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Early Britain - Anglo-Saxon Britain
The English By The Shores Of The Baltic
by Allen, Grant (B.A.)
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From the notices left us by Bæda in Britain, and by Nithard and others
on the continent, of the habits and manners which distinguished those
Saxons who remained in the old fatherland, we are able to form some idea
of the primitive condition of those other Saxons, English, and Jutes,
who afterwards colonized Britain, during the period while they still all
lived together in the heather-clad wastes and marshy lowlands of Denmark
and Northern Germany. The early heathen poem of Beowulf also gives us
a glimpse of their ideas and their mode of thought. The known physical
characteristics of the race, the nature of the country which they
inhabited, the analogy of other Germanic tribes, and the recent
discoveries of pre-historic archæology, all help us to piece out a
fairly consistent picture of their appearance, their manner of life, and
their rude political institutions.
We must begin by dismissing from our minds all those modern notions
which are almost inevitably implied by the use of language directly
derived from that of our heathen ancestors, but now mixed up in our
conceptions with the most advanced forms of European civilisation. We
must not allow such words as "king" and "English" to mislead us into a
species of filial blindness to the real nature of our Teutonic
forefathers. The little community of wild farmers and warriors who lived
among the dim woodlands of Sleswick, beside the swampy margin of the
North Sea, has grown into the nucleus of a vast empire, only very
partially Germanic in blood, and enriched by all the alien culture of
Egypt, Assyria, Greece, and Rome. But as it still preserves the
identical tongue of its early barbarous days, we are naturally tempted
to read our modern acquired feelings into the simple but familiar terms
employed by our continental predecessors. What the early English called
a king we should now-a-days call a chief; what they called a meeting of
wise men we should now-a-days call a palaver. In fact, we must recollect
that we are dealing with a purely barbaric race—not savage, indeed, nor
without a certain rude culture of its own, the result of long centuries
of previous development; yet essentially military and predatory in its
habits, and akin in its material civilisation to many races which we now
regard as immeasurably our inferiors. If we wish for a modern equivalent
of the primitive Anglo-Saxon level of culture, we may perhaps best find
it in the Kurds of the Turkish and Persian frontier, or in the Mahrattas
of the wild mountain region of the western Deccan.
The early English in Sleswick and Friesland had partially reached the
agricultural stage of civilisation. They tilled little plots of ground
in the forest; but they depended more largely for subsistence upon their
cattle, and they were also hunters and trappers in the great belts of
woodland or marsh which everywhere surrounded their isolated villages.
They were acquainted with the use of bronze from the first period of
their settlement in Europe, and some of the battle-axes or shields which
they manufactured from this metal were beautifully chased with exquisite
decorative patterns, equalling in taste the ornamental designs still
employed by the Polynesian islanders. Such weapons, however, were
doubtless intended for the use of the chieftains only, and were probably
employed as insignia of rank alone. They are still discovered in the
barrows which cover the remains of the early chieftains; though it is
possible that they may really belong to the monuments of a yet earlier
race. But iron was certainly employed by the English, at least, from
about the first century of the Christian era, and its use was perhaps
introduced into the marshlands of Sleswick by the Germanic conquerors of
the north. Even at this early date, abundant proof exists of mercantile
intercourse with the Roman world (probably through Pannonia), whereby
the alien culture of the south was already engrafted in part upon the
low civilisation of the native English. Amber was then exported from the
Baltic, while gold, silver, and glass beads were given in return. Roman
coins are discovered in Low German tombs of the first five centuries in
Sleswick, Holstein, Friesland, and the Isles; and Roman patterns are
imitated in the iron weapons and utensils of the same period. Gold
byzants of the fifth century prove an intercourse with Constantinople
at the exact date of the colonisation of Britain. From the very earliest
moment when we catch a glimpse of its nature, the home-grown English
culture had already begun to be modified by the superior arts of Rome.
Even the alphabet was known and used in its Runic form, though the
absence of writing materials caused its employment to be restricted to
inscriptions on wooden tablets, on rude stone monuments, or on utensils
of metal-work. A golden drinking-horn found in Sleswick, and engraved
with the maker's name, referred to the middle of the fourth century,
contains the earliest known specimen of the English language.
The early English society was founded entirely on the tie of blood.
Every clan or family lived by itself and formed a guild for mutual
protection, each kinsman being his brother's keeper, and bound to avenge
his death by feud with the tribe or clan which had killed him. This duty
of blood-revenge was the supreme religion of the race. Moreover, the
clan was answerable as a whole for the ill-deeds of all its members; and
the fine payable for murder or injury was handed over by the family of
the wrong-doer to the family of the injured man.
Each little village of the old English community possessed a general
independence of its own, and lay apart from all the others, often
surrounded by a broad belt or mark of virgin forest. It consisted of a
clearing like those of the American backwoods, where a single family or
kindred had made its home, and preserved its separate independence
intact. Each of these families was known by the name of its real or
supposed ancestor, the patronymic being formed by the addition of the
syllable ing. Thus the descendants of Ælla would be called Ællings,
and their ham or stockade would be known as Ællingaham, or in modern
form Allingham. So the tun or enclosure of the Culmings would be
Culmingatun, similarly modernised into Culmington. Names of this type
abound in the newer England at the present day; as in the case of
Birmingham, Buckingham, Wellington, Kensington, Basingstoke, and
Paddington. But while in America the clearing is merely a temporary
phase, and the border of forest is soon cut down so as to connect the
village with its neighbours, in the old Anglo-Saxon fatherland the
border of woodland, heath, or fen was jealously guarded as a frontier
and natural defence for the little predatory and agricultural community.
Whoever crossed it was bound to give notice of his coming by blowing a
horn; else he was cut down at once as a stealthy enemy. The marksmen
wished to remain separate from all others, and only to mix with those of
their own kin. In this primitive love of separation we have the germ of
that local independence and that isolated private home life which is one
of the most marked characteristics of modern Englishmen.
In the middle of the clearing, surrounded by a wooden stockade, stood
the village, a group of rude detached huts. The marksmen each possessed
a separate little homestead, consisting usually of a small wooden house
or shanty, a courtyard, and a cattle-fold. So far, private property in
land had already begun. But the forest and the pasture land were not
appropriated: each man had a right from year to year to let loose his
kine or horses on a certain equal or proportionate space of land
assigned to him by the village in council. The wealth of the people
consisted mainly in cattle which fed on the pasture, and pigs turned out
to fatten on the acorns of the forest: but a small portion of the soil
was ploughed and sown; and this portion also was distributed to the
villagers for tillage by annual arrangement. The hall of the chief rose
in the midst of the lesser houses, open to all comers. The village moot,
or assembly of freemen, met in the open air, under some sacred tree, or
beside some old monumental stone, often a relic of the older aboriginal
race, marking the tomb of a dead chieftain, but worshipped as a god by
the English immigrants. At these informal meetings, every head of a
family had a right to appear and deliberate. The primitive English
constitution was a pure republican aristocracy or oligarchy of
householders, like that which still survives in the Swiss forest
cantons.
But there were yet distinctions of rank in the villages and in the loose
tribes formed by their union for purposes of war or otherwise. The
people were divided into three classes of æthelings or chieftains,
freolings or freemen, and theows or slaves. The æthelings were the
nobles and rulers of each tribe. There was no king: but when the tribes
joined together in a war, their æthelings cast lots together, and
whoever drew the winning lot was made commander for the time being. As
soon as the war was over, each tribe returned to its own independence.
Indeed, the only really coherent body was the village or kindred: and
the whole course of early English history consists of a long and tedious
effort at increased national unity, which was never fully realised till
the Norman conquerors bound the whole nation together in the firm grasp
of William, Henry, and Edward.
In personal appearance, the primitive Anglo-Saxons were typical Germans
of very unmixed blood. Tall, fair-haired, and gray-eyed, their limbs
were large and stout, and their heads of the round or brachycephalic
type, common to most Aryan races. They did not intermarry with other
nations, preserving their Germanic blood pure and unadulterated. But as
they had slaves, and as these slaves must in many cases have been
captives spared in war, we must suppose that such descriptions apply,
strictly speaking, to the freemen and chieftains alone. The slaves might
be of any race, and in process of time they must have learnt to speak
English, and their children must have become English in all but blood.
Many of them, indeed, would probably be actually English on the father's
side, though born of slave mothers. Hence we must be careful not to
interpret the expressions of historians, who would be thinking of the
free classes only, and especially of the nobles, as though they applied
to the slaves as well. Wherever slavery exists, the blood of the slave
community is necessarily very mixed. The picture which the heathen
English have drawn of themselves in Beowulf is one of savage pirates,
clad in shirts of ring-armour, and greedy of gold and ale. Fighting and
drinking are their two delights. The noblest leader is he who builds a
great hall, throws it open for his people to carouse in, and liberally
deals out beer, and bracelets, and money at the feast. The joy of battle
is keen in their breasts. The sea and the storm are welcome to them.
They are fearless and greedy pirates, not ashamed of living by the
strong hand alone.
In creed, the English were pagans, having a religion of beliefs rather
than of rites. Their chief deity, perhaps, was a form of the old Aryan
Sky-god, who took with them the guise of Thunor or Thunder (in
Scandinavian, Thor), an angry warrior hurling his hammer, the
thunder-bolt, from the stormy clouds. These thunder-bolts were often
found buried in the earth; and being really the polished stone-axes of
the earlier inhabitants, they do actually resemble a hammer in shape.
But Woden, the special god of the Teutonic race, had practically usurped
the highest place in their mythology: he is represented as the leader of
the Germans in their exodus from Asia to north-western Europe, and since
all the pedigrees of their chieftains were traced back to Woden, it is
not improbable that he may have been really a deified ancestor of the
principal Germanic families. The popular creed, however, was mainly one
of lesser gods, such as elves, ogres, giants, and monsters, inhabitants
of the mark and fen, stories of whom still survive in English villages
as folk-lore or fairy tales. A few legends of the pagan time are
preserved for us in Christian books. Beowulf is rich in allusions to
these ancient superstitions. If we may build upon the slender materials
which alone are available, it would seem that the dead chieftains were
buried in barrows, and ghost-worship was practised at their tombs. The
temples were mere stockades of wood, with rude blocks or monoliths to
represent deities and altars. Probably their few rites consisted merely
of human or other sacrifices to the gods or the ghosts of departed
chiefs. There was a regular priesthood of the great gods, but each man
was priest for his own household. As in most other heathen communities,
the real worship of the people was mainly directed to the special family
deities of every hearth. The great gods were appealed to by the
chieftains and by the race in battle: but the household gods or deified
ancestors received the chief homage of the churls by their own
firesides.
Thus the Anglo-Saxons, before the great exodus from Denmark and North
Germany, appear as a race of fierce, cruel, and barbaric pagans,
delighting in the sea, in slaughter, and in drink. They dwelt in little
isolated communities, bound together internally by ties of blood, and
uniting occasionally with others only for purposes of rapine. They lived
a life which mainly alternated between grazing, piratical seafaring, and
cattle-lifting; always on the war-trail against the possessions of
others, when they were not specially engaged in taking care of their
own. Every record and every indication shows them to us as fiercer
heathen prototypes of the Scotch clans in the most lawless days of the
Highlands. Incapable of union for any peaceful purpose at home, they
learned their earliest lesson of subordination in their piratical
attacks upon the civilised Christian community of Roman Britain. We
first meet with them in history in the character of destroyers and
sea-robbers. Yet they possessed already in their wild marshy home the
germs of those free institutions which have made the history of England
unique amongst the nations of Europe.
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