January 31, 1890] 



SCIENCE. 



IT 



landsman — I have spoken already. And if this be a real 

 diflSculty, it is just as great a difficulty on M. Du Chaillu's 

 theory as it is according to the genuine records of English 

 history. Over and over again has it been noticed as a strange 

 thing that the settlers who came to Britain by sea, as soon as 

 they vpere settled in Britain, left off their seafaring ways, and 

 had no fleet to withstand the Danes when the Danes did come. 

 There is in this really nothing wonderful. But if this be a 

 difficulty in the case of Anglian or Saxon settlers, it is hard to 

 see how the difficulty becomes any less if the settlers are 

 rated to be Swedish, Danish, or Norwegian. 



In truth, M. Du Chaillu's theory is several degrees more 

 amazing than that of Mr. Seebohm. How did we come by our 

 language? How did we come by our national names? We did 

 not, according to this theory, light by the way on any of 

 those Low-Saxon, Frisian, or Jutish companions and teachers 

 who, in Mr. Seebohm' s view, may have done so much for us. 

 And it is a little daring of M. Du Cliaillu to represent the use 

 of the Saxon name, as applied to the ravagers and settlers of 

 Gaul and Britian, as simply the mistake of some Latin scribe, 

 some ignorant blunderers like Claudian or Sidonius, who wrote 

 "Saxones" when they should have written "Suiones." The 

 mistake went a little deeper than that. ' How came the 

 Teutonic settlers in Britain to call themselves Angles and 

 Saxons? How did their Celtic neighbors come to call them 

 Saxons? How did the conquered land come to take, here the 

 Anglian, there the Saxon, name? One is astonished to read 

 n M. Du Chaillu's book, "Nor is any part of England called 

 Saxland. " ' It is possible from the context that what is 

 meant is merely that no part of England is so called in the 

 northern sagas. But the name of ' 'England' ' comes often enough 

 in them, and ' 'England' ' is as bad as ' 'Saxland' ' for M. Du 

 Chaillu's theory. It is hardly worth searching through all the 

 sagas to see whether such a word as "Saxland" is ever found 

 there or not. If it be so, it merely proves that no northern 

 writers had any need to speak of Wessex, Essex, Sussex, or 

 .Middlesex by their local names. But considering that those 

 names have been in unbroken use in the lands themselves ever 

 since the fifth and sixth centuries, it does not much matter 

 whether any sagaman called them so or not. It is more 

 important, from M. Du Chaillu's point of view, to explain how 

 West-Saxons, East-Saxons, South-Saxons, and Midde-Saxons 

 were led into such strange mistakes as to their own name and 

 origin. 



No one denies that the Scandinavian infusion in England is 

 real, great, and valuable; only it is an infusion which dates 

 from the ninth century, and not from the fifth or sixth. 

 Danish writers, without going quite so faj as their champion 

 from Valland, have often greatly exaggerated the amount of 

 Scandinavian influence in England. They have often set down 

 as signs of direct Scandinavian influence things which are 

 simply part of the common heritage of the Teutonic race. But 

 no one doubts that the Danish infusion in England was large, that 

 in some parts it was dominant ; and its influence was whole- 

 some and strengthening. Dane and Angle, Dane and Saxon, 

 were near enough to each other to learn from one another, and 

 to profit by one another. They were near enough to be fused 

 into one whole by a much easier process than that which in 

 some parts of the island did in the end fuse together the Briton 

 and the Teuton. Still the Scandinavian infusion was but an 

 infusion into the already existing English mass. As we are 

 not a British people, but an English people with a certain 

 British infusion, so neither are we a Scandinavian people, but 

 an English people with a certain Scandinavian infusion. 



One word about the Franks, whose fate at M. Du Chaillu's 

 hands is so oddly the same as that of the Saxons. According 

 to him, as some Suiones were mistaken for Saxons, which gave 

 rise to the error of looking on Saxons as a seafaring people, so 

 also some Suiones were mistaken for Franks, which gave rise 

 to the error of looking on Franks as a seafaring people. But 

 this last error, at all events, never led astray any one. The 

 Franks were not a seafaring people, nor [did any body ever 

 1 '■ The Viking Age," vol. i. p,"20. 



think that they were. The whole notion of seafaring Franks; 

 comes from two passages of Eumenios and Zosimos whieb 

 record a single exploit of certain Frankish prisoners, who seized 

 on some ships in the Euxine and amazed mankind by sailing 

 about the Mediterranean, doing much damage in Sicily, and 

 getting back to Francia by way of the Ocean. This single 

 voyage, wonderful as it was, is not quite the same thing as the 

 habitual harrying of the coasts of the Channel, and of the Ocean- 

 too, by Saxons in their own ships. And when Ammianus. 

 speaks of Franks and Saxons laying waste the Roman territory 

 by land and sea, the obvious meaning surely is that the Franks, 

 did it by land, and the Saxons by sea. But all things about 

 Franks are surely outdone by a single sentence of M. Du 

 Chaillu, standing alone with all the honors of a separate 

 paragraph. 



' 'In the Bayeus tapestry, the followers of William the Con- 

 queror .were called Franci and they have always been recognized 

 as coming from the north."- 



Further comment is needless. We decline to be brought from 

 the north by M. Du Chaillu, even more strongly than we decline 

 to be brought from the south by Mr. Seebohm: for Mr, 

 Seebohm does leave some scrap of 'separate national ^being to 

 the "Anglo-Saxon invaders" from the English land of middle 

 Germany; M. Du Chaillu takes away our last shreds; we are 

 mere impostors, Suiones falsely calling ourselves Saxones. But. 

 let us speculate what might happen if M. Du Chaillu's theory- 

 should ever fall into the hands of those statesmen and princes 

 of the Church who seem to have lately taken in hand the 

 nomenclature of that part of mankind whom plain men may 

 think it enough to call the English folk.' The other day one 

 eminent person enlarged of the glories of the "Anglo-Saxon 

 race, ' ' while another enlarged instead on the glories of the 

 "British race." A third claimed the right of free discussion 

 for all "speakers of the British language." Let gallant little 

 Wales look out: there would seem to be some corner in its 

 twelve (or thirteen) counties in which free discussion is just 

 now not allowed. New names often take. In my youth the 

 "Anglo-Saxon race" was unheard of, and the "British race" 

 dates, I believe, only from the speech of last week, from 

 which I quote. Why should the Suiones, so long and so 

 unfairly cheated of their honor, not have their day at last? 

 Set forth with a good delivery, at the end of a fine rolling- 

 period, "the imperial instincts of the Suionic race" would be 

 as likely to draw forth a cheer as other phrases whose amount 

 of meaning is very much the same. When will men, statesmen 

 above all, learn that names are facts; that words, as expressing 

 things, are themselves things; that a confused nomenclatme 

 marks confusion of thought, failure to grasp the real nature of 

 things and the points of likeness and unlikeness between one 

 thing and another? Leaving, then, the Anglo-Saxon race and 

 the British race and the Suionic race, and the instincts, 

 imperial or otherwise, of any of them, this question of the 

 origin of our people, this great and abiding dispute whether we 

 are ourselves or somebody else,<^^t^gests one or two practical 

 thoughts. Here I rule no point of present controversy; I only 

 give some hints which may possibly help those who have to 

 rule such points. 



There is an English folk, and there is a British Crown. The 

 English folk have homes: the British Crown has dominions. 

 But the homes of the English folk and the dominions of the 

 British Crown do not always mean the same thing. Here, by 

 the border stream of the Angle and the Saxon, we are at once 

 in one of the hoihes of the English folk and in one — and I 

 dare to think the noblest and the gi-eatest — of the dominions- 

 of the British Crown. If we pass to the banks of the Indus, 

 and Ganges, we are still within the dominions of the British 

 Crown, but we cannot say that we are any longer among the 

 homes of the English folk. Let us pass again to the banks of 

 the Potomac and the Susquehanna: there we have gone out of 



^ See the speeches of the Earl of Rosebery. Cardinal Manning, and the Earl 

 of Carnarvon in the Times of Nov. 16, 1889. The qualification needful in all 

 such cases must of course be understood — '* if the speakers really said what 

 the reporters put into their mouths." 



