Toward the close of the Eighth Century the Scandinavians of the North began their work of devastation upon English soil. For at least three centuries the Anglo-Saxons held the Rover's name in dread. Contemporary English abounds with Scandinavian words and forms; numerous traces of Scandinavian occupancy are found on English soil to-day. The men of the Heptarchy were in the main bred upon English soil. At least they were not a broken race of stragglers when they came. They were a vigorous, fighting breed. But if Bismarck were looking for "mixed races" in his carefully calculated career of annexation (no "dreaming" here), he certainly found what he sought at the point where the column of Goths that had marched from Central Asia, turning its head to the German Ocean, took courage from the bracing prospect and—gathering their veterans into one compact, invulnerable mass—debouched boldly toward the vast, inhospitable regions of the North. The Angles and Saxons were cradled among the mixed or mongrel peoples that had been dropped by the great migrant races in the southeastern corner of the northern sea—a population, says Marsh, of "very mixed and diversified blood." These furnished the original "comelings" upon British soil, but it is scarcely credible that the outcome of this mongrel stock was the Anglo-Saxon Race,—which in the great Triple Alliance of Norman and Saxon and Dane has for centuries maintained an unbroken front and kept the world in awe.
[XVI]
The learned author of "British Family Names," speaking of certain lists of ancient Norman names alleged to be authentic, says: "Of this great array of time-honored names, few are now borne by direct representatives. They exist among the old gentry rather than in the peerage. In the majority of cases, the later descendants of illustrious families have sunk into poverty and obscurity, unconscious of their origin." They have not "vanished from the world" (as Mr. Freeman says), but are daily coming to the front in circumstances requiring capacity for leadership in affairs. "Even now," says the observant author of an anonymous treatise,[9] "agricultural laborers and coal miners can not combine for objects which demand the exercise of practical ability without finding themselves led by those who, though in humble stations, bear names of undoubted Norman origin," citing, by way of example, Joseph Arch (De Arques, Normandy). These quotations will fitly introduce to the reader the long and suggestive alphabetical series of Norman names which the compiler has made the basis of extended critical remark.
In examining this series, one naturally inquires: How do we know that the thousands of names, taken from an old English Directory, are Norman? Simply by the circumstance that the same names occur in the records of Normandy in the Eleventh and Twelfth centuries—the references in most cases being to the great Rolls of the Exchequer, 1180-1200. Comparative reference to the English records at an early date—Eleventh, Twelfth, and Thirteenth centuries—raises a strong presumption that names appearing on the Norman Rolls before the Conquest, and on English records after the Conquest, were derived from Normandy, and that names now accounted English were originally Norman names. A similar correspondence between the names in the records of a Virginian court house and those of official records in Kentucky, to the mind of a contemporary genealogist, would carry decisive weight. It is the weight of concurrent testimony of high character from authentic sources. Identitas colligitur ex multitudine signorum. Even one surname in like circumstances is a significant record of individual descent. What shall be said of thousands historically traced—the continuous record of a single race? Thirty years ago it was estimated by an English scholar that the English race proper comprised thirty millions of people—a great composite nation; the Saxon, Dane, and Norman—a trinity of races all derived from the same ancient stock (the Gothic) and each forming about one third of a homogeneous race. The Saxon came immediately from the southeastern shores and islands of the North Sea, and is of Gothic descent; the Dane from Denmark or the Danish Isles, and is of pure Scandinavian stock; the Norman from Normandy, remotely Gothic, is of direct descent from the Scandinavian race. If this statement be correct the conclusion seems to be inevitable, not that "we are Scandinavians"—as the London Times says—but that we are all deeply Scandinavianized and that there is a preponderance of Scandinavian blood in the English race. If there has been a thorough intermixture of the three racial elements during the past eight hundred years, we may assume that every Kentuckian of Anglo-Virginian stock represents a practically definite ethnical product: Saxon, one third; Scandinavian, two thirds—for all controversial purposes a sufficiently conclusive result. The long-commingled blood of this composite race is, in effect, an adamantine cement, and the racial plexus, fusion, or combination is one and inseparable in every sense. If it were possible to remove either of these constituent elements—the Scandinavian or Saxon—the Kentuckian in his present admirable form would disappear and nothing but a restoration of the racial balance by a reconstitution of the original parts would restore him to the position of primacy assigned him by Mr. Bart Kennedy in his recent contribution to the London Mail. How true, then, in a deep ethnological sense, the familiar legend of our Commonwealth—"United we stand, divided we fall."
Be this as it may, it is desirable to have it understood that so long as the Saxon holds his own (and no more) in the constitution of our common race, there can arise no possible "unpleasantness" between the parts of which it is composed. In that duplex anthropoidal abnormity to which its creator has given a significant binominal appellation—Jekyll and Hyde—some regulative element seems to be lacking. Is it an element of race? The author does not say as much in express terms, but apparently he suggests it in his selection of names. Have we not a Norman in Mr. Jekyll? And a Saxon in Mr. Hyde? That we have not a normal Englishman is quite clear. Is the dominant Scandinavian element short? or has some demoniac "Berserker" blood slipped into the cross?
Subtle and descriminative writers (such as Stevenson and Disraeli) do not express themselves after a careless fashion, as a rule. They mean something, even in the selection of a name.
COLONEL J. STODDARD JOHNSTON.