ERRATA RECEPTA. 387 



and sometimes a term is only simplified by clearing it of harsh con- 

 sonants or modifying it according to philological law. 



The Alemanni, rendered familiar to us by Tacitus, have given in 

 French and Italian a name to a large portion of central Europe. In 

 French, as we know, Germany is L'Allemagne. In Italian, it is Ala- 

 raap-na, popularized into Lamagna, conveying to the uninstructed ear 

 the idea simply of great size. Alemanni, nevertheless, was no national ' 

 name, but the sound caught by the Gallic or Roman soldier, when 

 some boastful prisoner from the farther bank of the Rhine asserted, 

 in his hearing, that his people were either all true men, all brave war- 

 riors, or else that they were congregated from all parts of the inte- 

 rior. Again : along the Danube, it would be gathered by the men of 

 the legions from Italy, that the banded hordes with whom they came 

 in immediate contact, called themselves Marcomanni. This expression 

 is entered on the tablets of the Roman officer as a national or tribal 

 name ; although its real significance in the barbarian mouth was 

 ''men of the border," "guardians of the march." Their tribal de- 

 signation would be quite a different thing. The elementary books on 

 English history, in ixse a few years ago, failed to apprise the student 

 that Mercia was the March-land, and the Mercians the people of the 

 March, i.e. as between the earlier Saxon settlers and the Celts whom 

 they were displacing. And it is not every one that is to this day 

 aware that " letters of marque " are strictly an authority to harass 

 the enemy beyond the limits of the frontier. 



In forming the word Germani, the Romans were probably influ- 

 enced as well by a kind of analogy of sound between it and Romani, 

 as also by its welcome identity with a vernacular term of their own 

 signifying " brothers." In this his effort at self-satisfaction, the Latin 

 etymologist was happier than the modern Englishman who barbar- 

 ously vernacularizes Moslem into Mussulman, and sometimes, with 

 greater cruelty still, pluralizes that into Mussulmen. Germani, again, 

 is, in reality, no common national name, but a descriptive term, 

 {wehr-mann, warrior, man of war) — formed from the boastful reply of 

 some indignant brave to the questionings of his captors. 



According to Tacitus, in his report of the ancient German songs 

 and ballads, the founder of the ancient Teutonic race was Mannus. 

 Here again we have a simple Latinization of Man, and a curious 

 parallel to the practice of other early and doubtless cognate races, of 

 embodying under a somewhat similar term a type of themselves in 



Vol. X. BB 



