the name Gēatas to supplant the correct Īote, Ēote, etc. But, whoever the Geatas may have been, Beowulf is their chief early record: indeed, almost all we know of their earliest history is derived from Beowulf. In Beowulf, therefore, if anywhere, the old names and traditions should be remembered. The word Gēat occurs some 50 times in the poem. The poet obviously wishes to use other synonyms, for the sake of variety and alliteration: hence we get Weder-Gēatas, Wederas, Sǣ-Gēatas, Gūð-Gēatas. Now, if these Geatas are the Jutes, how comes it that the poet never calls them such, never speaks of them under the correct tribal name of Ēote, etc., although this was the current name at the time Beowulf was written, and indeed for centuries later?
For, demonstrably, the form Ēote, etc., was recognized as the name of the Jutes till at least the twelfth century. Then it died out of current speech, and only Bede's Latin Iuti (and the modern "Jute" derived therefrom) remained as terms used by the historians. The evidence is conclusive:
(a) Bede, writing about the time when Beowulf, in its present form, is supposed to have been composed, uses Iuti, Iutae, corresponding to a presumed contemporary Northumbrian *Īuti, *Īutan.
(b) In the O.E. translation of Bede, made in Mercia perhaps two centuries after Bede's time, we do indeed in one place find "Geata," "Geatum" used to translate "Iutarum," "Iutis," instead of the correctly corresponding Mercian form "Eota," "Eotum." Only two MSS are extant at this point. But since both agree, and since they belong to different types, it is probable that "Geata" here is no mere copyist's error, but is due to the translator himself[[673]]. But, later, when the translator
has to render Bede's "Iutorum," he gives, not "Geata," but the correct Mercian "Eota." There can be no possible doubt here, for five MSS are extant at this point, and all give the correct form—four in the Mercian, "Eota," whilst one gives the West-Saxon equivalent, "Ytena."
Now the Gēata-passage in the Bede translation is the chief piece of evidence which those who would explain the Geatas of Beowulf as "Jutes" can call: and it does not, in fact, much help them. What they have to prove is that the Beowulf-poet could consistently and invariably have used Gēatas in the place of Ēote. To produce an instance in which the two terms are both used by the same translator is very little use, when what has to be proved is that the one term had already, at a much earlier period, entirely ousted the other.
All our other evidence is for the invariable use of the correct form Īote, Īotan, etc. in Old English.
(c) The passage from Bede was again translated, and inserted into a copy of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, which was sent quite early to one of the great abbeys of Northumbria[[674]]. In this, "Iutis, Iutarum" is represented by the correct Northumbrian equivalent, "Iutum," "Iotum"; "Iutna."
(d) This Northumbrian Chronicle, or a transcript of it, subsequently came South, to Canterbury. There, roughly about the year 1100, it was used to interpolate an Early West-Saxon copy of the Chronicle. Surely at Canterbury, the capital of the old Jutish kingdom, people must have known the correct form of the Jutish name, whether Gēatas or Īote. We find the forms "Iotum," "Iutum"; "Iutna."
(e) Corresponding to this Northumbrian (and Kentish) form Īote, Mercian Ēote, the Late West-Saxon form should be Ȳte. Now MS Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, 41, gives us "the Wessex version of the English Bede" and is written by a scribe who knew the Hampshire district[[675]]. In this MS the "Eota" of the Mercian original has been transcribed as "Ytena," "Eotum" as "Ytum," showing that the scribe understood the tribal name and its equivalent correctly. This was about the