Divisions of the host give form to civil organization. Teutonic heathen fluence upon na acter. composed of a single group of kindred, upon a settlement being made in a new land, its members would naturally draw together upon the old plan in a village-community. If the expedition happened to be composed of many groups, united under a common leadership, a cluster of village-communities would as naturally result. After the units of organization had thus been reproduced and brought into contact, through the ordinary law of federation, first the hundreds and last the state would reappear. When the attempt shall be made hereafter to reason out, upon scanty evidence, the probable form in which the earliest Teutonic settlements in Britain were made, the foregoing theory will constitute a serious factor in the argument. 13. No conception of the primitive Teutonic constitution ism; its in- can be at all rounded and complete that does not embrace some insight into the national character which pervaded tional char- everything, impressed itself upon everything.2 With the very warp and woof of that national character the forces of Teutonic heathenism were subtly interlaced. In all the vicissitudes of life, the fierce barbarians of the north felt impressed with a sense of reverence and of awe in the contemplation of the great forces of nature about them, these they regarded as personal divinities. There can be no doubt about the fact that the true interpretation of every mythology depends, to a great extent, upon a correct observation of the physical phenomena out of which it arose. The light, sensuous aspects of nature about the shores of the Mediterranean Sea reappeared in the mythology of the versatile Greek, idealized but yet unaltered. And so the stern aspects of nature about the shores of the Northern Ocean reappeared in the mythology 1 "And as they fought side by side on the field, so they dwelled side by side on the soil. Harling abode by Harling, and Billing by Billing; and each wick' or 'ham' or 'stead' or 'tun' took its name from the kinsmen who dwelled together in it."-Green, Hist. of the English People, vol. i. p. 10. 2 See Kemble's chapter (xii.) on "Heathendom," Saxons in England, vol. i. p. 327. 3 "The primary characteristic of this old Northland mythology I find to be impersonation of the visible workings of nature. . . . What we now lecture of as science, they wondered at, and fell down in awe before, as religion. The dark, hostile powers of nature they figured to themselves as Jötuns (giants), huge, shaggy beings, of a demoniac character. Frost, Fire, Sea-Tempest, these are Jötuns. The friendly powers, again, as Summer-heat, the Sun, are gods. The empire of this universe is divided between these two; they dwell apart in perennial internecine feud.". Carlyle's Heroes and Hero-Worship, p. 16. Buckle, History of Civilization in England, vol. i. pp. 118-124. ical extent veals the per of the of the Greek's Aryan brother, and impressed upon his serious character a deep sense of reverence, fidelity, and faith. From Tacitus we learn that the Teutonic race possessed a common mythology,1 but we can derive from the Germania no adequate conception of its character. Geographically this mythology Geographonce extended over all Scandinavia, including Iceland, over of Teutonic England, and over considerable portions of France and Ger- mythology. many. When the Teutonic nations separated, the form of the original faith, which each horde of emigrants took with them, became modified, of course, by the local circumstances of the particular country in which it was finally replanted. The Niebelungen-Lied was its offspring in Germany, the song The song of of Beowulf its offspring in England. As Christianity ad- Beowulf revanced, Teutonic heathenism retreated before it, step by moral temstep, to the north, until the circle of its influence was at English. last narrowed down to the limits of Ultima Thule. Here it expired after recording its purest traditions in the literature of Iceland. In the Eddas is preserved the genuine record of the ancient faith. In the forms of the Norse gods who move through the mighty epic, all the great forces of nature were vividly personified. Each god impersonated some phys- Each Norse ical or moral force, and according as it was friendly or ungod imperfriendly to man, it was adored as a divinity or dreaded as a demon. The roaring of the storm was to the Northman the coming of the angry Thor, whose chariot wheels shook the universe which the light of his eyes illumined. To his mind. the whole life of the world consisted of a great struggle between the gods of good and light on the one side, and of evil and darkness on the other. Out of this struggle creation began; through the results of the struggle everything in the end was to be destroyed. Everywhere the struggle was majestic, the powers terrible, the results profound, — everything was huge, vast, terrific. Still, behind the sombre veil The hope. of grandeur and of gloom there was the hope of a resurrec- yond the tion, and of a life beyond the grave. The noble and heroic grave. were borne after death to Valhalla, the base and cowardly 1 Germ., cc. 2, 7, 10. 2 Anderson, Norse Mythology, p. 34. 8 "But the thin veil of Christianity which he has flung over it fades away as we follow the hero-legend of our fathers; and the secret of their moral sonated a physical or moral force. of a life be as a source of principles and morals. or It has been said by a were dragged down to Naströnd. Danish poet1 that the Asa Faith unfolds in five acts the most glorious drama of victory ever composed by mortal bard. In the religion of the Northman there was nothing frivolous sensuous, everything was earnest, sincere, heroic. The greatest of the Norse gods was Odin, the progenitor of kings, the lord of battle and of victory. In this stern and high-thoughted system of mythology we see reflected as in a mirror the moral, social, and intellectual characteristics of The primi- that mighty race of which the English people is a part. In tive religion its traditions we possess a record of their earliest thoughts and feelings, and in these we discover the sources of their proud self-consciousness, their love of liberty and strife, their heroism, and their power. "In the old Gothic religion were embodied principles . . . and morals that in due course of time and under favorable circumstances evolved the Republic of Iceland, the Magna Carta of England, and the DeclaA century ration of Independence."2 The Teutonic invaders transof English planted into Britain the primitive religion, and the history of the English race begins with a century and a half of unbroken heathenism. The possession of Woden's blood was, among the first settlers, an indispensable prerequisite to kingship. Every royal house in every Old-English kingdom traced its descent from Woden,3 — his name is a part of the national epos. But in the names of the days of the week is perpetuated the most enduring memorial of the ancient faith. and a half heathenism. Engles, Saxons, 14. Thus far only such matters have been considered as relate to the history of the Teutonic race as a whole. Let us now gather together the few existing fragments which relate to the individual histories of the three tribes-Engles, and Jutes. Saxons, and Jutes-by whom the whole fabric of Teutonic life was transplanted from the Continent into Britain. The Saxons are not mentioned by Tacitus, but of the three tribes their history is most complete. For our earliest knowledge of this tribe we are indebted to Ptolemy, from a passage in of them de- whose geography it appears that, about the middle of the second century, there was a people called Saxons dwelling at Saxons: our earliest knowledge rived from Ptolemy. 1 Grundtvig. 8 Kemble, Saxons in England, vol. i 2 Anderson's Norse Mythology, p. 129. p. 335. the north side of the Elbe on the neck of the Danish peninsula, and on three small islands at the mouth of that river.1 From this account it is plain that the Saxons had not then attained to any great importance. About a century and a half later we have the account of Eutropius, who describes Account of Eutropius. the Saxons as actively engaged in piratical warfare on the coast of Gaul, A. D. 287.2 Sixty years afterwards we hear of Magnentius attempting to strengthen his precarious hold upon power by an alliance with the Franks and Saxons, whom, in return, he protected and encouraged. It seems to be probable that, by the fourth century, in the names of Frank and Saxon had been merged the names of many other tribes occupying the same seats, and better known in earlier times than either. The tendency seems to have been for the tribes on the Lower Rhine to become Franks, while those between the Rhine and the Oder were becoming Saxons. But the mere common name as yet implied no common organization, certainly nothing beyond an occasional union for temporary emergencies. Only a portion of the Saxons Only a por passed over into Britain, the bulk remaining in their old tion of the homes to play an important part in the history of northern into BritEurope, upon which the great Saxon Confederation has made an abiding impression.5 Saxons pass ain. only one of tioned by The Angles or Engles are the only one of the three tribes Engles: mentioned by Tacitus, but only as one of a number of North the three German tribes, whose positions he does not define.6 Accord- tribes mening to Ptolemy, the Engles and Saxons were situated in the Tacitus. second century between the Elbe, the Eyder, and the Warnow. At the time of the migrations the Engles, or at least a portion of them, were residing in the district of Angeln or 1 Cf. Ptolemæus, Georg. lib. ii. c. 2. A little after Ptolemy's account, Marcianus of Heraclea assigns to the Saxons the same position on the neck of the peninsula. See Turner's Hist. of the Anglo-Saxons, vol. i. p. 76. 2 Eutropius, ix. 21 (Monum. Hist. Brit., p. lxxii.). 8 Turner, Hist. of the Anglo-Saxons, vol. i. p. 106. Stubbs, Const. Hist., vol. i. pp. 38, 39. "In their homeland between the Elbe and the Ems, as well as in a wide tract across the Ems to the Rhine, a Britain. Engleland in Sleswick, while the main body lay probably in what is now Lower Hanover and Oldenburg.1 It would Whole tribe seem from the deserted state of the district of Angeln, as it probably passed into appeared hundreds of years afterwards, that the whole tribe of the Engles passed over in a body into Britain, leaving but a slight trace upon continental history. And this idea is strengthened by the very wide extent of their British conquests. To the new nationality, born of the union of the three tribes by whom Britain was won, the Engles gave their name, the conquered land became Engla-land or England. Jutes reappear as Danes in later his tory. North of that portion of the Engle situated in Sleswick, were the seats of the Jutes, whose name is still preserved in the district of Jutland. Under the name of Danes the Jutes reappear in later history. The three tribes were of the purest Teutonic type, and all spoke dialects of the LowGerman. 1 Green, Hist. of the English People, nity and Serfdom in England. Then vol. i. p. 7. 2 Bæda, Hist. Eccl., i. 15. more NOTE. The fact should be borne Mr. T. E. Scrutton, in reviewing_the Influence of Roman Law upon the Law of England, finds that the proof of a Roman parentage for the English manor is so incomplete as to leave the burden of proof still upon Mr. Seebohm. In the mean time a reviewer (Professor Kovalensky) of Mr. Paul Vinogradoff's untranslated Russian work, entitled Inquiries into the Social History of Mediaval England, states it to be Mr. Vinogradoff's opinion, in which the reviewer concurs, that Mr. Seebohm's theory has failed. Last comes Mr. John Earle, who, in his Introduction to the land charters and other Saxonic documents, concludes that the English manor is of composite origin; that the Roman villa supplied the dominical element, while the free churls settled beside it, and received from the hand of the superior officer who occupied it the lands which they cultivated after the agricultural customs derived from the continent. |