12 JOtJRNAL OF THE PLYMOUTH INSTITUTION. 



cious vase at Soissons, came from Germany. One new year's eve 

 the Ehine was crossed by a vast heterogeneous host, who took 

 permanent possession of Gaul, and parcelled it out among them- 

 selves and their kindred tribes who had preceded them. E'ot half 

 a century later, this island began to fall a prey to a series of 

 invasions from the northern shores of Germany, which changed 

 Eoman Britain into Saxon England. The lecturer maintained that 

 the accounts of these invasions, as given by Gildas, Bede, and the 

 Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, were on the whole to be relied on, and 

 protested against their straightforward accounts being confounded 

 with the fabulous tales published by Geoffrey of Monmouth from 

 his wonderful ''book written in the British tongue." 



As the languages of the Celtic stock are divided into two 

 branches — (i) the British or Cambrian, and (ii) the Gaelic or 

 Erse — so the Gothic are divided into (i) the German proper or 

 Teutonic, including the Moeso-Gothic, the High German, and the 

 Low German, — embracing Anglo-Saxon and modern English, old 

 Saxon (now extinct), Eriesian, Piatt Deutsch, &c., — and (ii) the 

 Scandinavian, including the Icelandic, Eeroic, Swedish, and Danish. 

 The Saxons, Angles, and Jutes, who invaded Britain, belonged to 

 the Low German division. The Saxons are first mentioned by 

 Ptolemy, who places them in Holstein, and the islands of Kord- 

 strand, Eohr, and Silt ; but they gradually became the head of a 

 powerful confederacy, including the Eriesians. The Angles are 

 first named by Tacitus among certain tribes of the Suevi, and 

 Ptolemy, some time after, places them on the banks of the Elbe 

 near the Lower Saale, and therefore in the neighbourhood of High 

 German races. They subsequently migrated to Angeln, and came 

 in contact with Scandinavians, both which facts are important. 

 The affinities of the Jutes are obscure. 



The lecturer then passed in rapid review the ancient Gothic 

 literature, observing, with reference to the Nibelungen Lied, that 

 one celebrated legend of heathen times had left its traces in both 

 Germanic and Scandinavian literature, — that of Sigfried the Dragon 

 Slayer, who forged his mighty sword in the depths of the primaeval 

 forest. This saga was borne to Iceland, where it still preserves its 

 old mythic shape. It was not, therefore, borrowed by the Ice- 

 landers from the Germans, nor by the Germans from the Icelanders, 

 but should be regarded as the joint production of these twin sisters 

 of the Aryan family. The debt that philology owes to Chris- 



