ORIGINS OF THE BRITISH

Evening Star, Issue 23753, 7 December 1940, Page 3

ORIGINS OF THE BRITISH

DISPUTED GERMANIC PREPONDERANCE IN THE RAGE [By Lewis Si’knck, in the ‘ Weekly Scotsman.’] The time appears to be more than ripe for u general reconsideration ot the deeply-rooted belief that the people of this island are mainly of Germanic origin. Of course, it will never do to regard the question cither from a propagandist point of view, or in the light of that hostility which has arisen between Briton and German. The problem must be faced honestly and in a spirit of scientific inquiry. Is it or is it not the case that the people of modern Britain are mainly of common origin with those of modern Germany? Well, in the first place, it is fundamentally erroneous to believe that the German race at the period ot its alleged wholesale settlement in Great Britain—the fifth and sixth centuries—was of the same composition as it is to-day. It most certainly was not. Nor are the semi-legendary accounts which describe the settlement of the Anglo-Saxons in England and Southern Scotland to be relied upon. Indeed, they have long been regarded by historians as mainly fabulous. BLOW TO NORDIC THEORY. There is every evidence that, although the population of the coastal parts of North Germany was chiefly “ jNordic,” or Teutonic, in the fifth century, the inland parts ot that country were by no means so racially pure, being mostly composed of what is known ns “ Alpine,” or round-headed stock. Since that period, too, there has been a large if gradual infiltration of Slavonic blood from the eastern parts of Europe, especially from old Prussia, which has been a Slavonic region since the dawn of history, its people speaking a language akin to Russian and Polish less than 250 years ago. So great has been this admixture, especially since the period of Prussian ascendancy in Germany, that is since the reign of Frederick the Great (17401786), that a German authority of the status of Dr H. F. K. Gunther, 'who is personally predisposed to the Nordic theory, is compelled to declare that is now only about 60 per cent. Nordic, or Teutonic, and that only some 5 or 6 per cent, of present-day Germans are purely Nordic at that. The Nordic theory, indeed, has received its final death-blow from Professor F. H. Hankins in his book, ‘ The Racial Basis of Civilisation,’ as an ethnological absurdThe physical make-up of the great majority of British people reveals their distance of kinship from the modern German. While we are prepouderatingly a nation of “ long-heads,” that is, a people with long and relatively narrow skulls, Germany, with perhaps the exception of part of the Balkans, is the most markedly round-headed region in Europe. But let us see how much actual matter of history is contained in the hitherto widely accepted accounts of the Germanic settlements in Britain. ANGLO-SAXON INVASION. According to the majority of Victorian authorities on the period in question the Teutonic invasion of Britain was practically a wholesale affair. Excavation has shown the truth to be far other than the Victorian imagination conceived, and we now know that the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes were not only greatly in the minority when compared with the native population of our island, but that, after the course of some generations, they intermarried freely with them. But the picture we conceive to-day of that period of invasion and settlement is still an obscure one. The very date at which it took place is still matter of lively dispute among scholars. The contemporary writings on the subject, or those written within a few generations of its circumstances, are vague. Prosper Tiro, a Gaulish annalist time, places it in the year a.d, 141, the so-called “ Nennius ” in 428, and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle in 449. When even the very chronology of the event is so dubious what shall we say concerning its attendant circumstances? REMOTE METHODS OF AGRICULTURE. That very considerable number of Angles. Jutes, and Saxons settled in this island in the fifth century is not denied. We have an excellent clue to some of the districts in which they settled in those aerial photographs which archaeologists have been taking during the past twenty years, and which have done so much for the explication of our more remote historical problems. In many counties these photographs reveal the presence on the soil of that system of agriculture employed by the Saxons, and which is known as the “ hyde ” method, showing markings of long strips of ploughed land, not unlike the Scottish system of run-rig ploughing; whereas in those areas cultivated by the Britons the native method of ploughing in square fields is still to be noted from the air.

But the ancient legends associated with the coming of the Saxons are regarded by modem authorities as being more or less of the nature of myth. To-day, the famous Hengist and Horsa appear to us as figures utterly fabulous. Indeed, Hengist does make an appearance in Teutonic mythology, and as the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle describes both chieftains as the descendants of the Teutonic god Odin or Wotan in the fourth generation, this in itself is sufficient testimony to their mythical character.

NO SINGLE TEUTONIC TRIBE. The more trustworthy research of modern archaeologists such as Leeds, /acbiisson, and others, shows that the Germanic invaders carried out a continuous policy of settlement in Eastern and Midland England from the middle of the fifth century to nearly the conclusion of the sixth, and that they also permanently occupied Northumberland'. Even so, they belonged to no' one Teutonic tribe, the remains of their cultures, discovered through excavation, being markedly varied. It is also a mistake to imagine that they succeeded, either in these areas ux elsewhere, in extirpating the British inhaofeasts. the odd thing is that wherever their cultural influence was strongest, as in the west of England, their numbers appear to have been fewest. Even in Kent, one of the oldest Saxon settlements, intermarriage with the (Britons was general, and signs of this, according to Mr Clapham, in his ‘ English Romanesque Architecture,’ and the late Professor Baldwin Brown, of Edinburgh, are apparent in the arclueology of this area, as well as in the landward localities. But the continued existence of British life and tradition in England requires no proof. The predominant typo in England to-day is by no means

Teutonic, but one derived from tho admixture of the old British race with still earlier ethnic elements in Britain, both Iberian and prehistoric.

PREDOMINANCE OF BRITONS. As for the Anglo-Saxon clement, it certainly was not Germanic in the most definite sense of the term. Its relationships were rather with the peoples of the Low Countries and Frisia. That these folk were only partly teutonic the name “ Cymhric Chersonese,” applied to their coast and archipelago, makes evident. Moreover, they spoke a Low German tongue, a language distinctly at a remove from the old High Gorman speech of Germany proper. Roughly speaking, it may be said that while the German people are chielly composed of round-headed Alpines and hybrid Teuton-Shivs, with a goodlv admixture of dark Iberians, those” of Great Britain are made up of a solid basis of the old British race; that is, an admixture of Celtic stock with still earlier native elements, which is again crossed with DutchFrisian and Jutish stock. But any theory of British ethnology which refuses to consider the extensive ■ and surviving influence of early elements in the island, such as the folk of the,long and round barrows, is, I feel, doomed to disillusion in the near future. It is from these, as well as from later Celtic, Teutonic, and Scandinavian incomers that the sap and sinew of our race has been derived.

Let us not forgot in this greatest of all moments in our history that the first designation of our people in chonicle was that of Britons —the oldest among our racial titles, and that which worthily includes us all.