That either Gildas or Beda knew of the line or translated it as if the Picts were Geloni cannot be shewn; but that an author not very much later than Beda did so is shewn by the following extract from a Life of St. Vodoal, written about the beginning of the tenth century—"The Blessed Vodoal was (as they say) sprung from the arrow-bearing nation of the Geloni, who are believed to have drawn their origin from Scythia. Concerning[256] whom, the poet writes Pictosque Gelonos; and from that time till now they are called Picts."[36] Sagittiferi is as Virgilian as the word Picti—
"Hic Nomadum genus et discinctos Mulciber Afros,
Hic Lelegas, Carasque sagittiferosque Gelonos
Finxerat."—Aen. viii. 725.
Another element in the reasoning upon the date of the earliest Scandinavians is the fact that more than one enquirer has noticed in the nomenclature of a writer so early as Ptolemy, words with an aspect more or less Scandinavian—e.g., Ar-beia, Leucopi-bi-um, Vand-uarii (Aqui-colæ), Lox-ius fluvius (=Salmon River), and, perhaps, some others.
To argue that there were Scandinavians amongst us in the second century, because certain words were Norse, and then to infer the Norse character of the words in question from the presence of Scandinavians is a vicious circle from which we must keep apart. At the same time, the insufficiency of the early historians to give a negative, the oversight of Beda in respect to the word dal, and the exceptions which can be taken to the gloss penn fahel, are all elements of importance. The present writer believes that there were Norsemen in Britain anterior to A.D. 787, and also that those Norsemen may have been the Picts.[257]
The Danish and Norwegian subjects of Canute give us a direct, the Normans of William the Conqueror an indirect, Scandinavian element.
"The latest conquerors of this island were also the bravest and the best. I do not except even the Romans. And, in spite of our sympathies with Harold and Hereward, and our abhorrence of the founder of the New Forest and the desolator of Yorkshire, we must confess the superiority of the Normans to the Anglo-Saxons and Anglo-Danes, whom they met here in 1066, as well as to the degenerate Frank noblesse, and the crushed and servile Romanesque provincials, from whom, in 912, they had wrested the district in the north of Gaul, which still bears the name of Normandy."[37]
This leads us to the analysis of the blood of the Norman, or North-man. Occupant as he is of a country so far south as Normandy, this is his designation; since the Scandinavians who in the eighth, ninth, and tenth centuries ravaged Great Britain, extended themselves along the coasts of the Continent as well. And here they are subject to the same questions as the Scandinavians of Lincolnshire, Scotland, and the Isle of Man. They are liable to being claimed as Norwegians, and liable to be claimed as Danes; they may or[258] they may not have had forerunners; their blood, if Danish rather than Norwegian, may have been Jute or it may have been Frisian; they may have been distinct from certain allied conquerors known under the name of Saxon, or they may be the Saxons of a previous period.
They seem, however, in reality, to have been Norwegians from Norway rather than Danes from Jutland and the Danish Isles; Norwegians, unaccompanied by females, and Norwegians who preserve their separate nationality to a very inconsiderable extent. They formed French alliances, and they adopted the habits and manners of the natives. These were, from first to last, Keltic on the mother's side; but on that of the father, Keltic, Roman, and German. That this latter element was important, is inferred from the names of the Ducal and Royal family: William, Richard, Henry, &c., names as little Scandinavian as they are Roman or Gallic.
Hence, the blood of even the true Norman was heterogeneous; whilst (more than this) the army itself was only partially levied on the soil of Normandy—Bretons, who were nearly pure Kelts, Flemings who were Kelto-Germans, and Walloons who were Kelto-German and Roman, all helped to swell the host of the Conqueror. What these effected at Hastings, and how they appropriated the country, is a matter for the civil[259] rather than the physical historian; the distribution of their blood amongst the present Englishmen being a problem for the herald and genealogist. The elements they brought over were only what we had before—Keltic, Roman, German, and Norse. The manner, however, of their combination differed. There was also a slight variation in the German blood. It was Frank rather than Angle.