THE ORIGIN OF THE ANGLO-SAXON RACE.* Jr is a matter

for much regret that Mr. T. W. Shore, the author of this very useful book, should have passed away before his work actually appeared. He was working at it to the last. "Some portions of the manuscript had been revised for printing, some of the chapters had received numerous additions and alterations in arrangement even until within a few days of his death, and others still needed their final revision." The work was carried by his sons and daughter through the press, and every effort has been made to prevent * The Origin of the Anglo-Saxon Race : a Study of the Settlement of England and the Tribal Origin of the Old English People. By the late Thomas William Shore. Edited by his Sons. T. W. Shore, M.D., and L. E. Shore, M.D. London: Elliot Stock. [9s. net.]

the work suffering from "the lack of that final revision which the author alone could have given it." The need of that final revision of course appears from place to place. Mr. Shore would never have used Camden's edition of Asser's Life of Alfred after the issue of Mr. W. H. Stevenson's definitive

edition of that famous book. Had the latter edition been used, we should have been told that "the compound Angul-

Saxo first occurs on the Continent, and was used to distinguish the English Saxons from the Old Saxons."

The word occurs in the form Engel-Saxo in the Life of Alcuin (written between 823 and 829). The compound is very rare in works composed in Old English. "Apart from the late translations of charters, it seems to occur only in the curious mixture of Old English and Latin in the poetical introduction to Aldhelm, in the tenth century copy in the library of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge." Mr. Stevenson's work would in many respects have been a valu-

able aid to Mr. Shore, while there is much in Dr. Hodgkin's recent volume in the Political History of England that supplements Mr. Shore's work. There are other recent works, such as Dr. Vinogradoff's Growth of the Manor, and the new edition of Dr. Seebohm's Tribal System, in Wales, that would have given invaluable aid. We have no desire in any way to minimise the usefulness of Mr. Shore's work, but it is well to remember in using it that he has by no means exhausted the sources of information, and that his book is not in any sense a final contribution to the literature of this great theme.

The subject has not, however, we believe, been dealt with before from quite the same point of view. Mr. Shore puts the problem that he set out to solve very clearly, if not quite accurately, when he says :—

"If we had no contemporary information of the settlement, for instance, of the State of Massachusetts, and nothing but traditions, more or less probable, concerning it until the middle of the nineteenth century, when an account of that settlement was first written, we should scarcely be warranted in regarding such a narrative as veritable history. Its traditionary value would be considerable, and there its value would end. This supposed case is parallel with that of the early account of the Anglo-Saxons and the settlement of England as it went on from the middle of the fifth to the middle of the seventh century. That which Bede wrote concerning his own time must be accepted as contemporary history, and for this historical informs, tion we venerate his memory ; but the early settlements in England were made six or eight generations before his day, and he had nothing but tradition to assist him in his narrative concerning them."

This suggests the general position, but it is not quite correct. We have much earlier information than that given us by Bede, though it is contained in a form that is difficult to use. Gildas, born in Strathclyde about the year 500, cannot be overlooked. He was an eyewitness of the Saxon deluge, and his "tearful discourse concerning the ruin of Britain" has various passages of high historical value. He tells us that the Britons were "trampled under foot by two savage nations from beyond seas, namely the Scots from the North-West and the Picts from the North." As Dr. Hodgkin says, "the description of the invaders as coming from beyond the seas is important." The story of the Roman of Imperial descent, Ambrosias Aurelianus, who led the Britons to victory, is probably true, and is of high interest. But Gildas is not the only early writer of value. Nennius, writing about the year 796—Bede's history was finished in 731—incorporates in his work extracts from a much earlier writer describing the Welsh and English battles between 547 and 679. This Northumbrian Celt gives us the

famous "Genealogies of the Kings" (Sections 57 to 65 of the Historia Brittonum), and these early passages "have this especial interest for us, that we have here, imbedded in a passionately Celtic work, information otherwise lacking as to

the rulers of the Anglian kingdoms of Northumbria and Mercia, in the sixth century." Mr. Shore, however, only used the Balm Edition of Nennius, and was apparently unaware of Professor Zimmer's reconstruction of the text in his great work Nennius Vindicatus. Matters of this sort largely detract from the scientific value of Mr. Shore's volume. The book requires to be supplemented by the use of competently edited editions of Gildas, Bede, Nennius, the Saxon Chronicle, and Asser, giving us in some detail the point of view of both the conquerors and the conquered. Moreover, some reference should have been made to two passages in a Roman chronicle

which are beyond all doubt contemporary with the beginnings of the Saxon onslaught. This chronicle (usually attributed, but wrongly, to Prosper Tiro) tells OH :—(1) "The fifteenth

year of Arcailius and Honorius [A.D. 409] : at this time the strength of the Romans was utterly wasted by sickness ; and the provinces of Britain were laid waste by the incursion of the Saxons "; (2) "The eighteenth year of Theodosius II. [A.D. 441] : the provinces of Britain which up to this time

had been torn by various slaughters and disasters, are brought under the dominion of the Saxons." The Life of St. Germanus, written by the presbyter Constantius about the year 480, deals with events that happened about 400; but this work is of great historical value, and describes the union of the Saxons and Picts against the Britons.

We are certainly not in the deep darkness imagined by Mr. Shore. The twilight is gloomy enough, but it is surely the business of any competent historian to point out such con- temporary light as exists before he proceeds to create some new sources of illumination. The value of this book is confined to these sources, and it is not so helpful as it would have been had it made some adequate use of the writers to whom we have referred. What other sources have we when we come to consider the origin of the Anglo-Saxon race ? Although we have exhausted the known historians, we have, as Mr. Shore shows in his painful accumulation of detail, by no means exhausted the written word in addition to the other vestiges of the early forefathers of our great race.

First, as to the written word. It is written in stone and scattered far and wide over the British Islands. It will be useful to quote a passage on the subject :—

"Runic inscriptions are an important source of evidence in tracing the migrations of the Northern Goths, and of the neighbouring nations who acquired their knowledge of runes from them. In Sweden, Denmark, and Norway there are on fixed objects thousands of inscriptions in this ancient alphabet. Similar records are scattered over the regions which wore over- run and settled by the Scandian tribes. They have beep found, on movable objects only, in the valley of the Danube, which was the earliest halting place of the Goths on their southern migra- tion. They have been found also on fixed objects in Kent, which was conquered by the so-called Jutes, in Cumberland and other northern parts of England, Orkney, and the Isle of Man, where Norwegians formed settlements. They are found in Northumber- land, where the Anglians settled at an earlier period than that of the later Norse invaders. Runes may be classed in three divisions —Gothic, Anglian, and Scandinavian. The oldest may date from the first or second century A.D., and the latest from the four- teenth or fifteenth century. . . . . Prom the circumstance of the discovery of runic inscriptions in characters in parts of England which were settled by Angles and Jutes, and not in those parts which were settled by Saxons, we are able to draw two conclusions : (1) That the settlers in Kent must have been near in race or allied to the Anglian settlers of Northumberland and other Anglian counties; and (2) that there must have been an absence of any close intercourse or communication, and con- sequently a considerable difference, between the Scandinavian Angles and the Saxons."

It is perhaps true that the Goths and Angles introduced the art of rune-writing into England in the fifth century. But the runes are certainly a modification of the Greek alphabet due to the very early intercourse of the Baltic with the Levant. This would point to their use in pre-Christian times, and would suggest that the British Greek characters referred to by Caesar were really runes. In any event, the Baltic s one source of origin of our race. It is clear from runic evidence that "the early Goths who settled in Kent were of the same stock as those who overran so large a part of Europe during the decline of the Roman Empire."

The written word does not end with the runes. There are, of course, the Roman inscriptions which throw some light on the invasion of Britain, but more important are the inscriptions in Ogham characters. Some twenty have been discovered in Wales, two in Devonshire, one in Cornwall (on a block of tin), and no less than one hundred and fifty-five in Ireland, of which one hundred and forty-eight "belong to the four counties of Kilkenny, Waterford, Cork and Kerry."

Mr. Shore attributes these Ogham inscriptions to Scandi- navian settlers, and declares that " Oghams are, indeed, a variation of runic writing." We are at issue with Mr. Shore here. Possibly the fact that there are some twelve Ogham inscriptions in Scotland helps his contention, but still we prefer to think, with the late Professor Morley and Professor Stephens of Copenhagen, that, "taking Baby- lonian as one branch of the oldest stave writing, and Phoenician as the other : of the Babylonian branch the

Ogham characters are the only Western representative ; but the Phoenician is in the old Runic, the modern Greek, Latin, and other alphabets." The Ogham characters may have been brought through from Asia with the Gaelic influx that pre- ceded by long centuries the Roman occupation, or may have come indirectly during the Saxon occupation. The Eastern influence on our race does not end with the Ogham characters. Mr. Shore shows us in his interesting passages on the custom of borough English or junior right—the right of the youngest son to succeed—that it was neither a Germanic nor a Scandi- navian institution, but had apparently an Eastern Mongol origin, whence it passed to the Slav races, and thence to Eastern Germany and England. [It is very interesting to note that in Sussex, where the custom of borough English chiefly survives, we find continually the syllable mer as part of place-names. Now mir or mer is the Russian or Mongol name for a village community.] Mr. Shore prefers to trace it to a prehistoric Alpine race ; but there is no evidence of this. It is a custom of a migratory people who leave the youngest behind as settlers. Customs of inheritance are very helpful in tracing the origin of the race. The custom of succession of the eldest daughter in default of sons—a custom now being considered judicially by the Committee of Privileges in the earldom of Norfolk case—almost always establishes a Nor- wegian settlement for the place where it prevails. Indeed, the custom of primogeniture itself is evidence of a Norwegian settlement in cases where we can show that the custom pre- vailed locally before it became the custom of the realm. The custom of equal division among the sons seems to indicate a Frisian or Baltic origin, whence we may possibly trace it to Greek influence, though Mr. Shore doubts this. The helpful- ness of local customs can hardly be overestimated, but there must be considered at the same time family settlements and early kindred organisation. Comparisons between the English and Continental evidence in these matters are fruitful in results ; not, however, probably more fruitful than investigations into questions of language and dialects and that difficult but extraordinarily valuable branch of learning, the investigation of place-names. Mr. Shore deals at length with all these questions, and traces in detail the settlers and settlements,—Kent, Sussex, and parts of Surrey, Wessex, Wilts, and Dorset, London, the Thames Valley, Essex and East Anglia, Lincolnshire, North- umbria, Mercia, the South-Western Counties and the Welsh Border. He concludes that" the Old English or Anglo-Saxon race was formed on English soil out of many tribal elements, and that the settlers who came here were known among themselves by tribal names, many of which still survive in those of some of the oldest settlements, where they lived under customary family and kindred law." Saxons had settled on the east before the withdrawal of the Romans ; Frisians came both with the Angles as well as the Jutes and Saxons; Danes and Scandinavians brought with them various races from the Baltic coasts ; while from first to last the Slavonic element was mingled with the invaders, who also drew to themselves an eastern residue of the conquered Celtic British tribes.

The book, as we have said, is one of considerable value ; but it has some serious deficiencies, and its chief worth is that it indicates methods of research which, if vigorously pursued, promise to throw much light on the fierce age that we associate with the name of King Arthur.