Germanic Origins. A study in primitive culture

Preface

One needs no longer to fetch an oracle, — antiquam exquirite matrem, for example, — in order to compel attention when one writes about the sources of language, literature, and institutions of the great Eng lish-speaking race. This volume aims to give an account of the founders of that race while they still held their old home, their old faith, their old customs ; and the sole purpose of these " forewords " is to explain what materials and what method have been employed. The author has tried to free his text from cumbrous allusions, and to put into the notes material for wider study. These notes, as well as a portion of the introductory chapter, tell the reader what sources have been consulted in the making of the book itself. Quotations at second hand occur only where the authority from which they are taken is itself of the first class, such as Grimm on mythology, Miillenhoff on archæology, or Waitz on institutions.

All quotations from the range of Early Germanic literature are at first hand, and the same statement holds good of classical PRBFACE IV sources like Tacitus or Cæsar. Translations from Anglo-Saxon and German poetry have been made by the author; those from the Edda are in the majority of cases by Vigfusson and Powell, but are always duly credited. F. B. G. Haverford College, 21 December, 1891. CONTENTS

Introduction

1 Germanic and Celtic in the English race — Appearance of the Germanic element in European history — Clash of Koman and German — Sources of information about the early Germans — Chronological and geographical data — Germania of Tacitus chief authority — The Ingævonic tribes.

Chapter II Land And People

30 The German in Germany — His former home — Inherited and actual culture — Country and climate — Pastures, flocks, and herds — Nomad or farmer ? — Boundaries.

Chapter III Men And Women

57 Stature and features — A fair-haired race — Sense of personal beauty — Food and drink — Habits of daily life — Clothing — Adornments.

Chapter IV The Home

90 Hatred of cities — Underground dwellings — Houses wooden and frail — Construction, and later improvements — The burg, and the hall — Descriptions in Beowulf — Banquet, songs, flyting, etc. — Amusements and vices — Hunting — The primitive house compared with modern dwellings. V CONTENTS VI

Chapter V Husband And Wife

129 The husband a warrior, the wife housekeeper and farmer- Rights of women — Germanic chastity — Woman as sibyl — Her courage — Wooing and wedding — How far love was a factor- Dower or price — Ceremony of marriage — Punishment for infi delity.

Chapter VI The Family

162 Hospitality and gif ts — Responsibilities of the head of a family — Importance of kinship — Conflicting duties — Feud — Wer gild, and other substitutes for feud — Paternal power — Expos ure — Education of children — Names — Old age.

Chapter VII Trade And Commerce

206 Household industries — The smith — Commerce — Exports — Amber — Myths relating to commerce and seas earing — Ships — Love of the sea — Money and bargains.

Chapter VIII The Warrior

226 Military service of two kinds — War the chief business of Ger manic life — Courage — Types of the warrior — Cowardice — Germanic weapons — Armor — Cavalry — Importance of the in fantry — Tactics of the army — The onset — Second kind of military service — The Comitatus — Its meaning in Germanic life and history — Age at which the German took up arms.

Chapter IX Social Order

. 270 The king originally a creation of the race — His authority and duties — Inheritance and election — Ideals — The queen — Nobles by birth and by office — The Germanic freeman — The freedman and the slave — The alien. CONTENTS VII

Chapter X Government And Law

289 Gifts, not taxes — Organization of government — Elements of monarchy and of democracy — Popular councils and assemblies — The town-meeting — Legal system — The function of priests in civil administration — Punishments for crime — Forms of law — Ordeal and trial by battle.

Chapter XI The Funeral

305 The weapon-death — Burning and burial — The former a primitive Germanic habit — The mound or barrow — Its position — What was burnt or buried with the dead — Sacrifice of the living — Ship burials — The land of souls — Germanic horror of the grave — The elegiac mood in our poetry — Games and feasts at the funeral — Ceremonies at the burial of Attila and of Beowulf.

Chapter XII The Worship Of The Dead

337 Germanic religion in general — Cult and creed — Heathen scepticism — Agreement of old and new faiths — Cult of ancestors, and superstitions about the dead — Survivals — All Souls — Swiss customs — Heathen rites made Christian — The patron saint and the fylgja.

Chapter XIII The Worship Of Nature

366 Dualism in worship — Sph its of the natural world — House spirits — Spirits of the air — The Mighty Women — Charms — The Wild Hunt — Spirits of the earth — Wood-spirits — Tree worship — Water-spirits and well-worship — The Swan-maidens — Giants — Worship of the elements — Water, air, and fire — Mother Earth — Sun, moon, and stars — Day, night, and the seasons.

CHAPTER XLV THE WORSHIP OF GODS

416 Germanic gods and goddesses — Evidence of their cult — The days of the week — Woden — Thunor — Tius — Nerthus, and the Ingævonic group — Other deities. CONTENTS

Chapter XV Form And Ceremony

440 Places of worship — Temples — Images and columns — Priest and priestess — Prayer, offering and sacrifice — Survivals — Divination and auguries — Runes.

Chapter XVI The Higher Mood

472 Public and private standard of morals — Ideals of the race — Æsthetics — Germanic faith — Notions about a future life — Con clusion. A STUDY IN PRIMITIVE CULTURE " Under the drums and tramplings of three conquests. ..." Sir Thomas Browvr

Chapter I Introduction

Germanic and Celtic in the English race — Appearance of the Germanic element in European history — Clash of Roman and German — Sources of information about the early Germans — Chronological and geographical data — Germania of Tacitus chief authority — The Ingævonic tribes. Who were the founders of our race? Working backwards, up the stream of national descent, we come to the great influx of Norman people, Norman words, Norman ways ; and we stop to reckon with this fact in the development of English life. A very brief study, a few minutes of consideration, assure us that here are no founders of England, but only generous contributors ; immigrants we may call them, who brought along valuable property, and furnished us with some new and desirable elements of civilization. Again, and for still stronger reasons, we reach the same conclusion with regard to that earlier conquest of England by the Northmen.

The Danes gave us a few words, — the common vocable " are," for example, a few customs, a few laws ; and that is the whole story. It lies, therefore, between the Celts, the peo ple whom Cæsar found in his Britain, and the Ger manic invaders and conquerors who seized upon the island when the Roman legions were withdrawn. Of these two claimants, the latter race is recognized by history and criticism as furnishing the real foundation of our national life. True, there is more or less oppo sition in the matter of actual descent. We are Ger manic in our institutions, concedes Professor Huxley ; but the race itself is at least half Celtic in its blood. " Not one half," Mr. Grant Allen is inclined to think, "of the population of the British Isles is really of Teutonic descent ; " and he carries the battle into still remoter territory when he concedes our language to Germanic origins, but claims our literature, especially the imagination displayed in it, for Celtic influences.

Furthermore, the greatest of our critics in literary matters, the late Matthew Arnold, has broken a lance for this Celtic influence in our national development, and is half inclined to answer the question, "What is England?" by saying, "A vast obscure Cymric basis with a vast visible Germanic super structure."1 In particular, Arnold attributes so high a quality of our literature as its humor — and what quality is so peculiarly its own, so triumphantly its own? — to the dash of Celtic impulse and fancy, clashing with our Germanism.2 And he goes on to say, that our poetry probably got its turn for style, probably its turn for melancholy, and certainly its " natural magic," from the Celtism in our character. Such statements as these from a man who on his own 1 On the Study of Celtic Literature (Macmillan & Co., 1883), p. 64. 2 Ibid. p. 101.

INTRODUCTION.

ground had no rivals deserve most careful considera tion. Arnold, however, is off his own ground when he asserts that rhyme, which he calls the main source of the romantic element in our poetry, " comes . . . from the Celts." Kluge has shown, in an article deal ing with strictly scientific evidence, that our Anglo- Saxon poetry, which already possessed that form of rhyme loosely called alliteration, was in its own fashion developing that form which we commonly understand when we use the general term.1 Now this mistake of Arnold's, trifling as it may be, shows us the need of very severe tests when we attempt to pass judgment on questions so intricate and rooted in such difficult and distant soil. It is a little too loud protesting when Mr. Grant Allen, though he may well be quite in the right, lays down the positive law that " our modern poetry " — and a fortiori, our prose,2 — " is wholly Romance in descent, form, and spirit."

We are tempted to ask Mr. Allen for definitions, for sources, for proof. It is just the same hesitation that besets us when he says that while our social and political organization must be regarded as Germanic, this Germanic element did nothing for our culture, which is "wholly Roman."3 1 Ibid. p. 120; Kluge in Paul-Braune, Beitrage zur Geschichte d. deutschen Sprache v. Literatur, Vol. IX. 2 Anglo-Saxon prose is vigorous, and sometimes, as in Ælfric, not without a certain compactness and form. But every one knows that the best qualities in the older period of English prose — as in Hooker or Milton — were Latinistic, and that the best qualities in the later period are distinctly indebted to the French. 3 See Grant Allen, Anglo-Saxon Britain, pp. 106, 224, 227. For the other side, see Professor Freeman, — who opposes "the witness of speech" to "the witness of skulls," and insists on the continuity of our race from Schleswig to New England, —in his Four Oxford Lec tures, 1887 (Macmillan & Co., 1888), especially pp. 71, 78, of the lecture on Teutonic Conquest in Gaul and Britain.

Granting all that these critics claim, we find in their concessions of speech, custom and law, broad enough basis for our assumption that the Germanic race is the source of English life, and that the Germanic invaders of Britain may fairly be styled founders of England. Moreover, in regard to the disputed terri tory, while we feel sure that Arnold has considerable justice in his claims for Celtic liveliness as a factor in the imaginative qualities of our literature, we do not wish to see the Germanic element fairly elbowed out of our poetry. We are willing to concede that Prospero found his Ariel on the island; but what shall we say of Prospero himself ? Vorn Vater hab' ich die Statur, Des Lebens ernstes Fiibren, Von Miitterchen die Frohnatur Und Lust zu f abuliren, — sang Goethe of his own " origins " ; and father Ger manic and mother Celtic may have contributed the same elements in the case of English poetry.

But Mr. Grant Allen says that our Germanic origin gave our literature " patience and thoroughness," and noth ing more.1 It is little better than beating the air to argue in general terms against these random conclusions. It is a question of facts ; and we must first of all inquire how we can best reach the facts. We could take that complex mass which we call English Literature, and by a grand Quellenjagd, such as the modern German loves, spread origins and sources over every land and time. It is easy with a certain facility in tailor-lore i Ibid. p. 229.

INTRODUCTION.

5 to show how oddly this literature is " suited," to trace the doublet to Italy and the round-hose to France, — pretty sport and often profitable, — but how is it with the flesh and blood of literature ? Is the heart of our literature Germanic or Celtic ? Or is it neither ? Is it rather the result of classical or even Romance tra ditions ? How can we so much as begin to answer these questions until we know what " Germanic " means ? If we wish to know what elements in our literature or our life we ought to refer to the Ger manic invaders of Britain, it is of prime importance to study this Germanic invader in his habit as he lived. He is the subject of these pages ; and it is to be hoped that a view of him, in different types and periods, may leave some general impressions — we may not hope for a sharp picture — of the Germanic character.

Our knowledge of the early German must be de rived from three main sources, — the accounts of his foreign contemporaries, the early literature of Ger manic races, and survivals ; the Germania of Tacitus, our Anglo-Saxon Beowulf, and the church festival of All Souls, are respectively examples of the three sources. In all of these classes our material must be sifted with extremest caution, but particularly in the second and third. No direct literature remains to us from the Germans of Tacitus, and the songs 1 about god or hero which they chanted in those early days have perished quite beyond the faintest hope of recov ery. But heroic legend was richly developed by the Germans of the " Wandering," the period when Roman and barbarian were opposed in the hottest struggle ; i Tac. Germ. II. ; Ann.

II. 88. and these legends have passed with more or less purity into early Germanic literature. The Christian setting often contains a purely heathen jewel. Evidently, with material scattered over so great a stretch of time, one is in danger of rescuing no old German at all, but rather of holding up a bit of literary patchwork, a veritable scarecrow of ill-matched garments passing for a man. The danger is real ; but it must be remembered that a type is far easier to establish for primitive than for modern times. Facts have wider bearings and life is more uniform of tone, the further we go back in history. Early times lacked diversity of employment, fine divisions in the drift of thought and feeling. It is civilization which brings out the individual and lays emphasis on his importance, — consider the "interview," — which creates distinctions, and puts a thousand angles of vision to-day for a hundred in the past.

One reason why Shakspere seems so much more modern than Chau cer is that the latter still drew types, while the former drew men and women. The Squire becomes Romeo, and the Wife of Bath yields to Mrs. Quickly of East cheap. What we must particularly avoid is to con fuse types, to treat on one plane the German of Taci tus and the German who has absorbed elements of classical and Christian culture. The players of the fifth act must not be huddled in one group with the simple and hardy characters who open the action and set the play upon its path of development. First of all, moreover, we must glance at the stage itself on which our German made his rude and clanging entrance ; we must study the scene. Civilization in the first centuries of our era re-

INTRODUCTION.

7 volved about the Mediterranean, where a complex of races was held together by the organizing genius of Rome. But the Roman state was in decay ; its lack of moral greatness combined with certain political and physical defects to bring about what a French scholar has called the " mortal illness " of epochs which are destitute of lofty aims and firmness of conviction. The slow " death of Rome," 1 consequence of this malady, may be said to begin with the invasion of Alaric in 402, and to end with the invasion of Alboin in 568. With the latter name we touch mediæval literature ; for Alboin is mentioned in our oldest piece of Anglo- Saxon poetry, in the curious medley of description and memories put into the mouth of an ideal Ger manic minstrel, Widsith, " the far-wanderer." When the historian begins to reckon the causes of downfall, he has the right to put first and foremost the general corruption of the age.

But, as was just now hinted, there were other and specific causes,2 such as thriftless administration of public and private property, excess of taxation, and high cost of living. The individual was crushed by the dead weight of im perial organization. Trade and manufactures must needs languish ; science led to no practical results ; and there was absolutely no material progress to keep pace with wider responsibilities. As Hehn remarks, the empire stretched further and further, and yet Roman ships remained what they always had been, coasting vessels, unable to contend with the perils of winter or the open sea. Where commerce did find 1 Hodgkin, Italy and her Invaders, I. 3. 2 Best summed up by Victor Hehn in his wholly admirable book Culturpflanzen und Hausthiere in ihrem Uebergang aus Asien, u.s.w., 4th ed., Berlin, 1883, p. 394 ff. its way, it gave no spur to invention, and accom plished little for the arts of life ; like the sailor, the farmer clung to the methods and implements of his forefathers.

In the world of mind it was no better, and literature gradually lost itself in rhetoric, its only remaining form. A deep scepticism prevailed, stifling all creative joy; the old gods were merely excuses for a priesthood, objects of a cult in which no one really believed. Over and through this outworn civilization swept two great waves, — Christianity from the east, Ger manic invasion from the north. In one sense, both of these movements were hurtful to literature ; for the invaders doubtless annihilated a mass of precious material, and what they spared was often the prey of monkish bigotry.1 As a piece of revenge, the answer ing wave of culture, the reacting civilization *#rhich carried rudiments of criticism and letters among the barbarians, went far toward destroying whatever na tive elements of literature were to be found.

The spirit of Christianity rudely checked the development of the heathen epic poetry; and such song as had reached form and substance was put under ban. The Frankish or Saxon monk disdained in most cases the artless poetry of his vernacular ; and in the hands of the monk lay all destiny of letters. Still, in that general wreck of literature, it was Christianity which 1 See the famous story of the Athenian libraries which the Goths were about to burn during a raid into Greece, near the end of the third century. It is told in Gibbon's Decline and Fall, Chap. X. The " big otry," by the way, was not always "monkish." Under Valentinian and Valens the persecutions on account of supposed " magic " involved the destruction of a vast amount of philosophical and classical literature ; and this was a political, not simply theological persecution. See Gibbon, Chap. XXV., and Hodgkin, Italy, I. 40.

INTRODUCTION.

manned the only life-boat. Christian zeal rescued many precious remnants of classical culture, keeping them for a time that could use and value them aright. Patriotic monks were here and there found who would set down the songs and legends of the father land, notwithstanding occasional survivals of heathendom which crept between the lines, — so we have a Beowulf, a Lay of Hildebrand ; or else the old sub jects were treated in the new style, as where German Ekkehard sings in vigorous Latin hexameters the story of Walter and Hildegund. This last example brings us to the greatest service which the church ever did for the cause of letters. It established a neutral ground on which classics and barbarism could in some manner join hands and so save what was best in each. Christianity inspired an international literature.

Despised by the learning of a riper age, this literature nevertheless saved the classics and preserved those early records of the Ger manic nations which we now value beyond price. To it we moderns owe what a great scholar owes to the simple books and lessons of his first school-days. With its universal medium of Latin, it controlled and shaped the beginnings of eveiy literature which arose in the states of Europe. Its great advantage was univer sality; its defect was monotony. It already realized, as Ebert points out,1 the later dream and longing of Goethe for a World-Literature ; but it lacked the vitality of a national consciousness, is everywhere the same, and has an air of saying its lesson, — not always too 1 The standard work for this subject : Adolf Ebert, Allgemeine Ges chichte der Literatur des Mittelalters im Abendlande, 3 vols., Leipzig, 1874-1887. fluently, — after its teacher.1 This Christian Latin lit> erature was the village-school of learned Europe ; but while it trained, it could not create.

The vital power of mediæval literature lay in the poetic impulses of old Germanic life, — we are speaking here of the northern nations alone, — in that joy of " singing and saying" which our forefathers brought out of their forests. The original songs have vanished. One lay about Arminius, such as Tacitus assures us was sung in his time, were worth its millions. But the later legends, which sprang up with the national con sciousness in the victories over eastern and western Romans, still keep the early note and give us some of our best material for studying the ancient German. True, they are inspired by contact with civilization, but the contact calls out a national and original utterance. It is in the first flush of Germanic conquest, in the clash of a fresh, ignorant race with a corrupt, out worn but highly civilized race, in the awakening of national consciousness, that we should like to make our picture of the ancient German.

But such a picture is no easy affair. The clash of Ger many and Rome lasted five hundred years ; and the Goth had grown as civilized as the Romans at a time when his Saxon brother was still the barbarian of Tacitus. We must look to our historical and geographical perspective. The pressure of Germanic invasion which finally burst the barriers of Rome was not altogether sponi" One feels," says Miillenhoff, "that the early middle ages wore another color and spoke another speech than we find in their chronicles and documents." Deutsche Alterthumskunde, Vol. I. Vorrede, p. v.

INTRODUCTION.

11 taneous. For a long time previous to the fall of the empire, . there had been a restless movement in the heart of Germany; and while we find some ex planation for this in the nomadic character and military instincts of the race, we must attribute no small share to the pressure of Huns and other tribes upon Germans of the east and north. The actual " movement of the tribes," or Vdlkerwanderung, is usually referred to a round century from the flight of the WestrGoths into Roman territory, — they were driven by the Huns, — until the fall of the Western Empire.1 The late Professor Scherer tells us2 that the historic consciousness of the Germans dates from this movement ; and we may say that it was during this entire period that German after German came out of his barbaric environment and took up that strange battle between an old civilization and a new race in which each is victor and each is vanquished.

It is in this period that we have the real conflict between Roman and German, a struggle alohg the entire line and fought for life or death; but there had been many a previous encounter. Southern Aryans first heard of their kinsmen in the north, not so much by conquest, as in the peaceful way of trade. Miillen hoff is of opinion 3 that nearly all the supply of tin came from Britain, and that the trade began in times too early for computation. Tin was needed for the making of bronze ; but another eagerly sought article was valued for itself. Amber — it is mentioned in the Odyssey — was in all probability the means of putting Greeks in communication with the shores of t See F. Dahn, Bausteine, I. 282. 8 D. A. 1. 211. 2 Geschichte d. deutschen Lit. p. 22. the Baltic, and with the Germanic tribes who lived there.

Greek coins of the fifth and sixth centuries before Christ have been found near the Baltic ; but in Miillenhoff' s opinion, commerce at that time was indirect, and articles were forwarded from tribe to tribe. The first person, therefore, who brought to the Greeks a definite knowledge of the north, was Pytheas of Marseilles, a Grecian geographer of the fourth century before Christ, who "followed the old path of the Phœnicians," and was an eye-witness of the tin mining processes in Britain.1 He went further. We may assume, concludes Miillenhoff, after a most elab orate investigation, " that Pytheas saw with his own eyes the islands and shores of the North Sea, passed the mouths of the Rhine, and the boundary between Celts and Scytho-Teutons ; but found it best to push no further among unknown races, and so con tented himself for the rest with what he heard of them." 2 Thus, so far as we know, came the first tidings about our ancestors to the ancient world.

Their first actual appearance on the border of the civilized coun tries about the Mediterranean, is not definitely set tled. Miillenhoff thinks the Bastarnæ were Germanic, a tribe mentioned by Tacitus and Pliny; they appeared on the lower Danube about the beginniner of the second century before Christ. A king of Macedonia i Miillenhoff, D. A. I. 375, 472. "The Humboldt of antiquity," as Pytheas is called, is also discussed, with less critical knowledge, by Elton, Origins of English History, p. 6 ff. It should be added that Professor Rhys, Celtic Britain, p. 47, says there was no direct trade between Cornwall and the continent, and adds that there is no "scrap of evidence, linguistic or other, of the presence of Phœnicians in Britain at any time." 2 D. A. I. 495.

INTRODUCTION.

13 is said J to have sent an embassy to them and to have asked them for troops as allies. According to Miillenhoff, the Bastarnæ came from the neigh borhood of the upper Vistula, attracted by southern fertility ; in the third century of our era they vanish utterly. Next of Germanic races to tread the tempting but perilous path southward were the Cimbrians and Teutons. A large part of the second volume of Miillenhoff's great work on German Archæology, the Deittsche Alterthumskunde, is devoted to a searching investigation into the details, scanty and disconnected as they are, which Greek and Roman writers have left us in regard to this movement, — a movement which, like the battle of Marathon, though less decisively, struck into the very heart of history.2 Miillenhoff makes 3 it strongly probable that these tribes were Germanic, and that their names — for the later term ' Germanic ' was not used at Rome till about 80 B.C.4 — were given to them by neighboring Celts.

Cimbrians 5 maybe translated "robbers," and Teutons "bands," or "multitudes." They came, after a succession of Celtic movements had left vacant tracts between the Weser and the Rhine, from the old home of the Germans, a region bounded by the Oder, the Harz mountains, and the Thuringian hills. Till a couple of centuries before Christ, if Miillenhoff is right, this girdle of 1 For references, see Zeuss, Die Deulschen und ihre Nachbar stiimme, p. 129. Zeuss says without reservation : " Die Bastarnen sind das erste deutsche Volk welches aus dem Schauplatze der Geschichte auftritt. ..." 2 The author reminds us that it is now about two thousand years since that Cimbrian terror heralded the Germanic invasion of Europe. a D. A. II. 207. 4 Ibid. II. 189. 6 The name has nothing to do with " Cymry," etc.

Ibid. II. 116. primeval forest 1 had separated the Germans from the Celts. Now they broke their bounds and streamed southward, the Cimbrians a swarm made up from various tribes along the middle Elbe,2 the Teutons mainly from the coasts of the North Sea. The Romans had a tradition that this great invasion was caused by floods, which drove Cimbrians and Teutons out of their homes " in the uttermost parts of the earth." 3 What havoc they wrought in Italy we know from Livy and Plutarch.4 Rome was saved at Aquæ Sex tiæ by the genius of Marius ; and the great barbarian wave melted away to the northward almost as suddenly as it had come. Not very long afterward, however, a kinsman of Marius, bent on the conquest of Celtic Gaul, found, across his path and intent on the same errand, an army from east of the Rhine, the hordes of Ariovistus the German.