198 HISTORY OF THE ANGLO-SAXONS. BOOK depravity in the Roman empire at this period are II. described by Fabian, who witnessed and detailed them, that however unwilling we are to adopt the violent abuse and repulsive rhetoric of Gildas, there is too much reason to fear, that many of the deformities which his coarse daubing has distorted almost into incredibility, degraded the character and accelerated the downfal of our ancient British predecessors.+ Gale and Bertram in certain transpositions of the subject; in the omission of two introductory prefaces; in not acknowledging the assistance of Samuel Bewly, the reputed master of Nennius; and in detaching the life of St. Patrick from the body of the work, and placing it at the end." Pref. xxiv. It is in fact the former work dislocated and curtailed. I think these alterations quite sufficient to account for Mark having put his own name to the transcript he so varied. This MS. makes one of its latest computation of dates in 946, and the fifth year of Edmund the Anglo-Saxon king, p. 45. But this year is afterwards protracted to 994, pp. 62. and 80. The dates of all the copies are inconsistent. Mark by his date has varied that of Nennius, which in the MSS. used by Gale was 800, and in the Hengwrt MS. 796, and in c. xi. is made 876. This would imply that the chronicle had both earlier authors and revisals than Mark. Jeffry quotes Gildas frequently as a writer of some history which we have not; and as this history of Nennius has had the name of Gildas prefixed to it, and bears so many marks of dislocated passages and changes of its date, I am tempted to think that it is an old chronicle revised and altered by several hands. Gildas may have made the first sketch of part of it. His work, Nennius in the ninth century may have abridged and carried on, and Mark in the next age have added his revisal. It is clear that the history of Nennius is not the whole work of Gildas to which Jeffry alludes, because it does not contain the incident to which he refers. It is therefore either an extract or a different work. 44 See Salv. de Gub. 44, 5, 6, 7. APPENDIX ΤΟ BOOK II. THE MANNERS OF THE SAXONS IN THEIR CHAP. I. The Character and Persons of the most ancient SAXONS. WE may now pause to consider the most prominent CHA P. features of the Saxons before they established them selves in Britain. THE Anglo-Saxons came to England from the Germanic continent; and above a century had elapsed from their first settlements before they received those improvements and changes which followed the introduction of the Christian system. These circumstances make it necessary to exhibit them as they were in their continental and pagan state, before they are delineated with the features, and in the dress of Christianity.. It would be extremely desirable to give a complete portrait of our ancestors in their uncivilised state; but this is an epocha in the history of the human mind which in former times seldom interested any one, and has not been faithfully detailed. Hence on this subject curiosity must submit to be disappointed. The converted Anglo-Saxon remembered the practices of his idolatrous ancestors with too much abhorrence, to record them for the notice of I. I. CHA P. future ages; and as we have no Runic spells to call the pagan warrior from his grave, we can only see him in those imperfect sketches, which patient industry may collect from the passages scattered in the works, which time has spared. THE character of the ancient Saxons displayed the quafities of fearless, active, and successful pirates. It is not merely the Spanish churchman Orosius, who remarks them as dreadful for their courage and agility, but the emperor Julian, who had lived among barbarians, and who had fought with some Saxon tribes, denotes them as distinguished amongst their neighbours for vehemence and valour.2 Zosimus, their contemporary, expresses the general feeling of his age when he ranks them as superior to others in energy, strength, and warlike fortitude.3 4 THEIR ferocious qualities were nourished by the habit of indiscriminate depredation. It was from the cruelty and destructiveness, as well as from the suddenness of their incursions, that they were dreaded more than any other people. Like the Danes and Norwegians, their successors and assailants, they desolated where they plundered with the sword and flame. 5 It was consistency in such men to be inattentive to danger. They launched their predatory vessels, and suffered the wind to blow them to any foreign coast, indifferent whether the result was a depredation unresisted, or the deathful conflict. Such was their cupidity, or their brutal hardihood, that they often preferred embarking in the tempest which might shipwreck them, because at such a 1 Orosius, lib. vii. c. 32. 2 Julian Imp. Orat. de laud. Const. p. 116. 4 Salvian says, gens Saxonum fera est. de Gub. Dei, lib. iv. V. Fortunatus calls them " aspera gens, vivens quasi more ferino," 8 Mag. Bib. 787.; and Sidonius has the strong expression of "omni hosti truculentior," lib. viii. c. 7. Even in the eighth century the Saxons on the continent are described by Eginhard as " natura feroces," p. 4. 5 Amm. Marcell. lib. xxviii. c. 3. I. season their victims would be more unguarded. Their CHA P. warfare did not originate from the more generous, or the more pardonable of man's evil passions. It was the offspring of the basest. Their swords were not unsheathed by ambition or resentment. The love of plunder and of cruelty was their favourite habit; and hence they attacked, indifferently, every coast which they could reach." INLAND provinces were not protected from their invasion. From ignorance, necessity, or policy, they traversed the ocean in boats, framed of osiers, and covered with skins sewed together; and such was their skill or their prodigality of life, that in these they sported in the tempests of the German Ocean.7 It is possible that men who had seen the vessels in which the Francs had escaped from the Pontus, and who had been twice instructed by Imperial usurpers in the naval art, might have constructed more important war ships, if their judgment had approved. Although their isles, and their maritime provinces of Ditmarsia and Stormaria, were barren of wood, yet Holsatia abounded with it; and if their defective land-carriage prevented the frequency of this supply, the Elbe was at hand to float down inexhaustible stores from the immense forests of Germany. THEY may have preferred their light skiffs, from an experience of their superior utility. When their fatal incursions had incited the Romans to fortify and to garrison the frontier of Britain and Gaul, the Saxons directed their enmity against the inland regions. For their peculiar ves 6 Amm. Marcell. lib. xxviii. c. 3., xxvii. c. 8. Sid. Apoll. 7 That this ocean was anciently dangerous from its tempests, Boniface, the self-devoted missionary of Germany, often states: periculosum est navigantibus, p. 52. Germanici tempestatibus maris undique quassantibus fatigati senis miserere, p. 59. vol. xvi. Bib. Mag. Patrum. 8 On the vessels of the Saxons, see Du Bos, Hist. Crit. de la Mon. de France, i. p. 150.- Mioparo quasi minimus paro; idem et carabus. Est parva scapha ex vimine facta quæ contexta crudo corio genus navigii præbet. Isidorus Örig. lib. xix. c. 1. I. CHA P. sels no coast was too shallow, no river too small; they dared to ascend the streams for eighty or an hundred miles; and if other plunder invited, or danger pressed, they carried their vessels from one river to another, and thus escaped with facility from the most superior foe." Of the Saxons, an author of the fifth century says to a friend who was opposed to them, "You see as many piratical leaders as you behold rowers, for they all command, obey, teach, and learn the art of pillage. Hence, after your greatest caution, still greater care is requisite. This enemy is fiercer than any other; if you be unguarded, they attack; if prepared, they elude you. They despise the opposing, and destroy the unwary; if they pursue, they overtake; if they fly, they escape. Shipwrecks discipline them, not deter; they do not merely know, they are familiar with all the dangers of the sea; a tempest gives them security and success, for it divests the meditated land of the apprehension of a descent. In the midst of waves and threatening rocks they rejoice at their peril, because they hope to surprise." 10 As their naval expeditions, though often wildly daring, were much governed by the policy of surprise, so their land incursions were sometimes conducted with all the craft of robbers. "Dispersed into many bodies," says Zosimus, of one of their confederates, 66 they plundered by night, and when day appeared, they concealed themselves in the woods, feasting on the booty they had gained." They are, however, seldom mentioned by the historians of the fourth and fifth centuries without some epithets which express a superiority over other men in their achievements or their courage. THE ferocity of the Saxon character would seem to suit better the dark and melancholy physiognomies of Asia and Africa, than the fair, pleasing, and blue-eyed countenances 9 See Du Bos, 149. 2 Gibbon, 524. 10 Sid. Apoll. Epist. vi. lib. 8. 11 Zosimus, lib. iii. p. 149. This tribe whom he calls Quadi, Marcellinus, lib. xvii. c. 8., more correctly names Chamavi. These robbers were destroyed by one Chariette, a Franc, who organized some corps on the same plan. |