As the previous chapter has shewn that a Saxon population, considered simply as such, and without reference to the particular fact of its date, locality, and similar important circumstances, may be in any or no ethnological relation to the Angle (i.e., absolutely Angle under a Keltic name, or, on the other hand, as little Angle as the Slavonians), the attempt at the reconstruction of the history of all the Germanic conquerors of Britain during the period of their occupation of Germany, although, perhaps, not impracticable as the subject of a special investigation, and as the matter of an elaborate monograph, must, in a sketch like the present, be limited to that of the unequivocal and undoubted Angles—this meaning those who are not only Angle in reality, but whose actions are described under the name of Angle. It is only when this is the case that we can be sure of our men. A Saxon, as aforesaid, may be anything, provided he be but a pirate. The greater part, too, of the actions of the Saxons[201] can be shewn to have been effected by the Old-Saxons rather than the Anglo-Saxons, and even by Franks and Frisians. Indeed, it is not too much to assert that, with the exception of the invasion of Britain and Sleswick, there is no recorded act of any Saxon population which cannot be more fairly attributed to some of the other allied sections of the Germanic stock than to the Angle. That this was the case with the Saxons of the Gallic frontier—the Saxons that, in the earlier periods of their history, came into collision with Julian, and, in the later ones, with Charlemagne, is undoubted; and, that it was also the case with the earlier Saxon pirates of the coasts of Gaul and Britain is likely—though I do not press this point. What I am considering now is the unequivocal history of the Angles of Germany under their own proper name. I have said that it is fragmentary. It is more than this. The fragments themselves are heterogeneous.

An Englishman, representing as he does the insular Angles, and looking to the part that they have played in the world, may, with either pride or regret, as the case may be, say that on their native soil of Germany, the Angle history is next to a non-entity. It is like that of the Majiars of Asia. What our ancestors did at home before they became the Englishmen of Great Britain may have been of any amount of importance, or,[202] of any amount of insignificance. They were deeds without a record. As to our own collateral relations, they suffered rather than acted. They have, indeed, a history, but it is a history neither full nor glorious.

The poem of Beowulf, an extract from Beda, and a similar extract from Procopius constitute the notices that continue the history—if so it can be called—of the Angles from the time of Ptolemy to the beginning of the seventh century, and even these are doubtful in their interpretation.

Beowulf is a poem in the Anglo-Saxon language, and, in the alliterative metre of the Anglo-Saxon compositions in general, of unknown date and authorship, of upwards of six thousand lines; a poem which, although preserved in England, and in a form adapted to English hearers subsequent to the conversion of our island to Christianity, is essentially pagan and German—pagan in respect to its superstitions and machinery, and German in respect to the scene of action; for in Germany, and not in England, are all its actions achieved. This being the case, it cannot but tell us something of the ancient Germans; and, as the hero is an Angle, the ancient Germans of whom this something is told, are, more or less, the Angle ancestors of the English in their original continental home.[203]

Much more than this it is unsafe to say. The composition itself is a poem—a romance—an epic. This is against the historical value of its subject-matter. Then, it has taken its present form under the hands of a Christian. This is against its value as cotemporaneous evidence. Thirdly, it has the character, to no small extent, not only of a rhapsody, but of a rhapsody of which the elements are heterogeneous. This is against its value as a piece of Anglicism.

Nick and Grendel—the old Nick of the present English, and Grendel—probably, the Geruthus of Saxo Grammaticus—are the chief supernaturals, demons of the swamp and fen. These best localize the legends in which they appear; for which most parts of Hanover and the Cimbric Chersonesus suit indifferently, the Frisian portions pre-eminently, well. The more exalted mythology of Woden, Thor, and Balder, so generally considered to have been all-pervading in Germany and Scandinavia, finds no place in Beowulf. Our Devil and the Devil's Dam are rough analogues of Nick and Grendel.

Heort is the great palatial hall of HroÐgar, the kingly personage of the poem, Beowulf being the hero. It stands in some part of the Cimbric Chersonese. Seeing in this, as a word, only another form of the name Hartz, I also see in it a proof of the rhapsodical character of the poem,[204] and the heterogeneous character of its elements.

An episode, of which Sigmund is the hero, gives us a narrative in which we have, in an altered form, and an obscure outline, a portion of the Nibelungenlied cycle—an element from the Rhine.

Another gives us an adventure apparently without a hero, or rather an adventure whose hero has no proper name, but only a designating adjective. Considering the indistinct shape which all legends take in Beowulf, I cannot but think that the individual whose name stands in the text as Stearc heart, and in the translation as Strong-heart, is neither more nor less than the great Danish hero Starcather, of a not unlike legend in Saxo.

Danes, Geats, Frisians, and Sweas (Swedes), are the populations with whom the Angles are most brought in contact; and the following extract shews the manner of their mention. The parties, here, are Jutish Danes and Frisians.

Hengist appears here as a Jute. Another English name, that of Offa, occurs in the following:

Beowulf approaches his end; the ceremonies of his funeral are described in detail, the political complications created by his death are alluded to:—

That Norse, Frisian, Angle, and other Germanic elements are combined in this poem is certain; and, looking to the extent to which Beowulf, the hero, besides other points of indistinctness in respect to his personality, is Geat as well as Angle, I cannot but suspect an incorporation of some Slavonic and Lithuanic ones as well. Finn, too, as a hero, not of the Laps and Finlanders (to whom he would be the proper eponymus), but of the Frisians, creates a further complication.

HroÐgar, too, the Dane or Jute, has a name inconveniently unlike that of the more historical Radiger who will soon come under notice.

The chief fact we get from Beowulf is, as is generally the case with early poems, one in the history of Fiction; and, to guard against disparaging such facts as these, let us remember that the history of Fiction is the history of the Commerce of Ideas.[210]

Now Beowulf tells us that, at the time of its composition, at latest, and, probably, much earlier, there was a certain interchange of legend or history between the Danes, Swedes, Lombards, Franks, Angles, Frisians, and Geats. We may say, then, that the Angli had an Heroic Age.

In respect to their historic epoch, a well-known notice in Beda, freely adopted by most of his after-comers, deduces the Angles from that part of Germany which he calls Angulus, between the provinces of the Jutes and Saxons, and which up to his own time remained a waste—"patria quÆ Angulus dicitur, et ab eo tempore usque hodie desertus inter provincias Jutarum et Saxonum perhibetur."

The Saxon Chronicle simply translates this. Alfred strengthens it, writing that there "the English dwelt before they came hither."—i.e., to England.

Ethelweard speaks of "Anglia vetus, sita inter Saxones et Giotos, habens oppidum capitale, quod sermone Saxonico Sleswic nuncupatur, secundum vero Danos, Hathaby."

A well-known locality in the Duchy of Sleswick supplies the commentary on these texts. A triangular block of land, about the size of the county of Middlesex, is bounded on two of its sides by the Slie and the Firth of Flensburg, and[211] on the third by the road from that town to Sleswick.

Many writers think that the Angles should be placed here; and, thinking this, maintain that no population except that of the Angles or some closely allied tribe has a claim to be considered as the early occupants of Holstein and Sleswick. They overlook, however, the important fact that Ptolemy, who places the Angili in a locality far south of the parts in question, places, in those parts, populations which he separates from his Angili. They also overlook the still more important fact that the only populations earlier than the present of which definite traces can be discovered in either Holstein or Sleswick, are the Frisians and the Slavonians—the Frisians on the west, and the Slavonians on the east.

In another point of view this district is important, although the line of criticism upon which it has its bearing is gradually becoming obsolete. When the direct influence of the Danes and Norwegians upon the language of Britain was less recognized than it is now, it was by no means uncommon to explain such Scandinavian words as occurred by the assumption that they were Angle as opposed to Saxon, the Angle being the most Danish of all the proper German dialects—transitional, perhaps, to the Teutonic and Scandinavian divisions of the so-called Gothic stock.[212] This was a line of criticism difficult to refute; since the advocate of the Angle origin of Danish words might fairly argue that it was not enough to shew that a word was Scandinavian. It must also be shewn to have been non-existent in the North-German dialects. This brought in the proverbial difficulty of proving a negative assertion. Hence, the district of Anglen and Beda's statement concerning it are important.

Now, at the present moment, this district of Anglen is just as Angle or English as the rest of Germany—that is, next to not at all. It is Low German, tinctured with Danish; having once been more Danish still, as is shewn by the geographical names ending in -by, -skov, and -gaard.

The only piece of truly cotemporary evidence in Beda is the statement of its being a waste when he wrote, and this is better explained by supposing it to have been a March, or Debateable Land, between the Germanic and Danish occupants of Sleswick, than by the notion that it was left empty by the exodus of its occupants to Great Britain. The deduction of the Angli from an improbably small area, on the wrong side of the Peninsula, must be looked upon as an inference under the garb of a tradition. Such I believe it to have been; freely, however, admitted that if Anglen poured forth upon England even half the Angles[213] that England contained, it was likely enough to have been most effectually emptied.

At one time I went further than the mere denial of Anglen being the original home of the Angles in the exclusive manner that Beda so evidently considers it, and looked upon the word as a mere translation of the word Angulus—since the area in question is certainly one of the nooks and corners of the Peninsula. But the fact of there being one or two small outlying districts, retaining (I believe) certain privileges, beyond the area bounded by the Slie, the Firth of Flensburg and the road to Sleswick, in the parts about Leck and Bredsted, and on the North-Frisian frontier, has modified this view, and inclined me to the notion that the Anglen districts of Sleswick were really Angle—though Angle only in the way that Britain was Angle, i.e., from the effect of an invasion from Hanover. If so, although we fail in finding in Sleswick the mother-country of the English, we get a detail in the history of the Angles of Germany instead—this being that certain Angles, probably at the time they were reducing Britain, may have turned their faces northwards, and effected settlements in certain parts of Sleswick, having, previously, reached the Trave. Hence they achieved a small maritime conquest on the coast of the Baltic, just as they effected certain large ones on the shores of[214] Britain. Why do I suppose this to have been by sea? Because, when true history begins, whatever the men of Anglen in Sleswick may have been, the intermediate parts of Holstein are Wagrian. The settlement, then, in Anglen, is just a detail in the naval history of the Angles, during the period of their rise and progress—that is, if it be anything Angle at all.

A notice of Procopius now finds place. An Angle princess betrothed to Radiger, prince of the Varni, is deserted by her promised husband for Theodechild, his father's widow, and avenges herself by sailing for the mouth of the Rhine with a large fleet, conquering her undervaluer, forgiving him as women are likely, and dismissing her rival, as they are sure to do in such cases. To deny "all historical foundation to this tale," writes Mr. Kemble,[22] "would perhaps be carrying scepticism to an unreasonable extent. Yet the most superficial examination proves that in all its details, at least, it is devoid of accuracy. The period during which the events described must be placed, is between the years 534 and 547; and it is very certain that the Varni were not settled at that time where Procopius has placed them; on that locality we can only look for Saxons. It is hardly necessary to say that a fleet of four hundred ships and an army of one hundred thousand Angles,[215] led by a woman, are not data upon which we could implicitly rely in calculating either the political or military power of any English principality at the commencement of the sixth century, or that ships capable of carrying two hundred-and-fifty men each, had hardly been launched at that time from any port in England. Still I am not altogether disposed to deny the possibility of predatory expeditions from the settled parts of the island adjoining the eastern coasts."

From this criticism I only differ in thinking that, instead of Procopius having mistaken Saxons for Varni, he has mistaken the Elbe for the Rhine.

It is a point of some uncertainty, but of no great importance to ascertain whether the Angle subjects of the insulted but forgiveful princess were from Britain or from Hanover—islanders already in a state of reaction against their continental fatherland, or simply Angles of the Elbe. The accounts of Procopius respecting both countries are eminently obscure and contradictory. It is only certain that as early as the ninth century there were continental writers who attributed to the Germans of Britain movements from the Island to the Continent as far back from their own time as the fifth century. Nay, later still, there were some historians who wholly reversed the order of Anglo-Saxon migration,[216] and deduced the true Fatherland Germans from England.

And now the history of the rise and progress of the Angles on the soil of Germany ends. Even if it can be increased there is but modicum of information. Yet we could scarcely expect more. On the contrary, why should not the Angles have shared the total obscurity of the Nuithones, Sigulones, and others? What population amongst those with which they came in contact could have recorded their alliances, their victories, or their defeats? Not the Frisians, who were unlettered as long as they were Pagan, and Pagan until the tenth century. Not the Slavonians, whose spiritual and intellectual darkness was equal. Not the Romans, for reasons already given. There only remained the Gauls and Britons. But, unfortunately, in the eyes of the Gauls and Britons, although all Angles were Saxons, all Saxons were not Angles—so that the proportion of proper Angle history which we have in the Gallic and British accounts of the Saxons cannot be determined.

The history of the Saxons of the continent has been stated to have been the history of the Old-Saxons. And up to the time of Beda, and about half a century later, such was the case. Hence, the rule is as follows—where we hear of Saxon actions by sea, the actors may be Old-Saxons,[217] Angles, Frisians, Scandinavians, or Slavonians, and where we hear of actions on the Terra Firma of Germany, and also in the times anterior to B.C. 800, the actors are Old-Saxons rather than Anglo-Saxons. In this case, except in Britain, we have little or no Angle history under the name of Saxon; and, as there is equally little under the name of Angle, we have, as has been already seen, next to no Angle history at all—i.e., in Germany.

But with the reign of Charlemagne the criticism changes. The Saxon history, even in Germany, becomes Anglo-Saxon, as well as Old-Saxon, and it may be that the events are pretty equally distributed between the two divisions. The reason is clear. The arms of Southern and Middle Europe have penetrated to the parts beyond the Weser, and it only requires the Angles to be described under their own proper name (instead of that of Saxon) for us to have the materials of an average history. It is a sickening and revolting history, and a history that few nations but the English can afford. Throughout the whole length and breadth of Germany there is not one village, hamlet, or family which can shew definite signs of descent from the continental ancestors of the Angles of England. There is not a man, woman, or child who can say, I have pure Angle blood in my veins. In no nook or corner can dialect or sub-dialect of the most provincial[218] form of the German speech be found which shall have a similar pedigree with the English. The Angles of the Continent are either exterminated or undistinguishably mixed up with the other Germans in proportions more or less large, and in combinations more or less heterogeneous. And the history of the Conquest and Conversion of the Saxons by Charlemagne is the history of this extinction. It is this that makes it so impossible to argue backwards from the present state of the Angles of Germany to an earlier one, and so to reconstruct their history. They have no present state. Neither have the Old-Saxons—their next of kin. Of the Frisians only, the next nearest, there are still fragments; for, although the enemy of the Old-Saxons and the Anglo-Saxons was the enemy of the Frisians also, he was not equally their exterminator. They may or may not have been braver than the Angles and Old-Saxons. They certainly occupied a more impracticable country. To this period—the period of their reduction—the Angli and Werini of Thuringia are attributed. They may, indeed, have got there as they did to Sleswick, by conquest, and at an earlier period. If so, there was an alliance. They were, however, more probably transplanted.

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