[179] Northern Antiquities, Bohn's edition, p. 71. Sigge is generally held as the name of one of the sons of Woden.
[180] Gest. I. sec. 5, I. 11.
[181] Monumenta Historica Britannica, p. 707.
[182] See his "Chronicon ex Chronicis," in the Monumenta Historica, pp. 523 and 627.
[183] See preceding note (1), p. 168. In answer to the vague objection that the alleged leaders were two brothers, Mr. Thorpe observes that the circumstance of two brothers being joint-kings or leaders, bearing, like Hengist and Horsa, alliterative names, is far from unheard of in the annals of the north; and as instances (he adds) may be cited, Ragnar, Inver, Ulba, and two kings in Rumedal—viz. Haerlang and Hrollang.—See his Translation of Lappenberg's History of the Anglo-Saxons, vol. i. pp. 78 and 275.
[184] See Mr. Stevenson's Introduction, p. xxv., to the Historical Society's edition of Bede's Historia Ecclesiastica; and also Mr. Hardy in the Preface, p. 71, to the Monumenta Historica Britannica.
[185] The great importance attached to genealogical descent lasted much longer than the Saxon era itself. Thus the author of the latest Life (1860) of Edward I., when speaking of the birth of that monarch at London in 1239, observes (p. 8), "The kind of feeling which was excited by the birth of an English prince in the English metropolis, and by the king's evident desire to connect the young heir to the throne with his Saxon ancestors, is shown in the Worcester Chronicle of that date. The fact is thus significantly described:—
'On the 14th day of the calends of July, Eleanor, Queen of England gave birth to her eldest son Edward; whose father was Henry; whose father was John; whose father was Henry; whose mother was Matilda the Empress; whose mother was Matilda, Queen of England; whose mother was Margaret, Queen of Scotland; whose father was Edward; whose father was Edmund Ironside; who was the son of Ethelred; who was the son of Edgar; who was the son of Edmund; who was the son of Edward the elder; who was the son of Alfred.'"—(The Greatest of the Plantagenets, pp. 8 and 9.)
Here we have eleven genealogical ascents appealed to from Edward to Alfred. The thirteen or fourteen ascents again from Alfred to Cerdic, the first Anglo-Saxon king of Wessex, are as fixed and determined as the eleven from Alfred to Edward. (See them quoted by Florence, Asser, etc.) But the power of reckoning the lineage of Cerdic up through the intervening nine alleged ascents to Woden, was indispensable to form and to maintain Cerdic's claim to royalty, and was probably preserved with as great, if not greater care when written records were so defective and wanting.
[186] The Saxons in England, vol. i. p. 11.