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 SAXONICUM.--SAXONES BAJOCASSINI.
The ethnologist of England has to deal with a specific section of those
numerous Germans, who, in different degrees of relationship 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-_sex_, Sus-_sex_, and Middle-_sex_ 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-_sex_, 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-_sex_ 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 _indigenæ_ 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-_sex_, Es-_sex_, and Middle-_sex_?
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.
Yet nowhere can we find a definite tract of country upon which we can
lay our finger and say _this is the land of Saxons_, saving only the
insignificant district to the north of the Elbe, mentioned by Ptolemy.
From the time of Honorius to that of Charlemagne, _Saxo_ is, like
_Franc_, a general term applied, indeed, to the maritime Germans rather
than those of the interior, and to those of the north rather than the
south, yet nowhere specifically attached to any definite population with
a local habitation and a name to match. Whenever we come to detail, the
Saxons of the Roman writers become Chamavi, Bructeri, Cherusci, Chauci,
or Frisii; while the Frank details are those of the Ostphali, Westphali,
and Angrivarii.
But the Frank writers under the Merovingian and Carlovingian dynasties
are neither the only nor the earliest authors who speak of the
Hanoverians and Westphalians under the general name of _Saxon_. The
Christianized Angles of England used the same denomination; and, as
early as the middle of the eighth century, Beda mentions the Fresones,
Rugini, Dani, Huni, _Antiqui Saxones_, Boructuarii.--_Hist. Eccles._ 5,
10. Again--the Boructuarii, descendants of the nearly exterminated
Bructeri of Tacitus, and occupants of the country on the Lower Lippe,
are said to have been reduced by the nation of the _Old Saxons_ (_a
gente Antiquorum Saxonum_). In other records we find the epithet
_Antiqui_ translated by the native word _eald_ (=_old_) and the
formation of the compound _Altsaxones_--Gregorius Papa universo populo
provinciæ _Altsaxonum_ (vita St. Boniface). Lastly, the Anglo-Saxon
writers of England use the term _Eald-Seaxan_ (=_Old-Saxon_). And this
form is current amongst the scholars of the present time; who call the
language of the _Heliand_, of the so-called _Carolinian Psalms_ and of
_Hildebrant and Hathubrant_, the _Old_-Saxon, in contradistinction to
the _Anglo_-Saxon of Alfred, Cædmon, and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. The
authority of the Anglo-Saxons themselves justifies this compound; yet it
is by no means unexceptionable. Many a writer has acquiesced in the
notion that the Old-Saxon was neither more nor less than the Anglo-Saxon
in a continental locality, and the Anglo-Saxon but the Old-Saxon
transplanted into England. Again--the Old-Saxons have been considered as
men who struck, as with a two-edged sword, at Britain on the one side,
and at Upper Saxony on the other, so that the Saxons of Leipsic and the
Saxons of London are common daughters of one parent--the Saxons of
Westphalia.
The exact relations, however, to the Old-Saxons and the Anglo-Saxons
seem to have been as follows:--
The so-called Old-Saxon is the old _Westphalian_--
The so-called Anglo-Saxon the old _Hanoverian_ population.
Their languages were sufficient alike to be mutually intelligible, and
after the conversion of the Angles of England, who became Christianized
about A.D. 600, the extension of their own creed to the still Pagan
Saxons of the Continent became one of the great duties to the bishops
and missionaries of Britain; who, although themselves of Hanoverian
rather than Westphalian extraction, looked upon the whole stock at large
as their parentage, and called their cousins (so to say) in Westphalia,
and their brothers in Hanover, by the collective term _Old-Saxon_.
All the Angles, then, of the _Saxonia_ of the Frank and British writers
of the eighth century were Saxon, though all the Saxons were not Angle.
Eastphalia, the division which must have been the most _Angle_, reached
as far as the Elbe.
But there was, also, a Saxony beyond Eastphalia, a Saxony beyond the
Elbe; the country of the _Saxones Transalbiani_; other names for its
occupants being _Nord-albingi_ (=_men to the north of the Elbe_), and
Nord-leudi (=_North people_). The poet already quoted, writes--
Saxonum populus quidam, quos claudit ab Austro
Albis sejunctim positos Aquilonis ad axem.
Hos _Nordalbingos_ patrio sermone vocamus.
In this case as before, _Saxon_ is a generic rather than a particular
name. The facts that prove this give us also the geographical position
of the Nordalbingians. They fell into three divisions:
1. The _Thiedmarsi_, _Thiatmarsgi_, or _Ditmarshers_, whose capital was
Meldorp--_primi ad Oceanum Thiatmarsgi_, et eorum _ecclesia
Mildindorp_--
2. The _Holsati_, _Holtzati_, or _Holtsætan_, from whom the present
Duchy of Holstein takes its name--_dicti a sylvis, quas incolunt_.[20]
The river Sturia separated the Holsatians from--
3. The _Stormarii_, or people of _Stormar_; of whom Hamburg was the
capital--_Adam Bremens_: _Hist. Eccles._ c. 61.
These are the Nordalbingians of the eighth century. Before we consider
their relations to the Westphalian and Hanoverian Saxons the details of
the present ethnology of the Cimbric Peninsula are necessary. At the
present moment Holstein, Stormar, and Ditmarsh are Low German, or
Platt-Deutsch, districts; the High German being taught in the schools
much as English is taught in the Scotch Highlands. Eydersted also is Low
German, and so are the southern and eastern parts of Sleswick. Not so,
however, the western. Facing the Atlantic, we find an interesting
population, isolated in locality, and definitely stamped with old and
original characteristics. They are as different from the Low Germans on
the one side as the Dutch are from the English; and they are as little
like the Danes on the other. They are somewhat bigger and stronger than
either; at least both Danes and Germans may be found who own to their
being _bigger if not better_. They shew, too, a greater proportion of
blue eyes and flaxen locks; though these are common enough on all sides.
That breadth of frame out of which has arisen the epithet _Dutch-built_,
is here seen in its full development; with a sevenfold shield of thick
woollen petticoats to set it of. So that there are characteristics, both
of dress and figure, which sufficiently distinguish the _North-Frisian_
of Sleswick from the Dane on one side and the German on the other.
It is only, however, in the more inaccessible parts of their country
that the _differentiæ_ of dress rise to the dignity of a separate and
independent _costume_. They do so, however, in some of those small
islands which lie off the coast of Sleswick; three of which are supposed
to have been the _three islands of the Saxons_, in the second and third
centuries. A party, which the writer fell in with, from _Föhr_, were all
dressed alike, all in black, all in woollen, with capes over the heads
instead of bonnets. "Those," says the driver, who was himself half Dane
and half German, "are from Föhr. They have been to Flensburg to see one
of their relations. He is a sailor. They are all sailors in Föhr. Some
of them, perhaps, smugglers--they all dress so--I can't speak to
them--my brother can--he has been in England, and an Englishman can talk
to them--they talk half Danish and half Platt-Deutsch, and half
English--more than half. They were Englishmen once--a good sort of
people--took no part in the war--did not much care for the Danes, though
the Danes took pains to persuade them--so did the Germans, but they did
not much care for the Germans either--strong men--good soldiers--good
sailors--Englishmen, but not like the Englishmen I've seen myself. My
brother's been in London and America, and can talk with them."
What is thus said about their English-hood is commonly believed by the
Danes and Germans of the Frisian localities. They are English in some
way or other, though how no one knows exactly. And many learned men hold
the same view. It is a half-truth. They are more English, and, at the
same time, more Dutch, than any of their neighbours; more so than either
Dane or German, but for all that they are something that is neither
English nor Dutch. They are _Frisians_ of the same stock as the
Frisians of Friesland, whom they resemble in form, and dress, and
manners, and speech, and temper, and history. But from the Frisians of
the south they have been cut off for many centuries, partly by the hand
of man, partly by the powers of Nature, partly by invasions from
Germans, and partly by overwhelming inbreaks of the Ocean. There is a
Frisian country in the south (the present Province of Friesland), and
there is a Frisian country in the north (the tract which we are speaking
of); and these are parts of the _terra firma_. But the Friesland that
lay between the two is lost--lost, though we know where it is. It is at
the bottom of the sea: forfeited, like the lava-stricken plains of
Sicily, of Campania, and of Iceland, in the great game of Man against
Nature--for it is not everywhere that Man has been the winner. The war
of the Frisians against the sea has been the war not of the Titans
against Jove, but of the Amphibii against Neptune.
Every Frisian--_Friese_ as he calls himself--is an agriculturist, and it
is only in the villages that the Frisian tongue is spoken. In the towns
of Ripe, Bredsted, and Husum, small as they are, there is nothing but
Danish and German. But in all the little hamlets between, the well-built
old-fashioned farm-houses, with gable-ends of vast breadth, and massive
thatched roofs that make two-thirds of the height of the house, and a
stork's nest on the chimney, and a cow-house at the end, are Frisian;
and, if you can overhear what they say amongst themselves, you find
that, without being English it is somewhat like it. _Woman_ is the word
which sounds strangest to both the German and the Dane, and, it is
generally the first instance given of the peculiarity of the Frisian
language. "Why can't they speak properly, and say _Kone_?" says the
Dane. "_Weib_ is the right word," says the German. "Who ever says
_woman_?" cry both. The language has not been reduced to writing;
indeed, the little that has been done with it is highly discreditable to
the Sleswick-Holstein Church Establishment. It is spoken by upwards of
thirty thousand individuals; and when we remember that the whole
population of Denmark is less than that of London and the suburbs, we
see at once that a large proportion of it has been less heeded in
respect to its spiritualities than the Gaels and Welsh of Great Britain.
You may distinguish a Frisian parish as the Eton grammar distinguishes
nouns of the neuter gender. It is _omne quod exit in -um_; for so end
nine out of ten of the Frisian villages. Now, throughout the whole
length and breadth of the Brekkel_ums_, and Stad_ums_, &c., that lie
along the coast, from Ripe north to Hus_um_ south, there is not one
church service that is performed in Frisian, or half-a-dozen priests who
could perform it. No fraction of the Liturgy is native; nor has it ever
been so. Danish there is, and German there is; German, too, of two
kinds--High and Low. The High German is taught in the schools, and that
well; so well, that nowhere are the answers of the little children more
easily understood by such travellers as are not over strong in their
language than in the _Friese_ country. Nevertheless, it is but a
well-taught lesson; and by no means excuses the neglect of the native
idiom.
As things are at present, this is, perhaps, all for the best. The
complaint lies against the original neglect of the Frisian; and its
_gravamen_ is the sad tale it so silently tells of previous
centralization--by which is meant arbitrary and unjustifiable
oppression; for at no distant time back, the Frisians must have formed a
very considerable proportion of the Sleswickers, and, at the beginning
of the Historical period, the majority. And yet it was not thought of
Christianizing them through their own tongue; a tongue which, because it
has never been systematically reduced to writing, conscientious
clergymen say is incapable of being written. As if the Frisian of
Friesland, the Frisian of the south, had not been the language of law
and poetry for more than eight hundred years, and, as if it were a bit
harder to write, or print, the northern dialect of the same, than it was
for Scotland to have a literature. For the tongue is no growth of
yesterday. It may, possibly, be as much older as any other tongue of the
Peninsula as the Welsh is older than the English. That it is older than
some of them is certain. Amateur investigators of it there are, of
course. Outzen, the pastor of Brekkelum, was the father of them; and
honourable mention is due to the present clergyman in Hacksted. As a
general rule, however, the religion of Sleswick has been centralized.
The literature, as far as it has been collected, consists of a
wedding-song of the fifteenth century, to be found in Camerarius, with
addition of, perhaps, a dozen such _morceaux_ as the following
approaches to song, epigram, and ballad, respectively.
1
Læt foammen kom ins jordt to meh,
Ik hêv en blanken daaler to deh,
Di væl ik deh vel zjönke,
Dæ sjællt du beh meh tjönke,
Læt foammen, &c.
2
Ik[21] væl for tusend daaler ej
Dat ik het haad of vaas,
Den lüp ik med den rump ombej
En vöst ekj vær ik var.
3
DER FREYER VOM HOLSTEIN.
Diar kam en skep bi Sudher Siöe
Me tri jung Fruers ön di Floot.
Hokken wiar di fördeorst?
Dit wiar Peter Rothgrun.
Hud säät hi sin spooren?
Fuar Hennerk Jerkens düür.
Hokken kam tö Düür?
Marrike sallef,
Me Krük en Bekker ön di jen hundh,
En gulde Ring aur di udher hundh.
Jü nöödhight höm en sin Hinghst in,
Död di Hingst Haaver und Peter wün.
Toonkh Gott fuar des gud dei.
Al di Brid end bridmaaner of wei,
Butolter Marri en Peter allüning!
Jü look höm ün to Kest
En wildh höm nimmer muar mest.
_Translated._
1.
Little woman come in the yard to me,
I have a white dollar for thee;
I will give it you
So that you think of me.
2.
I would not for a thousand dollars,
That my head were off,
Then should I run with my trunk,
And know (wiss) not where I was.
3.
There came a ship by the South Sea,
With three young wooers on the flood;
Who was the first?
That was Peter Rothgrun.
Where set he his tracts?
For Hennerk Jerken's door.
Who came to door?
Mary-kin herself,
With a pitcher (crock) and beaker in the one hand,
A gold ring on the other hand.
She pressed him and his horse (to come) in,
Gave the horse oats and Peter wine.
Thank God for this good day!
All the brides and bridesmen out of the way!
Except Mary and Peter alone.
She locked him up in her box,
And never would miss him more.
This was what became of Peter; who is, perhaps, the most legendary and
heroic of the North-Frisians--so that the development in this line lies
within a small compass.
The Isle of Nordstand is Low German (Platt-Deutsch) in language, but in
blood and pedigree is Frisian; as, indeed, it was in speech up to A.D.
1610. Then came a great inundation, which destroyed half the cattle of
the island, and beggared its inhabitants; who were removed by their
hard-hearted lord the Count of Gottorp to the continent, and replaced by
Low Germans.
The island of Pelvorm is in the same category with Nordstand, the
population being essentially Frisian though the Platt-Deutsch form of
speech has replaced the native dialect; which was spoken in both islands
A.D. 1639.
Amrom partially preserves it; though the Frisian character is less
marked than in--
_Föhr._--Here all the names which in English would end in -_ham_, in
High German in -_heim_, in Low German in -_hem_, and in Danish in -_by_
(as Threking-_ham_, Mann-_heim_, Arn-_hem_, Wis-_by_) take the form in
-_um_, the vowel being changed into _u_-, and the _h_- being omitted, as
Duns-_um_, Utters-_um_, Midl-_um_, &c.--and this is a sure sign of
Frisian occupancy. In Föhr, too, the language is still current.
Of _Sylt_, the southern part has its names in the Frisian form; as
Horn-_um_, Mors-_um_, &c. The northern half, however, is Danish, and the
villages end in -_by_.
Such is the present area of North-Frisians; which we shall see lies
north of that of the Nordalbingians.
Nevertheless, the present writer believes that, either there was no
difference whatever between the Angles and the Saxons, or that the
Saxons were North-Frisians.
Let us, for a while, allow the name _Saxon_ to be so little conclusive
as to the ethnological position of these same Nordalbingians as to leave
the question open.
The first fact that meets us is the existence of the Frisians of Holland
not only south of the Elbe but south of Weser.
East Friesland, as its name shews, is Frisian also; although, with a few
exceptional localities in the very fenny districts, the language has
been replaced by the German.
Notwithstanding, too, its sanctity in the eyes of the Angle worshipper
of the Goddess Hertha, Heligoland at the beginning of the Historical
period was not exactly Angle. It was what the opposite coast
was--Frisian. And Oldenburg was Frisian as well; indeed the whole area
occupied by the two great nations of antiquity--the Frisii and
Chauci--was neither Old-Saxon nor Angle-Saxon. It differed from each
rather more than they differed from each other, and, accordingly,
constituted a separate variety of the German tongue.
So that there were, and are, two Frisian areas, one extending no farther
north than the Elbe, and the other extending no farther south than the
Eyder.
And between these two lies that of the Nordalbingians. This alone is
_primâ facie_ evidence of their being Frisian; for we should certainly
argue that if Norfolk and Essex were English, Suffolk was English also.
Of course, it might not be so: as intrusion and displacement might have
taken place; but intrusion and displacement are not to be too lightly
and gratuitously assumed. The Frisian of Oldenburg can be traced up to
the Elbe, and the Frisian of Sleswick can be followed down to the Eyder.
Eydersted, however, and Holstein are Low German. Were they always so? Of
Eydersted, Jacob Sax, himself a Low German of the district, writes, A.D.
1610, that "the inhabitants besides the Saxon, use their own
extraordinary natural speech, which is the same as the East and West
Frisian."
For Ditmarsh the evidence is inconclusive. But one or two names end in
-_um_.
As early as A.D. 1452 the following inscription which was found on a
font in Pelvorm was _un_-intelligible to the natives of Ditmarsh, who
carried it off--"disse hirren Döpe de have wi thön ewigen Ohnthonken
mage lete, da schollen össe Berrne in kressent warde"="this here dip
(font) we have let be made as an everlasting remembrance: there shall
our bairns be christened in it." Clemens translates this into the
present Frisian of Amrom, which runs thus--"thas hirr döp di ha wi tun
iwagen Unthonken mage leat, thiar skell üs Biarner un krassent wurd."
Still, Clemens thinks that the dress and domestic utensils of the
present Ditmarshers are more Frisian than Platt-Deutsch. Now whatever
the ancient tongue of Ditmarsh may have been, it was not the present
Platt-Deutsch; yet, if it were Frisian, it had become obsolete before
A.D. 1452.
That we are justified in assuming an original continuity between the
North and South Frisian areas may readily be admitted. There are, of
course, reasonable objections against it--the want of proof of Frisian
character of the language of Ditmarsh being the chief. Still, the
principle which would lead us to predicate of Suffolk what we had
previously predicated of Norfolk and Essex, induces us to do the same
with the district in question, and to argue that if Eydersted, to the
North, and the parts between Bremen and Cuxhaven, to the South, were
Frisian, Ditmarsh, which lay between them, was Frisian also.
But this may have been the case without the Nordalbingians being
Frisian; since an Angle movement, northward and westward, may easily
have taken place in the sixth, seventh, or eighth centuries; in which
case the _Stormarii_, _Holtsati_, and _Ditmarsi_ were Angle; intrusive,
non-indigenous, and, perhaps, of mixed blood--but still Angle.
I am not prepared, however, to go further at present upon this point
than to a repetition of a previous statement, viz.: that if the Saxons
of Anglo-Saxon England were other than Angles under a different name,
they were North-Frisians.
_Saxony_ and _Saxon_ we have seen to be, for the most part, general
names for certain populations of considerable magnitude, populations
which when investigated in detail have been Ostphali, Angrarii,
Stormarii, &c., &c. Ptolemy alone assigns to the word a _specific_
power, and in Ptolemy alone is the country of the Saxons the definite
circumscribed area of a special population. Ptolemy, as has been already
shewn, places the _Saxons on the neck of the Chersonese_ to the north of
the Chauci of the Elbe, and to the East of the Sigulones--there or
thereabouts in Stormar. He also gives them three of the islands off the
coasts of Holstein and Sleswick; though it is uncertain and unimportant
which three he means. Hence, the Saxons of Ptolemy, truly
Nord-albingian, coincide in locality with the subsequent Stormarii, the
Sigulones being similarly related to the Holsatians. Yet neither the
Saxones nor the Sigulones may have been the ancestors to their
respective successors, any more than the Durotriges, or Iceni of England
were the ancestors to the Anglo-Saxons of Dorsetshire and Norfolk.
Before this point comes under consideration we must ask a question
already suggested as to the _Saxons_ of the ninth century. Were they
Frisians or Angles?
Strongly impressed with the belief that no third division of the Saxon
section of the Germans beyond that represented by the Angles of Hanover
and the Old Saxons of Westphalia can be shewn to have existed or need
be assumed, I have thus limited the problem, although the third question
as to the probability of their having been something different from
either may be raised. I also believe that the Frisians reached Sleswick
by an extension of their frontier, this being the reason why the
original continuity of their area is assumed,--at the same time
admitting the possibility of their having come by sea, in which case no
such continuity is necessary. What we find on the Eyder, and also on the
Elbe may fairly be supposed to have once been discoverable in the
intermediate country.
Assuming, then, an original continuity of the Frisian area from Sleswick
to the Elbe anterior to the conquest of Ditmarsh and Holsatia by the
present Low German occupants to be a fair inference from the present
distribution of the North Frisians, and the history of their known and
recorded displacements, we may ask how far it follows that this
displacement was effected by the ancestors of the present Holsteiners;
in other words, how far it is certain that the present Holsteiners
succeeded immediately to the Frisians. There is a question here; since
the continuity may have been broken by a population which was itself
broken-up in its turn. It may have been broken by Angle inroads even as
early as the time of Tacitus. If so, the order of succession would not
be 1. Frisian, 2. Low German, but 1. Frisian, 2. Angle or Anglo-Saxon,
3. Low German.
The Holsati, Stormarii, and Ditmarsi were, most probably, _Angle_. That
they were not the ancestors of the present Low-Dutch is nearly certain.
The date is too early for this. It was not till some time after the
death of Charlemagne that the spread of that section of the German
family reached Holstein. That they were not Frisian is less certain, but
it is inferred from the manner in which they are mentioned by the native
poet already quoted; who, if he had considered the Frisians to have been
sufficiently Saxon to pass under that denomination, would have carried
his Nordalbingian Saxony as far as the most northern boundary of the
North-Frisians.
The evidence, then, is in favour of the Nordalbingians having been
Anglo-Saxon in the ninth century, and that under the name Stormarii,
Holsati, and Ditmarsi. Were they equally so in the third, _i.e._, when
Ptolemy wrote, and when the names under which he noticed them were
Saxones and Sigulones? I should not like to say this. The encroachment
upon the Frisian area--the continuity being assumed--may not have begun
thus early. Nay, even the northward extension of the Frisian area may
not have begun. I should not even like to say positively that the Saxons
of Ptolemy were German at all. They may have been Slavonians--a
continuation of the Wagrian and Polabic populations of Eastern Holstein
and Lauenburg.
To say, too, that Ptolemy's term _Saxon_ was a native name would be
hazardous. We can only say that when we get definite information
respecting the districts to which it applied it was _not_ so. It was no
Nordalbingian name to the _Stormarians_, no Nordalbingian name to the
_Holsatians_, no Nordalbingian name to the men of _Ditmarsh_, no
Nordalbingian name to any of the islanders. It was no native name with
any specific import at all. It was a general name applied to the
countries in question, as it was to many others besides; and it was the
Franks who applied it. It had been specific once; but, when it was so,
no one knew who bore it, or who gave it. It may have been Slavonic
applied to Slavonians, or German applied to Germans, or German applied
to Slavonians, or Slavonic applied to Germans. Which was it?
Who bore it? In the first instance the occupants of the northern bank of
the Elbe, and some of the islands of the coast of Holstein and Sleswick;
men of the _wooded districts_ of _Holt_-satia, whose timber gave them
the means of building ships, and whose situation on the coast developed
the habit of using them to the annoyance of their neighbours. This is
all that can be said.
Who spread it abroad? The Romans first, the Franks afterwards. They it
was who called by the name of _Saxon_ men who never so called
themselves, _e.g._, the Angrivarians, the Westphalians, the Saxons of
Upper Saxony.
How did the Romans get it? From the Kelts of Gaul and Britain.
How came the Kelts by it? The usual answer to this: that they got it
from the Saxons themselves, the Saxons being, of course, Germans. But
the main object of the present chapter has been to shew the extremely
unsatisfactory nature of the evidence of any Germans having so called
themselves. Assuredly, if they stopped at the present point, the reasons
for believing the name to have been native would be eminently
unsatisfactory. The best fact would be in the language of Beda, who, as
we have seen, called the Westphalians _Old-Saxons_. But Beda often
allowed himself to use the language of his authorities, most of whom
wrote in Latin, and some of whom were Gauls or Britons.
But four fresh ones can be added--
1. There is the element -_sex_ in the names Es-_sex_, Wes-_sex_,
Sus-_sex_, and Middle-_sex_.
2. The name _Sax_-neot was that of a deity, whom the Old Saxons, on
their conversion to Christianity, were compelled to foreswear. This
gives us the likelihood of its being the name of an _eponymus_.
3. The story about _nimeþ eowre Seaxas_=_take your daggers_, and the
deduction from it, that _Saxons_ meant _dagger-men_, is of no great
weight; with the present writer, at least. Still, as far as it goes, it
is something.
4. The Finlanders call the Germans _Saxon_.
The necessity of getting as far as we can into the obscure problems
connected with this word is urgent. One part of England is more
evidently _Saxon_ than another; at least, it bears certain outward and
visible signs of Saxonism which are wanting elsewhere. What are we to
say to this? That Es-_sex_ is Saxon, and, as _Saxon_, something notably
different from Suffolk which is _Angle_? It may have been so; yet the
minutest ethnology ever applied has failed in detecting the
_differentiæ_. They have, indeed, been assumed, and an unduly broad
distinction between the dialect of Angle and the dialects of Saxon
origin has been drawn; but the distinction is unreal. Angle
_North_umberland and Saxon _Sus_sex differ from each other, not because
they are Angle and Saxon, but because they are _north_ern and _south_ern
counties. And so on throughout. The difference between Angle and Saxon
Britain has ever been assumed to be _real_, whereas it may be but
_nominal_.
Let us suppose it to be the latter, and _Saxon_ to have been the British
name of the _Angle_--nothing more. What do names like Sus-_sex_, &c.,
indicate? Not that the population was less Angle than elsewhere, but
that it was more Roman or British--an important distinction.
Again--certain Frisians are stated by Procopius to have dwelt in
Britain; though Beda makes no mention of them. Assume, however, that the
Saxons of the latter writer were the Frisians of the former, and all is
plain and clear. But, then, they should be more unlike the Angles than
they can be shewn to have been.
But why refine upon these points at all? Why, when we admit the
Nordalbingians to have been Angle, demur to their having called
themselves Saxons? I do this because I cannot get over the fact of the
king who first decreed that his kingdom should be called _Angle_-land
having been no _Angle_ but a West-_Saxon_. That he should give the
native German name precedence over the Roman and Keltic is likely; but
that, by calling himself and his immediate subjects _Saxon_, he should
change the name to _Angle_, is as unlikely as that a King of Prussia
should propose that all Germany should be known as _Austria_. Of course,
if the evidence in favour of the word _Saxon_ being native was of a
certain degree of cogency, we must take the preceding improbability as
we find it; but no such cogent evidence can be found. _Saxon_ is always
a name that some one _may_ give to some one else, never one that he
necessarily bears himself.
Were the conquerors, then, of Sus-_sex_, &c., other than Nordalbingian?
I do not say this. I only say that the evidence of their coming from the
special district of Holstein does not lie in their name. Germans from
the south of the Elbe would--according to the preceding hypothesis--have
been equally _Saxon_ in the eyes of the degenerate Romans and the
corrupted Britons whom they conquered.
We are still dealing with the origin of the _name_. The Franks and
Romans diffused and generalized, the Kelts suggested, it. That the name
was Keltic is undenied and undeniable. The Welsh and Gaels know us to
the present moment as _Saxons_, and not as _Englishmen_. The only doubt
has been as to how far it was _exclusively_ Keltic--_i.e._,
non-Germanic.
Will the supposition of its being Keltic account for _all_ the facts
connected with it? No. It will not account for the Finlanders using it.
They, like the Kelts, call the Germans _Saxon_. This, then, is a fresh
condition to be satisfied. The hypothesis which does this is, that the
name _Saxo_ was applied by the Slavonians of the Baltic as well as by
Kelts of the coasts of Gaul and Britain to the pirates of the neck of
the Chersonese,--the Slavonic designation being adopted by the
Finlanders just as the Keltic was by the Romans.
And this supplies an argument in favour of the name having been native,
since a little consideration will shew that, when two different nations
speak of a third by the same name, the _primâ facie_ evidence is in
favour of the population to whom it is applied by their neighbours
applying it to themselves also.
Yet this is no proof of its being German: nor yet of the men of
Wes-_sex_, &c., being Nordalbingian. All that we get from the British
counties ending in -_sex_ is, that in certain parts of the island, the
British name for certain German pirates prevailed over the native,
whereas, in others, the native prevailed over the British.
If this be but a trifling conclusion in respect to its positive results,
it is one of some negative value; inasmuch, as when we have shewn that
_Angle_ and _Saxon_ are, to a great extent, the same names in different
languages, we have rid ourselves of the imaginary necessity of
investigating such imaginary differences as the difference of name, at
the first view, suggests. We have also ascertained the historical import
of the spread of the names _Saxon_ and _Saxony_. They spread, not
because certain Saxons originating in a district no bigger than the
county of Rutland, bodily took possession of vast tracts of country in
Germany, Britain, and Gaul, but because a great number of Germans were
called by the name of a small tribe, just as the Hellenes of Thessaly,
Attica, and Peloponnesus were called by the Romans, _Greeks_. The true
_Græci_ were a tribe of dimensions nearly as small in respect to the
Hellenes at large as the Saxons of Ptolemy were to the Germans in
general (perhaps, indeed, they were not Hellenic at all); yet it was the
_Græci_ whom the Romans identified with the Hellenes. No one, however,
believes that the Græci extended themselves to the extent of the term
_Græcia_. On the contrary, every one admits that it was only the import
of the name which became enlarged. And this I believe to have been the
case with the word _Saxon_.
_Saxon_, then, like _Greek_, was a general name. Nevertheless, they were
specific _Saxons_ just as they were specific _Græci_. These were the
_Saxons_ of Ptolemy. When that author wrote, I believe them to have been
either _Frisian_ or _Slavonians_, without saying which--Frisians, if we
look for their affinities to the south of the Elbe; Slavonians, if we
seek them to the east of the Bille.
Between the time of Ptolemy and the end of the fourth century, the name
grew into importance, and became a name of terror to the Romans, Gauls,
and Britons, who applied it to the northern Germans of the sea-board in
general.
The spread of the name along the sea-coast began in the fourth century.
Claudian alludes to a naval victory over them
----"maduerunt _Saxone_ fuso
Orcades."
This gives them a robbing-ground as far north as the Orkneys.
Ammianus notices their descent upon Gaul; and writes that in the reign
of Valentinian "Gallicanos vero tractus Franci et _Saxones_ iisdem
confines, quo quisque erumpere potuit, terra vel mari, praedis acerbis
incendiisque et captivorum funeribus hominum violabant."
Again--"Valentinianus Saxones, gentem in Oceani litoribus et paludibus
inviis sitam, _virtute et agilitate terribilem_, periculosam Romanis
finibus, eruptionem magna mole meditantes, _in ipsis Francorum finibus_
oppressit." Oros. 7, 32.
A victory over the Saxones at Deuso (Deutz, opposite Cologne) is
referred by more than one of the later writers to the same reign.
The banks of the Loire are their next quarters, Anjou being their chief
locality, and their great captain bearing a name of which the Latin form
was _Adovacrius_--"igitur Childericus Aurelianis pugnas egit:
_Adovacrius_ vero cum _Saxonibus_ Andegavos venit ... (Aegidio) defuncto
Adovacrius de Andegavo et aliis locis obsides accepit ... Veniente vero
Adovacrio Andegavis, Childericus rex sequenti die advenit; interemtoque
Paulo Comite, civitatem obtinuit." Greg. Tur. 2, 18; "his itaque gestis,
inter _Saxones_ atque Romanos bellum gestum est, sed Saxones terga
vertentes multos de suis, Romanis insequentibus, gladio reliquerunt:
_insulae eorum_ cum multo populo interemto a Francis captae atque
subversae sunt ... Adovacrius cum Childerico foedus iniit, Alamannosque
subjugarunt." id. 2, 19.
Of Saxons who joined the Lombards in the invasion of Italy we also hear
from the same author--"Post hæc _Saxones qui cum Langobardis in Italiam
venerant_, iterum prorumpunt in Gallias, ... scilicet ut a Sigiberto
rege collecti in loco, unde egressi fuerant, stabilirentur ... Hi vero
ad Sigibertum regem transeuntes, in locum, unde prius egressi fuerant,
stabiliti sunt." 4, 43.
The best measure, however, of the Saxon piracies is to be found in two
terms, each of which has always commanded the attention of
investigators--the names _Saxones Bajocassini_ and _Littus Saxonicum_.
1. _Saxones Bajocassini_ or the _Saxons of Bayeux_ are mentioned under
that name by Gregory of Tours (§. 27. 10. 9); and in a charter of
Charles the Bald there is the notice of a _pagus_ in the same district
called _Ot linguæ_. Zeuss reasonably suggests, as an emended reading,
_Otlinga_; in which case we have one of the numerous equivalents of
those local names which, in the modern English, end in -_ing_, and in
the Anglo-Saxon, in -_ingas_--Palling, Notting, Horbling,
Billing--Æsclingas, Gillingas, &c., &c. Who were these? When we hear of
Bayeux again, _i.e._, in the tenth century, it is alluded to as the most
_Scandinavian_ or _Norse_ town of Normandy, the only one indeed where
the Norse language and customs were decidedly retained. These Saxons,
then, may have been Norsemen. But they may equally easily have been
Angles, or Frisians; since a Norse conquest in the tenth is perfectly
compatible with a German in the fifth century; and, in Britain, such was
actually the case.
2. The _Littus Saxonicum_ is a term in the _Notitia Dignitatum_, which
appears in three places. In chapter xxxvi, where we have the details of
the sea-coast of Gaul, under the denomination of the _Tractus
Armoricanus_, the first officer--
[§. 1.] Sub dispositione viri spectabilis Ducis Tractus Armoricani et
Nervicani--
Is--
[A] [1.] Tribunus Cohortis Primæ Novæ Armoricæ Grannona in Littore
Saxonico.
_b._ CAP. xxxvii. [§. 1.] Sub Dispositione viri spectabilis Ducis
Belgicæ Secundæ--
[1.] Equites Dalmatæ Marcis in Littore Saxonico.
_c._ These but give us a _Littus Saxonicum_ in Gaul. The 25th chapter
supplies one for Britain, and that with considerable detail--
[§. 1.] Sub dispositione viri spectabilis comitis Littoris Saxonici per
Britanniam:
[1.] Præpositus Numeri Fortensium Othonæ.
[2.] Præpositus Militum Tungricanorum Dubris, &c.
It is not necessary to go through the detail. It is sufficient to say
that we find stations at the following undoubted localities--Brancaster,
Yarmouth, Reculvers, Richborough, Dover, Lymne, and the mouth of the
Adur. Putting this together it is safe to say that the whole line of
coast from the Wash to the Southampton water was, in the reign of
Honorius, if not earlier, a _Littus Saxonicum_--whatever may have been
the import of that term.
Looking over the preceding details we find how hazardous it would
be to predicate concerning the several populations designated as
_Saxons_ any single statement beyond that of their having been
pirates from the north-German sea-board. Some may have been Angle,
some Frisian, some Platt-Deutsch, some Scandinavian. Nay, the name
_Adovacrius_=_Odoacer_=_Ottocar_, may have belonged to a Slavonian
captain, whatever may have been the country of the crew.
FOOTNOTES:
[20] The compound is of the same kind with the English words Dor-_set_,
and Somer-_set_, _i.e._, from the Anglo-Saxon _sætan_=_settlers_.
[21] This is so mixed up with Danish as scarcely to be Frisian.