The Ethnology of the British Islands Part 11

"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 Caesar'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 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 Ptolemaean 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 lat.i.tude is allowable.

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 a.s.sume 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_.

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_ 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 Suebus, and that of the Buguntae 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 Caesar. 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 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_--

"Mid _E_nglum ic waes, and mid Swaefum-- With _E_ngles I was, and with Sueves."--_Line_ 121.

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.

FOOTNOTES:

[15] Zeuss ad vv. _Rugiani_, _Warnabi_.

[16] From the "Germania of Tacitus with Ethnological Notes."

[17] As a general rule, I believe that the combination -_ing_, represents a German, the combination -_ign_ a Slavonic, word.

[18] In v. _Jutae_.

[19] See Chapter ix.

CHAPTER IX.

THE SAXONS--OF UPPER SAXONY--OF LOWER OR OLD SAXONY.-- NORDALBINGIANS.--SAXONS OF PTOLEMY.--PRESENT AND ANCIENT POPULATIONS OF SLESWICK-HOLSTEIN.--NORTH-FRISIANS.--PROBABLE ORIGIN OF THE NAME SAXON.--THE LITTUS SAXONIc.u.m.--SAXONES BAJOCa.s.sINI.

The ethnologist of England has to deal with a specific section of those numerous Germans, who, in different degrees of relations.h.i.+p 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-_s.e.x_, Sus-_s.e.x_, and Middle-_s.e.x_ 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-_s.e.x_, 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 Kingdom on the frontier of Bohemia, bear names so much alike as Sus-_s.e.x_ 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.

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 _indigenae_ 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 one whose sentiments indicate a Saxon origin, thus laments the degenerate state of his country:

"Generalis habet populos divisio ternos, Insignita quibus Saxonia floruit olim; Nomina nunc remanent virtus antiqua recessit.

Denique _Westfalos_ vocitant in parte manentes Occidua; quorum non longe terminus amne A Rheno distat? regionem solis ad ortum Inhabitant _Osterleudi_, quos nomine quidam _Ostvalos_ alii vocitant, confinia quorum Infestant conjuncta suis gens perfida Sclavi.

Inter predictos media regione morantur _Angarii_, populus Saxonum tertius; horum Patria Francorum terris sociatur ab Austro, Oceanoque eadem conjungitur ex Aquilone."

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-_s.e.x_, Es-_s.e.x_, and Middle-_s.e.x_?

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.