INTRODUCTION. XI 



entirely alien nation. In such, for instance, as hound and 

 ox, we have unquestionable proof that they must have been 

 given to those animals, before the existing dialects of our 

 ancient mother-tongue had assumed their distinctive form ; 

 and this must have been at an immensely remote point of 

 time. For to educe from the same language others so dif- 

 ferent from one another, not only in their vocabulary, but 

 in their grammatical construction and declensions, as were 

 already in their earliest known state the oldest of them 

 with which we are acquainted, the Sanskrit, Latin, Greek, 

 and Gothic, required a period, not of centuries merely, but 

 millennia. 



The most interesting, in this respect, of the names that 

 have come down to us, are those which date from a period 

 antecedent to the settlement of the German race in Eng- 

 land, names which are deducible from Anglo-Saxon roots, 

 and identical, with allowance for dialectic peculiarities, in 

 all the High and Low German, and Scandinavian lan- 

 guages, and, what is particularly worthy of our attention, 

 each of them expressive of some distinct meaning. These 

 will prove, what with many readers is a fact ascertained 

 upon other evidence, such as the contents of sepulchral 

 mounds, traditionary laws, and various parallel researches, 

 that the tribes which descended upon Britain had entered 

 Europe, not as a set of savages, or wandering pastoral 

 tribes, or mere pirates and warriors, but as colonists, who, 

 rude as they may have been in dress and manners, yet, in 

 essential points, were already a civilized people. It will 



