NEW LIGHT ON HENGEST AND HORSA
Si:11,—May I draw attention to what is logically the most important centenary this year ; tge 1,500th anniversary of the traditional date of the coming of Hengest and Horsa—the coming, that is, of the English people. The only reference I have seen in our Press rather disparages Hengest as a stolid and oafish personality. Not so the Nationaltidende of Copenhagen, which on April 20th published an illustrated article of three colinnns.. If as is there suggested; •Hengest is also the warrior of that name appearing in the Finnsburg LayLpf which an extract is included in Beowulf, he was a very .honourable --Tnark. .accOrding to his heathen lights,.Certainly the hero who was driven out of Kent by three signal defeats about 455, but could reeruit,a new, host and stage such a come-
back, must have been a leader of the li_ett quality: - Where did the Jutes under their leadeMengest come from ? Professor Stenton (Anglo-Saxon England, 1943) questioned Bede's statement that they came hum Jutland, asserting that all archaeological evidence in Kent pointed to a Frankish (Lower Rhine) origin. While it is probably true that Hengest, and certainly true that his -successors for 150 years, recruited mans' 'followers from that area, so that the Jutish element assumed Frankish customs, yet the case for South Jutland (i.e. North Friesland, the north-west 'corner of Schleswig-Holstein today) as the genuine home of Hengest and his original bands is very„sd-ong. The Hengest of the Finn.sburg Lay was a "Jutish" chief. -.whose dealings with the Frisian King Finn are described. Hengst and its variant in Old German Hingst mean stallion ; Horsa a horse (not a mare). Animal names of this kind were commonly used by men.
When I visited Horsebiill behind Sylt on military government duties in 1945, Professor Stenton's dictum grieved me, for I pictured Horsa sailing from that home or " building " on the little rise above the wide marshes. The place ending -ebiill (Old German -Ind, Danish -bol) is very common there—Krakebilll for example, and Dagebiill, the latter near the mouth of a small river. The Victoria Country History of Kent states that there are in that country only two known inscriptions in Runic, and so of the -earliest date before the Frankish influence brought in Latin script. Both are near Sandwich, " Raehaebul " on an inscribed stone, and "I, Chief Dagmund " on a sword found in a grave.
Professor Haeberlin of Wyk-auf-Fohr (near Sylt), whO was evicted from Hamburg by the Nazis in 1936, writes that one of the islands left by the great encroachment of the sea in 1362 contained an ancient parish called Hingsmess, which has since been washed away. (Before 1231 it was an extension of the island of Oland, now much reduced.) Also there is, or was, in the neighbouring island of Amrum a placed called 1Cingstgap. Hengist, Horsa, Rahebul and Dagrnund ; the four names with Kentish associations, all appear to derive from this North Frisian coast, a strip twelve miles. If so, Bede is proved right.—Yours faithfully,
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