January 31, 1890.] 



SCIENCE. 



75 



THE LATEST THEORIES ON THE ORIGIN OF THE 

 ENGLISH. 

 ^Continued from p. 71.) 

 "Anglo-Saxon invaders of England," who came from some- 

 where in middle Germany. Only how is this doctrine to be 

 reconciled with the "assumption" that "the invaders of 

 England came fiom the north"? Taking it by itself, the 

 southern theory comes to this: the main body of the invaders, 

 "Anglo-Saxons," "High-Saxons," whatever they are to be 

 called, started from middle Germany, from some point between 

 Westfalia and Thuringia, from some part far away from 

 marling and peat-manure; but on their road to Britain they 

 fell in with certain companions, — Frisians, Low-Saxons, Jutes, 

 — all seemingly from the marling and peat-manure country. 

 In company with them, they came into Britain, to a part of it 

 which had somehow already become "England." 



This seemingly is the doctrine which is casually thrown out 

 in the second of our quotation from Mr. Seebohm. Now, if we 

 could only get rid of hyphened words, and talk simply of 

 "Angles" or "English," it would heljj Mr. Seebohm' s case 

 not a little. The odd thing is, that, in arguing against Mr. 

 Seebohm's case, one has iirst to put together his case for him. 

 In his casual way of putting things, he does not seem to know 

 how much might have been really said on behalf of something 

 very like the view which he lets fall. In the older edition of 

 Spruner's "Atlas," Mr. Seebohm would have found an English 

 land marked for him in the very part of Germany where he 

 would have most wished for it. There was an Angeln shown 

 clearly enough between Westfalia and Thuringia, and whatever 

 was to be said about the branch of the Angles who were held 

 to have dwelled there was carefully brought together by Zeuss. ' 

 Unluckily this inland Angeln has vanished from the revised 

 Spruner-Menke, as also from the now atlas of Droysen. It 

 might therefore be dangerous to build any theories on the 

 subject without going deeply into the whole question ; but just 

 such an Angeln as suited Mr. Seebohm's theory was there, 

 according to the best lights, at the time that Mr. Seebohm 

 wrote. If he was not aware of this, his stumbling by an a 

 pinori road on a doctrine actually supported by such respectable 

 authorities is one of the strangest of undesigned coincidences. 

 If he was aware of it, it is almost more strange that he should 

 not have thought it worth while to refer to a fact or supposed 

 fact of so much value for his case. With its help, that case 

 could be put in a veiy taking shape. These central Angles, 

 Used to a three-field system, set out to go somewhither, it 

 need not have been to Britain. On the road they fall in with 

 companions, Saxons, Low-Saxon, Frisian, Jutish, any thing 

 else. These seafaring folk would doubtless know the way to 

 Britain much better than the Angles of middle Germany. 

 They suggest the course that the expedition should take, and 

 the united force crosses the sea in as many keels as might be 

 needful. It may even be, if anybody chooses, that the inland 

 Anglos, entering into partnership with the seafaring Saxons, 

 first set foot on British soil under the style, already duly 

 hyphened, of "Anglo-Saxons." To be sure, in Britain itself 

 the compound name was not heard till some ages later, and 

 then only in a very special and naiTow sense. But on the 

 mainland it was known much earlier. Paul the Deacon uses 

 it;- it may have been used earlier still. So there is really a 

 very fair case made out for "Anglo-Saxon invaders of Britain" 

 coming from Mid-Germany, and no doubt bringing the three- 

 field system with them. We have only to suppose that in the 

 matter of agriculture some such agreement was made between 

 the different classes of settlers, as we know was sometimes 

 made among joint settlers in early times. The Sicilian Naxos 

 reckoned as a colony of Chalkis, but it took its name from the 

 elder Naxos. In Himera, peopled by Dorians and Chalkidians, 

 the speech was mingled, but the laws were Chalkidian. So in 



1 "Die Deutschen und die Nachbarstamme,^' 153, c.f. 495. It would be dan- 

 gerous to enter casually and light-heartedly on questions about "Angrivarii/ 

 *'Engern," and the like. 



^ Paul the Deacon speaks of " Angli-Saxoues " (iv. 22, vi. 15) and " Sasones 

 Angli " (V. 37) . For other instances see Norman Conquest, i. 541. 



the Anglo-Saxon colonization of ritain it was evidently agreed 

 that the Angles should bring their system of three-field culture 

 into the conquered land ; the Saxons, Low-Saxons, Frisians, 

 and Jutes, any other votaries of marling and peat-manure, had 

 to conform to the practice of their betters. 



There would still remain the question of langQage, — a point 

 of which Mr. Seebohm does not seem to have thought, but on 

 which Zeuss underwent some searchings of heart. He puts the 

 question, without very positively settling it, whether Angles 

 who dwelled so far south siJoke High Dutch or Low. In the 

 fifth century, indeed, the question could hardly have been of 

 the same moment as it would have been in the ninth. The 

 High Dutch has not as yet wholly parted company with the 

 Low. Still the point is worth thinking of. Those who use the 

 one-field and the peat-manure have ever belonged to the ranks 

 of men who eaten and drinken. It may be that those who 

 practise the three-field culture had already begun to fall off to 

 them who essen an trinken. But one thing at least is certain : 

 no man ever did essen and trinken in this isle of Britian. If, 

 then, the Angles of the inland England had begun to adopt the 

 more modern forms, something of an agreement — again like 

 that of the Dorians and the Chalkidians — must have been come 

 to between them and their Nether-Dutch companions. While 

 the inland Angles had their way in the matter of three-field 

 culture, the lesser point of language was yielded in favor of 

 the seafaring Saxon. 



Mr. Seebohm's casual theory, then, when worked out with 

 some little care, really puts on so winning an air that it is 

 hard not to accept it. Yet, even if we accept the existence of 

 an inland Angeln without any doubt, Mr. Seebohm's theory- at 

 least would no thold water. It simply has against it the universal 

 belief of Englishmen from the beginning. In the eyes of 

 Baeda, in the eyes of the Chroniclers, in the eyes of the glee- 

 man of Brunanburh, in the eyes of all who ever spoke or sang 

 of the great migration of our people, the Angles, no less than 

 the Saxons, count among the seafaring folk of northern 

 Germany. The England from whence they came, the England 

 which their coming was said to have left empty of men, was 

 the England of the coast of Sleswick, not any inland England 

 between Westfalia and Thuringia. At all events, if we are 

 to believe otherwise, we have at least a right to ask that the 

 question shall be thoroughly discussed on its own merits, and 

 not tossed jauntily aside as a small point in the history of the 

 rotation of crops. Till then, whether we believe that we were 

 called "ab angelica facie, id est pulcra," or merely because we 

 dwelled "in angulo terrce" we shall still go on believing that it 

 was from the borderland of Germany and Denmark that our 

 forefathers, set forth to work by sea their share in the wandering 

 of the nations. It may be that some of the Anglian folk may 

 well have strayed inland, as some of the Saxon folk may have 

 strayed farther inland still. But the first England of history, 

 the land from which men set forth to found the second, as from 

 the second they set forth to found the third, was assuredly no 

 inland region from which they had to make their way to a 

 distant coast and there pick up vSaxons or Frisians as com- 

 panions of their further journey. Tlie little England, the little 

 ^^angulus terrce,'" of Sleswick was only part of it. There is no 

 need minutely to measure how much was Anglian, how much 

 Saxon, how much Frisian, how much belonged to any 

 other branch of the common stock. In the days of Tacitus 

 and Ptolemy the Angle and the Frisian were folk of the main- 

 land only: by the days of Prooopius they had won their home 

 in the island to part of which one of them was to give his 

 name. 



We came by sea. By no other way indeed could we make 

 our way into an island. But we came by sea in another sense 

 from that in which Roman Cffisar came by sea before us and 

 Norman William came after us. We came by sea not simply 

 because the sea was the only road but because we came as folk 

 of the sea to whom the sea was not a mere path but a true 

 home. Of the details of the purely Anglian settlement and of 

 the Angles themselves we know comparatively little, for the 

 obvious reason that they lay farther off than their fellows from 



