THE ANGLES OF GERMANY: THEIR COMPARATIVE OBSCURITY.--NOTICE OF
TACITUS.--EXTRACT FROM PTOLEMY.--CONDITIONS OF THE ANGLE AREA.--THE
VARINI.--THE REUDIGNI AND OTHER POPULATIONS OF TACITUS.--THE
SABALINGII, ETC., OF PTOLEMY.--THE SUEVI ANGILI.--ENGLE AND
ONGLE.--ORIGINAL ANGLE AREA.
There are several populations of whom, like quiet and retiring
individuals, we know nothing until they move; for, in their original
countries, they lead a kind of still life which escapes notice and
description, and which, if it were not for a change of habits with a
change of area, would place them in the position of the great men who
lived before Agamemnon. They would pass from the development to the
death of their separate existence unobserved, and no one know who they
were, where they lived, and what were their relations. But they move to
some new locality, and then, like those fruit-trees which, in order to
be prolific, must be transplanted, the noiseless and unnoticed tenor of
their original way is exchanged for an influential and prominent
position. They take up a large place in the world's history. Sometimes
this arises from an absolute change of character with the change of
circumstances; but oftener it is due to a more intelligible cause. They
move from a country beyond the reach of historical and geographical
knowledge to one within it; and having done this they find writers who
observe and describe them, simply because they have come within the
field of observation and description.
It is no great stretch of imagination to picture some of the stronger
tribes of the now unknown parts of Central Africa finding their way as
far southward as the Cape, when they would come within the sphere of
European observation. On such a ground, they may play a conspicuous part
in history; conspicuous enough to be noticed by historians,
missionaries, and journalists. They may even form the matter of a blue
book. For all this, however, they shall only be known in the latter-days
of their history. What they were in their original domain may remain a
mystery; and that, even when the parts wherein it lay shall have become
explored. For it is just possible that between the appearance of such a
population in a locality beyond the pale of their own unexplored home,
and the subsequent discovery of that previously obscure area, the part
which was left behind--the parent portion--may have lost its
nationality, its language, its locality, its independence, its name--any
one or any number of its characteristics. Perhaps, the name alone, with
a vague notice of its locality, may remain; a name famous from the
glory of its new country, but obscure, and even equivocal in its
fatherland.
How truly are the Majiars of Hungary known only from what they have been
in Hungary. Yet they are no natives of that country. It was from the
parts beyond the Uralian mountains that they came, and when we visit
those parts and ask for their original home, we find no such name, no
such language, no such nationality as that of the Majiars. We find
Bashkirs, or something equally different instead. But north of the old
country of the Majiars--now no longer Majiar--we find Majiar
characteristics; in other words, we are amongst the first cousins of the
Hungarians, the descendants not of the exact ancestors of the conquerors
of Hungary, but of the populations most nearly allied to such ancestors.
And it is in these that we must study the Majiar before he became
European. The direct descendants of the same parents have disappeared,
but collateral branches of the family survive; and these we study,
_assuming that there is a family likeness_.
All this has been written in illustration of a case near home. The
Majiar of the Uralian wilds, the Majiar of the Yaik and Oby, the Majiar,
in short, of Asia, is not more obscure, unknown, and unimportant when
compared with the countrymen 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 passage, and every word in that single
passage which applies to Angli applies to the _Eudoses_, _Aviones_,
_Reudigni_, _Suardones_, and _Nuithones_ as well.
The passage in question is the 40th section of the Germania of Tacitus,
and is as follows:--
"Contra Langobardos paucitas nobilitat: plurimis ac valentissimis
nationibus cincti non per obsequium sed præliis et periclitando tuti
sunt. Reudigni, deinde, et Aviones, et Angli, et Varini, et Suardones,
et Nuithones fluminibus aut sylvis muniuntur; neque quidquam notabile in
singulis nisi quod in commune Hertham, id est, Terram Matrem colunt,
eamque intervenire rebus hominum, invehi populis arbitrantur. Est in
insula Oceani castum nemus, dicatum in eo vehiculum, veste contectum,
attingere uni sacerdoti concessum. Is adesse penetrali deam intelligit,
vectamque bobus feminis multa cum veneratione prosequitur. Læti tunc
dies, festa loca, quæcunque adventu hospitioque dignatur. Non bella
ineunt, non arma sumunt, clausum omne ferrum; pax et quies tunc tantum
nota, tunc tantum amata, donec idem sacerdos satiatam conversatione
mortalium deam templo reddat: mox vehiculum et vestes, et si credere
velis, numen ipsum secreto lacu abluitur. Servi ministrant, quos statim
idem lacus haurit. Arcanus hinc terror, sanctaque ignorantia, quid sit
id, quod perituri tantum vident."
Let us ask what we get from this passage _when taken by itself_, _i.e._,
without the light thrown upon it by the present existence of the
descendants of the Angli as the English of England.
We get the evidence of a good writer, that six nations considered by him
as sufficiently Germanic to be included in his _Germania_, were far
enough north of the Germans who came in immediate contact with Rome to
be briefly and imperfectly described and near enough the sea to frequent
an island worshipping a goddess with a German name and certain
remarkable attributes. This is the most we get; and to get this we must
shut our eyes to more than one complication.
_a._ Thus the country that can most reasonably be assigned to the
_Varini_, is in the tenth century the country of the _Varnavi_, who are
no Germans, but Slavonians.
_b._ Another reading, instead of _Hertham_, is _Nerthum_, a name less
decidedly Germanic.
All we get beyond this is from their subsequent histories; and of these
subsequent histories there is only one--the _Angle_ or _English_.
Truly, then, may we say that the Angles of Germany are only known from
their _relations to the Angles of England_.
Let us inquire into the geographical and ethnological conditions of the
Angli of Tacitus; and first in respect to their geography.
1. They must be placed as far north as the Weser; because the area
required for the Cherusci, Fosi, Chasuarii, Dulgubini, Chamavi, and
Angrivarii must be carried to a certain extent northwards; and the
populations in question lay beyond these.
2. They must not be carried very far north of the Elbe. The reasons for
this are less conclusive. They lie, however, in the circumstance of
_Ptolemy's_ notices placing them in a decidedly _southern_ direction;
and, as Tacitus has left their locality an open question, the evidence
of even a worse authority than Ptolemy ought to be decisive,--"of the
nations of the interior the greatest is that of _Suevi Angili_, who are
the most eastern of the Longobardi, stretching as far northwards as the
middle Elbe." The same writer precludes us from placing them in Holstein
and Sleswick by filling up the Peninsula by populations other than
Angle, one of which is the Saxon. But these Saxons we are not at liberty
to identify with the Angli of Tacitus, because, by so doing, we
separate 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 worship of _Mother
Earth_ in a Holy Island, was a link which connected the Angli with the
populations to the north rather than to the south of them; and--as far
as we may judge from the negative fact of finding no Angles in the great
confederacy that the energy of Arminius formed against the aggression of
Rome--their political relations did the same. But this is uncertain.
Such was the supposed area of the ancient Angles of Germany, and it
agrees so well with all the ethnological conditions of the populations
around, that it should not be objected to, or refined upon, on light
grounds. The two varieties of the German languages to which the
Anglo-Saxon bore the closest relationship, were the Old Saxon and the
Frisian, and each of these are made conterminous with it by the
recognition of the area in question--the Old Saxon to the south, the
Frisian to the west, and, probably, to the north as well. It is an area,
too, which is neither unnecessarily large, nor preposterously small; an
area which gives its occupants the navigable portions of two such rivers
as the Elbe and Weser; one which places them in the necessary relations
to their Holy Island (an island which, for the present we assume to be
Heligoland); and, lastly, one which without being exactly the nearest
part of the continent, fronts Britain, and is well situated for descents
upon the British coast.
During the third, fourth, and fifth centuries we hear nothing of the
Angli. They re-appear in the eighth. But then they are the Angles of
Beda, the Angles of Britain--not those of Germany--the Angles of a new
locality, and of a conquered country--not the parent stock on its
original continental home. Of these latter the history of Beda says but
little. Neither does the history of any other writer; indeed it is not
too much to say that they have no authentic, detailed, and consecutive
history at all, either early or late, either in the time of Beda when
the Angles of England are first described, or in the time of any
subsequent writer. There are reasons for this; as will be seen if we
look to their geographical position, and the relations between them and
the neighbouring populations. The Angles of Germany were too far north
to come in contact with the Romans. That we met with no Angli in the
great Arminian Confederacy has already been stated. When the Romans
were the aggressors, the Angli lay beyond the pale of their ambition.
When the Romans were on the defensive the Angli were beyond the
opportunities of attack.
All attempts to illustrate the history of the Angles of Germany by means
of that of the nations mentioned in conjunction with them by Tacitus, is
_obscurum per obscurius_. It is more than this. The connexion creates
difficulties. The Langobardi, who gave their name to Lombardy, were
anything but Angle; inasmuch as their language was a dialect of the High
German division. Hence, if we connect them with our own ancestors we
must suppose that when they changed their locality they changed their
speech also. But no such assumption is necessary. All that we get from
the text of Tacitus is, that they were in geographical contiguity with
the Reudigni, &c.
The Varini are in a different predicament. They are mentioned in the
present text along with the Angli, and they are similarly mentioned in
the heading of a code of laws referred to the tenth century. Every name
in this latter document is attended with difficulties.
_Incipit Lex Anglorum et Werinorum, hoc est Thuringorum._--To find
_Angli_ in Thuringia by themselves would be strange. So it would be to
find _Werini_. But to find the two combined is exceedingly puzzling. I
suggest the likelihood of there having been military colonies, settled
by some of the earlier successors of Charlemagne, if not by Charlemagne
himself. There are other interpretations; but this seems the likeliest.
That the Varini and Angli were contiguous populations in the time of
Tacitus, joining each other on the Lower Elbe, even as they join each
other in his text, is likely. It is also likely that when their
respective areas were conquered, each should have supplied the elements
of a colony to the conqueror.
At the same time, I do not think that their ethnological relations were
equally close. The Varini I believe to have been Slavonians. There is no
difficulty in doing this. The only difficulty lies in the choice between
two Slavonic populations. Adam of Bremen places a tribe, which he
sometimes calls _Warnabi_, and sometimes _Warnahi_ (Helmoldus calling it
_Warnavi_), between the river Havel in Brandenburg and the Obotrites of
Mecklenburg-Schwerin. He mentions them, too, in conjunction with the
_Linones_ of _Lun_-eburg. Now this evidence fixes them in the parts
about the present district of _Warnow_, on the Elde, a locality which is
further confirmed by two chartas of the latter part of the twelfth
century--"silva quæ destinguit terras Havelliere scilicet et Muritz,
eandem terram quoque Muritz et Vepero cum terminis suis ad terram
_Warnowe_ ex utraque parte fluminis quod Eldene dicitur usque ad castrum
Grabow." Also--"distinguit tandem terram Moritz et Veprouwe cum omnibus
terminis suis ad terram quæ _Warnowe_ vocatur, includens et terram
_Warnowe_ cum terminis suis ex utraque parte fluminis quod Eldena
dicitur usque ad castrum quod Grabou vocatur." Such is one of the later
populations of the parts on the Lower Elbe, which may claim to represent
the Varini of Tacitus.
But the name re-appears. In the Life of Bishop Otto, the Isle of Rugen
is called _Verania_,[15] and the population _Verani_--eminent for their
paganism. To reconcile these two divisions of the Mecklenburg
populations is a question for the Slavonic archæologist. Between the two
we get some light for the ethnology of the Varini. _Their_ island is
_Rugen_ rather than Heligoland. The island, however, that best suits the
Angli is _Heligoland_ rather than Rugen. Which is which? The following
hypothesis has already been suggested. "What if the Varini had one _holy
island_, and the Angli another--so that the _insulæ sacræ_, with their
corresponding _casta nemora_, were two in number?" I submit that a
writer with no better means of knowing the exact truth than Tacitus,
might, in such a case, when he recognized the _insular_ character
common to the two forms of _cultus_, easily and pardonably, refer them
to one and the same island; in other words, he might know the general
fact that the _Angli_ and _Varini_ worshipped in an island, without
knowing the particular fact of their each having a separate one.
This is what really happened; so that the hypothesis is as follows:--
_a._ The truly and undoubtedly Germanic _Angli_ worshipped in
Heligoland.
_b._ The probably Slavonic Varini worshipped in the Isle of Rugen.
_c._ The _holy island_ of Tacitus is that of the Angli--
_d._ With whom the _Varini_ are inaccurately associated--
_e._ The source of the inaccuracy lying in the fact of that nation
having a _holy island_, different from that of the Angles, but not known
to be so.[16]
We have got now, in the text of Tacitus, the Angli as a Germanic, and
the Varini as a Slavonic, population. The Langobardi may be left
unnoticed for the present. But round which of the two are the remaining
tribes to be grouped, the Reudigni, the Aviones, Eudoses, the Suardones,
and Nuithones.
_The Reudigni._--Whether we imagine the Latin form before us to
represent such a word as the German Reud-_ing-as_, or the Slavonic
Reud-_inie_[17] (of either of which it may be the equivalent), the two
last syllables are inflexional; the first only belonging to the root.
Now, although unknown to any Latin writer but Tacitus, the syllable
_Reud_ as the element of a compound, occurs in the Icelandic Sagas.
Whoever the Goths of Scandinavia may have been, they fell into more than
one class. There were, for instance, the simple _Goths_ of _Got_-land,
the _island_ Goths of _Ey-gota_-land, and, thirdly, the Goths of
_Reidh-gota_-land. Where was this? Reidhgotaland was an old name of
_Jutland_. Reidhgotaland was also the name of a country _east of
Poland_. Zeuss[18] well suggests that these conflicting facts may be
reconciled by considering the prefix _Reidh_, to denote the Goths of the
_Continent_ in opposition to the word _Ey_, denoting the Goths of the
_Islands_; both being formidable and important nations, both being in
political and military relations to the Danes, Swedes, and Norwegians,
and both being other than Germanic.
In the Traveller's Song a more remarkable compound is found;
_Hreth_-king--
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
latitude of the Angli, though not, perhaps, so far east. His death is
said to have been occasioned by the revolt of two _Rhoxalanian_ princes.
Now the Rhoxalani were, at least, as far north as the Angli, however
much farther they may have lain eastwards.
But in the same poem we meet with the name in the simple form _Hræd_;
for, when we remember that one of the Icelandic notices of Reidhgotaland
is that it lay to _the east of Poland_, we may fairly infer that
Reidhgotaland was the country of the nation mentioned in the following
passage:--
Eadwine I sought and Elsa,
Ægelmund and Hungar,
And the proud host
Of the With-Myrgings;
Wulfhere I sought and Wyrnhere;
Full oft war ceas'd not there,
When the _Hræds'_ army,
With hard swords,
About _Vistula's_ wood
Had to defend
Their ancient native seat
Against the folk of Ætla.
Such faint light then as can be thrown upon the Reudigni of Tacitus
disconnects them with the Angli both geographically and ethnologically,
connecting them with the Prussians, and placing them on the Lower
Vistula.
_The Aviones._--The Aviones are either unknown to history, or known
under the slightly modified form of _Chaviones_. Maximian conquers them
about A.D. 289. His Panegyrist Mamertinus associates them with the
Heruli. Perhaps, the _Obii_ are the same people. If so, they cross the
Danube in conjunction with the Langobardi, and are mentioned, as having
done so, by Petrus Patricius.
The _Eudoses_ will be noticed when Ptolemy's list comes under
consideration.
So will the _Suardones_.
No light has ever been thrown on the _Nuithones_.
Over and above the Saxons, to whom a special chapter will be devoted,
_Ptolemy's_ list contains:--
1. _The Sigulones._--The Saxons lay to the north of Elbe, on the neck of
the Chersonese, and the Sigulones occupied the Chersonese itself,
westwards. Two populations thus placed between the Atlantic and the
Baltic, immediately north of the Elbe, leave but little room for each
other.
"Then," writes Ptolemy, "come--
"2. _The Sabalingii._--then--
"3. _The Kobandi._--above these--
"4. _The Chali._--and above them, but more to the west--
"5. _The Phundusii._--more to the east--
"6. _The Charudes._--and most to the north of all--
"7. _The Cimbri._"
8. _The Pharodini_ lay next to the Saxons, between the Rivers Chalusus
and Suebus.
Tacitus' geography is obscure; Ptolemy's is difficult. One wants light.
The other gives us conflicting facts. Neither have the attempts to
reconcile them been successful. The first point that strikes us is the
difference of the names in the two authors. No Sigulones and Sabalingii
in Tacitus. No Nuithones and Reudigni in Ptolemy. Then there is the
extremely northern position which the latter gives the Cimbri. His
Charudes, too, cannot well be separated from Cæsar's Harudes.
Nevertheless, their area is inconveniently distant from the seat of war
in the invasion of Gaul under Ariovistus, of whose armies the Harudes
form a part. The River Chalusus is reasonably considered to be the
Trave. But the Suebus is not the Oder; though the two are often
identified: inasmuch as the geographer continues to state that after the
Pharodini come "the Sidini to the river Iadua" (the Oder?), "and, after
them, the Rutikleii as far as the Vistula."
Zeuss has allowed himself to simplify some of the details by identifying
certain of the Ptolemæan names with those of Tacitus. Thus he thinks
that, by supposing the original word to have been {Sphar/od-inoi}, the
{Phar/odin-oi} and _Suardon_-es may be made the same. _Kobandi_, too, he
thinks may be reduced to _Chaviones_, or _Aviones_. Thirdly, by the
prefix {Ph}, and the insertion of N, _Eudos_-es may be converted into
{Phoundo^us-ioi}.
Those who know the degree to which the modern German philologists act
upon the doctrine that _Truth is stranger than Fiction_, and, by
unparallelled manipulations reconcile a so-called iron-bound system of
scientific letter-changes with results as extraordinary as those of the
Keltic and Hebraic dreamers of the last century, will see in such
comparisons as these nothing extraordinary. On the contrary, they will
give them credit for being moderate. And so they are: for it is
extremely likely that whilst Tacitus got his names from German, Ptolemy
got _his_ from Keltic, or Slavonic, sources; and if such be the case, a
very considerable latitude is allowable.
Yet, even if we make the Cobandi, Aviones; the Phundusii, Eudoses; and
the Pharodini, Suardones (probably, also, the _Sweordwere_, of the
Traveller's Song), the geographical difficulties are still considerable.
Saxons on the neck of the Chersonese (say in Stormar) with Sigulones
(say in Holstein) to the west of them are fully sufficient to stretch
from sea to sea; but _beyond_ (and this we must suppose to be in a
_westerly_ direction) are the Sabalingii, and then the Kobandi; above
(north of) these the Chali (whom we should expect to be connected with
the river Chalusus), and west of these the Phundusii. Similar
complications can easily be added.
The meaning of the word _Sabalingii_ is explained, if we may assume a
slight change in the reading. How far it is legitimate, emendatory
critics may determine; but by transposing the B and L, the word becomes
_Sa-lab_-ingii. The Slavonic is the tongue that explains this.
1. The Slavonic name of the _Elbe_ is _Laba_; and--
2. The Slavonic for _Transalbian_, as a term for the population _beyond
the Elbe_, would be _Sa-lab-ingii_. This compound is common. The Finns
of Karelia are called _Za-volok-ian_, because they live beyond the
_volok_ or _watershed_. The Kossacks of the Dnieper are called
_Za-porog-ian_, because they live beyond the _porog_ or _waterfall_.
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
Suêbus, and that of the Buguntæ next in succession, extending as far as
the Vistula."--Lib. ii. c. xi.
This connexion of the Angles with the Suevi requires notice; though it
should not cause any serious difficulty. The term _Suevi_, or _Suevia_,
is used in a very extensive signification, denoting the vast tracts east
of the better known districts of Germany; and in a similar sense it is
used by both Tacitus and Cæsar. The notion of any specific connection
with the _Suevi_ of Suabia is unnecessary.
It has already been stated that in the Traveller's Song the Kingdom of
Hermanric is placed _east of Ongle_. Either this means that the one
country was east of the other, in the way that Hungary is east of the
Rhine, or else an unrecognized 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 wæs, and mid Swæfum--
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. _Jutæ_.
[19] See Chapter ix.