Between the two, descendants of the Angri-varii of Tacitus, and ancestors of the present Germans of the parts about Engern, lay the Angr-arii, or Ang-arii.
An unknown poet of the eighth century, but[168] one whose sentiments indicate a Saxon origin, thus laments the degenerate state of his country:
"Generalis habet populos divisio ternos,
Insignita quibus Saxonia floruit olim;
Nomina nunc remanent virtus antiqua recessit.
Denique Westfalos vocitant in parte manentes
Occidua; quorum non longe terminus amne
A Rheno distat? regionem solis ad ortum
Inhabitant Osterleudi, quos nomine quidam
Ostvalos alii vocitant, confinia quorum
Infestant conjuncta suis gens perfida Sclavi.
Inter predictos media regione morantur
Angarii, populus Saxonum tertius; horum
Patria Francorum terris sociatur ab Austro,
Oceanoque eadem conjungitur ex Aquilone."
The conquest of Charlemagne is the reason for the language being thus querulous; for, unlike Upper Saxony, the Saxony of the Lower Weser, the Saxony of the Angrivarii, Westfalii, and Ostfalii, was truly the native land of an old and heroic German population, of a population which under Arminius had resisted Rome, of a population descended from the Chamavi, the Dulgubini, the Fosi, and the Cherusci of Tacitus, and, finally, the land of a population whose immediate and closest affinities were with the Angles of Hanover, and the Frisians of Friesland, rather than with the Chatti of Hesse, or the Franks of the Carlovingian dynasty.
How far are these the Saxons of Sus-sex, Es-sex,[169] and Middle-sex? Only so far as they were Angles; and, except in the parts near the Elbe, they were other than Angle. This we know from their language, in which a Gospel Harmony, in alliterative metre, a fragmentary translation of the Psalms, and a heroic rhapsody called Hildubrant and Hathubrant have come down to us.
The parts where the dialects of these particular specimens were spoken are generally considered to have been the country about Essen, Cleves, and Munster; and, although closely allied to the Anglo-Saxon of England, the Westphalian Saxon is still a notably different form of speech. It was the Angle language in its southern variety, or (changing the expression) the Angle was the most northern form of it.
We have seen that Saxony and Saxon were no native terms on the Upper Elbe. Were they so in the present area—in Westphalia, Eastphalia, and the land of the Angrivarii? Tacitus knows no such name at all; and Ptolemy, the first writer in whom we find it, attaches it to a population of the Cimbric Peninsula. Afterwards, in the third and fourth centuries it is applied by the Roman and Byzantine writers in a general sense, to those maritime Germans whose piracies were the boldest, and whose descents upon the Provinces of Gaul and Britain were most dreaded. Yet nowhere can we find a definite tract of country[170] upon which we can lay our finger and say this is the land of Saxons, saving only the insignificant district to the north of the Elbe, mentioned by Ptolemy. From the time of Honorius to that of Charlemagne, Saxo is, like Franc, a general term applied, indeed, to the maritime Germans rather than those of the interior, and to those of the north rather than the south, yet nowhere specifically attached to any definite population with a local habitation and a name to match. Whenever we come to detail, the Saxons of the Roman writers become Chamavi, Bructeri, Cherusci, Chauci, or Frisii; while the Frank details are those of the Ostphali, Westphali, and Angrivarii.
But the Frank writers under the Merovingian and Carlovingian dynasties are neither the only nor the earliest authors who speak of the Hanoverians and Westphalians under the general name of Saxon. The Christianized Angles of England used the same denomination; and, as early as the middle of the eighth century, Beda mentions the Fresones, Rugini, Dani, Huni, Antiqui Saxones, Boructuarii.—Hist. Eccles. 5, 10. Again—the Boructuarii, descendants of the nearly exterminated Bructeri of Tacitus, and occupants of the country on the Lower Lippe, are said to have been reduced by the nation of the Old Saxons (a gente Antiquorum Saxonum). In other records we find the epithet Antiqui translated by the native[171] word eald (=old) and the formation of the compound Altsaxones—Gregorius Papa universo populo provinciæ Altsaxonum (vita St. Boniface). Lastly, the Anglo-Saxon writers of England use the term Eald-Seaxan (=Old-Saxon). And this form is current amongst the scholars of the present time; who call the language of the Heliand, of the so-called Carolinian Psalms and of Hildebrant and Hathubrant, the Old-Saxon, in contradistinction to the Anglo-Saxon of Alfred, Cædmon, and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. The authority of the Anglo-Saxons themselves justifies this compound; yet it is by no means unexceptionable. Many a writer has acquiesced in the notion that the Old-Saxon was neither more nor less than the Anglo-Saxon in a continental locality, and the Anglo-Saxon but the Old-Saxon transplanted into England. Again—the Old-Saxons have been considered as men who struck, as with a two-edged sword, at Britain on the one side, and at Upper Saxony on the other, so that the Saxons of Leipsic and the Saxons of London are common daughters of one parent—the Saxons of Westphalia.
The exact relations, however, to the Old-Saxons and the Anglo-Saxons seem to have been as follows:—
The so-called Old-Saxon is the old Westphalian[172]—