70 



SCIENCE. 



[Vol. XV. No. 365 



before us, or of the Norman who came after us. Still we had 

 some place. Nobody denied that there had been Angles and 

 Saxons in the isle of Britain. Nobody denied that those Angles 

 and Saxons had had some share in the history of the isle of 

 Britain. Nobody — save, I believe, one thoroughgoing man at 

 Liverpool — denied that those Angles and Saxons had supplied 

 some part, however mean a part, to the tongue now spoken 

 over the larger part of Britain. Nobody, I fancy, ever denied 

 that to the mixed ancestry of the present inhabitants of 

 Britain, Angles and Saxons had contributed some elements, 

 however paltry. The fight seemed hard, and we did not know 

 that there was a harder fight coming. For now the strife is 

 not for victory or dominion, but for life. The question is no 

 longer whether Angles and Saxons have played a greater or a 

 less part in the history of Britain: it now is, whether there 

 ever were any Angles or Saxons in Britain at all, perhaps 

 whether there ever were any Angles or Saxons anywhere; or, 

 more truly, the question takes a form of much greater subtlery. 

 Our new teachers ask us, sometimes seemingly without knowing 

 what they are asking, to believe a doctrine that is strange 

 indeed. The latest doctrine, brought to its real substance, comes 

 to this: we are not Angles and Saxons; we did not come from 

 the land of the Angles and Saxons ; we are some other people 

 who came from some other land ; only by some strange chance we 

 were led to believe that we were Angles and Saxons, to take 

 the name of Angles and Saxons, and even to speak the tongue 

 which we should have spoken if we had been such. Or, to 

 come back to the old formula with which we began, we are not 

 really ourselves, but somebody else ; only at some stage of our 

 life we fell in with ingenious schoolmasters, who cunningly 

 persuaded us that we were ourselves. 



On the old controversy I need not enter again now. That 

 controversy might have been much shorter if clever talkers 

 would have taken the trouble to find out what those whom 

 they were talking about had really said. Many statements 

 have been made, many jokes have been joked, many outcries 

 have been raised, some ingenious names have been invented, 

 nay, even some arguments have been brought, and all about doc- 

 trines which no man in this world ever held. Personally I have 

 nothing more to say on the matter. I have had my say: any 

 body that cares to know what that say is may read it for 

 himself.^ I will make only one remark on a single statement 

 which I have casually lighted on, and which is, on the whole, 

 the very strangest that I have ever seen. I find in a volume 

 of a series which comes under the respectable name of ' 'The 

 Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge" — a series to 

 which Oxford professors and examiners contribute, a book 

 which has a book by Mr. Bhys before it and a book by Mr. 

 Hunt after it — this amazing saying : ' 'Florence uses the strange 

 expression that Eadgar was chosen by the Anglo-Britons.'"' 

 Strange indeed if Florence had ever used it ; but to say that he 

 did use It surely goes beyond the admitted literary and 

 "stylistic" license of making people, old or new, say what 

 they never did say. But the saying is instructive: it shows 

 how some writers, sometimes more famous writers, now and 

 then get at their facts. One received way is to glance at a 

 page of an original writer, to have the eye caught by a word, 

 to write down another word that looks a little like it, and to 

 nvent facts that suit the word written down. To roll two 

 independent words into a compound word with a hyphen is 

 perhaps a little stronger, but only a little. Florence says some 

 thing about Englishmen in one line, and something about 

 Britains in another line not far off. Roll them together: 

 make a new fellow to Anglo-Saxons and Anglo -Catholics, and 

 we get the "strange expression," and the stranger fact, about 

 Eadgar and the "Anglo-Britains." Yet even with a creator 

 of "Anglo-Britons" we may make peace for the present. 



' I must refer to wliat I have said on "Teutonic Conquest in Gaul and 

 Britain "in " Four Oxford Lectures " (Macmillan, 1888^, and to the essay on 

 " Race and Language " in the third series of Historical Essays. 



2 Anglo-Saxon Britain, by Grant Allen, B.A , p. 147. The real words of Flor- 

 ence (959) are: "Rex Mercensiura Eadgarus, ab omni Anglorum populo electus 

 anno eetatia suae 16, adventus veri Anglorum in Britanniam quingentesimo, 

 363 autem ex quo sanctus Augustines et socii ejus in AngUam venerunt." No 

 ■words could be more carefully chosen. 



There is allowed to be something "Anglo" in the matter; and 

 that for the present is enough. The old question was, after 

 all, simply one of less and more. There was some "Anglo" 

 something, only how much? He who shall say that the present 

 English-speaking people of Britian are Angles and Saxons who 

 have assimilated certain infusions, British and otherwise, and 

 he who shall say that the English-speaking people of Britian 

 are Iberians, Celts, Romans, any thing, who have received just 

 enough of Anglian and Saxon infusion to be entitled to be 

 called "Anglo Britons," maintain doctrines that differ a good 

 deal from one another. Still it is only a difference in degree. 

 Both sides may encamp together in the struggle with the new 

 adversaries. Whether the Angle assimilated the Briton or the 

 Briton assimilated the Angle, there was some ' 'Anglo' ' element 

 in the business. It is serious for both to be told that there 

 never was any ' 'Anglo' ' element at all ; while, according to 

 one view, there could hardly have been Briton enough to have 

 the "Anglo" element, if there had been any, hyphened on 

 to him. 



We have in this matter to deal with two writers, whom it 

 may seem somewhat strange to group together. M. Du Chaillu 

 has startled us, one may venture to say that he has amused 

 us, by a doctrine that a good many tribes or nations which 

 have hitherto gone about with tribal or national names had no 

 right to any national names at all, but only to the name of an 

 occupation. The Franks of the third century, the Saxons of 

 the fifth, were not Franks or Saxons, but "Vikings." Being 

 "Vikings," they may have been Suiones, Swedes, Danes, Nor- 

 wegians: but the chief thing is to be "Vikings;" they belong 

 to the "Viking age." On this teaching I shall say a few more 

 words presently. I want just now to point out that, according 

 to the Viking doctrine, we must have come from lands farther 

 to the north than we have commonly thought. And this 

 doctrine I wish to contrast with another, which has been less 

 noticed than one might have expected, according to which we 

 must have come from lands much farther to the south than we 

 have commonly thought. Of these two doctrines, the first 

 comes to this, that Angles and Saxons are all a mistake. 

 There was no migration into Britian from the lands which we 

 have been taught to look on as the older England and the older 

 Saxony : the name of Angle and Saxon came somehow to be 

 wrongly applied to people who were really Suiones or others 

 entitled to be called Vikings. I am not sure that I should 

 have thought this doctrine, at least as set forth by M. Du 

 Chaillu, worthy of any serious examination, had it not been 

 for the singular relation in which it stands to the other slightly 

 older teaching, which, when we strive to obey the precept, 

 '^Antiquam exquirite niatrem," bids us look, not farther to the 

 north than usual, but farther to the south. According to this 

 teaching, there may have been some Saxons from North Ger- 

 many among the Teutonic settlers in Britian, but the main 

 body came from a more southern land. These two doctrines, 

 very opposite to one another, but both upsgtting most things 

 which we have hitherto believed, have been put forward in a 

 singularly casual way. Some will perhaps be a little amazed 

 when for the southern doctrine I send them to Mr. Seebohm's 

 well-known book, "The English Village Community." There 

 it certainly is: it is not exactly set forth by Mr. Seebohm, but 

 it has at least dropped from him ; and the opposite doctrine 

 has not much more than dropped from M. Du Chaillu. Both 

 teachings are thrown on the world in a strangely casual SOTt, 

 as mere appendages to something held to be of greater moment. 

 Still M. Du Chaillu does put forth his view as a view ; Mr. 

 Seebohm lets fall his pearls, if they be pearls, seemingly 

 without knowing that they have fallen from him. I am not 

 going to discuss any of Mr. Seebohm's special theories, about 

 manors or serfdom, about one-field or three-field culture. Mr. 

 Seebohm's views on these matters, whether we accept them or 

 not, are, as the evident result of honest work at original 

 materials, eminently entitled to be weighed, and, if need be, 

 to be answered. And in any case we can at least give our best 

 thanks to Mr. Seebohm for his maps and descriptions of the 

 manor of Hitchin, a happy survival in our day of a state of 



