[35] "De Moribus Germanorum," xv., xxvi.
[36] Names of villages recalling German clans or families are very numerous on the eastern and southern coasts. "They diminish rapidly as we move inland, and they die away altogether as we approach the purely Celtic west. Fourteen hundred such names have been counted, of which 48 occur in Northumberland, 127 in Yorkshire, 76 in Lincolnshire, 153 in Norfolk and Suffolk, 48 in Essex, 60 in Kent, 86 in Sussex and Surrey, only 2 are found in Cornwall, 6 in Cumberland, 24 in Devon, 13 in Worcester, 2 in Westmoreland, and none in Monmouth." Grant Allen, "Anglo-Saxon Britain" (S.P.C.K.), p. 43.
[37] Ammianus Marcellinus: "Ipsa oppida, ut circumdata retiis busta declinant"; in reference to the Franks and Alemanni, "Rerum Gestarum," lib. xvi., cap. ii. Tacitus says the same thing for the whole of the Germans: "Nullas Germanorum populis urbes habitari, satis notum est.... Colunt discreti ac diversi, ut fons, ut campus, ut nemus placuit. Vicos locant, non in nostrum morem, connexis et cohærentibus ædificiis: suam quisque domum spatio circumdat." "De Moribus Germanorum," xvi.
[38] It seems impossible to admit, as has been suggested, that these frail objects should have been saved from the plunder and burning of the villas and preserved by the Anglo-Saxons as curiosities. Glasses with knobs, "à larmes," abound in the Anglo-Saxon tombs, and similar ones have been found in the Roman tombs of an earlier epoch, notably at Lépine, in the department of the Marne.
[39] Where the Celtic element was reinforced, at the commencement of the sixth century, by a considerable immigration of Britons driven from England. Hence the name of Bretagne, given then for the first time to Armorica.
CHAPTER III.
THE NATIONAL POETRY OF THE ANGLO-SAXONS.
I.