The Ethnology of the British Islands Part 10

All this has been written in ill.u.s.tration 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 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 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 pa.s.sage, and every word in that single pa.s.sage which applies to Angli applies to the _Eudoses_, _Aviones_, _Reudigni_, _Suardones_, and _Nuithones_ as well.

The pa.s.sage in question is the 40th section of the Germania of Tacitus, and is as follows:--

"Contra Langobardos paucitas n.o.bilitat: plurimis ac valentissimis nationibus cincti non per obsequium sed praeliis et peric.l.i.tando 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 c.u.m veneratione prosequitur. Laeti tunc dies, festa loca, quaecunque 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 mortalium deam templo reddat: mox vehiculum et vestes, et si credere velis, numen ipsum secreto lacu abluitur. Servi ministrant, quos statim idem lacus haurit. Arca.n.u.s hinc terror, sanctaque ignorantia, quid sit id, quod perituri tantum vident."

Let us ask what we get from this pa.s.sage _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 wors.h.i.+pping a G.o.ddess 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 a.s.signed 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 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 circ.u.mstance 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 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 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 wors.h.i.+p 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 relations.h.i.+p, 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 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 a.s.sume 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 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 ill.u.s.trate 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 a.s.sumption 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 doc.u.ment 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 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 quae destinguit terras Havelliere scilicet et Muritz, eandem terram quoque Muritz et Vepero c.u.m terminis suis ad terram _Warnowe_ ex utraque parte fluminis quod Eldene dicitur usque ad castrum Grabow." Also--"distinguit tandem terram Moritz et Veprouwe c.u.m omnibus terminis suis ad terram quae _Warnowe_ vocatur, includens et terram _Warnowe_ c.u.m 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 archaeologist. 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 _insulae sacrae_, 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 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_ wors.h.i.+pped 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_ wors.h.i.+pped in Heligoland.

_b._ The probably Slavonic Varini wors.h.i.+pped in the Isle of Rugen.

_c._ The _holy island_ of Tacitus is that of the Angli--

_d._ With whom the _Varini_ are inaccurately a.s.sociated--

_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 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 cla.s.s. 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--

He with Ealhild, Faithful peace-weaver, For the first time, Of the _Hreth_-king Sought the home, _East of Ongle_, Of Eormenric, The fierce faith-breaker.

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 lat.i.tude 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 _Hraed_; 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 pa.s.sage:--

Eadwine I sought and Elsa, aegelmund and Hungar, And the proud host Of the With-Myrgings; Wulfhere I sought and Wyrnhere; Full oft war ceas'd not there, When the _Hraeds'_ army, With hard swords, About _Vistula's_ wood Had to defend Their ancient native seat Against the folk of aetla.

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 a.s.sociates 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 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--