_THE GERMAN SIDE OF THE CONTINENTAL EVIDENCE._
I. THE GERMAN TRIBAL SYSTEM, AND ITS TENDENCY TOWARDS THE MANORIAL
SYSTEM.
«Cæsar's description of the German tribal system.»
The description given of the Germans by Cæsar is evidently that of a
people in the same tribal stage of economic development as the one
with which Irish and Welsh evidence has made us familiar.
'Their whole life is occupied in hunting and warlike
enterprise. . . . They do not apply much to agriculture, and
their food mostly consists of milk, cheese, and flesh. Nor has
anyone a fixed quantity of land or defined individual property,
but the magistrates and chiefs assign to tribes and families
who herd together, annually, and for one year's occupation, as
much land and in such place as they think fit, compelling them
the next year to move somewhere else.'[508]
He also alludes to the frailty of their houses,[509] another mark
of the tribal system in Wales, which [p337] indeed was a necessary
result of the yearly migration to fresh fields and pastures.
Now what were the tribes of Germans with whom Cæsar came most in
contact?
«The Suevi.»
His chief campaigns against the Germans were (1) against the _Suevi_,
who were crossing the Rhine north of the confluence with the Moselle,
and (2) against Ariovistus in the territory of the _Sequani_ at the
southern bend of the Rhine eastward. And it is remarkable that the
_Suevi_ were prominent again among the tribes enlisted in the army of
Ariovistus.[510] So that it is easy to see how the Suevi, coming into
close contact with Cæsar at both ends, came to be considered by him
as the most important of the German peoples.
He describes the _Suevi_ separately, and in terms which show over
again that they were still in the early tribal stage[511] in which an
annual shifting of holdings was practised. Indeed, their semi-nomadic
habits could not be shown better than by the inadvertently mentioned
facts that the Suevi who were crossing the Rhine to the north brought
their families with them; and that the Suevi and other tribes forming
the army of Ariovistus to the south had not had settled homes for
fourteen years,[512] but brought their families about with them in
waggons wherever they went, the waggons and women of each tribe being
placed behind the warriors when they were drawn up by tribes in
battle array.[513]
This statement of Cæsar that the Germans of his [p338] time were
still in the early tribal stage of economic development in which
there was an annual shifting of the households from place to place
needs no corroboration or explaining away after what has already been
seen going on under the Welsh and Irish tribal systems. The ease with
which tribal redistributions were made under the peculiar method of
clustering homesteads which prevailed in Wales and Ireland, makes the
statement of Cæsar perfectly probable.
* * * * *
But how was it 150 years later, when Tacitus wrote his celebrated
description of the Germans of his time?
«The 'Germania' of Tacitus.»
The 'Germania' was obviously written from a distinctly Roman point of
view.
The eye of the writer was struck with those points chiefly in which
German and Roman manners differed. The Romans of the well-to-do
classes lived in cities. City life was their usual life, and those
of them who had villas in the country, whilst sometimes having
residences for themselves upon them, as we have seen, cultivated them
most often by means of slave-labour under a _villicus_, but sometimes
by _coloni_.
«The scattered settlements of the free tribesmen.»
«The villages of their servile tenants.»
What struck Tacitus in the economy of the Germans (and by Germans
he obviously meant the _free tribesmen_, not their slaves) was that
they did _not_ live in cities like the Romans. 'They dwell' (he says)
'apart and scattered, as spring, or plain, or grove attracted their
fancy.'[514] Of whom is he speaking? Obviously of free tribesmen or
tribal households, _not of villagers or village communities_, for he
[p339] immediately afterwards, in the very next sentence, speaks of
the Germans as avoiding even in their villages (_vici_) what seemed
to him to be obviously the best mode of building, viz. in streets
with continuous roofs. 'Their villages' (he says) 'they build not in
our manner with connected and attached buildings. There is an open
space round every one's house.' And this he attributes not to their
fancy for one situation or another, as in the first case, but 'either
to fear of fire or ignorance of how to build.'[515]
It is obvious, therefore, that the Germans who chose to live
scattered about the country sides, as spring, plain or grove
attracted them, were not the villagers who had spaces round their
houses. We are left to conclude that the first class were the chiefs
and free tribesmen, who, now having become settled for a time,
were, in a very loose sense, the _landowners_, while the latter,
the villagers, must chiefly have been their servile dependants.
And this inference is confirmed when Tacitus comes to the second
point and tells us that the _servi_ of the Germans differed greatly
from those of the Romans. There were some slaves bought and sold in
the market, and free men sometimes sank into slavery as the result
of war or gambling ventures; but in a general way (he says) their
slaves were not included in the tribesmen's households or employed in
household service, but each family of slaves had a separate [p340]
homestead.[516] They had also separate crops and cattle; for 'the
lord (_dominus_) requires from the slave a certain quantity of corn,
cattle, or material for clothing, as in the case of _coloni_. To this
modified extent (Tacitus says) the German _servus_ is a slave. The
wife and children of the free tribesman do the household work of his
house, not slaves as in the Roman households.'
Clearly, then, the _vicus_--the _village_--on the land of the
tribesman who was their lord, was inhabited by these _servi_, who,
like Roman _coloni_, had their own homesteads and cattle and crops,
and rendered to their lord part of their produce by way of tribute or
food-rent.
The lords--the tribesmen--themselves (as Tacitus elsewhere remarks)
preferred fighting and hunting to agriculture, and left the
management of the latter to the women and weaker members of the
family.[517]
«A later tribal stage than Cæsar described.»
«Division among heirs.»
Now, if we could be sure that the tribal homestead was a permanent
possession, and that the village of serfs around it had a single
tribesman for its lord, the settlement would practically be to all
intents and purposes a _heim_ or _manor_ with a village in serfdom
upon it. It was evidently in a real sense the tribesman's separate
possession, for, after speaking of blood relationships which bind the
German tribesman's family and home most strongly together, Tacitus
adds, 'Everyone's children are his heirs and successors [p341]
without his making a will; and if there be no children, the grades of
succession are brothers, paternal uncles, maternal uncles.'[518]
But then this was also the case in Wales and Ireland. There was
division among male heirs of the family land. And yet this family
land was not a freehold permanent estate so long as a periodical
redistribution of the tribe land might shift it over to someone else.
«The embryo manor.»
The embryo manor of the German tribesman, with its village of serfs
upon it, might therefore, if the same practice prevailed, differ in
three ways from the later manor. It might become the possession of
a tribal household instead of a single lord; and also it possibly
might, on a sudden redistribution of the tribal land, fall into
the possession of another tribesman or tribal household, though
perhaps this is not very likely often to have happened. Finally,
it might become subdivided when the time came for the unity of the
tribal household to be broken up as it was in Wales after the final
redivision among second cousins.
It must be remembered that land in the tribal stages of economic
progress was the least stable and the least regarded of possessions.
A tribesman's property consisted of his cattle and his serfs. These
were his permanent family wealth, and he was rich or poor as he had
more or less of them. So long as the tribe land was plentiful, he as
the head of a tribal household took his proper share according to
tribal rank; and so long as periodical redistributions took place,
even when the tribal household finally was [p342] broken up, room
would be found for the new tribal households on the tribal land. But
when at last the limits of the land became too narrow for the tribe,
a portion of the tribesmen would swarm off to seek new homes in a new
country. Frequent migrations were, therefore, at once the proofs of
pressure of population and the safety-valve of the system.
«Fresh settlements.»
The emigrating tribesmen in their new home would form themselves into
a new sept or tribe, take possession of fresh tracts of unoccupied
land, and perhaps, if land were plentiful, wander about for a time
from place to place as pasture for their cattle might tempt them.
Then at last they would settle: each tribesman would select his site
by plain, wood or stream, as it pleased him. He would erect his stake
and wattle tribal house, and daub it over with clay[519] to keep out
the weather. He would put up his rough outbuildings and fence in his
corn and cattle yard. Round this tribal homestead the still rougher
homesteads of his serfs, each with its yard around it, would soon
form a straggling village, and the likeness to the embryo manor would
once more appear.
«The celebrated passage of Tacitus describing German
agriculture.»
Indeed, when we turn to the famous passage in which the German
settlements and their internal economy are described, the words
used by Tacitus seem in themselves to indicate that he had in his
eye precisely this process which the example of the Welsh and Irish
tribal systems has helped to make intelligible to us. Tracts of
country (_agri_), he says, are '_taken possession of_' (_occupantur_)
by a body of tribesmen (_ab universis_) who are apparently seeking
new [p343] homes; and then the _agri_ are presently divided among
them.
This passage, so often and so variously construed and interpreted, is
as follows:--
'Agri pro numero cultorum ab universis vicis [or _in_ or _per
vices_][520] occupantur, quos mox inter se secundum dignationem
partiuntur: facilitatem partiendi camporum spatia præstant.
'Arva per annos mutant, et superest ager: nec enim cum
ubertate et amplitudine soli labore contendunt, ut pomaria
conserant et prata separent et hortos rigent: sola terræ seges
imperatur.'[521]
It is unfortunate that the first few lines of this passage are
made ambiguous by an error in the texts. If the true reading be,
as many modern German critics now hold, '_ab universis vicis_'--by
all the _vici_ together, or by the whole community in _vici_--there
still must remain the doubt whether the word _vicus_ should not
be considered rather as the equivalent of the Welsh _trev_ than
of the modern _village_. The Welsh 'trev' was, as we have seen, a
subordinate cluster of scattered households. Tacitus himself probably
uses the word in this sense in the passage where he describes the
choice of the chiefs, or head men (_principes_) 'qui jura per pagos
_vicos_que reddunt.'[522] The _vicus_ is here evidently a smaller
tribal subdivision of the _pagus_, just as the Welsh _trev_ was
of the '_cymwd_,' and not necessarily a village in the modern
sense.[523] [p344]
«Fresh _agri_ taken possession of and divided under tribal
rules.»
If, on the other hand, the true reading be '_ab universis in_,' or
'_per, vices_' or '_invicem_,' the meaning probably is that fresh
tracts of land (_agri_) are one after another taken possession of by
the tribal community when it moves to a new district or requires more
room as its numbers increase.
The new _agri_, the passage goes on to say, are soon divided among
the tribesmen or the _trevs_, '_secundum dignationem_,' according to
the tribal rules, the great extent of the open country and absence of
limits making the division easy, just as it was in the instance of
Abraham and Lot.
«The agriculture is a co-aration of fresh portions of the
waste each year.»
In any case it is impossible to suppose that Tacitus meant by the
words _in vices_ or _invicem_, if he used them, that there was
any _annual_ shifting of the tribe from one locality to another,
for it is obvious that the very next words absolutely exclude the
possibility of an annual movement such as that described by Cæsar.
'_Arva per annos mutant et superest ager._' They change their _arva_
or ploughed land yearly, _i.e._, they plough up fresh portions of
the _ager_ or grass land every year, and there is always plenty left
over which has never been ploughed.[524] Nothing could describe more
clearly what is mentioned in the Welsh triads as '_co-aration of the
waste_.' The tribesmen have their scattered homesteads surrounded by
the lesser homesteads of their 'servi.' And the latter join in the
co-tillage of such part of the grass land as year by year is chosen
for the corn crops, while the cattle wander over the rest. [p345]
This seems to have been the simple form of the open field husbandry
of the Germans of Tacitus.
And this is sufficient for the present purpose; for whichever way
this passage be read, it does not modify the force of the previous
passages, which show how manorial were the lines upon which the
German tribal system was moving even in this early and still tribal
stage of its economic development, owing chiefly to the possession
of serfs by the tribesmen. It gives us further a clear landmark as
regards the use by the Germans of the open-field system of ploughing.
Tacitus describes a husbandry in the stage of 'co-aration of the
waste.' It has not yet developed into a fixed _three-course_ rotation
of crops, pursued over and over again permanently on the same arable
area, as in 'the three-field system' afterwards so prevalent in
Germany and England.
«The tendency of the German tribal system unlike the Welsh
towards the manor.»
These are important points to have gained, but the most important one
is that, notwithstanding the strong resemblances between the Welsh
and German tribal arrangements, there was this distinct difference
between them. The two tribal systems were not working themselves out,
so to speak, on the same lines. The Welsh system, in its economic
development, was not directly approaching the manorial arrangement
except perhaps on the mensal land of the chiefs. The Welsh tribesmen
had as a rule no servile tenants under them. The _taeogs_ were mostly
the _taeogs_ of the chiefs, not of the tribesmen. Thus, as we have
seen, when the conquest of Wales was completed, the tribesmen of the
till then unconquered districts became freeholders under the Prince
of Wales, and with no _mesne_ lord over them. The taeogs [p346]
became taeogs of the Prince of Wales and not of local landowners. So
that the manor did not arise. But even in the time of Tacitus the
German tribesmen seem to have already become practically manorial
lords over their own _servi_, who were already so nearly in the
position of serfs on their estates that Tacitus described them as
'_like coloni_.'
«The German and Roman elements easily combined to make the
manor.»
The manor--in embryo--was, in fact, already in course of development.
The German economic system was, to say the very least, working itself
out on lines so nearly parallel to those of the Roman manorial system
that we cannot wonder at the silent ease with which before and after
the conquest of Roman provinces, German chieftains became lords of
villas and manors. The two systems, Roman and German, may well have
easily combined in producing the later manorial system which grew up
in the Roman provinces of Gaul and the two Germanies.
II. THE TRIBAL HOUSEHOLDS OF GERMAN SETTLERS.
Now, if we were to rely upon this evidence of Tacitus alone, the
conclusion would be inevitable that the German and Roman land-systems
were so nearly alike in their tendencies that they naturally and
simply joined in producing the manorial system of later times. And
there can be little doubt that, speaking broadly, this would be a
substantially correct statement of the case.
«Were there other kinds of settlements not so manorial?»
But before we can fairly and finally accept it as such, it is
necessary to consider another branch of evidence which has sometimes
been understood to point to a kind of settlement _not manorial_.
[p347]
«The patronymic suffix _ing_ or _ingas_ to local names.»
The evidence alluded to is that of _local names_ ending in the
remarkable suffix _ing_ or _ingas_. It is needful to examine this
evidence, notwithstanding its difficult and doubtful nature. It
raises a question upon which the last word has by no means yet been
spoken, and out of which interesting and important results may
eventually spring. The impossibility of arriving, in the present
state of the evidence, at a positive conclusion, is no reason why its
apparent bearing should not be stated, provided that suggestion and
hypothesis be not confounded with verified fact. At all events, the
inquiry pursued in this essay would be open to the charge of being
one-sided if it were not alluded to.
«Do they represent clan settlements?»
The reader of recent literature bearing upon the history of the
English conquest of Britain will have been struck by the confidence
and skill with which, in the absence of historical, or even, in some
cases, traditional evidence, the story of the invasion and occupation
of England has been sometimes created out of little more than the
combination of physical geography with local names, on the hypothesis
that local names ending in '_ing_,' or its plural form '_ingas_,'
represent the original _clan settlements_ of the German conquerors.
Writers who rely upon G. L. Von Maurer's theory of the German
_mark-system_ have also naturally called attention to local names
with this suffix as evidence of settlements on the basis of the _free
village community_ as opposed to those of a manorial type.
Local names with this suffix, it is hardly needful to say, are found
on the Continent as well as in England. [p348]
How, it may well be asked, does the evidence they afford of _clan
settlements_ or _free village communities_ comport with the
thoroughly manorial character of the German settlements on the lines
described by Tacitus?
«What Germans did Tacitus describe?»
Now, in order to answer this question, it must first be considered
how far the description of Tacitus covers the whole field--whether it
refers to the Germans as a whole, or whether only to those tribes who
had come within Roman influences, and so had sooner, perhaps, than
the rest, relinquished their earlier tribal habits to follow manorial
lines.
So far as his description is geographical it is very methodical.
«Those within the _limes_.»
(1) There are the Germans _within_ the Roman _limes_.[525] These
included the tribes who, following up the conquests of Ariovistus,
had settled on the left bank of the Rhine in what was then called
the province of Upper Germany, including the present Elsass and the
country round the confluence of the Rhine with the Maine and Moselle.
These tribes were the Tribocci, Nemetes and Vangiones.[526] Further,
there were the tribes or emigrants, many of them German, gradually
settling within the limits of the 'Agri Decumates.' Lastly, there
were the _Batavi_ and other tribes settled in the province of Lower
Germany at the mouths of the Rhine, shading off into Belgic Gaul.
«Northern tribes outside it.»
(2) There were the Northern tribes _outside_ the Roman province,[527]
some of them tributary to the [p349] Romans and some of them
hostile, the _Frisii_, the _Chatti_ (or Hessians), and other tribes,
reaching from the German Ocean to the mountains, and occupying the
country embracing the upper valleys of the Weser and the Elbe, some
of which tribes afterwards joined the Franks and Saxons.
«The _Suevic_ tribes on the borders.»
(3) There were the _Suevic_ tribes[528] so familiar to Cæsar, and
amongst whom were the _Angli_ and _Varini_, the _Marcomanni_ and
_Hermunduri_, always hovering over the _limes_ of the provinces from
the Rhine and Maine to the Danube: some of them hostile and some
of them friendly; some of whom afterwards mingled with the Franks
and Saxons, but most of whom were absorbed in the Alamannic and the
Bavarian tribes who finally, following the course of the previous
emigration, passed over the _limes_ and settled within the 'Agri
Decumates' in Rhætia, and in the Roman province of Upper Germany.
«Distant tribes.»
(4) Behind all these tribes with whom the Romans came in contact were
others vaguely described as lying far away to the north and east.
The habits of _which_ of these widely different classes of German
tribes did Tacitus describe?
«The _Suevic_ tribes most in his mind probably.»
Probably it would not be safe to go further than to say that the
Germans whose manners he was most _likely_ to describe were those
chiefly _Suevic_ tribes hovering round the _limes_ of the provinces,
especially of the 'Agri Decumates,' with whom the Romans had most
to do. It is at least possible that he left out of his picture, on
the one hand, those distant northern or eastern tribes who may still
have retained their early nomadic habits, and on the other hand those
[p350] Germans who had silently and peaceably settled within the
_limes_ of the Roman provinces, and so had become half Roman.[529]
But to what class are we to refer the settlements represented by the
local names with the supposed patronymic suffix?
«The patronymic local names imply fixed _settlement_.»
The previous study of the Welsh and Irish tribal system ought to help
us to judge what they were.
In the first place we have clearly learned that in tracing the
connexion of the tribal system with local names, the fixing of a
particular personal name to a locality implies _settlement_. It
implies not only a departure from the old nomadic habits on the
part of the whole tribe, but also the absence within the territory
of the tribe of those redistributions of the tribesmen among
the homesteads--the shifting of families from one homestead to
another--which prevailed apparently in Wales and certainly in Ireland
to so late a date.
Following the parallel experience of the Irish and Welsh tribal
system we may certainly conclude that in the early semi-nomadic and
shifting tribal stage described by Cæsar the names of places, like
those of the Irish townlands, would follow local peculiarities of
wood or stream or plain, and that not until there was a permanent
settlement of particular families in fixed abodes could personal
names attach themselves to places, or suffixes be used which in
themselves involve the idea of a fixed abode.
«They are suggestive of the _tribal household_.»
Then with regard to the nature of the tribal settlements which these
local names with a patronymic [p351] suffix may represent, surely
the actual evidence of the Welsh laws and the 'Record of Carnarvon,'
as to what a _tribal household_ was, must be far more likely to
guide us to the truth than any theoretical view of the 'village
community' under the German mark-system, or even actual examples of
village communities existing under complex and totally different
circumstances at the present time, valuable as such examples may be
as evidence of how the descendants of tribesmen comport themselves
after perhaps centuries of settlement on the same ground.
«The joint holding of a family down to second cousins.»
Now we have seen that the tribal household in Wales was the
joint holding of the heirs of a common ancestor from the
_great-grandfather_ downwards, with redistributions within it to
make equality, first between brothers, then between cousins, and
finally between second cousins; the youngest son always retaining the
original homestead in these divisions. The _Weles_, _Gwelys_, and
_Gavells_ of the 'Record of Carnarvon' were late examples of such
holdings. They were named after the common ancestor and occupied
by his heirs. Such holdings, so soon as there was fixed settlement
in the homesteads, were obviously in the economic stage in which,
according to German usage, the name of the original holders with the
patronymic suffix might well become permanently attached to them.[530]
«The division, the youngest retaining the family homestead.»
We may then, following the Welsh example, fairly expect the
distinctive marks of the tribal household to be joint holding for
two or three _generations_, and then the _ultimate division of the
holding among male heirs_, the _youngest retaining the original
ancestral homestead_. [p352]
We know how persistently the division among male heirs was adhered to
in Wales and in Ireland under the custom of Gavelkind,[531] though
of the peculiar right of the youngest son to the original homestead
we have no clear trace in Ireland. Possibly St. Patrick was strong
enough to reverse in this instance a strong tribal custom. But in
Wales the succession of the youngest was, as we have seen, so deeply
ingrained in the habits of the people that it was observed even among
the _taeogs_. The elder sons received _tyddyns_ of their own in the
_taeog trev_ in their father's lifetime, whilst the youngest son
remained in his father's tyddyn, and on his death succeeded to it.
The persistence in division among heirs and the right of the youngest
were very likely therefore to linger as survivals of the tribal
household.
«Survival of this equal division and _the right of the
youngest_.»
Now it is well known that in the south-east of England, and
especially in Kent, the custom of Gavelkind has continued to the
present day, retaining the division among male heirs and historical
traces of the right of the youngest son to the original homestead.
In other districts of England and in many parts of Europe and Asia
the division among heirs has passed away, but the right of the
youngest--_Jüngsten-Recht_--has survived.
Mr. Elton, in his '_Origins of English History_,' has carefully
described the geographical distribution in Western Europe of the
practice, not so much of _division among heirs_, as of the _right of
the youngest_ to [p353] inherit the _original homestead_, the latter
having survived in many districts where the other has not.
«In Wales and S.E. England--the old 'Saxon shore.'»
In England he finds the right of the youngest most prevalent in the
south-east counties--in Kent, Sussex, and Surrey, in a ring of manors
round London, and to a less extent in Essex and the East Anglian
kingdom,--_i.e._ as Mr. Elton describes it, in a district about
co-extensive with what in Roman times was known as the _Saxon shore_.
A few examples occur in Hampshire, and there is a wide district where
the right of the youngest survives in Somersetshire, which formed for
so long a part of what the Saxons called '_Wealcyn_.'[532]
Further, as the custom is found to apply to copyhold or semi-servile
holdings, it would not be an impossible conjecture that previously
existing original tribal households were, at some period, upon
conquest, reduced into serfs, the division of the holdings among
heirs being at the same time stopped, so as to keep the holdings
in equal 'yokes,' or 'yard-lands,' thus leaving the right of the
youngest as the only point of the pre-existing tribal custom
permitted to survive.
«Survival of the 'right of the youngest' on the Continent.»
A similar process, perhaps in connexion with the Frankish conquest
of parts of Germany, possibly had been gone through in many
continental districts. Mr. Elton traces the right of the youngest
in the north-east corner of France and in Brabant, in Friesland, in
Westphalia, in Silesia, in Wirtemberg, in the Odenwald and district
north of Lake Constance, in Suabia, in Elsass, in the Grisons. It is
found also in [p354] the island of Borneholm, though it seems to be
absent in Denmark and on the Scandinavian mainland.[533]
Attention has been called to this curious survival of the right of
the youngest because it forms a possible link between the Welsh,
English, and continental systems of settlements in tribal households.
* * * * *
We now pass to the more direct consideration of the local names with
the supposed patronymic suffix.
«Wide extension and meaning of the patronymic suffix 'ing,' &c.»
These peculiar local names are scattered over a wide area; the suffix
varying from the English _ing_ with its plural '_ingas_,' the German
_ing_ or _ung_ with its plural _ingas_, _ingen_, _ungen_, _ungun_,
and the French '_ign_' or _igny_, to the Swiss[534] equivalent
_ikon_, the Bohemian _ici_,[535] and the wider Slavonic _itz_ or
_witz_.
It seems to be clear that the termination _ing_, in its older plural
form _ingas_, in Anglo-Saxon, not by any means always,[536] but still
in a large number of cases, had a _patronymic_ significance.
We have the evidence of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle itself that if
_Baldo_ were the name of the parent, his children or heirs would in
Anglo-Saxon be called _Baldings_[537] (Baldingas).
There is also evidence that the oldest historical form of settlement
in Bohemian and Slavic districts [p355] was in the tribal or joint
household--the undivided family sometimes for many generations
herding together in the same homestead (_dĕdiny_).[538]
And the number of local names ending in _ici_, or _owici_, changing
in later times into _itz_ and _witz_, taken together with the
late prevalence of the undivided household in these semi-Slavonic
regions, so far as it goes, confirms the connexion of the patronymic
termination with the holding of the co-heirs of an original
holder.[539]
The geographical distribution of local names with the patronymic
termination is shown on the same map as that on which were marked the
position of the 'hams' and 'heims.'
«In England.»
First, as regards England, the map will show that in the distribution
of places mentioned in the Domesday survey ending in _ing_, the
largest proportion occurs east of a line drawn from the Wash to the
Isle of Wight: just as in the case of the 'hams,' only that in Sussex
the greatest number of 'ings' occurs instead of in Essex.
It is worthy of notice that names ending in _ingham_ or _ington_ are
not confined so closely to this district, but are spread much more
evenly all over England.[540] Further, it will be observed that the
counties where the names ending in _ing_ occur without a suffix are
remarkably coincident with those where Mr. Elton has found survivals
of the _right of the youngest_, _i.e._ the old 'Saxon shore.' [p356]
«In Picardy.»
Next, as to the opposite coast of _Picardy_, the _ings_ and _hems_
are alike, for very nearly all the _hems_ in the Survey of the Abbey
of St. Bertin of A.D. 850 are preceded by _ing_, _i.e._ they are
_inghems_. The proportion was found to be sixty per cent.[541] In
this north-east corner of France the right of the youngest, as we
have seen, also survives.
«In the Moselle valley and round Troyes and Langres.»
There are also many patronymic names of places in the Moselle valley
and in Champagne around Troyes and Langres.[542]
«In Frisia.»
Next, as to _Frisia_, eight per cent. of the names mentioned in
the Fulda records end in '_inga_,' two and a half per cent. in
_ingaheim_, and three per cent. in _ing_ with some other suffix,
making thirteen and a half per cent. in all. In Friesland also there
are survivals of the _right of the youngest_.
«In Germany most densely in the old Roman provinces of the
'Agri Decumates.'»
Over North Germany, outside the Roman _limes_, the proportion is much
less, shading off in the Fulda records from six to three, two, and
one per cent.
But the greatest proportion occurs within the Roman _limes_ in the
valleys of the Neckar and the Upper Danube, where (according to the
Fulda records) it rises to from twenty to twenty-four per cent.,[543]
shading off to ten per cent. towards the Maine, and in the present
Elsass, and to nine per cent. southwards in the neighbourhood of St.
Gall.[544] [p357]
This chief home of the 'ings' was the western part of the district
of the 'Agri Decumates' of Tacitus and the northern province of
Rhætia, gradually occupied by the Alamannic and Bavarian tribes in
the later centuries of Roman rule.
Whether they entered these districts under cover of the Roman peace,
or as conquerors to disturb it, the founders of the 'ings' evidently
came from German mountains and forests beyond the _limes_.
«North of the _limes_ chiefly in Grapfeld and Thuringia.»
North of the Danube names with this suffix extend chiefly through
the region of the old Hermunduri into the district of Grapfeld and
Thuringia, where they were in the Fulda records six per cent.
This remarkable geographical distribution in Germany suggests
important inferences.
«They suggest settlements»
(1) The attachment of the personal patronymic to the name of a
particular locality implies in Germany no less than in Ireland
and Wales a permanent settlement in that locality, and so far
an abandonment of nomadic habits and even of the frequent
redistributions and shifting of residences within the tribal
territory.
«within Roman provinces,»
(2) The occurrence of these patronymic local names most thickly
_within the Roman limes_ and near to it, points to the fact that the
Roman rule was the outside influence which compelled the abandonment
of the semi-nomadic and the adoption of the settled form of life.
«possibly manorial.»
(3) The addition in some cases--most often in Flanders and in
England, which were both Roman [p358] provinces--of the suffix
_ham_ to the patronymic local name, although most probably a _later_
addition, and possibly the result of conquest, at least reminds us
of the possibility already noticed that even a _villa_ or _ham_ or
manor, with a servile population upon it, might be the possession of
a tribal household, who thus might be the lords of a manorial estate.
«Offshoots from Suevic tribes who became Alamanni.»
(4) Considering the geographical distribution of the patronymic
termination, beginning in Thuringia and Grapfeld, but becoming most
numerous in Rhætia and the 'Agri Decumates,' it is almost impossible
to avoid the inference that it is in most cases connected with
settlements in these Roman districts of offshoots from the old Suevic
tribe of the Hermunduri--viz. _Thuringi_, _Juthungi_, and others who,
settling in these districts during Roman rule, became afterwards lost
in the later and greater group of the _Alamanni_.
«Forced settlement of Alamanni in Belgic Gaul,»
«and possibly in England.»
This inference might possibly be confirmed by the fact that the
isolated clusters of names ending in 'ing' on the west of the Rhine,
correspond in many instances with the districts into which we happen
to know that forced colonies of families of these and other German
tribes had been located after the termination of the Alamannic wars
of Probus, Maximian, and Constantius Clorus. These colonies of
_læti_ were planted, as we have seen, in the valley of the Moselle,
and the names of places ending in 'ing' are numerous there to this
day. They were planted in the district of the Tricassi round Troyes
and Langres, and here again there are numerous patronymic names.
They were planted in the district of the Nervii round Amiens close
to the cluster of names ending in 'ingahem,' so many of which in
the ninth century are [p359] found to belong to the Abbey of St.
Bertin. Lastly--and this is a point of special interest for the
present inquiry--we know that similar deportations of tribesmen of
the Alamannic group were repeatedly made into Britain, and thus the
question arises whether the places ending in 'ing' in England may not
also mark the sites of peaceable or forced settlements of Germans
under Roman rule.
They lie, as we have seen, chiefly within the district of the Saxon
shore, _i.e._ east of a line between the Wash and the Isle of Wight,
just as was the case also with the survivals of the _right of the
youngest_.
If evidence had happened to have come to hand of a similar
deportation of Alamannic Germans into Frisia instead of Frisians into
Gaul, the coincidence would be still more complete.
«Such settlements naturally in tribal households without
slaves.»
The suggestion is very precarious. Still, it might be asked, where
should clusters of tribal households of Germans resembling the Welsh
_Weles_ and _Gavells_ be more likely to perpetuate their character
and resist for a time manorial tendencies than in these cases of
peaceable or forced emigration into Roman provinces? Who would
be more likely to do so than troublesome septs (like that of the
Cumberland '_Grames_' in the days of James I.) deported bodily to a
strange country, and settled, probably not on private estates, but on
previously depopulated public land, without slaves, and without the
possibility of acquiring them by making raids upon other tribes?
«Not necessarily Alamannic.»
Now, according to Professor Wilhelm Arnold, the German writer who
has recently given the closest attention to these local names, the
patronymic suffix [p360] 'ingen' is one of the distinctive marks
of settlements of Alamannic and Bavarian tribes, and denotes that
the districts wherein it is found have at some time or another been
conquered or occupied by them. The _heims_, on the other hand, in
this writer's view, are in the same way indicative of Frankish
settlements.[545]
The view of so accurate and laborious a student must be regarded as
of great authority. But the foregoing inquiry has led in both cases
to a somewhat different suggestion as to their meaning. The suffix
_heim_ is Anglo-Saxon as well as Frankish, and translating itself
into villa and manor seems to represent a settlement or estate most
often of the manorial type. So that it seems likely, that whatever
German tribes at whatever time came over into the Roman province and
usurped the lordship of existing villas, or adopted the Roman villa
as the type of their settlements, would probably have called them
either _weilers_ or _heims_ according to whether they used the Roman
or the German word for the same thing.
And in the same way it also seems likely, that _whatever tribes_,
at _whatever time_, by their own choice or by forced colonisation,
settled in _house communities of tribesmen with or without a servile
population under them_, would be passing through the stage in which
they might naturally call their settlements or [p361] homesteads
after their own names, using the patronymic suffix _ing_.
It is undoubtedly difficult to obtain any clear indication of the
_time_[546] when these settlements may have been made. Nor, perhaps,
need they be referred generally to the same period, were it not for
the remarkable fact that the _personal names_ prefixed to the suffix
in England, Flanders, the Moselle valley, round Troyes and Langres,
in the old _Agri Decumates_ (now Wirtemburg), and in the old Rhætia
(now Bavaria), and even those in Frisia, were to a very large extent
_identical_.
«The names are not _clan_ names, but personal names.»
«But the identity of the names throughout is very
remarkable.»
This identity is so striking, that if the names were, as some have
supposed, necessarily _clan-names_, it might be impossible to deny
that the English and continental districts were peopled actually by
branches of the same _clans_. But it must be admitted that, as the
names to [p362] which the peculiar suffix was added were _personal_
names and not family or clan names--_John_ and _Thomas_, and not
_Smith_ and _Jones_--it would not be safe to press the inference from
the similarity too far. _Baldo_ was the name of a person. There may
have been persons of that name in every tribe in Germany. The Baldo
of one tribe need not be closely related to the Baldo of another
tribe, any more than _John Smith_ need be related to _John Jones_.
The households of each Baldo would be called _Baldings_, or in the
old form _Baldingas_; but obviously the Baldings of England need have
no clan-relationship whatever to the Baldings of Upper Germany.[547]
Nevertheless, the striking similarity of mere personal names goes for
something, and it is impossible to pass it by unnoticed. The extent
of it may be shown by a few examples.
In the following list are placed _all_ the local names mentioned in
the Domesday Survey of _Sussex_, beginning with the first two letters
of the alphabet in which the peculiar suffix occurs, whether as final
or not,[548] and opposite to them similar personal or local [p363]
names taken from the early records of _Wirtemberg_, _i.e._ the
district of the Rhine, Maine, and Neckar, formerly part of the 'Agri
Decumates.'
«In Sussex.»
_Sussex._ _Wirtemberg._
Achingeworde Acco, Echo, Eccho, Achelm
Aldingeborne Aldingas
Babintone Babinberch, Babenhausen, Bebingon
Basingeham Besigheim
Bechingetone Bechingen
Beddingesjham Bedzingeswilaeri
Belingeham Bellingon, Böllingerhof
Berchinges Bercheim
Bevringetone
Bollintun Bollo, Bollinga
Botingelle Böttinger
Brislinga Brisgau
«In Picardy.»
As regards the supposed patronymic names in the district between
Calais and St. Omer, Mr. Taylor states that 80 per cent. are found
also in England.[549]
«In the Moselle valley.»
We may take as a further example the resemblance between names of
places occurring in Sprüner's maps of '_Deutschlands Gaue_' in the
Moselle valley and those of places and persons mentioned in early
Wirtemberg charters.
_Moselle Valley._ _Wirtemberg._
Beringa Beringerus
Eslingis Esslingen
Frisingen Frieso, Frisingen
Gundredingen Gundrud
Heminingsthal Hemminbah
Holdingen Holda
Hasmaringa Hasmaresheim
Lukesinga Lucas, Lucilunburch [p364]
Munderchinga Mundricheshuntun, Munderkingen
Ottringas Oteric, Otrik
Putilinga Pettili, Pertilo
Uffeninga Ufeninga
Uttingon Uto, Uttinuuilare
«In Champagne.»
The following coincidences[550] occur in the modern Champagne, which
embraces another district into which forced emigrants were deported.
_Champagne._ _England._ _Wirtemberg._
Autigny Edington Eutingen
Effincourt Effingham Oeffingen
Euffigneux Uffington Offingen
Alincourt Allington --
Arrigne Arrington Erringhausen
Orbigny Orpington Erpfingen
Attigny Attington Atting
Etigny Ettinghall Oettinger
Bocquegney Buckingham Böchingen
Bettigny Beddington Böttingen
And so on in about forty cases.
A comparison of the fifteen similar names in _Frisia_ occurring in
the Fulda records, with other similar names of places or persons in
_England_ and _Wirtemberg_, gives an equally clear result.
«In Frisia.»
_Frisia._[551] _Wirtemberg._[552] _England._
Auinge Au, Auenhofen Avington (Berks and Hants)
Baltratingen Baldhart, Baldingen Beltings (Kent)
Belinge Bellingon Bellingdon, Bellings (Several
counties)
Bottinge Böttingen Boddington (Gloucester,
Northampton)
Creslinge Creglingen, Cressing (Essex),
Chrezzingen Cressingham (Norfolk)
Gandingen ──── ────
Gutinge ──── Guyting (Gloucester),
Getingas (Surrey)
Hustinga ──── ────
Huchingen Huchiheim, Hucking (Kent)
Huc = Hugo
Husdingun ──── ────
Rochinge Roingus, Rohinc Rockingham (Notts)
Suettenge Suittes, Suitger ────
Wacheringe Uuachar Wakering (Essex)
Wasginge Uuassingun Washington (Sussex)
Weingi Wehingen ────
«The inferences to be drawn from the similarity.»
It is impossible to follow out in greater detail these remarkable
resemblances between the personal names which appear with a
patronymic suffix in the local names in England and Frisia, and
certain well-defined districts west of the Rhine, and the local and
personal names mentioned in the Wirtemberg charters. The foregoing
instances must not be regarded as more than examples. And for the
reasons already given it would also be unwise to build too much
upon this evident similarity in the personal names, but still it
should be remembered that the facts to be accounted for are--(1) The
concentration of these places with names having a supposed patronymic
termination in certain defined districts mostly within the old Roman
provinces. (2) The practical identity throughout all these districts
of so many of the personal names to which this suffix is attached.
The first fact points to these settlements in tribal households
having taken place by peaceable or forcible emigration during Roman
rule, or very soon after, at all events _at about the same period_.
The second fact points to the practical homogeneity of the German
tribes, whose emigrants founded the settlements which [p366] in
England, Flanders, around Troyes and Langres, on the Moselle, in
Wirtemberg, in Bavaria, and also in Frisia, bear the common suffix to
their names.
The facts already mentioned of the survival _to a great extent in
the same districts_, strikingly so in England, of the _right of the
youngest_, and in Kent of the original form of the local custom of
Gavelkind, point in the same direction.
Taking all these things together, we may at least regard the economic
problem involved in them as one deserving closer attention than has
yet been given to it.
«The settlements in tribal households may have been manors.»
In conclusion, turning back to the direct relation of these facts to
the process of transition of the German tribal system into the later
manorial system, it must be remembered that the holdings of tribal
households might quite possibly be, from the first, embryo manors
with serfs upon them. They might be settlements precisely like those
described by Tacitus, the lordship of which had become the joint
inheritance of the heirs of the founder. As a matter of fact, the
actual settlements in question had at all events become manors before
the dates of the earliest documents. We have seen, _e.g._, that
the villas belonging to the monks of St. Bertin, with their almost
invariable suffix 'ingahem,' were manors from the time of the first
records in the seventh century, and they may never have been anything
else. We have seen that in the year 645 the founder of the abbey gave
to the monks his villa called _Sitdiu_, and its twelve dependent
villas (_Tatinga villa_, afterwards _Tatingahem_, among them)[553]
with the slaves and coloni upon them. They seem to [p367] have been,
in fact, so many manorial farms just like those which, as we learned
from Gregory of Tours, _Chrodinus_ in the previous century founded
and handed over to the Church.
«They at least ultimately became manorial.»
We have not found, therefore, in this inquiry into the character of
the settlements with local names ending in the supposed patronymic
suffix, doubtful as its result has proved, anything which conflicts
with the general conclusion to which we were brought by the manorial
character of the Roman villa and the manorial tendency of the German
tribal system as described by Tacitus, viz. that as a general rule
the German settlements made upon the conquest of what had once been
Roman provinces were of a strictly manorial type. If the settlements
with names ending in _ing_ were settlements of _læti_ or of other
emigrants during Roman rule, taking at first the form of tribal
households, they at least became manors like the rest during or very
soon after the German conquests. If, on the other hand, they were
later settlements of the conquerors of the Roman provinces, or of
emigrants following in the wake of the conquests, they none the less
on that account soon became just as manorial as those Roman villas
which by a change of lordship and translation of words may have
become German _heims_ or Anglo-Saxon _hams_.
It is certainly possible that during a short period, especially if
they held no serfs or slaves, tribal households may have expanded
into free village communities. But to infer from the existence of
patronymic local names that German emigration at all generally took
the form of free village communities would surely not be consistent
with the evidence.
FOOTNOTES:
[508] _De Bello Gallico_, lib. vi. c. 21 and 22. 'Neque quisquam agri
modum certum aut fines habet proprios, sed magistratus ac principes
in annos singulos gentibus cognationibusque hominum, qui una
coierunt, quantum eis et quo loco visum est agri attribuunt, atque
anno post alio transire cogunt.'
[509] _Id._ lib. vi. c. 22.
[510] _De Bello Gallico_, lib. i. c. 51.
[511] _Id._ lib. iv. c. 1. 'Sed privati ac separati agri apud eos
nihil est, neque longius anno remanere uno in loco incolendi causa
licet.'
[512] _Id._ lib. i. c. 36.
[513] _Id._ lib. i. c. 51.
[514] 'Colunt discreti ac diversi, ut fons, ut campus, ut nemus
placuit.'--_Germania_, xvi.
[515] 'Vicos locant non in nostrum morem, connexis et cohærentibus
ædificiis: suam quisque domum spatio circumdat, sive adversus casus
ignis remedium, sive inscitia ædificandi.'--_Germania_, xvi.
[516] 'Ceteris servis non in nostrum morem descriptis per familiam
ministeriis utuntur. Suam quisque sedem, suos penates regit.
Frumenti modum dominus aut pecoris aut vestis ut colono injungit,
et servus hactenus paret: cetera domus officia uxor ac liberi
exsequuntur.'--_Germania_, xxv.
[517] _Id._ xiv. and xv.
[518] _Germania_, xx.
[519] _Germania_, xvi.
[520] The Bamberg Codex has '_ab universis vicis_,' and this is
followed by Waitz (_Verfassungsgeschichte_, Kiel, 1880, i. 145).
The Leyden Codex has 'in vicem.' Others 'per vices,' which earlier
critics considered to be an error for 'per vicos.' See Wietersheim's
_Geschichte der Völkerwanderung_, with Dahn's notes, i. p. 43.
Leipzig, 1880.
[521] _Germania_, xxvi.
[522] _Id._ xii.
[523] The Welsh 'trev' and German 'dorf' probably are from the same
root.
[524] '"_Ager_" dictus qui a divisoribus agrorum relictus est ad
pascendum communiter vicinis.' Isodorus, _De Agris_. Lachmann and
Rudorff, i. p. 369.
[525] _Germania_, xxviii. and xxix.
[526] These tribes are mentioned by Cæsar as forming part of the army
of Ariovistus. _De Bello Gallico_, lib. i. c. 51.
[527] _Germania_, xxx.–xxxvii.
[528] _Germania_, xxxviii.–xlv.
[529] He regarded the 'Agri Decumates' as 'hardly in Germany.'
[530] This result did not follow in Wales, because in Welsh local
names suffixes are not usual.
[531] _Gavelkind_ may be derived from _gabel_, a fork or branch,
and the word is used in Ireland as well as in Kent. Irish _gabal_,
_gabal-cined_ (Gavelkind). _Manners, &c. of the Ancient Irish._
O'Curry, iii. p. 581.
[532] _Origins of English History_, pp. 188–9.
[533] _Origins of English History_, pp. 197–98.
[534] Arnold's _Ansiedelungen_, p. 89.
[535] Palacky's _Geschichte von Böhmen_, Buch ii. c. 6, p. 169.
[536] 'Ing' also meant a low meadow by a river bank, as '_Clifton
Ings_,' near York, &c. Also it was sometimes used like 'ers,',
as '_Ochringen_,' dwellers on the river 'Ohra.' In Denmark the
individual strip in a meadow was an 'ing,' and so the whole meadow
would be '_the ings_.'
[537] See Anglo-Saxon Chronicle _sub anno_ 522. 'Cordic was Elesing,
Elesa was Esling, Esla was Gewising,' and so on. See also Bede's
statement that the Kentish kings were called _Oiscings_, after their
ancestor _Oisc_. Bede, bk. ii. c. 5.
[538] Palacky, pp. 168–9. Compare the word with the Welsh _tyddyn_,
and the Irish _tate_ or _tath_.
[539] See Meitzen's _Ausbreitung der Deutschen_, p. 17. Jena, 1879.
[540] See Taylor's _Words and Places_, p. 131.
[541] It is curious to observe that, taking all the names in the
Cartulary (including many of _later date_), only 2 per cent. end in
_ing_ or _inga_, 6 per cent. in _inghem_ or _ingahem_: making 8 per
cent. in all.
[542] Taylor's _Words and Places_, pp. 496 _et seq._
[543] Out of 119 places named in the charters of the Abbey of
_Frisinga_ earlier in date than A.D. 800, 24 per cent. ended in
_inge_, and only 1 per cent. in _heim_.--Meichelbeck, _passim_.
[544] In the St. Gall charters, out of 1,920 names, 9 per cent.
end in _inga_, 3½ per cent. in _inchova_. The most common other
terminations are either _wilare_ or _wanga_; only 2 per cent. end in
_heim_.
[545] Arnold's _Ansiedelungen und Wanderungen deutscher Stämme_.
Marburg, 1881. See pp. 153 _et seq._ He considers that the Alamanni
were a group of German peoples who had settled in the Rhine valley
and the _Agri Decumates_, including among them the _Juthungi_, who
had crossed over from the north of the _limes_ late in the third
century.
[546] In the _Erklärung der Peutinger Tafel_, by E. Paulus,
Stuttgart, 1866, there is a careful attempt to identify the stations
on the Roman roads from _Brigantia_ to _Vindonissa_, and from
_Vindonissa_ to _Regino_. The stations on the latter, which passed
through the district abounding in 'ings,' are thus identified;
the distances between them, except in one case (where there is a
difference of 2 leugen), answering to those marked in the _Table_
(see p. 35):--
_Vindonissa_ (Windisch), _Tenedone_ (Heidenschlöschen), _Juliomago_
(Hüfingen), _Brigobanne_ (Rottweil), _Aris flavis_ (Unter-Iflingen),
_Samulocennis_ (Rottenberg), _Grinario_ (Sindelfingen), _Clarenna_
(Carlsstatt), _Ad lunam_ (Pfahlbronn), _Aquileia_ (Aalen) [up to
which point there is a remarkable change of names throughout, but
from which point the similarity of names becomes striking], _Opie_
(Bopfingen), _Septemiaci_ (Maihingen), _Losodica_ (Oettingen),
_Medianis_ (Markhof), _Iciniaco_ (Itzing), _Biricianis_
(Burkmarshofen), _Vetonianis_ (Nassenfels), _Germanico_ (Kösching),
_Celeuso_ (Ettling), _Abusena_ (Abensberg), _Regino_ (Regensburg).
But these names in _ing_ and _ingen_, and Latin _iaci_, do not seem
to be patronymic. So also in the case of the Roman '_Vicus Aurelii_'
on the _Ohra_ river, now 'Oehringen.' Is it not possible that
many other supposed patronymics may simply mean such and such or
So-and-so's 'ings' or meadows?
[547] The occasional instances in which the patronymic termination
is added to the name of a tree or an animal, has led to the hasty
conclusion that the Saxons were '_totemists_,' and believed
themselves descended from trees and animals; _e.g._ that the
_Buckings_ of _Bucks_ thought themselves descendants of the beech
tree. The fact that _personal names_ were taken from trees and
animals--that one person called himself '_the Beech_,' another '_the
Wolf_'--quite disposes of this argument, for their households would
call themselves '_Beechings_' and '_Wolfings_' in quite a natural
course, without any dream of descent from the tree or the animal
whose name their father or great-grandfather had borne.
[548] The resemblance is equally apparent whether the comparison
be made between names without further suffix or whether those with
it are included. See the long list of patronymic names in England,
Germany, and France in Taylor's _Words and Places_, App. B, pp.
496–513.
[549] Taylor's _Words and Places_, pp. 131–4, and App. B, p. 491.
[550] See the lists given in Taylor's _Words and Places_, Appendix B,
pp. 496 _et seq._ Taylor says that there are 1,100 of the patronymic
names in France, of which 250 are similar to those in England. See
pp. 144 _et seq._
[551] Taken from _Traditiones Fuldensis_, Dronke, pp. 240–243. The
above list includes all the names in Frisia with a patronymic and no
other suffix.
[552] Taken from the _Wirtembergische Urkundenbuch_.
[553] _Chartularium Sithiense_, p. 18.
[p368]