Chapter I: Saxon and Welsh Traditions

Eleven centuries ago, an industrious and conscientious historian, desiring to give a record of the establishment of his forefathers in this island, could find no fuller or better account than this: “About the year of Grace 445-446, the British inhabitants of England, deserted by the Roman masters who had enervated while they protected them, and exposed to the ravages of Picts and Scots from the extreme and barbarous portions of the island, called in the assistance of heathen Saxons from the continent of Europe. The strangers faithfully performed their task, and chastised the Northern invaders; then, in scorn of the weakness of their employers, subjected them in turn to the yoke, and after various vicissitudes of fortune, established their own power upon the ruins of Roman and British civilization.” The few details which had reached the historian taught that the strangers were under the guidance of two brothers, Hengest and Hors: that their armament was conveyed in three ships or keels: that it consisted of Jutes, Saxons and Angles: that their successes stimulated similar adventurers among their countrymen: and that in process of time their continued migrations were so large and numerous, as to have reduced Anglia, their original home, to a desert[3].

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Footnote 3:

Beda, Hist. Eccl. i. 14, 15. Gildas, Hist. § 14. Nennius, Hist. § 38.

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Such was the tale of the victorious Saxons in the eighth century: at a later period, the vanquished Britons found a melancholy satisfaction in adding details which might brand the career of their conquerors with the stain of disloyalty. According to these hostile authorities, treachery and fraud prepared and consolidated the Saxon triumph. The wiles of Hengest’s beautiful daughter[4] subdued the mind of the British ruler; a murderous violation of the rights of hospitality, which cut off the chieftains of the Britons at the very table of their hosts, delivered over the defenceless land to the barbarous invader[5]; and the miraculous intervention of Germanus, the spells of Merlin and the prowess of Arthur, or the victorious career of Aurelius Ambrosius, although they delayed and in part avenged, yet could not prevent the downfall of their people[6]. Meagre indeed are the accounts which thus satisfied the most enquiring of our forefathers; yet such as they are, they were received as the undoubted truth, and appealed to in later periods as the earliest authentic record of our race. The acuter criticism of an age less prone to believe, more skilful in the appreciation of evidence, and familiar with the fleeting forms of mythical and epical thought, sees in them only a confused mass of traditions borrowed from the most heterogeneous sources, compacted rudely and with little ingenuity, and in which the smallest possible amount of historical truth is involved in a great deal of fable. Yet the truth which such traditions do nevertheless contain, yields to the alchemy of our days a golden harvest: if we cannot undoubtingly accept the details of such legends, they still point out to us at least the course we must pursue to discover the elements of fact upon which the Mythus and Epos rest, and guide us to the period and the locality where these took root and flourished.

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Footnote 4:

It is uncertain from the MSS. whether this lady is to be called Rouwen
or Ronwen. The usual English tradition gives her name as Rowena; if
this be accurate, I presume our pagan forefathers knew something of a
divine personage—Hróðwén—possibly a dialectical form of the _great_
and _glorious_ goddess Hréðe; for whom refer to Chapter X. of this
Book.

Footnote 5:

The story of the treacherous murder perpetrated upon the Welsh
chieftains does not claim an English origin. It is related of the
Oldsaxons upon the continent, in connexion with the conquest of the
Thuringians. See Widukind.

Footnote 6:

Conf. Nennius, Hist. 37 _seq._, 46 _seq._ Beda, Hist. Ecc. i. 14, 15.
Gildas, Hist. § 25.

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From times beyond the records of history, it is certain that continual changes were taking place in the position and condition of the various tribes that peopled the northern districts of Europe. Into this great basin the successive waves of Keltic, Teutonic and Slavonic migrations were poured, and here, through hundreds of years, were probably reproduced convulsions, terminated only by the great outbreak which the Germans call _the wandering of the nations_. For successive generations, the tribes, or even portions of tribes, may have moved from place to place, as the necessities of their circumstances demanded; names may have appeared, and vanished altogether from the scene; wars, seditions, conquests, the rise and fall of states, the solemn formation or dissolution of confederacies, may have filled the ages which intervened between the first settlement of the Teutons in Germany, and their appearance in history as dangerous to the quiet of Rome. The heroic lays[7] may possibly preserve some shadowy traces of these events; but of all the changes in detail we know nothing: we argue only that nations possessing in so preeminent a degree as the Germans, the principles, the arts and institutions of civilization, must have passed through a long apprenticeship of action and suffering, and have learnt in the rough school of practice the wisdom they embodied in their lives.

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Footnote 7:

The Anglosaxon Traveller’s Song contains a multitude of names which
cannot be found elsewhere. Paulus Diaconus and Jornandes have
evidently used ancient poems as the foundation of their histories. The
lays of the various Germanic cycles still furnish details respecting
Hermanaric, Otachar, Theodoric, Hiltibrant and other heroes of this
troubled period. But the reader who would judge of the fragmentary and
unsatisfactory result of _all_ that the ancient world has recorded of
the new, had better consult that most remarkable work of Zeuss, Die
Deutschen und die Nachbarstämme. Munich, 1837. He will there see how
the profoundest science halts after the reality of ancient ages, and
strives in vain to reduce their manifold falsehood to a truth.

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Possessing no written annals, and trusting to the poet the task of the historian, our forefathers have left but scanty records of their early condition[8]. Nor did the supercilious or unsuspecting ignorance of Italy care to enquire into the mode of life and habits of the barbarians until their strong arms threatened the civilization and the very existence of the empire itself. Then first, dimly through the twilight in which the sun of Rome was to set for ever, loomed the Colossus of the German race, gigantic, terrible, inexplicable; and the vague attempt to define its awful features came too late to be fully successful. In Tacitus, the city possessed indeed a thinker worthy of the exalted theme; but his sketch, though vigorous beyond expectation, is incomplete in many of the most material points: yet this is the most detailed and fullest account which we possess, and nearly the only certain source of information till we arrive at the moment when the invading tribes in every portion of the empire entered upon their great task of reconstructing society from its foundations. Slowly, from point to point, and from time to time, traces are recognized of powerful struggles, of national movements, of destructive revolutions: but the definite facts which emerge from the darkness of the first three centuries are rare and fragmentary.

Footnote 8:

“Celebrant carminibus antiquis, quod unum apud illos memoriae et
annalium genus est.” Tac. Mor. Germ. cap. ii.

Let us confine our attention to that portion of the race which settled on our own shores.

The testimony of contemporaneous history assures us that about the middle of the fifth century, a considerable movement took place among the tribes that inhabited the western coasts of Germany and the islands of the Baltic sea. Pressed at home by the incursions of restless neighbours, and the urgency of increasing population, or yielding to the universal spirit of adventure, Angles, Saxons and Frisians crossed a little-known and dangerous ocean to seek new settlements in adjacent lands. Familiar as we are with daring deeds of maritime enterprise, who have seen our flag float over every sea, and flutter in every breeze that sweeps over the surface of the earth, we cannot contemplate without astonishment and admiration, these hardy sailors, swarming on every point, traversing every ocean, sweeping every æstuary and bay, and landing on every shore which promised plunder or a temporary rest from their fatigues. The wealth of Gaul had already attracted fearful visitations, and the spoils of Roman cultivation had been displayed before the wondering borderers of the Elbe and Eyder, the prize of past, and incentive to future activity. Britain, fertile and defenceless, abounding in the accumulations of a long career of peace, deserted by its ancient lords, unaccustomed to arms[9], and accustomed to the yoke, at once invited attack and held out the prospect of a rich reward: and it is certain that at that period, there took place some extensive migration of Germans to the shores of England[10]. The expeditions known to tradition as those of Hengest, Ælli, Cissa, Cerdic and Port, may therefore have some foundation in fact; and around this meagre nucleus of truth were grouped the legends which afterwards served to conceal the poverty and eke out the scanty stock of early history. But I do not think it at all probable that this was the earliest period at which the Germans formed settlements in England.

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Footnote 9:

This is asserted both by Gildas and Nennius, and it is not in itself
improbable. The Romans did sometimes attempt to disarm the nations
they subdued: thus Probus with the Alamanni. Vopisc. cap. 14.
Malmsbury’s account of the defenceless state of Britain was probably
not exaggerated. He says: “Ita cum tyranni nullum in agris praeter
semibarbaros, nullum in urbibus praeter ventri deditos reliquissent,
Britannia omni patrocinio iuvenilis vigoris viduata, omni exercitio
artium exinanita, conterminarum gentium inhiationi diu obnoxia fuit.”
Gest. Reg. lib. i. § 2.

Footnote 10:

Prosper Tyro, a.d. 441, says, “Theodosii xviii. Britanniae usque ad
hoc tempus variis cladibus eventibusque latae [? laceratae] in
ditionem Saxonum rediguntur.” See also Procop. Bel. Got. iv. 20. The
former of these passages might however be understood without the
assumption of an immigration, which the movements of Attila render
probable.

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It is natural to believe that for many centuries a considerable and active intercourse had prevailed between the southern and eastern shores of this island, and the western districts of Gaul. The first landing of Julius Caesar was caused or justified by the assurance that his Gallic enemies recruited their armies and repaired their losses, by the aid of their British kinsmen and allies[11]; and the merchants of the coast, who found a market in Britain, reluctantly furnished him with the information upon which the plan of his invasion was founded[12]. When the fortune and the arms of Rome had prevailed over her ill-disciplined antagonists, and both continent and island were subject to the same all-embracing rule, it is highly probable that the ancient bonds were renewed, and that the most familiar intercourse continued to prevail. In the time of Strabo the products of the island, corn, cattle, gold, silver and iron, skins, slaves, and a large description of dog, were exported by the natives, no doubt principally to the neighbouring coasts, and their commerce with these was sufficient to justify the imposition of an export and import duty[13]. As early as the time of Nero, London, though not a colony, was remarkable as a mercantile station[14], and in all human probability was the great mart of the Gauls. There cannot be the least doubt that an active communication was maintained throughout by the Keltic nations on the different sides of the channel; and similarly, as German tribes gradually advanced along the lines of the Elbe, the Weser, the Maes and the Rhine, occupying the countries which lie upon the banks of those rivers, and between them and the sea, it is reasonable to suppose that some offsets of their great migrations reached the opposite shores of England[15]. As early as the second century, Chauci are mentioned among the inhabitants of the south-east of Ireland[16], and although we have only the name whereby to identify them with the great Saxon tribe, yet this deserves consideration when compared with the indisputably Keltic names of the surrounding races. The Coritavi, who occupied the present counties of Lincoln, Leicester, Rutland, Northampton, Nottingham and Derby, were Germans, according to the Welsh tradition itself[17], and the next following name Κατυευχλανοι, though not certainly German, bears a strong resemblance to many German formations[18].

Footnote 11:

Bell. Gal. iii. 8. 9; iv. 20.

Footnote 12:

Especially the Veneti: hέτοιμοι γὰρ ἦσαν κωλύειν τὸν εἰς τὴν
βρεττανικὴν πλοῦν, χρώμενοι τῷ ἐμπορίῳ. Strabo, bk. iv. p. 271. Conf.
Bell. Gall. iv. 20.

Footnote 13:

Book iv. p. 278.

Footnote 14:

Tacit. Ann. xiv. 33.

Footnote 15:

Caesar notices the migrations of continental tribes to Britain: he
says, “Britanniae pars interior ab iis incolitur, quos natos in insula
ipsa memoria proditum dicunt; maritima pars ab iis qui praedae ac
belli inferendi causa ex Belgis transierant; qui omnes fere iis
nominibus civitatum adpellantur, quibus orti ex civitatibus eo
pervenerunt, et bello inlato ibi remanserunt, atque agros colere
coeperunt.” Bell. Gall. v. 12.

Footnote 16:

Ptolemy, bk. ii. c. 2. It is true that Ptolemy calls them Καύκοι, but
this mode of spelling is not unexampled, and is found in even so
correct a writer as Strabo. The proper form is Καύχοι. Latin authors
occasionally write Cauci for Chauci, and sometimes even Cauchi: see
Zeuss, Die Deutschen und die Nachbarstämme, p. 138. It is right to add
that Zeuss, whose opinion on such a point is entitled to the highest
consideration, hesitates to include these Καυκοι among Germanic tribes
(p. 199). The Μανάπιοι, placed also by Ptolemy in Ireland, can hardly
be Germans.

Footnote 17:

Ptolemy, bk. ii. c. 3. μεθ’ οὗς Κοριταυοὶ, ἐν οἷς πόλεις, λίνδον,
ῥάγε· εἶτα, Κατυευχλανοὶ, ἐν οἷς πόλεις, σαλῆναι[al. σαλιοῦαι],
οὐρολάνιον. Others have preferred the form Κοριτανοὶ, but the
authority of the best manuscripts, not less than the analogy of the
names Ingaevones, Iscaevones, Chamavi, Batavi, confirms the earlier
reading. According to the Triads, these Coritavi (Coriniaidd) had
migrated from a Teutonic marshland. Thorpe’s Lappenberg, i. 15. The
word is thus in all probability derived from Hor, _lutum_, Horiht,
_lutosus_; equivalent to the “aquosa Fresonum arva.” Vit. Sci. Sturm.
Pertz. ii. 372. “Saxones, gentem oceani, in littoribus et paludibus
inviis sitam.” Oros. vii. 32.

Footnote 18:

Chatuarii, Heaðobeardan, Heaðoræmes. However Catu is a genuine British
prefix.

Without, however, laying more stress upon these facts than they will fairly warrant, let us proceed to other considerations which render it probable that a large admixture of German tribes was found in England long previous to the middle of the fifth century. It appears to me that the presence of Roman emperors recruiting the forces with which the throne of the world was to be disputed, from among the hardiest populations of the continent, must not only have led to the settlement of Teutonic families in this island, but also to the maintenance, on their part, of a steady intercourse with their kinsmen who remained behind. The military colony, moreover, which claimed to be settled upon good arable land, formed the easiest and most advantageous mode of pensioning the _emeriti_; and many a successful Caesar may have felt that his own safety was better secured by portioning his German veterans in the fruitful valleys of England, than by settling them as doubtful garrisons in Lombardy or Campania.

The fertile fields which long before had merited the praises of the first Roman victor, must have offered attractions enough to induce wandering Saxons and Angles to desert the marshes and islands of the Elbe, and to call Frisian adventurers over from the sands and salt-pools of their home. If in the middle of the fifth century Saxons had established regular settlements at Bayeux[19]; if even before this time the country about Grannona bore the name of Littus Saxonicum[20], we may easily believe that at still earlier periods other Saxons had found over the intervening ocean a way less dangerous and tedious than a march through the territories of jealous or hostile neighbours, or even than a coasting voyage along barbarous shores defended by a yet more barbarous population. A north-east wind would, almost without effort of their own, have carried their ships from Hêlgoland and the islands of the Elbe, or from Silt and Romsey[21], to the Wash and the coast of Norfolk. There seems then every probability that bodies more or less numerous, of coast-Germans, perhaps actually of Saxons and Angles, had colonized the eastern shores of England long before the time generally assumed for their advent[22]. The very exigencies of military service had rendered this island familiar to the nations of the continent: Batavi, under their own national chieftains, had earned a share of the Roman glory, and why not of the Roman land, in Britain[23]? The policy of the Emperor Marcus Antoninus, at the successful close of the Marcomannic war, had transplanted to Britain multitudes of Germans, to serve at once as instruments of Roman power and as hostages for their countrymen on the frontier of the empire[24]. The remnants of this once powerful confederation cannot but have left long and lasting traces of their settlement among us; nor can it be considered at all improbable that Carausius, when in the year 287, he raised the standard of revolt in Britain, calculated upon the assistance of the Germans in this country, as well as that of their allies and brethren on the continent[25]. Nineteen years later the death of Constantius delivered the dignity of Caesar to his son Constantine: he was solemnly elected to that dignity in Britain, and among his supporters was Crocus, or as some read Erocus, an Alamannic king who had accompanied his father from Germany[26]. Still later, under Valentinian, we find an auxiliary force of Alamanni serving with the Roman legions here.

Footnote 19:

Saxones Baiocassini. Greg. Turon. v. 27; x. 9.

Footnote 20:

_Grannona in littore Saxonico._ Notit. Imp. Occid. c. 86. Du Chesne
Hist. i. p. 3. The Tótingas, who have left their name to Tooting in
Surrey, are recorded also at Tótingahám in the county of Boulogne.
Leo, Rectitudines singularum personarum, p. 26.

Footnote 21:

Ptolemy calls the islands at the mouth of the Elbe, Σαξόνων νῆσοι
τρεῖς. Zeuss considers these to be Föhr, Silt and Nordstrand. Die
Deutschen, p. 150. Lappenberg sees in them, North Friesland,
Eiderstedt, Nordstrand, Wickingharde and Böcingharde. Thorpe, Lap. i.
87. It seems hardly conceivable that Frisians, who occupied the coast
as early as the time of Caesar, should not have found their way by sea
to Britain, especially when pressed by Roman power: see Tac. Ann.
xiii. 54.

Footnote 22:

Hengest defeated the Picts and Scots at Stamford in Lincolnshire, not
far from the Nene, the Witham and the Welland, upon whose banks it is
nearly certain that there were German settlements. Widukind’s story of
an embassy from the Britons to the Saxons, to entreat aid, is thus
rendered not altogether improbable: but then it must be understood of
Saxons already established in England, and on the very line of march
of the Northern invaders, whom they thus took most effectually in
flank. Compare Geoffry’s story of Vortigern giving Hengest lands in
Lincolnshire, etc.

Footnote 23:

Tac. Hist. iv. 12, about A.D. 69. “Diu Germanicis bellis exerciti; mox
aucta per Britanniam gloria, transmissis illuc cohortibus, quas vetere
instituto, nobilissimi popularium regebant.”

Footnote 24:

Dio. Cas. lxxi. lxxii. Gibbon, Dec. cap. ix. At a later period, Probus
settled Vandals and Burgundians here: Zosimus tells us (Hist. Nov. i.
68): ὅσους δὲ ζῶντας οἷος τε γέγονεν ἑλεῖν, εἰς Βρεττανίαν παρέπεμψεν·
ὃι τὴν νῆσον οἰκήσαντες, ἐπαναστάντος μετὰ ταῦτα τινος, γεγόνασι
βασιλεῖ χρήσιμοι. Procopius even goes so far as to make Belisarius
talk of Goths in Britain, but the context itself proves that this
deserves very little notice. Bell. Got. ii. 6.

Footnote 25:

Carausius was a Menapian: but in the third century the inhabitants of
the Menapian territory were certainly Teutonic. Aurelius Victor calls
him a Batavian: see Gibbon, Dec. cap. xiii. Carausius, and after him
Allectus, maintained a German force here: “Omnes enim illos, ut audio,
campos atque colles non nisi teterrimorum hostium corpora fusa
texerunt. Illa barbara aut imitatione barbariae olim cultu vestis, et
prolixo crine rutilantia, tunc vero pulvere et cruore foedata, et in
diversos situs tracta, sicuti dolorem vulnerum fuerant secuta,
iacuerunt.... Enimvero, Caesar invicte, tanto deorum immortalium tibi
est addicta consensu omnium quidem quos adortus fueris hostium, sed
praecipue internecio Francorum, ut illi quoque milites vestri, qui per
errorem nebulosi, ut paullo ante dixi, maris abiuncti ad oppidum
Londiniense pervenerunt, quidquid ex mercenaria illa multitudine
barbarorum praelio superfuerat, cum direpta civitate, fugam capessere
cogitarent, passim tota urbe confecerint.” Eumen. Paneg. Const. cap.
18, 19.

Footnote 26:

Aurel. Vict. cap. 41. Lappenberg, referring to this fact (Thorpe, i.
47), asks, “May not the name Erocus be a corruption of Ertocus, a
Latinization of the old-Saxon Heritogo, _dux_?” I think not; for an
Alaman would have been called by a high and not low German name,
Herizohho, not Heritogo. I think it much more likely that his name was
Chrohho or Hrôca, a _rook_.

By chronological steps we have now approached the period at which was compiled the celebrated document entitled ‘Notitia utriusque imperii’[27]. Even if we place this at the latest admissible date, it is still at least half a century earlier than the earliest date assigned to Hengest. Among the important officers of state mentioned therein as administering the affairs of this island, is the Comes Littoris Saxonici per Britannias; and his government, which extended from near the present site of Portsmouth to Wells in Norfolk[28], was supported by various civil and military establishments, dispersed along the whole sea-board. The term Littus Saxonicum has been explained to mean rather the coast visited by, or exposed to the ravages of, the Saxons, than the coast occupied by them: but against this loose system of philological and historical interpretation I beg emphatically to protest: it seems to have arisen merely from the uncritical spirit in which the Saxon and Welsh traditions have been adopted as ascertained facts, and from the impossibility of reconciling the account of Beda with the natural sense of the entry in the Notitia: but there seems no reason whatever for adopting an exceptional rendering in this case, and as the Littus Saxonicum on the mainland was that district in which members of the Saxon confederacy were settled, the Littus Saxonicum per Britannias unquestionably obtained its name from a similar circumstance[29].

Footnote 27:

Pancirolus would date this important record in A.D. 438. Gibbon,
however, refutes him and places it between 395 and 407. Dec. cap.
xvii. I am inclined to think even this date inaccurate, and that the
Romans did not maintain any such great establishment in Britain, as
that herein described, at so late a period. For even Ammianus tells us
in 364, “Hoc tempore Picti, Saxonesque et Scotti et Attacotti
Britannos aerumnis vexavere continuis,” (Hist. xxvi. 4), which is
hardly consistent with a flourishing state of the Roman civil and
military rule. The actual document we possess may possibly date from
390 or 400, but it refers to the arrangements of an earlier time, and
to an organization of Roman power in more palmy days of their
dominion.

Footnote 28:

The document itself may be consulted in Graevius, vol. vii. The
“littus Saxonicum per Britannias” extended at least from the Portus
Adurni to Branodunum, that is, from the neighbourhood of Portsmouth to
Branchester on the Wash. In both these places there were civil or
military officers under the orders of the Comes littoris Saxonici.

Footnote 29:

Professor Leo, of Halle, has called attention to a remarkable
resemblance between the names of certain places in Kent, and
settlements of the Alamanni upon the Neckar. A few of these, it must
be admitted, are striking, but the majority are only such as might be
expected to arise from similarities of surface and natural features in
any two countries settled by cognate populations, having nearly the
same language, religious rites and civil institutions. Even if the
fact be admitted in the fullest extent, it is still unnecessary to
adopt Dr. Leo’s hypothesis, that the coincidence is due to a double
migration from the shores of the Elbe. Rectitud. sing. person. pp.
100-104. It has been already stated that Constantius was accompanied
to Britain by an Alamannic king; and I cannot doubt that under
Valentinian, a force of Alamanni served in this country. Ammianus
says: “Valentinianus ... in Macriani locum, Bucinobantibus, quae
contra Moguntiacum gens est Alamanna, regem Fraomarium ordinavit: quem
paullo postea, quoniam recens excursus eundem penitus vastaverat
pagum, in Britannos translatum potestate tribuni, Alamannorum
praefecerat numero, multitudine, viribusque ea tempestate florenti.”
Hist. xxix. c. 4. The context renders it impossible that this “numerus
Alamannorum” should have been anything but genuine Germans.

Thus far the object of this rapid sketch has been to show the improbability of our earliest records being anything more than ill-understood and confused traditions, accepted without criticism by our first annalists, and to refute the opinion long entertained by our chroniclers, that the Germanic settlements in England really date from the middle of the fifth century. The results at which we have arrived are far from unimportant; indeed they seem to form the only possible basis upon which we can ground a consistent and intelligible account of the manner of the settlements themselves. And, be it remembered, that the evidence brought forward upon this point are the assertions of indifferent and impartial witnesses; statesmen, soldiers, men of letters and philosophers, who merely recorded events of which they had full means of becoming cognizant, with no object in general save that of stating facts appertaining to the history of their empire. Moreover, the accounts they give are probable in themselves and perfectly consistent with other well-ascertained facts of Roman history. Can the same praise be awarded to our own meagre national traditions, or to the fuller, detailed, but palpably uncritical assertions of our conquered neighbours? I confess that the more I examine this question, the more completely I am convinced that the received accounts of our migrations, our subsequent fortunes, and ultimate settlement, are devoid of historical truth in every detail.

It strikes the enquirer at once with suspicion when he finds the tales supposed peculiar to his own race and to this island, shared by the Germanic populations of other lands, and with slight changes of locality, or trifling variations of detail, recorded as authentic parts of their history. The readiest belief in fortuitous resemblances and coincidences gives way before a number of instances whose agreement defies all the calculation of chances. Thus, when we find Hengest and Hors approaching the coasts of Kent in three keels, and Ælli effecting a landing in Sussex with the same number, we are reminded of the Gothic tradition which carries a migration of Ostrogoths, Visigoths and Gepidae, also in three vessels, to the mouths of the Vistula, certainly a spot where we do not readily look for that recurrence to a trinal calculation, which so peculiarly characterizes the modes of thought of the Cymri. The murder of the British chieftains by Hengest is told _totidem verbis_ by Widukind and others, of the Oldsaxons in Thuringia[30]. Geoffry of Monmouth relates also how Hengest obtained from the Britons as much land as could be enclosed by an ox-hide; then, cutting the hide into thongs, enclosed a much larger space than the grantors intended, on which he erected Thong castle[31]—a tale too familiar to need illustration, and which runs throughout the mythus of many nations. Among the Oldsaxons the tradition is in reality the same, though recorded with a slight variety of detail. In their story, a lapful of earth is purchased at a dear rate from a Thuringian; the companions of the Saxon jeer him for his imprudent bargain; but he sows the purchased earth over a large space of ground, which he claims and, by the aid of his comrades, ultimately wrests from the Thuringians[32].

Footnote 30:

Widukind in Leibnitz, Rer. Brunsw. i. 73, 74; Repgow, Sachsensp. iii.
44, § 2. It is amusing enough to see how the number of ships increases
as people began to feel the absurdity of bringing over conquering
armies in such very small flotillas.

Footnote 31:

Galf. Monum. H. Brit., vi. 11. Thong castle probably gave a turn to
the story here which the Oldsaxon legend had not. The classical tale
of Dido and Byrsa is well known to every schoolboy. Ragnor Lodbrog
adopted the same artifice, Rag. Lodb. Saga, cap. 19, 20. Nay the
Hindoos declare that we obtained possession of Calcutta by similar
means.

Footnote 32:

Widuk. _in loc. citat._, also Grimm’s Deutsche Sagen, No. 547, 369,
and Deutsche Rechtsalt. p. 90, where several valuable examples are
cited: it is remarkable how many of these are Thuringian.

To the traditional history of the tribes peculiarly belong the genealogies of their kings, to which it will be necessary to refer hereafter in a mythological point of view. For the present it is enough that I call attention to the extraordinary tale of Offa, who occurs at an early stage of the Mercian table, among the progenitors of the Mercian kings. This story, as we find it in Matthew Paris’s detailed account[33], coincides in the minutest particulars with a tale told by Saxo Grammaticus of a Danish prince bearing the same name[34].

Footnote 33:

Vit. Offae Primi, edited by Wats.

Footnote 34:

Saxo Gramm. bk. iv. p. 59 _seq._

The form itself in which details, which profess to be authentic, have been preserved, ought to secure us from falling into error. They are romantic, not historical; and the romance has salient and characteristic points, not very reconcilable with the variety which marks the authentic records of fact. For example, the details of a long and doubtful struggle between the Saxons and the Britons are obviously based upon no solid foundation; the dates and the events are alike traditional,—the usual and melancholy consolation of the vanquished. In proportion as we desert the older and apply to later sources of information, do we meet with successful wars, triumphant British chieftains, vanquished Saxons, heroes endowed with supernatural powers and blessed with supernatural luck. Gildas, Nennius and Beda mention but a few contests, and even these of a doubtful and suspicious character; Geoffry of Monmouth and gossipers of his class, on the contrary, are full of wondrous incidents by flood and field, of details calculated to flatter the pride or console the sorrows of Keltic auditors: the successes which those who lived in or near the times described either pass over in modest silence or vaguely insinuate under sweeping generalities, are impudently related by this fabler and his copyists with every richness of narration. According to him the invaders are defeated in every part of the island, nay even expelled from it; army after army is destroyed, chieftain after chieftain slain; till he winds up his enormous tissue of fabrications with the defeat, the capture and execution of a hero whose very existence becomes problematical when tested by the severe principles of historical criticism, and who, according to the strict theory of our times, can hardly be otherwise than enrolled among the gods, through a godlike or half-godlike form[35].

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Footnote 35:

Woden in the _gentile_ form of a horse, Hengest, _equus admissarius_,
the brother of Hors, and father of a line in which names of horses
form a distinguishing part of the royal appellatives. It is hardly
necessary to remind the classical reader of Poseidon in his favourite
shape, the shape in which he contended with Athene and mingled with
Ceres. In these remarks on Geoffry and his sources, I do not mean to
deny the obligation under which the reader of romance has been laid by
him; only to reject everything like historical authority. It is from
the countrymen of Geoffry that we have also gained the marvellous
superstructure of imagination which has supplied the tales of that
time, “when Charlemagne with all his peerage fell by Fontarabia,” and
which is recognised by history in the very short entry, “In quo
proelio Eggihardus regiae mensae praepositus, Anselmus comes palatii,
et Hruodlandus Brittanici limitis praefectus, cum aliis compluribus
interficiuntur.” Einhardi Vita Karoli, § 9. Pertz, ii. 448. Let us be
grateful for the Orlando Innamorato and Furioso, but not make history
of them.

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It is no doubt probable that the whole land was not subdued without some pains in different quarters; that here and there a courageous leader or a favourable position may have enabled the aborigines to obtain even temporary successes over the invaders: the new immigrants were not likely to find land vacant for their occupation among their kinsmen who had long been settled here, though well-assured of their co-operation in any attempt to wrest new settlements from the British. But no authentic record remains of the slow and gradual progress that would have attended the conquest of a brave and united people, nor is any such consistent with the accounts the British authors have left of the disorganized and disarmed condition of the population. A skirmish, carried on by very small numbers on either side, seems generally to have decided the fate of a campaign. Steadily from east to west, from south to north, the sharp axes and long swords of the Teutons hewed their way: wherever opposition was offered, it ended in the retreat of the aborigines to the mountains,—fortresses whence it was impossible to dislodge them, and from which they sometimes descended to attempt a hopeless effort for the liberty of their country or revenge upon their oppressors. The ruder or more generous of their number may have preferred exile and the chances of emigration to subjection at home[36]; but the mass of the people, accustomed to Roman rule or the oppression of native princes[37], probably suffered little by a change of masters, and did little to avoid it. At even a later period an indignant bard could pour out his patriotic reproaches upon the Loegrians who had condescended to become Saxons. We learn that at first the condition of the British under the German rule was fair and easy, and only rendered harsher in punishment of their unsuccessful attempts at rebellion[38]; and the laws of Ini, a Westsaxon king, show that in the territories subject to his rule, and bordering upon the yet British lands, the Welshman occupied the place of a _perioecian_ rather than a _helot_[39]. Nothing in fact is more common, or less true, than the exaggerated account of total exterminations and miserable oppressions, in the traditional literature of conquered nations; and we may very safely appeal even to the personal appearance of the peasantry in many parts of England, as evidence how much Keltic blood was permitted to subsist and even to mingle with that of the ruling Germans; while the signatures to very early charters supply us with names assuredly not Teutonic, and therefore probably borne by persons of Keltic race, occupying positions of dignity at the courts of Anglosaxon kings[40].

Footnote 36:

Many beyond a doubt found a refuge in Brittany among their brethren
and co-religionists who had long been settled there. Conf. Ermold.
Nigel. bk. iii. v. 11. in Pertz, ii. 490. The Cumbrians and Welsh had
probably been as little subdued by the Romans as they were by the
Saxons.

Footnote 37:

Gildas does not spare the native princes: see Epist. querul. _passim_;
and when every excuse has been made for the exaggerations of an honest
zeal, we must believe the condition of the people to have been bad in
the extreme.

Footnote 38:

“Quorum illi qui Northwallos, id est Aquilonales Britones dicebantur,
parti Westsaxonum regum obvenerant. Illi quondam consuetis servitiis
seduli, diu nil asperum retulere, sed tunc rebellionem meditantes,
Kentuuinus rex tam anxia caede perdomuit, ut nihil ulterius sperarent.
Quare et ultima malorum accessit captivis tributaria functio; ut qui
antea nec solam umbram palpabant libertatis, nunc iugum subiectionis
palam ingemiscerent.” W. Malmsb. Vit. Aldhelmi, Ang. Sac. ii. 14.

Footnote 39:

Leg. Ini, § 32, 33.

Footnote 40:

See a tract of the author’s in the Proceedings of the Archaeological
Institute, 1845, on Anglosaxon names. From some very interesting
papers read by the Rev. R. Garnett before the Philological Society in
1843, 1844, we learn that a considerable proportion of the words which
denote the daily processes of agriculture, domestic life, and
generally indoor and outdoor service, are borrowed by us from the
Keltic. Philolog. Trans, i. 171 _seq._ The amount of Keltic words yet
current in English may of course he accounted for in part, without the
hypothesis of an actual incorporation; but many have unquestionably
been borrowed, and serve to show that a strong Keltic element was
permitted to remain and influence the Saxon. That it did so especially
in local names is not of much importance, as it may be doubted whether
conquest ever succeeded in changing these entirely, in any country.

From what has preceded it will be inferred that I look upon the genuine details of the German conquests in England as irrevocably lost to us. So extraordinary a success as the conquest of this island by bands of bold adventurers from the continent, whose cognate tribes had already come into fatal collision with not only the Gallic provincials, but even the levies of the city itself[41], could hardly have passed unnoticed by the historians of the empire: we have seen however that only Prosper Tyro and Procopius notice this great event, and that too in terms which by no means necessarily imply a state of things consistent with the received accounts. The former only says indefinitely, that _about_ 441, Britain was finally reduced under the Saxon power; while Procopius clearly shows how very imperfect, indeed fabulous, an account he had received[42]. Could we trust the accuracy and critical spirit of this writer, whom no less a man than Gibbon has condescended to call the gravest historian of his time, we might indeed imagine that we had recovered one fact of our earliest history, which brought with it all the attractions of romance. An Angle princess had been betrothed to Radigér, prince of the Varni, a Teutonic tribe whose seats are subsequently described to have been about the shores of the Northern Ocean and upon the Rhine, by which alone they were separated from the Franks[43]. Tempted however partly by motives of policy, partly perhaps by maxims of heathendom, he deserted his promised bride and offered his hand to Theodechild, the widow of his father, and sister of the Austrasian Theodberht[44]. Like the epic heroine Brynhildr, the deserted lady was not disposed to pass over the affront thus offered to her charms. With an immense armament she sailed for the mouth of the Rhine. A victory placed the faithless bridegroom a prisoner in her power. But desire of revenge gave place to softer emotions, and the triumphant princess was content to dismiss her rival and compel her repentant suitor to perform his engagement.

Footnote 41:

I borrow from Hermann Müller’s instructive work, Der Lex Salica und
der Lex Angliorum et Werinorum Alter und Heimat, p. 269, the following
chronological notices of the Franks in their relations to the Roman
empire:—

A.D. 250. Franks, the inhabitants of marshes, become known by their
predatory excursions.

280. Franks, transplanted to Asia, return.
287. Franks occupy Batavia; are expelled.
291. Franks in the Gallic provinces.
306. Constantine chastises the Franks. They enjoy consideration in the
service of Rome.
340. Wars and treaties with the Franks.
356. Julian treats with the Franks on the lower Rhine.
358. He treats with Franks in Toxandria.
359. Salic Franks in Batavia.
395. Stilicho treats with the Franks.
408. The Vandals invading Gaul are defeated by the Franks.
414. War with the Franks.
416. The Franks possess the Rhine-land.
437. Chlojo bursts into Gaul and takes Cambray.

Footnote 42:

Procop. Bel. Got. iv. 20.

Footnote 43:

Ουαρνοι μεν ὑπερ Ιστρον ποταμον ἱδρυνται· διηκουσι δε αχρι τε ες
Ωκεανον τον αρκτωον, και ποταμον Ῥηνον· ὁσπερ αυτους τε διοριζει, και
Φραγγους και ταλλα εθνη, ἁ ταυτη ἱδρυνται. ὁυτοι απαντες, ὁσοι
τοπαλαιον αμφι Ῥηνον ἑκατερωθεν ποταμον ωκηντο, ιδιου μεν τινος
ονοματος ἑκαστοι μετελαγχανον ... επικοινης δε Γερμανοι εκαλουντο
ἁπαντες.... Ουαρνοι δε και Φραγγοι τουτι μονον του Ῥηνου το ὑδωρ
μεταξυ εχουσιν. Bel. Got. iv. 20.

Footnote 44:

Procopius tells us that this was done by the dying father’s advice,
and in consonance with the law of the people. Ῥαδίγερ δὲ ὁ παῖς
ξυνοικιζέσθω τῇ μητρυιᾷ τολοιπὸν τῇ αὐτου, καθάπερ ὁ πάτριος ἡμῖν
ἐφίησι νόμος. Ibid. Conf. Bed. Hist. Eccl. ii. 5.

To deny all historical foundation to this tale would perhaps be carrying scepticism to an unreasonable extent. Yet the most superficial examination proves that in all its details, at least, it is devoid of accuracy. The period during which the events described must be placed[45], is between the years 534 and 547; and it is very certain that the Varni were not settled at that time where Procopius has placed them[46]: on that locality we can only look for Saxons. It is hardly necessary to say that a fleet of four hundred ships, and an army of one hundred thousand Angles, led by a woman, are not data upon which we could implicitly rely in calculating either the political or military power of any English principality at the commencement of the sixth century; or that ships capable of carrying two hundred and fifty men each, had hardly been launched at that time from any port in England. Still I am not altogether disposed to deny the possibility of predatory expeditions from the more settled parts of the island, adjoining the eastern coasts. Gregory of Tours tells us that about the same time as that assigned to this Angle expedition, Theodoric the Frank, assisted by Sueves, Saxons and even Bavarians, cruelly devastated the territory of the Thuringians; and although it would be far more natural to seek these Saxons in their old settlements upon the continent, we have the authority of Rudolf or Meginhart, that they were in fact inhabitants of this island[47].

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Footnote 45:

The years 534 and 547 are the extreme terms of Theodberht’s reign. See
Gib. Dec. bk. 38.

Footnote 46:

This fact, which has escaped the accurate, and generally merciless,
criticism of Gibbon, is very clearly proved by Zeuss, Die Deutschen,
etc. pp. 361, 362.

Footnote 47:

The passage is sufficiently important to deserve transcription at
length. “Saxonum gens, sicut tradit antiquitas, ab Anglis Britanniae
incolis egressa, per Oceanum navigans Germaniae litoribus studio et
necessitate quaerendarum sedium appulsa est, in loco qui vocatur
Haduloha, eo tempore quo Thiotricus rex Francorum contra Irminfridum
generum suum, ducem Thuringorum, dimicans, terram eorum ferro vastavit
et igni. Et cum iam duobus proeliis ancipiti pugna incertaque victoria
miserabili suorum cede decertassent, Thiotricus spe vincendi
frustratus, misit legatos ad Saxones, quorum dux erat Hadugoto.
Audivit enim causam adventus eorum, promissisque pro victoria
habitandi sedibus, conduxit eos in adiutorium; quibus secum quasi iam
pro libertate et patria fortiter dimicantibus, superavit adversarios,
vastatisque indigenis et ad internitionem pene deletis, terram eorum
iuxta pollicitationem suam victoribus delegavit. Qui eam sorte
dividentes, cum multi ex eis in bello cecidissent, et pro raritate
eorum tota ab eis occupari non potuit, partem illius, et eam quam
maxime quae respicit orientem, colonis tradebant, singuli pro sorte
sua, sub tributo exercendam. Caetera vero loca ipsi possiderunt.”
Transl. Sci. Alexandri, Pertz, ii. 674. This was written about 863.
Possibly some ancient and now lost epic had recorded the wars of the
Saxon Heaðogeát.

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But if such difficulties exist in dealing with the events of periods which are within the ascertained limits of our chronological system, and which have received the illustration of contemporary history, what shall we say of those whereof the time, nay even the locality is unknown? What account shall we render of those occurrences, which exist for us only in the confused forms given to them by successive ages; some, mischievously determined to reduce the abnormal to rule, the extraordinary to order, as measured by their narrow scheme of analogy? Is it not obvious that to seek for historic truth in such traditions, is to be guilty of violating every principle of historic logic? Such was the course pursued by our early chroniclers, but it is not one that we can be justified in repeating. In their view no doubt, the annals of the several Saxon kingdoms did supply points of definite information; but we are now able to take the measure of their credulity, and to apply severer canons of criticism to the facts themselves which they believed and recorded. If it was the tendency and duty of their age to deliver to us the history that they found, it is the tendency and duty of ours to enquire upon what foundation that history rests, and what amount of authority it may justly claim.

The little that Beda could collect at the beginning of the eighth century, formed the basis of all the subsequent reports. Though not entirely free from the prejudices of his time, and yielding ready faith to tales which his frame of mind disposed him willingly to credit, he seems to have bestowed some pains upon the investigation and critical appreciation of the materials he collected. But the limits of the object he had proposed to himself, viz. the ecclesiastical history of the island, not only imposed upon him the necessity of commencing his detailed narrative at a comparatively late period[48], but led him to reject much that may have been well known to him, of our secular history. The deeds of pagan and barbarous chieftains offered little to attract his attention or command his sympathies; indeed were little likely to be objects of interest to those from whom his own information was generally derived. Beda’s account, copied and recopied both at home and abroad, was swelled by a few vague data from the regnal annals of the kings; these were probably increased by a few traditions, ill understood and ill applied, which belonged exclusively to the epical or mythological cycles of our own several tribes and races, and the cognate families of the continent; and finally the whole was elaborated into a mass of inconsistent fables, on the admission of Cymric or Armorican tales by Norman writers, who for the most part felt as little interest in the fate of the Briton as the Saxon, and were as little able to appreciate the genuine history of the one as of the other race. Thus Wóden, Bældæg, Geát, Scyld, Sceáf and Beówa gradually found their way into the royal genealogies; one by one, Brutus, Aurelius Ambrosius, Uther Pendragon and Arthur, Hengest, Hors and Vortigern, all became numbered among historical personages; and from heroes of respective epic poems sunk down into kings and warriors, who lived and fought and died upon the soil of England.

Footnote 48:

Beda attempts to give some account of the early state of Britain
previous to the arrival of Augustine; a few quotations from Solinus,
Gildas, and a legendary life of St. Germanus, comprise however nearly
the whole of his collections. Either he could find no more
information, or he did not think it worthy of belief. He even speaks
doubtfully of the tale of Hengest. Hist. Eccl. i. 15.

We are ignorant what _fasti_ or mode even of reckoning the revolutions of seasons prevailed in England, previous to the introduction of Christianity. We know not how any event before the year 600 was recorded, or to what period the memory of man extended. There may have been rare annals: there may have been poems: if such there were they have perished, and have left no trace behind, unless we are to attribute to them such scanty notices as the Saxon chronicle adds to Beda’s account. From such sources however little could have been gained of accurate information either as to the real internal state, the domestic progress, or development of a people. The dry, bare entries of the chronicles in historical periods may supply the means of judging what sort of annals were likely to exist before the general introduction of the Roman alphabet and parchment, while, in all probability, runes supplied the place of letters, and stones, or the _beech_-wood from which their name is derived, of _books_. Again, the traditions embodied in the epic, are preeminently those of kings and princes: they are heroical, devoted to celebrate the divine or half-divine founders of a race, the fortunes of their warlike descendants, the manners and mode of life of military adventurers, not the obscure progress, household peace and orderly habits of the humble husbandman. They are full of feasts and fighting, shining arms and golden goblets: the gods mingle among men almost their equals, share in the same pursuits, are animated by the same passions of love, and jealousy and hatred; or, blending the divine with the mortal nature, become the founders of races, kingly because derived from divinity itself. But one race knows little of another or its traditions, and cares as little for them. Alliances or wars alone bring them in contact with one another; and the terms of intercourse between the races will for the most part determine the character under which foreign heroes shall be admitted into the national epos, or whether they shall be admitted at all. All history then, which is founded in any degree upon epical tradition (and national history is usually more or less so founded) must be to that extent imperfect, if not inaccurate; only when corrected by the written references of contemporaneous authors, can we assign any certainty to its records[49].

Let us apply these observations to the early events of Saxon history: of Kent indeed we have the vague and uncertain notices which I have mentioned: even more vague and uncertain are those of Sussex and Wessex. Of the former, we learn that in the year 477, Ælli, with three sons, Cymen, Wlencing and Cissa, landed in Sussex; that in the year 485 they defeated the Welsh, and that in 491 they destroyed the population of Anderida[50]. Not another word is there about Sussex, before the arrival of Augustine, except a late assertion of the military preeminence of Ælli among the Saxon chieftains. The events of Wessex are somewhat better detailed; we learn that in 495 two nobles, Cerdic and Cyneríc, came to England, and landed at Cerdices ora, where on the same day they fought a battle: that in 501 they were followed by a noble named Port, who with his two sons Bieda and Mægla made a forcible landing at Portsmouth: and that in 508 they gained a great battle over a British king, whom they slew together with five thousand of his people. In 514 Stuff and Wihtgár, their nephews, brought them a reinforcement of three ships; in 519 they again defeated the Britons, and established the kingdom of Wessex. In 527 a new victory is recorded: in 530, the Isle of Wight was subdued and given to Wihtgár; and in 534, Cerdic died, and was succeeded by Cyneríc, who reigned twenty-six years[51]. In 544 Wihtgár died. A victory of Cyneríc in 552 and 556, and Ceawlin’s accession to the throne of Wessex are next recorded. Wars of the Westsaxon kings are noted in 568, 571, 577, 584. From 590 to 595 a king of that race named Ceól is mentioned: in 591 we learn the expulsion of Ceawlin from power: in 593 the deaths of Ceawlin, Cwichelm and Crida are mentioned, and in 597, the year of Augustine’s arrival, we learn that Ceólwulf ascended the throne of Wessex.

Footnote 49:

The Homeric poems and those of the Edda are obvious examples: but
nothing can be more instructive than the _history_ which Livy and Saxo
Grammaticus have woven out of similar materials.

Footnote 50:

Sax. Chron. under the respective dates.

Footnote 51:

Cerdic and Cyneríc landed in 495, after forty years Cerdic dies, and
Cyneríc reigns twenty-six more!

Meagre as these details are, they far exceed what is related of Northumberland, Essex or Eastanglia. In 547 we are told that Ida began to reign in the first of these kingdoms; and that he was succeeded in 560 by Ælli: that after a reign of _thirty_ years[52], he died in 588 and was succeeded by Æðelríc, who again in 593 was succeeded by Æðelfrið. This is all we learn of Northumbria; of Mercia, Essex, Eastanglia, and the innumerable kingdoms that must have been comprised under these general appellations, we hear not a single word.

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Footnote 52:

The chronology is inconsistent throughout, and it is inconceivable
that it should have been otherwise. Beda himself assigns different
dates to the arrival of the Saxons, though it is the æra from which he
frequently reckons.

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If this be all that we can now recover of events, a great number of which must have fallen within the lives of those to whom Augustine preached, what credit shall we give to the inconsistent accounts of earlier actions? How shall we supply the almost total want of information respecting the first settlements? What explanation have we to give of the alliance between Jutes, Angles and Saxons which preceded the invasions of England? What knowledge will these records supply of the real number and quality of the chieftains, the language and blood of the populations who gradually spread themselves from the Atlantic to the Frith of Forth; of the remains of Roman cultivation, or the amount of British power with which they had to contend? of the vicissitudes of good and evil fortune which visited the independent principalities, before they were swallowed up in the kingdoms of the heptarchy, or the extent of the influence which they retained after that event? On all these several points we are left entirely in the dark; and yet these are facts which it most imports us to know, if we would comprehend the growth of a society which endured for at least seven hundred years in England, and formed the foundation of that in which we live.

Lappenberg has devoted several pages of his elaborate history[53] to an investigation of the Kentish legends, with a view to demonstrate their traditional, that is unhistorical, character. He has shown that the best authorities are inconsistent with one another and with themselves, in assigning the period of Hengest’s arrival in England. Carefully comparing the dates of the leading events, as given from the soundest sources, he has proved beyond a doubt, that all these periods are calculated upon a mythical number 8, whose multiples recur in every year assigned. Thus the periods of twenty-four, sixteen, eight and particularly forty years meet us at every turn; and a somewhat similar tendency may, I think, be observed in the earlier dates of Westsaxon history cited in a preceding page. It is also very probable that the early genealogies of the various Anglosaxon kings were arranged in series of eight names, including always the great name of Wóden[54].

Footnote 53:

Thorpe’s Lappenb. i. 78 _seq._

Footnote 54:

Beówulf, ii. Postscript to the Preface, xxvii.

The result of all these enquiries is, to guard against plausible details which can only mislead us. If we endeavour to destroy the credit of traditions which have long existed, it is only to put something in their place, inconsistent with them, but of more value: to reduce them to what they really are, lest their authority should render the truth more obscure, and its pursuit more difficult than is necessary; but to use them wherever they seem capable of guiding our researches, and are not irreconcilable with our other conclusions.

Far less in the fabulous records adopted by historians, than in the divisions of the land itself, according to the populations that occupied it, and the rank of their several members, must the truth be sought. The names of the tribes and families have survived in the localities where they settled, while their peculiar forms of customary law have become as it were melted together into one general system; and the national legends which each of them most probably possessed, have either perished altogether, or are now to be traced only in proper names which fill up the genealogies of the royal families[55]. To these local names I shall return hereafter; they will furnish a strong confirmation of what has been advanced in this chapter as to the probability of an early and wide dispersion of Teutonic settlers in Britain.

Footnote 55:

Geát, the eponymus of a race, Geátas, is found in the common genealogy
previous to Wóden; his legend is alluded to in the Codex Exoniensis,
pp. 377, 378, together with those of Ðeódríc, Wéland and Eormanríc.
Witta in the Kentish line is found in the Traveller’s Song, l. 43.
Offa in the Mercian genealogy occurs in the same poem, l. 69, in the
fine epos of Beówulf, and in Saxo Grammaticus. Fin the son of
Folcwalda is one of the heroes of Beówulf. Scyld, Sceáf and Beówa are
found in the same poem, etc. These facts render it probable that many
other, if not all the names in the genealogies were equally derived
from the peculiar national or gentile legends, although the epic poems
in which they were celebrated being now lost, we are unable to point
to them as we have done to others.