44 Proceedings 
of the struggle of the first Teutonic settlers with the aboriginals 
who lived in caves in the unknown lands, and whose size would 
be magnified by superstitious dread. There are stories of this 
kind in Iceland, of wights who lived in deep and gloomy caverns. 
There is a cave-dweller’s tale (edited by G. Vigfusson), and the 
cave-wight in it, whose burning eyes are like two full moons, chants 
monstrously and in a big voice a song which is supposed to be 
a death-song over the cave-kin of the country. (Grettis Saga, 
Magnusson and Morris, Notes, p. 277.)’* 
I have already (p. 30) alluded to the opinion that a modified 
Neandertal type can still be traced among the Frisians. If Virchow, 
Huxley, Spengel, de Quatrefages, Davis and Sergit are right in 
this opinion, the Frisians, who of course are a Teutonic people 
(and a branch of Sergi’s Eurafrican race), must have been next 
neighbours to a lingering group of aboriginal savages and must 
have finally absorbed the remnants of them. Now in Beowulf 
(1.902) a Danish king, Heremod, is said to have been driven 
out by his subjects among the Eotons, where he seems to have 
perished miserably. In another episodet the word eo/on is four 
times applied to the N. Frisians, who under their King Finn 
carried on wars with the Danes. They are treacherous, and their 
king carries off a Danish princess. But they are not represented 
as savages, still less as beings like Grendel or the Norse jo¢nuar. 
This use of eo¢on has aroused much discussion, into which I can- 
not enter here, but some take it to be the ordinary word in a 
supposed specialized sense ‘enemy,’ and not a proper name at all. 
However this may be, there are fairy-tales still current in the 
N. Frisian island of Sylt to the effect that Finn was king of the 
dwarfs, who were conquered by Frisian giants.|| A writer in 
Blackwood’s Magazine (July, 1888) sees here an echo of the 
conquest of an earlier race by the Teutonic immigrants. May 
we not therefore see in the Finn episode in Beowulf a half-for- 
gotten tradition of the existence of the Neandertal race in the 
* Mr. Brooke says (p.118) he would like to refer the myth of Grendel 
to the Stone Age. 
+ Huxley, Coll. Works, viii. p. 326f.; G. Sergi, Medit. Race, p. 203, 
with references. 
t Beow. 1068ff. 
|| See Earle, Deeds of Beowulf, p. 146. 
