Angles

“ The Angles settled chiefly in the north and east. One of the kingdoms founded by them was called East Anglia; and the northern and southern settlers{12} in it gave their names to the two counties of Norfolk and Suffolk, which are only later forms of the words North folk and South folk. These three tribes all spoke different dialects of the same speech. The early predominance of the Angles, especially as the Angles in Northumbria were the first to have a literature, gave to the language the name of English, though the Keltic people still call it Saxon or Sassenach. ”

“ If the first batch of battles occurred in the north, it is fair to assume that they were fought against the Angles, and this practically fixes them in the north-east. There is good reason for believing that the Angles had very early established themselves in this quarter. ”

“ Now if we suppose that the real Angles of Germany were either so reduced in numbers as to have become an obscure tribe, or so incorporated with other populations as to have lost their independent existence, we can easily see how the similarity of name, combined with the geographical contiguity of Anglen to the Saxon frontier, might mislead even so good a writer as Beda, into the notion that he had found the country of the Angles in the Angulus (Anglen) of Sleswick. ”

“ The Angles settled principally in the north of England, the Saxons in the south and south-west, and mingled amongst both dwelt the Jutes, who do not appear to have been numerous enough to occupy large districts of their own. Under the common name of “Anglo-Saxons,” the descendants of these nations continued for several centuries to be the reigning people, although the Britons did not cease to make harassing invasions on the frontiers of their hereditary enemies. ”

“ They were clearly people who formed a confederacy, as has been shown was the case of the Saxons, and these confederate invaders took their name from those who were the leaders of it. Even as late as Edward the Confessor’s time the names Angles and Danes were considered as almost the same. His laws tell us of the counties which were under the laws of the Angles, using the name Angles for Danes. That the name of the earliest Angles comprised people of various tribes is also certain from the words used by Bede in his reference to them as the peoples of the old Angles. ”

“ We know how the petty realms of the Angles-land, under pressure from a common foe, learned to act momentarily together, came for a summer under some commanding leader, drew thus into closer affiliations grouped gradually around the more powerful realms, and at length crystallized into England. ”

“ See VENETI OF WESTERN GAUL. ANGEVIN KINGS AND ANGEVIN EMPIRE. See ENGLAND: A. D. 1154-1189. ANGHIARI, Battle of (1425) . See ITALY: A. D. 1412-1447. ANGLES AND JUTES, The. The mention of the Angles by Tacitus is in the following, passage: "Next [to the Langobardi] come the Reudigni, the Aviones, the Anglii, the Varini, the Eudoses, the Suardones, and Nuithones, who are fenced in by rivers or forests. None of these tribes have any noteworthy feature, except their common worship of Ertha, or mother-Earth, and their belief that she interposes in human affairs, and visits the nations in her car. ”

“ As Pan-Angles we are, in short, the cream of the earth. As Britishers, Americans or Australians we are the cream of the cream. As Englanders, Missourians, or Queenslanders we are something even more superlative. ”

“ Of all Pan-Angles a tremendous majority are of British descent. Of all Pan-Angles outside the British Isles a majority are still of British descent; and theirs has been the influence that has made six new nations vastly alike, and like, also, to the Mother Country. ”

“ Angles, Saxons, Jutes, Frisians, Danes, Norse, and Wends, comprised people of many various tribes, speaking many various dialects, some of which must have been less intelligible to people who as English settlers lived near them than their own vernacular speech. ”

“ The English become Christians.—When the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes came to England they were heathens, and believed in gods, water-spirits, and wood-demons. Their chief god was Woden, who rewarded them after death for their bravery and for the number of enemies they killed. Heaven was to them a place where they could fights and carouse, for these German tribes were very fond of eating and drinking. ”

“ They christened England. Indeed, they christened it before it was born. The one thing the Angles obviously and certainly could not manage to do was to become English. But they did become Christians, and indeed showed a particular disposition to become monks. Moderns who talk vaguely of them as our hardy ancestors never do justice to the real good they [Pg 47] did us, by thus opening our history, as it were, with the fable of an age of innocence, and beginning all our chronicles, as so many chronicles began, with the golden initial of a saint. ”

“ To criticise the evidence which derives the English in general from the Angles, the particular inhabitants of Sussex, Essex, Middlesex and Wessex, from the Saxons, and the Anglo-Saxon language from the Angle and Saxon would be superfluous ”

“ II. The term "Anglo-Saxon" is derived from the names Angles and Saxons, two North German tribes who, in the fifth century A.D., invaded Britain, conquered the native Britons, and possessed themselves of the land, which they called England, that is, Angle-land. The Britons spoke a Celtic language, best represented by modern Welsh. Some British words were adopted into Anglo-Saxon, and still continue in our language.
6. The Latin element in the English vocabulary consists of a large number of words of Latin origin, adopted directly into English at various periods. ”

“ There is not a man, woman, or child who can say, I have pure Angle blood in my veins. In no nook or corner can dialect or sub-dialect of the most provincial [218] form of the German speech be found which shall have a similar pedigree with the English. The Angles of the Continent are either exterminated or undistinguishably mixed up with the other Germans in proportions more or less large, and in combinations more or less heterogeneous. And the history of the Conquest and Conversion of the Saxons by Charlemagne is the history of this extinction. ”

“ England is now merged into the nationality of the British Isles, and New England is merely a small corner of America. But the ideas they gave to us live wherever Pan-Angles talk of the safety of our civilization. ”

“ It must be admitted, however, that whatever the origin of the words Angle and Saxon may be, they expressed, from the time of the invasions downwards, a difference that was, if not radical and of long continuance, at least real and obvious. The Angles were a strong and vigorous people, and not only founded three kingdoms in England, Northumbria, East Anglia, and Mercia (which all, and especially the first, exercised a great influence on our early history) , but also spread through a large part of the Lowlands of Scotland. ”

“ In each of these seven nations white local autonomy is recognized as necessary. The existence of these problems in no way modifies the definition of Pan-Angles as English-speaking whites who are the self-governing forces in the seven above-named nations.
The language Pan-Angles speak grew out of the Germanic tongues of the Saxons, Angles, Danes, and Jutes. Our most common and familiar words have been in uninterrupted use since the days of those invaders. ”

“ The Scandinavian runes discovered in England are chiefly inscriptions on objects belonging to, or made by, the men who came in during the so-called Danish or Viking period. [20]
Many hundreds of inscribed stones have been found in ancient Germany, but they bear Roman inscriptions. The runes, consequently, afford us evidence in connection with the settlement of Angles in Britain of a kind which is wholly wanting in connection with the Saxons. ”

“ It would be well to have a name for these self-governing, English-speaking white people that would direct the mind back to the European stocks, whose bloods have mingled in the British Isles and in these six other nations, and that would suggest the origin of the ideals and of the men that have made possible the present world domination of these people. Failing such an extensively composite and suggestive word, resort is had to the name of one of these many tribes. They are but one of many peoples that went to our making. The Angles to-day exist nowhere as Angles. ”

“ There is evidence of the large immigration of settlers of various tribes from Scandinavia to be found in remains of their speech. The dialects which the Northmen introduced into England, both during the earlier settlements of Goths and Angles and the later settlements of Danes, certainly formed the basis from which some of the dialects spoken in many parts of England were formed. ”

“ Thus to bring the great Angle population from an area no larger than the county of Rutland, is an objection—but it is not the chief one.
The chief objection to the Angles of England being derived from the little district of Anglen, in Sleswick, lies in the fact of there being mention of Angli in another part of Germany.
§ 24. This exposition of the elements of uncertainty will be followed by an enumeration of—
1. Those portions of the Germanic populations, which from their geographical position, are the likeliest, à priori, to have helped to people England. ”

“ Let the heralds account for these variations; we take them as we find them. The letter N, as we are informed, according to the genius of the Irish tongue, is nothing more than a prefix, set, euphoniæ gratiâ, before the radical name itself, when commencing with a vowel. Thus, the N'Angles of Ireland were the Angles whose heroic deeds are duly recorded in the lists of the battle of Hastings. They went over to Ireland with Strongbow ”

“ 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 consequently a considerable difference, between the Scandinavian Angles and the Saxons, seeing that the Angles were acquainted with the runes and the Saxons were not, as far as appears from the total absence of such inscriptions on stones or other fixed monuments in Germany, and in Wessex, Sussex, or Essex. ”

“ Goths, Norwegians, Swedes, Danes, Angles, and Saxons among the ancient nations all had this general head-form, as shown by the remains of these several races which have been found, and from the head-form of the modern nations descended from them; but among these long-headed people there were some with variations in the skull and a few with broad skulls. ”

“ The physical features of the coast must have been attractive to a people who had been accustomed to similar surroundings in their old homes, and who would be able to make settlements with environments resembling those of the Danish lands they had left. Fen, heath, and forest made up a large proportion of the area of Lincolnshire at the time of the coming of the Angles and Danes. ”

“ Ely is in the province of the East Angles, a country of about six hundred families, in the nature of an island, enclosed, as has been said, either with marshes or waters, and therefore it has its name from the great plenty of eels taken in those marches; there the aforesaid servant of Christ desired to have a monastery, because, as we have before observed, she was descended from that same province of the East Angles. ”

“ Under a limited monarchy and a widely embracing franchise, the people of England enjoy an unrivalled political freedom. Since Henry VIII.'s time, the national religion has been an established Protestantism, but all forms are tolerated. In 1896 education was made free. The name England is derived from Engle-land, or land of the Angles, a Teutonic people who, with kindred Saxons and Jutes, came over from the mainland in the 5th century, and took possession of the island, driving Britons and Celts before them. ”

“ The northern counties of England have, through all historic record, and in times previous from monumental evidence, been the scenes of constant struggles, sometimes between the different tribes of the inhabitants amongst themselves, or marauders; and at other times united as a people opposing the invasions of foreign aggressors, as the Romans, and after them the Scots, Picts, Angles, Saxons and Danes; each in their turn conquering in whole or part, and so settling as a separate people, or mingling with the previous inhabitants. ”

“ I will assume then—for it is that to which the question really comes—that England is England and that Englishmen are Englishmen. I will assume that we are not Romans or Welshmen, but that we are the descendants of the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes who came hither in the fifth and sixth centuries, of the Danes and Northmen who came hither in the ninth. I will assume that we are a people, not indeed of unmixed Teutonic blood—for no people in the world is of absolutely unmixed blood—but a people whose blood is not more mixed than that of any other nation ”

“ Anglesey is as interesting to the antiquary, as to the natural philosopher. The ancient British vestiges are very numerous; comprising no less than twenty-eight cromlechs, or Druidical altars, together with circles, monumental stones, entrenchments, and other remains of a similar description, both British and Roman, which will receive attention in their proper places; several of the parish churches (of which the whole, seventy-four, stand near the coast) , with various monastic remains, also deserve examination on the score of antiquity. ”

“ This identification of Gothland and the part of Old Denmark in Scandinavia, also the Danish islands, as lands from which the Anglian settlers in England partly came is of much importance. It helps us to understand the circumstance that a greater extent of England was occupied by Angles than by Saxons; that the predominant people gave their name to the country; and shows that there was a Scandinavian immigration before the eighth century. Our chroniclers have assigned a large territory in North Germany as the fatherland of the Saxons, but only Schleswig as the fatherland of the Angles. ”