ANGLO-SAXON CONQUEST OF BRITAIN.* Timm is somejustice in the claim

of very learned men to be occa- sionally unintelligible to the mass. It is very wearisome, and some- times very injurious to waste time in perpetual explanations, to build, as it were, each successive story upon a new foundation. Sir H. Rawlinson cannot be expected to tell everybody why the discovery

that l'hoth II. belonged to a dynasty different from the one in which he is usually enumerated is an important discovery, nor would Sir W. Hooker think of explaining why he was interested in discovering a Northern plant within the tropics. Mailer's " Dorian" is a hopeless book even to well-instructed men, because each chapter is the result of the labours of many lives, but Muller could not be fairly called on to write the cyclopiadias the demonstration of all his assertions would have required. It is possible, however, to push this claim too far, and to mistake the merely recondite for the learned. A. man is not a scholar because he knows something nobody else does, but because he knows something more than everybody else does. Mr. Haigh has fallen in no slight degree into this error, and has spoiled a volume of real, though fanciful learning, by pouring out facts only a very few out of a very limited class of scholars can even comprehend. A. single illustration will perhaps serve to make the difference clear. Thus, Mr. Haigh says : " The date of Maximus' victory over Gratian, Gratian's death and Theodosius' accession, is fixed by Orosius in .a.u.c. 1138, A.D. 385. In that year, through fear of Theodosius, Maximus made a treaty with Valentinian. This he violated two years later, by invading Italy at the head of a large force collected from Britain and Gaul, and compelled Valentinian to flee for protection to Theodosius. In the following year, A.D. 388, Theodosius and Valentinian led an army into Italy, defeated Maximus, and put him to death near Aquileia." That is a had paragraph, but everybody who has been educated at all knows what it was intended to prove, and the relation to history of the personages named. But what are we to make of this sentence ? "Still, in making Folcwald the father of Fin, the author of this History has fallen into an error, for which it is easy to account; the memory of Fin, the son of Folcwalda, was fresh in men's minds when he wrote, and it was easy to con- found him with Fin, the son of Godwulf; for, (those only excepted who have copied from him), all other authorities, Norse and Anglo-Saxon, tell us that Go4lwulf was the son of Geat, and the ancestor of Woden. To Geat he gives precisely the character which Jordanis gives him, saying that he was reputed to have been the son of a god ; whilst Aster goes further, and says that he was actually worshipped as a god (an instance of the corruption of tradition). Woden, then, the fifth descendant of Gest, stands in the same degree as Ostrogotha, and as we may presume that his was the younger line, he would be somewhat Ostrogotha's Junior. The date at which his descendants in the fourth degree, Horse and Hencgest, appear in our annals, and the circumstances of their history, suggest that he lived during the latter half of the third century and the earlier of the fourth, and thus was contemporary with Hunnuil, Atlial, Achinlf, and his sons ; and this inference, whilst on the one hand it is quite consistent with the facts of the Gothic genealou, is abundantly confirmed by the other genealogies of Woden's descendants, and by the circumstances of his life as detailed in Scan- dinavian tradition.

It may be all correct that ; but to any man less intimately familiar with Saxon history than Mr. Haigh—and he surely does not intend to waste his time in writing for men as thoroughly informed as him- self—the paragraph has very little force.

His chapter on the " futhore," or Runic alphabet, has very little more. Its real merit, we admit, is beyond ordinary criticism, be- cause Mr. Haigh's assertions can only be tested by men whose special knowledge is even more extensive than his own. The remark, for example, that in the Cotton MSS., " ior, the 29th character of the futhorc, is placed before ear," and the arrangement is therefore wrong, though of real value to Mr. Haigh's argument, has, for or- dinary readers, no meaning. But any reader has a right to com- plain when the information the author obviously desires to convey is not conveyed. He cannot test the accuracy of the theory, but he at least expects to understand what it is, and we fear Mr. Haigh's explanation is wholly beyond ordinary powers. At all events, after the patient study of hours, we confess that the explanation of the arrangement of the secret runes remains to us hopelessly unintelli- gible. That the secret rune used to express Anglo-Saxon contained forty-one characters, that these were divided into eight classes, that the writers contrived to indicate the class of the letter, and that such indication was necessary to describe its true force, is perhaps clear. But how they did it we understand no more than a telegraph clerk would understand a cypher without a key. As Mr. Haigh's object was to furnish the key, the alternative lies between his confused dic- tion and his reader's dulness. One mode of phonetic writing he describes clearly enough, though in too few words, and it is worth

• The Anglo-Saxon Conquest of Britain; a Harmony of the "Historia Britonerm," the Writings of Midas, the "Brut," and the Saxon Chronicle. By Daniel EL Haigh. Publiehed by John Rama Smith.

attention, as perhaps the very rudest form of alphabetical cypher. Each letter in most ancient tongues has a name, generally of some animal or common object, and one form of secret writing was to use the symbol instead of the letter. This was not picture-writing, the drawings not having the smallest relation to the meaning it was in- tended to convey, but simply a pictorial alphabet. We shall not enter into Mr. thigh's theory of. Anglo-Saxon genealogies, which are distinguished by that reliance on .overstrained analogies of sound which is the temptation of all mythologists. Faber wrote three big quartos to prove on this system that all mythological systems are varieties of the worship of Noah, and it would not be difficult on the same principles to prove that they are all based on the adoration of fire, or the sun, or the intellect, or the creative principle, or the serpent which tempted Eve—a theory really de- fended—or anything else which inflames the imagination and soothes the credulous. Thus Mr. Haigh holds that Woden, the general Teutonic ancestor, is mentioned by Ezekiel xxvii., 19, and that, as he is mentioned together with Javan, the founder of the Greek family, he was his brother, and consequently the son of Japhet, and that all the gods of all the Teutonic races were Babylonian patriarchs. One main evidence which lie adduces in Woden's case is the belief of the aboriginal people of Guatemala that the first leader of their race was named Yotan, and assisted in building the Tower of Babel! As a specimen of his style of argument we must quote the hierarchical descent of Baldr, the gentle hero of Scandi- navian mythology : "Ishtar, the goddess of war and of the chase, answers to Eoster, to whom, as the goddess of the opening year, our forefathers dedicated the month of April. Her Babylonian name was Nana; to this day Nana is the Syrian, as Asbtar is the Mendiean, name of the planet Venus, which represented her in the heavens ; and Nanna in Scandinavian mythology is the wife of the god Baldr. The un- timely death of Thammuz, and the lament for him of all the gods in Babylon, has its counterpart in that of the death of Baldr, and of all creation weeping for him ; and the name of Thammuz, which is said to mean hidden,' aptly describes the state of Baldr detained in Hel's kingdom of darkness. But Thammuz or Adonis is recognized as the lover of Astarte or Venus so that we can identify unhesi- tatingly Eoster and Nanna, with Ishtar and Nana, as names of the same goddess."

That is to say, Baldr is the northern version of Thammuz, but be- cause Baldr descended to Hel, and Hel is dark, therefore the wor- shippers of Babylon called their deity's name "hidden." The Em- peror Karl, that is, was called Charlemagne because Napoleon was a great hero ! The explanation that all savage tribes having the same natural objects before them, and the same passions within them, deified those objects and passions pretty much in the same way, with only local ntodifications, seems, at all events, simpler. We should like to know, too, on what authority Mr. Haigh makes dark- ness an attribute of the ancient Oriental hell. We thought fire was its main element, just as cold is that of the Scandinavian, each race inventing that which it most disliked in its daily life. The notion of a general wailing is common enough, and to this day the Mussulman world annually wails for Hussein and Hossein, just as the Scandinavians wailed for Baldr, without any mythological reason at all. A stranger who saw the women of Medina shrieking for Hamza, might readily connect the ceremonial with Thammuz. "Th" often becomes a mere aspirate, and the conversion of " ammaz" into " amza" is of no philological importance. The only objection to the theory is that Hamza like, we doubt not, Thammuz, and like Baldr, was originally a human being, who, for political reasons, was much regretted in Medina.

Mr. Haigh is more reliable when he quits mythology for history, though even here his book is deformed by the same fanciful spirit. Thus he assumes that all places whose names begin with Horse indi- cate the career of Horse. Thus he says,

"Following, therefore, the career of these chieftains, we have first, in the dis- trict around Stamford, Horsey-hill, near Peterborough, and Horsegate, near Market Deeping; then, in Yorkshire, Horsefield and Hinchcliff, near Hohnfirth, Horseforth, near Leeds, Horsall, near Halifax, and Horsehouse, near Middlebam ; in Northumberland, three Horseleys ; in Norfolk, Horsey, Horsford, Horsham, Horstead, and Hensthead ; in Suffolk, Hensthead; in Essex, Horsey Isle, and 'Hinckford; in Kent, Hiuxhill ; in Surrey, liorsall and Horsley ; in Sussex, Horsebridge, two Horsteads, Horsell. and Horsham; in Derbyshire, Horsley; in Leicestershire, Horsepool and Hinckley ; in Staffordshire, Horseley and Hincks- ford."

Why should not the root of these names be simply. "horse ?" Horsa, however, really was distinguished by Saxon tradition, but Mr. Haigh pushes his theory in a style that would have delighted Mr. Oid- buck : "Haver and Frode of the Danish line may also have been associated in Horsa'a and Hencgest's enterprise. We have the name of the former at Haverholme and Haverstoc in Lincolnshire ; Havercroft in Yorkshire ; Haverthwaite in Lanca- shire; Heversham, near it, in Westmoreland ; Haverhill in Essex ; Havershem (Hsefieresham) in 'Buckinghamshire ; and Haverford in Pembrokeshire, the dis- trict in which Uther defeated the Irish and Saxon allies of Fitment."

As well might every Smithrille in America be held to prove the ex- istence and career of some all-conquering Smith. A race without surnames has few distinctive titles, and even now there are scarcely thirty Christian names, properly so called, in use in Europe. ffavar may have been as common a Saxon or Danish name as William is a common English one. Then, as now, any great proprietor or other man of distinction fixed his own name on his own bit of the soil. In this instance it is probable that the blunder is even more absurd than this, Havercroft meaning simply oat-croft, from haver, the Danish word for oats. On strictly historic ground, however, Mr. Haigh is more reasonable, and his narrative of the Saxon conquest, which differs considerably from the popular one, is the redeeming portion of the book.

Throughout he follows the old chronicles, treating them as we treat all other original records, carefully collating and reconciling

them, analyzing. the probabilities for and against each story, and most carefully adducing any corroborative circumstantial evidence. He holds, to begin with, that the Teutonic-clans had beguntosettle in F.ng. land during the Roman period, and indeed this is demonstrated from the fact that the Southern coast is called in the " Notitia Imperii," " Littus Saxonicum per Britannias." DionCassius mentions the settle- ment of Macomanni, m Britain, in the reign of Marcus Antoninus, and other writers allude to immigrations of Vandals, Burgundians, and Ala- manni. The Saxons, probably so called, first arrived at a time which Mr. Haigh fixes as A.D. 375, and the Angles in A.D. 397. Vortigern, who is pularly held to have first invited them, did not ascend the throne 425, or 28 years after. Vortigern, who was a usurper, and hated by the Picts whom he had once governed, called indeed the Saxons to his aid, but unsuccessfully, and the landing of Hengist and Horsa was accidental. They had arrived in search of adventures with 300 followers, and it was not till after their first battle with the Picts they summoned their countrymen, and appeared in Vortigern's army at the head of ten thousand men. After the first defeat of the Picts, Mr. Haigh believes that they were settled near Leeds, the king interposing them, as it were, between his own subjects and the Northern savages. Reinforced by new arrivals from Germany, the Saxons next year totally defeated the Picts in a great battle, in which the Northern tribes are believed to have brought 40,000 men into the field. A second engagement terminated in a still more com- plete victory, and Hengist, whose followers were still regarded as an army, and not as colonists, for we have records of the disputes about their monthly pay, married his daughter to Vortigern, and thenceforward held in England the position which Bussy in the last century held at the court of the Nizam, exercising royal authority in the name of a puppet ally. On the marriage, Hengist received Kent as a place for his personal following, and thenceforward the Saxons were encamped in that county and in Yorkshire, the northern section being under the command of Horsa, the leader of the entire people. The battles thenceforward recorded by tradition, are struggles between Vortigern, aided by his foreign allies, and the Britons, who, in 433, deposed him, and elected Vortimer. In a cam- paign of three years, Vortimer all but extirpated the Saxons of York- shire, and drove Hengist to his ships, but his death dispirited his party, and the Britons once more raised Vortigern to the throne. Rowena immediately summoned Hengist, who arrived with an extraordinary number of followers, and recovered possession of Kent and Nor- thumbria. The Britons, however, were so alarmed at the immense number of the invaders that, with Vortigern's consent, they attacked them in Kent, and from their defeat, in 436, commences the true Saxon conquest of Great Britain. The process, often described as sudden, lasted exactly seventy years, during the whole of which time a series of British kings was supported by a section of the population strong enough to compel the Saxons to demand external aid. These kings, usually regarded as mythical, Mr. Haigh considers, on strong evidence, to have been real and powerful, and he assigns to each a distinct history. They reigned : Ambrosias from A.D. 443 to 449.

Uther 449 to 467.

Arthur 17 467 to 493.

Constantine 493 to 495.

Conan lf 495 to 496.

Vortipore 496 to 500.

Maglocun If 500 to 502. Caredig 71 502 to 506.

Muircheartach Mac Erc „ 506 to 513.

The last named being an Irishman, who pressed the Saxons so closely that they summoned allies from Africa, and by their assist- ance were finally, A.D. 506, placed in possession of modern Eng- land, with the exception of Cornwall. The Britons who had striven with the Saxons at first from party motives, and latterly from a feeling of nationality, gradually withdrew into Wales and Cornwall, to live under chiefs of their own race, and the Saxons commenced that wonderful career which we call the history of England. This narrative, true or false, is at least far more natural than the popular one, inasmuch as it allows time for a conquest, which could never have been suddenly accomplished. It is supported, too, by the only ancient evidence we possess, and, if " mythical," compels us to assume that between the departure of the Romans and the establish- ment of the Heptarchy, the true history of England can never be re- covered.