly mentioned in the heading of a code of laws referred to the tenth century. Every name in this latter document is attended with difficulties.

Incipit Lex Anglorum et Werinorum, hoc est Thuringorum.—To find Angli in Thuringia by themselves would be strange. So it would be to find Werini. But to find the two combined[153] is exceedingly puzzling. I suggest the likelihood of there having been military colonies, settled by some of the earlier successors of Charlemagne, if not by Charlemagne himself. There are other interpretations; but this seems the likeliest. That the Varini and Angli were contiguous populations in the time of Tacitus, joining each other on the Lower Elbe, even as they join each other in his text, is likely. It is also likely that when their respective areas were conquered, each should have supplied the elements of a colony to the conqueror.

At the same time, I do not think that their ethnological relations were equally close. The Varini I believe to have been Slavonians. There is no difficulty in doing this. The only difficulty lies in the choice between two Slavonic populations. Adam of Bremen places a tribe, which he sometimes calls Warnabi, and sometimes Warnahi (Helmoldus calling it Warnavi), between the river Havel in Brandenburg and the Obotrites of Mecklenburg-Schwerin. He mentions them, too, in conjunction with the Linones of Lun-eburg. Now this evidence fixes them in the parts about the present district of Warnow, on the Elde, a locality which is further confirmed by two chartas of the latter part of the twelfth century—"silva quÆ destinguit terras Havelliere scilicet et Muritz, eandem terram quoque Muritz[154] et Vepero cum terminis suis ad terram Warnowe ex utraque parte fluminis quod Eldene dicitur usque ad castrum Grabow." Also—"distinguit tandem terram Moritz et Veprouwe cum omnibus terminis suis ad terram quÆ Warnowe vocatur, includens et terram Warnowe cum terminis suis ex utraque parte fluminis quod Eldena dicitur usque ad castrum quod Grabou vocatur." Such is one of the later populations of the parts on the Lower Elbe, which may claim to represent the Varini of Tacitus.

But the name re-appears. In the Life of Bishop Otto, the Isle of Rugen is called Verania,[15] and the population Verani—eminent for their paganism. To reconcile these two divisions of the Mecklenburg populations is a question for the Slavonic archÆologist. Between the two we get some light for the ethnology of the Varini. Their island is Rugen rather than Heligoland. The island, however, that best suits the Angli is Heligoland rather than Rugen. Which is which? The following hypothesis has already been suggested. "What if the Varini had one holy island, and the Angli another—so that the insulÆ sacrÆ, with their corresponding casta nemora, were two in number?" I submit that a writer with no better means of knowing the exact truth than Tacitus, might, in such a case, when he recognized[155] the insular character common to the two forms of cultus, easily and pardonably, refer them to one and the same island; in other words, he might know the general fact that the Angli and Varini worshipped in an island, without knowing the particular fact of their each having a separate one.

This is what really happened; so that the hypothesis is as follows:—

a. The truly and undoubtedly Germanic Angli worshipped in Heligoland.

b. The probably Slavonic Varini worshipped in the Isle of Rugen.

c. The holy island of Tacitus is that of the Angli—

d. With whom the Varini are inaccurately associated—

e. The source of the inaccuracy lying in the fact of that nation having a holy island, different from that of the Angles, but not known to be so.[16]

We have got now, in the text of Tacitus, the Angli as a Germanic, and the Varini as a Slavonic, population. The Langobardi may be left unnoticed for the present. But round which of the two are the remaining tribes to be grouped, the Reudigni, the Aviones, Eudoses, the Suardones, and Nuithones.

The Reudigni.—Whether we imagine the Latin[156] form before us to represent such a word as the German Reud-ing-as, or the Slavonic Reud-inie[17] (of either of which it may be the equivalent), the two last syllables are inflexional; the first only belonging to the root. Now, although unknown to any Latin writer but Tacitus, the syllable Reud as the element of a compound, occurs in the Icelandic Sagas. Whoever the Goths of Scandinavia may have been, they fell into more than one class. There were, for instance, the simple Goths of Got-land, the island Goths of Ey-gota-land, and, thirdly, the Goths of Reidh-gota-land. Where was this? Reidhgotaland was an old name of Jutland. Reidhgotaland was also the name of a country east of Poland. Zeuss[18] well suggests that these conflicting facts may be reconciled by considering the prefix Reidh, to denote the Goths of the Continent in opposition to the word Ey, denoting the Goths of the Islands; both being formidable and important nations, both being in political and military relations to the Danes, Swedes, and Norwegians, and both being other than Germanic.

In the Traveller's Song a more remarkable compound is found; Hreth-king—

Now, although the usual notions respecting the locality of the great Gothic empire of Hermanric are rather invalidated than confirmed by this extract, the relation between the Hreths and Ongle is exactly that between the Reudigni and Angli. Neither are there other facts wanting which would bring the rule of Hermanric as far north as the latitude of the Angli, though not, perhaps, so far east. His death is said to have been occasioned by the revolt of two Rhoxalanian princes. Now the Rhoxalani were, at least, as far north as the Angli, however much farther they may have lain eastwards.

But in the same poem we meet with the name in the simple form HrÆd; for, when we remember that one of the Icelandic notices of Reidhgotaland is that it lay to the east of Poland, we may fairly infer that Reidhgotaland was the country of the nation mentioned in the following passage:—

Such faint light then as can be thrown upon the Reudigni of Tacitus disconnects them with the Angli both geographically and ethnologically, connecting them with the Prussians, and placing them on the Lower Vistula.

The Aviones.—The Aviones are either unknown to history, or known under the slightly modified form of Chaviones. Maximian conquers them about A.D. 289. His Panegyrist Mamertinus associates them with the Heruli. Perhaps, the Obii are the same people. If so, they cross the Danube in conjunction with the Langobardi, and are mentioned, as having done so, by Petrus Patricius.

The Eudoses will be noticed when Ptolemy's list comes under consideration.

So will the Suardones.

No light has ever been thrown on the Nuithones.

Over and above the Saxons, to whom a special chapter will be devoted, Ptolemy's list contains:—

1. The Sigulones.—The Saxons lay to the north of Elbe, on the neck of the Chersonese, and[159] the Sigulones occupied the Chersonese itself, westwards. Two populations thus placed between the Atlantic and the Baltic, immediately north of the Elbe, leave but little room for each other.

"Then," writes Ptolemy, "come—

"2. The Sabalingii.—then—

"3. The Kobandi.—above these—

"4. The Chali.—and above them, but more to the west—

"5. The Phundusii.—more to the east—

"6. The Charudes.—and most to the north of all—

"7. The Cimbri."

8. The Pharodini lay next to the Saxons, between the Rivers Chalusus and Suebus.

Tacitus' geography is obscure; Ptolemy's is difficult. One wants light. The other gives us conflicting facts. Neither have the attempts to reconcile them been successful. The first point that strikes us is the difference of the names in the two authors. No Sigulones and Sabalingii in Tacitus. No Nuithones and Reudigni in Ptolemy. Then there is the extremely northern position which the latter gives the Cimbri. His Charudes, too, cannot well be separated from CÆsar's Harudes. Nevertheless, their area is inconveniently distant from the seat of war in the invasion of Gaul under Ariovistus, of whose armies the Harudes form a part. The River Chalusus is reasonably[160] considered to be the Trave. But the Suebus is not the Oder; though the two are often identified: inasmuch as the geographer continues to state that after the Pharodini come "the Sidini to the river Iadua" (the Oder?), "and, after them, the Rutikleii as far as the Vistula."

Zeuss has allowed himself to simplify some of the details by identifying certain of the PtolemÆan names with those of Tacitus. Thus he thinks that, by supposing the original word to have been Sfa??d-????, the Fa??d??-?? and Suardon-es may be made the same. Kobandi, too, he thinks may be reduced to Chaviones, or Aviones. Thirdly, by the prefix F, and the insertion of N, Eudos-es may be converted into F???d??s-???.

Those who know the degree to which the modern German philologists act upon the doctrine that Truth is stranger than Fiction, and, by unparallelled manipulations reconcile a so-called iron-bound system of scientific letter-changes with results as extraordinary as those of the Keltic and Hebraic dreamers of the last century, will see in such comparisons as these nothing extraordinary. On the contrary, they will give them credit for being moderate. And so they are: for it is extremely likely that whilst Tacitus got his names from German, Ptolemy got his from Keltic, or Slavonic, sources; and if such be the case, a very considerable latitude is allowable.[161]

Yet, even if we make the Cobandi, Aviones; the Phundusii, Eudoses; and the Pharodini, Suardones (probably, also, the Sweordwere, of the Traveller's Song), the geographical difficulties are still considerable. Saxons on the neck of the Chersonese (say in Stormar) with Sigulones (say in Holstein) to the west of them are fully sufficient to stretch from sea to sea; but beyond (and this we must suppose to be in a westerly direction) are the Sabalingii, and then the Kobandi; above (north of) these the Chali (whom we should expect to be connected with the river Chalusus), and west of these the Phundusii. Similar complications can easily be added.

The meaning of the word Sabalingii is explained, if we may assume a slight change in the reading. How far it is legitimate, emendatory critics may determine; but by transposing the B and L, the word becomes Sa-lab-ingii. The Slavonic is the tongue that explains this.

1. The Slavonic name of the Elbe is Laba; and—

2. The Slavonic for Transalbian, as a term for the population beyond the Elbe, would be Sa-lab-ingii. This compound is common. The Finns of Karelia are called Za-volok-ian, because they live beyond the volok or watershed. The Kossacks of the Dnieper are called Za-porog-ian, because they live beyond the porog or waterfall.[162] The population in question I imagine to have been called Sa-lab-ingian, because they lived beyond the Laba, or Elbe.

Now a name closely akin to Salabingian actually occurs at the beginning of the Historical period. The population of the Duchy of Lauenburg is (then) Slavonic. So is that of south-eastern Holstein; since the Saxon area begins with the district of Stormar. So is that of Luneburg. And the name of these Slavonians of the Elbe is Po-lab-ingii (on the Elbe), just as Po-mor-ania is the country on the sea. Of the Po-labingians, then, the Sa-labingii were the section belonging to that side of the Elbe to which the tribe that used the term did not belong. Such are the reasons for believing the name to be Slavonic.

There are specific grounds, of more or less value, then, for separating the Angli from, at least, the following populations—the Varini, the Reudigni, the Eudoses, the Phundusii, the Suardones, the Pharodini, and the Sabalingii (Salabingii?); indeed, the Sigulones and Harudes seem to be the only Germans of two lists. The former, I think, was Frisian rather than Angle, the latter Old Saxon rather than Anglo-Saxon; for, notwithstanding some difficulties of detail which will be noticed in another chapter, the Charudes must be considered the Germans of the Hartz. The Sigulones, being placed so definitely to the west[163] of the Saxons, were probably the Nordalbingians of Holsatia.[19]

The last complication which will be noticed is in the following extract from Ptolemy.—"But of the inland nations far in the interior the greatest are that of the Suevi Angeili, who are east of the Longobardi, stretching to the north, as far as the middle parts of the river Elbe, that of the Suevi Semnones, who, when we leave the Elbe, reach from the aforesaid (middle) parts, eastwards, as far as the River SuÊbus, and that of the BuguntÆ next in succession, extending as far as the Vistula."—Lib. ii. c. xi.

This connexion of the Angles with the Suevi requires notice; though it should not cause any serious difficulty. The term Suevi, or Suevia, is used in a very extensive signification, denoting the vast tracts east of the better known districts of Germany; and in a similar sense it is used by both Tacitus and CÆsar. The notion of any specific connection with the Suevi of Suabia is unnecessary.

It has already been stated that in the Traveller's Song the Kingdom of Hermanric is placed east of Ongle. Either this means that the one country was east of the other, in the way that Hungary is east of the Rhine, or else an unrecognized[164] extension must be given to one of the two areas.

In one part of the poem in question the form is not Ongle but Engle—

The result of the previous criticism is—

1. That the Angli of Germany distinguished, by the use of that form of speech which afterwards became Anglo-Saxon, from the Slavonians of south-eastern Holstein, Lauenburg, Luneburg, and Altmark, from the Old Saxons of Westphalia, and from the Frisians of the sea-coast between the Ems and Elbe, occupied, with the exceptions just suggested, the northern two-thirds of the present Kingdom of Hanover.

2. That they were the only members of the particular section of the German population to which they belonged, i.e., the section using the Anglo-Saxon rather than the Old Saxon speech.

Their relations to the population of the Cimbric Chersonese will form the subject of the next chapter.

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