How came the Kelts by it? The usual answer to this: that they got it from the Saxons themselves, the Saxons being, of course, Germans. But the main object of the present chapter has been to shew the extremely unsatisfactory nature of the evidence of any Germans having so called themselves. Assuredly, if they stopped at the present point, the reasons for believing the name to have been native would be eminently unsatisfactory. The best fact would be in the language of Beda, who, as we have seen, called the Westphalians Old-Saxons. But Beda often allowed himself to use the language of his authorities, most of whom wrote in Latin, and some of whom were Gauls or Britons.
But four fresh ones can be added—
1. There is the element -sex in the names Es-sex, Wes-sex, Sus-sex, and Middle-sex.
2. The name Sax-neot was that of a deity, whom the Old Saxons, on their conversion to Christianity, were compelled to foreswear. This gives us the likelihood of its being the name of an eponymus.[191]
3. The story about nimeþ eowre Seaxas=take your daggers, and the deduction from it, that Saxons meant dagger-men, is of no great weight; with the present writer, at least. Still, as far as it goes, it is something.
4. The Finlanders call the Germans Saxon.
The necessity of getting as far as we can into the obscure problems connected with this word is urgent. One part of England is more evidently Saxon than another; at least, it bears certain outward and visible signs of Saxonism which are wanting elsewhere. What are we to say to this? That Es-sex is Saxon, and, as Saxon, something notably different from Suffolk which is Angle? It may have been so; yet the minutest ethnology ever applied has failed in detecting the differentiæ. They have, indeed, been assumed, and an unduly broad distinction between the dialect of Angle and the dialects of Saxon origin has been drawn; but the distinction is unreal. Angle Northumberland and Saxon Sussex differ from each other, not because they are Angle and Saxon, but because they are northern and southern counties. And so on throughout. The difference between Angle and Saxon Britain has ever been assumed to be real, whereas it may be but nominal.
Let us suppose it to be the latter, and Saxon to have been the British name of the Angle—nothing[192] more. What do names like Sus-sex, &c., indicate? Not that the population was less Angle than elsewhere, but that it was more Roman or British—an important distinction.
Again—certain Frisians are stated by Procopius to have dwelt in Britain; though Beda makes no mention of them. Assume, however, that the Saxons of the latter writer were the Frisians of the former, and all is plain and clear. But, then, they should be more unlike the Angles than they can be shewn to have been.
But why refine upon these points at all? Why, when we admit the Nordalbingians to have been Angle, demur to their having called themselves Saxons? I do this because I cannot get over the fact of the king who first decreed that his kingdom should be called Angle-land having been no Angle but a West-Saxon. That he should give the native German name precedence over the Roman and Keltic is likely; but that, by calling himself and his immediate subjects Saxon, he should change the name to Angle, is as unlikely as that a King of Prussia should propose that all Germany should be known as Austria. Of course, if the evidence in favour of the word Saxon being native was of a certain degree of cogency, we must take the preceding improbability as we find it; but no such cogent evidence can be found. Saxon is always a name that some[193] one may give to some one else, never one that he necessarily bears himself.