The Salic Law.
By Charles Mackay, LL.D., Author of “The Gaelic Etymology of the Languages of Western Europe.”
THE Salic law, which still prevails in some parts of Europe, is supposed to have been instituted in the sixth century by Clovis, or Pharamond, King of the Franks. In Shakespeare’s play of “King Henry V.,” Act i. Scene 2, King Henry, addressing the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of Ely, thus asks them to expound the Salic Law:—
“My learned Lord, we pray you to proceed:
And justly and religiously unfold,
Why the law Salique, that they have in France
Or should, or should not, bar us in our claim.”
The Archbishop of Canterbury in his reply mentions the ancient tradition that this law was instituted by Pharamond, and continues:—
“The land Salique is in Germany,
Between the floods of Sala and of Elbe,
Where Charles the Great, having subdued the Saxons,
There left behind and settled certain French;
Who, holding in disdain the German women,
In some dishonest manners of their life,
Established then this law—to wit, no female
Should be inheritrix in Salique land.”
The very prosy speech of the Archbishop, from which this is an extract, bears no trace of the fine hand of Shakespeare, and was copied almost verbatim from Holinshed.
President Henault, borrowing from previous writers—who wrote from tradition, without adequate proof or authority for the statements they made or adopted—says that it was Clovis who instituted and signed the Salic Law in A.D. 511, the year of his death. Voltaire says that Clovis could neither read nor write, and that it is uncertain whether his name was Clovis, Clodvic, or Hildovic. Voltaire states also that there are two versions of the text of this Salic Law, each of which differs from the other.
Though the word Salic is by no means uncertain in its meaning, its etymology is so very obscure and undecided as to have puzzled all the French, German, and English philologists who have flourished since the invention of printing. According to Worcester’s Dictionary the word was applied to a body of laws framed by the Salians or Salian Franks, about the beginning of the fifth century, but who the Salians were, no one has yet been able to explain. The derivation from the River Saal, which Holinshed calls Sala, is wholly untenable, as well as the imputation on the virtue of the German ladies of the district through which that river runs. The Salic law never prevailed in any part of Germany, but was peculiar to such Keltic nations as France and Spain. It continued to prevail in France until the abolition of the monarchy under Louis Philippe in 1848, and was never a question so much as debated in the Imperial monarchy under the first or the third Napoleons. In Spain it was abrogated only by Ferdinand VII., within living memory, in favour of his daughter, the infant Isabella, whose accession to the throne led to a civil war, which cannot yet be said to have ended, as long as Don Carlos or his family exist and keep their pretensions alive. On this subject Voltaire, in his “Philosophical Dictionary,” has some pithy remarks. According to Froissart he says, “The kingdom of France is of such great nobleness that it never can allow the succession to go to a female,” and adds, “but one must confess that this decision is very unpolite for England, for Naples, for Hungary, and for Russia, in which latter country four reigning Empresses have sat upon the throne.”
In the French “Etymological Dictionary” of Messrs. Noel and Carpentier, are cited various surmises as to the origin of the word, among others that salique is a corruption of gallique, that it comes from Salle—the great hall of a palace, from an imaginary tribe of Germans called in Latin salice, from si aliquis, the first words of the Latin document in which the Salic law was promulgated; from sal, salt, and from Salogart, the name of one of Pharamond’s jurisconsults, or counsellors. Who shall decide when so many doctors disagree? Yet as the law was a Keltic law, passed by a Gaelic speaking people some centuries before the formation of the actual French language, search ought to be made for the derivation of the word in Keltic sources. We there find So lagh, the “excellent or befitting law.” This was a name very likely to have been given to such an ordinance by barbarians, who thought that none but men and warriors were fit to govern them, or lead their armies to the conflicts in which they were perpetually engaged. The name of Pharamond himself was purely Keltic, and signified a Highlander or mountaineer, from fear, a man, and monadh a mountain. The four jurisconsults who are reported to have drawn up the ungallant law at the request of Pharamond are given by Voltaire as Visogast, Harogast, Salogast, and Vindogast. In these names the final syllable, gast, appears to have been a title given to learned men of the Keltic tribes of the period, from gasda, or gasta, expert, or skilful. Brachet’s “French Etymological Dictionary,” printed at the Clarendon Press, Oxford, in 1882, and advertised to have been revised by the French Academy, does not contain the word salique or salic, which looks as if M. Brachet was not satisfied that it is really of French origin.
Lord Brabourne, after many years’ collecting, has brought together a unique series of papers relating to the early history of Australia. These have just been purchased by the New South Wales Government. The batch consists mainly of letters formerly in the possession of Sir Joseph Banks, long president of the Royal Society, and deeply interested in New South Wales, since he accompanied Captain Cook in the discovery of that country. The letters cover a period between 1772-1815. Among them are letters of Captain Cook, his companion Captain Clark, and many from later discoverers and visitors to the new lands.
Lines on Opening an Ancient Barrow.[28]
By the Rev. W. Lisle Bowles.
DURING the examination of one of these ancient burial-places by Sir Richard C. Hoare, a storm of thunder and lightning surprised the antiquaries. “Our only place of refuge,” says Sir Richard, “was the barrow, which had been excavated to a considerable depth. The lightning flashed upon our spades and iron instruments, and the large flints poured down upon us from the summit of the barrow, so abundantly and so forcibly, that we were obliged to quit our hiding-place, and abide the pelting of the pitiless storm upon the bleak and unsheltered down.” Mr. Bowles, being of the party, sent the following beautiful poem the next morning to Sir R. C. Hoare:—
“Let me, let me sleep again;
Thus methought, in feeble strain,
Plained from its disturbed bed
The spirit of the mighty dead.
O’er my mouldered ashes cold
Many a century slow hath rolled,
Many a race hath disappeared
Since my giant form I reared;
Since my flinted[29] arrow flew,
Since my battle-horn I blew;
Since my brazen dagger’s pride
Glittered on my warlike side,
Which, transported o’er the wave,
Kings of distant ocean gave;[30]
Ne’er hath glared the eye of day
My death-bed secrets to betray,
Since with muttered Celtic rhyme,
The white-haired Druid bard sublime,
’Mid the stillness of the night,
Waked the sad and solemn rite,
The rite of death; and o’er my bones
Were piled the monumental stones.
Passing near the hallowed ground,
The Roman gazed upon the mound;
And murmured, with a secret sigh,
‘There, in dust, the mighty lie.’
Ev’n while his heart with conquest glowed,
While the high-raised flinty road[31]
Echoed to the prancing hoof,
And golden eagles flamed aloof,
And flashing to the orient light
His bannered legions glittered bright,
The Victor of the world confessed
A dark awe shivering at his breast.
Shall, then, the Sons of distant days
Unpunished on my relics gaze?
Hark! Hesus rushes from on high,
Vindictive thunder rocks the sky;
See, Taranis[32] descends to save
His hero’s violated grave;
And shakes, beneath the lightning’s glare,
The sulphur from his blazing hair.
Hence! yet though my grave ye spoil,
Dark oblivion mocks your toil:
Deep the clouds of ages roll,
History drops her mouldering scroll,
And never shall reveal the name
Of him who scorns her transient fame.”