Were the conquerors, then, of Sus-sex, &c., other than Nordalbingian? I do not say this. I only say that the evidence of their coming from the special district of Holstein does not lie in their name. Germans from the south of the Elbe would—according to the preceding hypothesis—have been equally Saxon in the eyes of the degenerate Romans and the corrupted Britons whom they conquered.
We are still dealing with the origin of the name. The Franks and Romans diffused and generalized, the Kelts suggested, it. That the name was Keltic is undenied and undeniable. The Welsh and Gaels know us to the present moment as Saxons, and not as Englishmen. The only doubt has been as to how far it was exclusively Keltic—i.e., non-Germanic.
Will the supposition of its being Keltic account for all the facts connected with it? No. It will not account for the Finlanders using it. They, like the Kelts, call the Germans Saxon. This, then, is a fresh condition to be satisfied. The hypothesis which does this is, that the name Saxo was applied by the Slavonians of the Baltic as well as by Kelts of the coasts of Gaul and Britain to the pirates of the neck of the Chersonese,—the Slavonic designation being[194] adopted by the Finlanders just as the Keltic was by the Romans.
And this supplies an argument in favour of the name having been native, since a little consideration will shew that, when two different nations speak of a third by the same name, the primâ facie evidence is in favour of the population to whom it is applied by their neighbours applying it to themselves also.
Yet this is no proof of its being German: nor yet of the men of Wes-sex, &c., being Nordalbingian. All that we get from the British counties ending in -sex is, that in certain parts of the island, the British name for certain German pirates prevailed over the native, whereas, in others, the native prevailed over the British.
If this be but a trifling conclusion in respect to its positive results, it is one of some negative value; inasmuch, as when we have shewn that Angle and Saxon are, to a great extent, the same names in different languages, we have rid ourselves of the imaginary necessity of investigating such imaginary differences as the difference of name, at the first view, suggests. We have also ascertained the historical import of the spread of the names Saxon and Saxony. They spread, not because certain Saxons originating in a district no bigger than the county of Rutland, bodily took possession of vast tracts of country in Germany,[195] Britain, and Gaul, but because a great number of Germans were called by the name of a small tribe, just as the Hellenes of Thessaly, Attica, and Peloponnesus were called by the Romans, Greeks. The true Græci were a tribe of dimensions nearly as small in respect to the Hellenes at large as the Saxons of Ptolemy were to the Germans in general (perhaps, indeed, they were not Hellenic at all); yet it was the Græci whom the Romans identified with the Hellenes. No one, however, believes that the Græci extended themselves to the extent of the term Græcia. On the contrary, every one admits that it was only the import of the name which became enlarged. And this I believe to have been the case with the word Saxon.
Saxon, then, like Greek, was a general name. Nevertheless, they were specific Saxons just as they were specific Græci. These were the Saxons of Ptolemy. When that author wrote, I believe them to have been either Frisian or Slavonians, without saying which—Frisians, if we look for their affinities to the south of the Elbe; Slavonians, if we seek them to the east of the Bille.
Between the time of Ptolemy and the end of the fourth century, the name grew into importance, and became a name of terror to the Romans, Gauls, and Britons, who applied it to the northern Germans of the sea-board in general.[196]
The spread of the name along the sea-coast began in the fourth century. Claudian alludes to a naval victory over them
——"maduerunt Saxone fuso
Orcades."