Their ethnological affinities are simpler. They[150] spoke the language which afterwards became the Anglo-Saxon of Alfred, and the English of Milton. In this we have the first and most definite of their differential characteristics—the characteristics which distinguished them from the closely allied Cheruscans, Chamavi, Angrivarii and other less important nations.
Their religious cultus, as far at least as the worship of Mother Earth in a Holy Island, was a link which connected the Angli with the populations to the north rather than to the south of them; and—as far as we may judge from the negative fact of finding no Angles in the great confederacy that the energy of Arminius formed against the aggression of Rome—their political relations did the same. But this is uncertain.
Such was the supposed area of the ancient Angles of Germany, and it agrees so well with all the ethnological conditions of the populations around, that it should not be objected to, or refined upon, on light grounds. The two varieties of the German languages to which the Anglo-Saxon bore the closest relationship, were the Old Saxon and the Frisian, and each of these are made conterminous with it by the recognition of the area in question—the Old Saxon to the south, the Frisian to the west, and, probably, to the north as well. It is an area, too, which is neither unnecessarily large, nor preposterously[151] small; an area which gives its occupants the navigable portions of two such rivers as the Elbe and Weser; one which places them in the necessary relations to their Holy Island (an island which, for the present we assume to be Heligoland); and, lastly, one which without being exactly the nearest part of the continent, fronts Britain, and is well situated for descents upon the British coast.
During the third, fourth, and fifth centuries we hear nothing of the Angli. They re-appear in the eighth. But then they are the Angles of Beda, the Angles of Britain—not those of Germany—the Angles of a new locality, and of a conquered country—not the parent stock on its original continental home. Of these latter the history of Beda says but little. Neither does the history of any other writer; indeed it is not too much to say that they have no authentic, detailed, and consecutive history at all, either early or late, either in the time of Beda when the Angles of England are first described, or in the time of any subsequent writer. There are reasons for this; as will be seen if we look to their geographical position, and the relations between them and the neighbouring populations. The Angles of Germany were too far north to come in contact with the Romans. That we met with no Angli in the great Arminian Confederacy has already been stated. When the Romans were[152] the aggressors, the Angli lay beyond the pale of their ambition. When the Romans were on the defensive the Angli were beyond the opportunities of attack.
All attempts to illustrate the history of the Angles of Germany by means of that of the nations mentioned in conjunction with them by Tacitus, is obscurum per obscurius. It is more than this. The connexion creates difficulties. The Langobardi, who gave their name to Lombardy, were anything but Angle; inasmuch as their language was a dialect of the High German division. Hence, if we connect them with our own ancestors we must suppose that when they changed their locality they changed their speech also. But no such assumption is necessary. All that we get from the text of Tacitus is, that they were in geographical contiguity with the Reudigni, &c.
The Varini are in a different predicament. They are mentioned in the present text along with the Angli, and they are similarly mentioned in the heading of a code of laws referred to the tenth century. Every name in this latter document is attended with difficulties.
Incipit Lex Anglorum et Werinorum, hoc est Thuringorum.—To find Angli in Thuringia by themselves would be strange. So it would be to find Werini. But to find the two combined[153] is exceedingly puzzling. I suggest the likelihood of there having been military colonies, settled by some of the earlier successors of Charlemagne, if not by Charlemagne himself. There are other interpretations; but this seems the likeliest. That the Varini and Angli were contiguous populations in the time of Tacitus, joining each other on the Lower Elbe, even as they join each other in his text, is likely. It is also likely that when their respective areas were conquered, each should have supplied the elements of a colony to the conqueror.
At the same time, I do not think that their ethnological relations were equally close. The Varini I believe to have been Slavonians. There is no difficulty in doing this. The only difficulty lies in the choice between two Slavonic populations. Adam of Bremen places a tribe, which he sometimes calls Warnabi, and sometimes Warnahi (Helmoldus calling it Warnavi), between the river Havel in Brandenburg and the Obotrites of Mecklenburg-Schwerin. He mentions them, too, in conjunction with the Linones of Lun-eburg. Now this evidence fixes them in the parts about the present district of Warnow, on the Elde, a locality which is further confirmed by two chartas of the latter part of the twelfth century—"silva quæ destinguit terras Havelliere scilicet et Muritz, eandem terram quoque Muritz[154] et Vepero cum terminis suis ad terram Warnowe ex utraque parte fluminis quod Eldene dicitur usque ad castrum Grabow." Also—"distinguit tandem terram Moritz et Veprouwe cum omnibus terminis suis ad terram quæ Warnowe vocatur, includens et terram Warnowe cum terminis suis ex utraque parte fluminis quod Eldena dicitur usque ad castrum quod Grabou vocatur." Such is one of the later populations of the parts on the Lower Elbe, which may claim to represent the Varini of Tacitus.
But the name re-appears. In the Life of Bishop Otto, the Isle of Rugen is called Verania,[15] and the population Verani—eminent for their paganism. To reconcile these two divisions of the Mecklenburg populations is a question for the Slavonic archæologist. Between the two we get some light for the ethnology of the Varini. Their island is Rugen rather than Heligoland. The island, however, that best suits the Angli is Heligoland rather than Rugen. Which is which? The following hypothesis has already been suggested. "What if the Varini had one holy island, and the Angli another—so that the insulæ sacræ, with their corresponding casta nemora, were two in number?" I submit that a writer with no better means of knowing the exact truth than Tacitus, might, in such a case, when he recognized[155] the insular character common to the two forms of cultus, easily and pardonably, refer them to one and the same island; in other words, he might know the general fact that the Angli and Varini worshipped in an island, without knowing the particular fact of their each having a separate one.
This is what really happened; so that the hypothesis is as follows:—