The Ethnology of Europe

by R. G. Latham

When the main argument rests upon some single fact of primary weight or importance, a single fact to which nothing of equal magnitude can be opposed, the neglect of subordinate details is excusable—at least, in a short work. If they come spontaneously, and are of a satisfactory character—well and good. They are no part of the leading argument.

In some cases, perhaps, it should be a matter of principle to abstain from them; for example, when the leading argument, although good in itself, is liable, either from its novelty or from the amount of previous opinions which it contradicts, to be undervalued. In such a case, the display of subsidiary minutiæ subtracts from its weight. They make it look weaker than it is; weak enough to require all the support that the skill of its author can devise. In deducing the Greeks from Italy, the relations between the Greek and Latin tongues, the great difficulty of explaining them otherwise than by a geographical continuity, and the equal difficulty of effecting this continuity by any of the ordinary means formed the palmary argument. Such details as fell in with this view were put down to gain (apposita lucro). They were also good against similar details on the opposite side. But they were ex abundanti—at least in the first instance. To have neglected them altogether would not have been too bold. To have paraded them unnecessarily would have subtracted from the value of the real argument.

A comparative depreciation of subsidiary details appears in the present question; wherein it is held that certain members of the Lithuanian family extended their area across the Baltic into parts of Scandinavia, and peopled the southern provinces of Sweden. These were the Goths of Gothland, the Jutes of Jutland, the Vites of Withesleth, the old name of the Danish islands, anterior to their occupation by the Danes. The critic who doubts whether the names are the same as that of the Goths, on the strength of the difference of form, is free to do so; but by doing so, he will only impugn a part of the present doctrine. That the Goths of Gothland are the Gothones, Guttones, or Gythini of the opposite coast of Prussia and Courland is the important inference; and that the appearance of identical or similar names on the opposite coasts of an inland sea of no considerable breadth is a phenomenon which, until it can be explained otherwise, must be presumed to denote ethnological affinity is the principle which supports it. Whether the Gothones of Courland were really and truly Lithuanian is a point upon which there may be a difference of opinion; but there should be no difference of opinion as to the explanation of the presence of Goths in the opposite country of Gothland. The common-sense view of the matter, and the ordinary habits of interpretation should take their course.

This may be admitted, and yet an objection be taken to the effect that the Goths of the southern Gothland (the Goth-ones, Gyth-ini, Gutt-ones) were not Lithuanic but German. The primary argument on this point lies in the undoubted fact of the Goths of the Lower Danube, in the third and fourth centuries, being German.

But this primary argument is considerably invalidated by the fact, too often overlooked, of those Germans having been known under the name of Goths only when they have settled in the country of the Getæ and Gaudæ, a fact which makes the name just as foreign to the Teutonic dialects as Briton was to the Anglo-Saxon. From which it follows that all other populations which were, in respect to their name, in the same predicament as the Goths of Alaric and Theodoric, were connected not with the German invaders, but with the occupants of the country invaded; just as the Bretons of Brittany are connected not with such Englishmen as call themselves patriotically and poetically “Britons,” but with the Welsh representatives of the original occupants of the Keltic island Britannia. Now the populations thus linked together by some such name as G-th, G-t, J-t,[21] and V-t (all of which have been admitted to be but different forms of the same word) are numerous; three of them being now before us.

The real Goths, like the real Britons, were something very different from their German conquerors.

But the Gothic historian Jornandes, deduces the Goths of the Danube first from the southern coasts of the Baltic, and ultimately from Scandinavia. I think, however, that whoever reads his notices will be satisfied that he has fallen into the same confusion in respect to the Germans of the Lower Danube and the Getæ whose country they settled in, as an English writer would do who should adapt the legends of Geoffroy of Monmouth respecting the British kings to the genealogies of Ecbert and Alfred or to the origin of the warriors under Hengist. The legends of the soil and the legends of its invaders have been mixed together.

Nor is such confusion unnatural. The real facts before the historian were remarkable. There were Goths on the Lower Danube, Germanic in blood, but not Germanic in name; the name being that of the older inhabitants of the country. There were Gothones, or Guttones, in the Baltic, the essential part of whose name was Goth-; the -n- being, probably, and almost certainly, an inflexion.

Thirdly, there were Goths in Scandinavia, and Goths in an intermediate island of the Baltic. With such a series of Goth-lands, the single error of mistaking the old Getic legends for those of the more recent Germans (now called Goths), would easily engender others; and the most distant of the three Gothic areas would naturally pass for being the oldest also. Hence, the deduction of the Goths of the Danube from the Scandinavian Gothland.

The exception, then, to the Lithuanic origin of the Gothlander, which lies in the application of the name Goth to a population undoubtedly Germanic, is itself exceptionable; and the common-sense interpretation of the existence of similarly designated populations on the opposite coasts of an inland sea must take its course.