Part 1 (1/2)
The Ethnology of the British Colonies and Dependencies.
by Robert Gordon Latham.
PREFACE.
The following pages represent a Course of Six Lectures delivered at the Royal Inst.i.tution, Manchester, in the months of February and March of the present year; the matter being now laid before the public in a somewhat fuller and more systematic form than was compatible with the original delivery.
ETHNOLOGY OF THE BRITISH DEPENDENCIES.
CHAPTER I.
DEPENDENCIES IN EUROPE.
HELIGOLAND AND THE FRISIANS.--GIBRALTAR AND THE SPANISH STOCK.--MALTA.--THE IONIAN ISLANDS.--THE CHANNEL ISLANDS.
_Heligoland._--We learn from a pa.s.sage in the _Germania_ of Tacitus, that certain tribes agreed with each other in the wors.h.i.+p of a G.o.ddess who was revered as _Earth the Mother_; that a sacred grove, in a sacred island, was dedicated to her; and that, in that grove, there stood a holy wagon, covered with a pall, and touched by the priest only. The G.o.ddess herself was drawn by heifers; and as long as she vouchsafed her presence among men, there was joy, and feasts, and hospitality; and peace amongst otherwise fierce tribes instead of war and violence. After a time, however, the G.o.ddess withdrew herself to her secret temple--satiated with the converse of mankind; and then the wagon, the pall, and the deity herself were bathed in the holy lake. The administrant slaves were sucked up by its waters. There was terror and there was ignorance; the reality being revealed to those alone who thus suddenly pa.s.sed from life to death.
Now we know, by name at least, five of the tribes who are thus connected by a common wors.h.i.+p--mysterious and obscure as it is. They are the Reudigni, the Aviones, the Eudoses, the Suardones, and the Nuithones.
Two others we know by something more than name--the Varini and the Langobardi.
The eighth is our own parent stock--the _Angli_.
Such is one of the earliest notices of the old creed of our German forefathers; and, fragmentary and indefinite as it is, it is one of the fullest which has reached us. I subjoin the original text, premising that, instead of _Herthum_, certain MSS. read _Nerthum_.
”----Langobardos paucitas n.o.bilitat: plurimis ac valentissimis nationibus cincti, non per obsequium sed prliis et peric.l.i.tando tuti sunt. Reudigni deinde, et Aviones, et _Angli_, et Varini, et Eudoses, et Suardones, et Nuithones, fluminibus aut silvis muniuntur: nec quidquam notabile in singulis, nisi quod in commune Herthum, id est, Terram matrem colunt, eamque intervenire rebus hominum, invehi populis, arbitrantur. Est in insula Oceani Castum nemus, dicatumque in eo vehiculum, veste contectum, attingere uni sacerdoti concessum. Is adesse penetrali deam intelligit, vectamque bobus feminis multa c.u.m veneratione prosequitur. Laeti tunc dies, festa loca, quaec.u.mque adventu hospitioque dignatur. Non bella ineunt, non arma sumunt, clausum omne ferrum; pax et quies tunc tantum nota, tunc tantum amata, donec idem sacerdos satiatam conversatione mortalium deam templo reddat; mox vehiculum et vestes, et, si credere velis, numen ipsum secreto lacu abluitur. Servi ministrant, quos statim idem lacus haurit. Arca.n.u.s hinc terror, sanctaque ignorantia, quid sit id, quod tantum perituri vident.”--”De Moribus Germanorum,” 40.
What connects the pa.s.sage with the ethnology of Heligoland? Heligoland is, probably, the _island of the Holy Grove_. Its present name indicates this--_the holy land_. Its position in the main sea, or _Ocean_, does the same. So does its vicinity to the country of Germans.
At the same time it must not be concealed from the reader that the Isle of Rugen, off the coast of Pomerania, has its claims. It is an island--but not an island of the _Ocean_. It is full of religious remains--but those remains are _Slavonic_ rather than _German_.
I believe, for my own part, that the seat of the wors.h.i.+p of _Earth the Mother_, was the island which we are now considering.
In respect to its inhabitants, it must serve as a slight text for a long commentary. A population of about two thousand fishers; characterized, like the ancient Venetians, by an utter absence of horses, mules, ponies, a.s.ses, carts, wagons, or any of the ordinary applications of animal power to the purposes of locomotion, confined to a small rock, and but little interrupted with foreign elements, is, if considered in respect to itself alone, no great subject for either the ethnologist or the geographer. But what if its relations to the population of the continent be remarkable? What if the source of its population be other than that which, from the occupants of the nearest portion of the continent, we are prepared to expect? In this case, the narrow area of an isolated rock a.s.sumes an importance which its magnitude would never have created.
The nearest part of the opposite continent is German--Cuxhaven, Bremen, and Hamburg, being all German towns. And what the towns are the country is also--or nearly so. It is German--which Heligoland is _not_.
The Heligolanders are no Germans, but _Frisians_. I have lying before me the Heligoland version of _G.o.d save the Queen_. A Dutchman would understand this, easier than a Low German, a Low German easier than an Englishman, and (I _think_) an Englishman easier than a German of Bavaria. The same applies to another sample of the Heligoland muse--_the contented Heligolander's wife_ (_Dii tofreden Hjelgelunnerin_), a pretty little song in Hettema's collection of Frisian poems; with which, however, the native literature ends. There is plenty of Frisian verse in general; but little enough of the particular Frisian of Heligoland.
A difference like that between the Frisians of Heligoland and the Germans of Hanover, is always suggestive of an ethnological alternative; since it is a general rule, supported both by induction and common sense, that, except under certain modifying circ.u.mstances, islands derive their inhabitants from the nearest part of the nearest continent.
When, however, the populations differ, one of two views has to be taken.
Either some more distant point than the one which geographical proximity suggests has supplied the original occupants, or a change has taken place on the part of one or both of the populations since the period of the original migration.
Which has been the case here? The latter. The present Germans of the coast between the Elbe and Weser are not the Germans who peopled Heligoland, nor yet the descendants of them. Allied to them they are; inasmuch as Germany is a wide country, and German a comprehensive term; but they are not the same. The two peoples, though like, are different.
Of what sort, then, were the men and women that the present Germans of the Oldenburg and Hanoverian coast have displaced and superseded? Let us investigate. Whoever rises from the perusal of those numerous notices of the ancient Germans which we find in the cla.s.sical writers, to the usual tour of Rhenish Germany, will find a notable contrast between the natives of that region as they _were_ and as they _are_. His mind may be full of their _golden_ hair, expecting to find it _flaxen_ at least.
Blue and grey eyes, too, he will expect to preponderate over the black and hazel. This is what he will have read about, and what he will _not_ find--at least along the routine lines of travel. As little will there be of ma.s.sive muscularity in the limbs, and height in the stature. Has the type changed, or have the old records been inaccurate? Has the wrong part of Germany been described? or has the contrast between the Goth and the Italian engendered an exaggeration of the differences? It is no part of the present treatise to enter upon this question. It is enough to indicate the difference between the actual German of the greater part of Germany in respect to the colour of his hair, eyes, and skin, and the epithets of the cla.s.sical writers.