The Ethnology of Germany.-Part V. The Jutes and Fomorians. Author(s): H. H. Howorth Source: The Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, Vol. 10 (1881), pp. 174-211 Published by: Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2841608 . Accessed: 16/06/2014 18:33 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 185.2.32.49 on Mon, 16 Jun 2014 18:33:07 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 174 H. H. HOWORTm.-TlteEthnology of Germa.ny. DISCUSSION. The PRESIDENT inquired whether these Fiji mountaineerswith large heads of hair being pure Melanesians, would, in Prof. Flower's opinion, go against the common view that the mop- headed Papuans owe their peculiarity of hair to mixtures between Malay and Melanesian. He remarked that though Prof. Flower treated the cephalic index as only a subordinate cranial character, he practically showed it in the case of these most dolichocephalic people to be a most valuable race-mark. He called the attention of the meeting to the interesting series of cranial measurements,where four sets of indices in a crossed race showed intermediatedimensions between the two purest races, which as a reduction of hybridity to measurement was a most instructive result, never previouslyequalled. Dr. ALLEN THOuMSON expressed the pleasure with which he bad listened to Prof. Flower's interesting description of the series of Fiji skulls exhibitedto the Institute for the firsttime, in which the Professorcontinued his able and accurate applio-ationof the newer methods of craniological examination and descriptionto the dis- tinction of the races of mankind, as inaugurated bv Broca and others, and in connectionwith which Prof. Flower from his in- timate acqaintance with the subject, and his unrivalled oppor- tunities,was enabled to make important contributionsto ethno- logical science. Dr. Thomson had never before seen such remarkaole examples of Dolichocephaly, without scaphocephalic difformity,as were presented by these skulls, and could not help regarding them as indicating a distinctiverace or familycharacter. Dr. Thomson congratulatedProf. Flower and the Institute on the recent acquisition by the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons of Dr. Barnard Davis' rich collection of Crania and Skeletons belonging to differentraces, fromwhich, notwithstan-dirig the large amount of intelligentwork bestowedupon it by its foimer possessor, new and useful informationmay be confidentlyexpected in its association with the collectionof the College fromthe investigations of Prof. Flower. The ETHNOLOGYof GERMANY.-PART V. THE JUTES AND FOMORIANS. By H. H. HOWORTH,Esq., F.S.A. IT is the almost invariable result of taking a new step in ethnologyas in other sciences,that we are obliged to modify considerablyour views along the whole line. The freshvantage that we gain enables us to see thatwhat was formerlyheld as This content downloaded from 185.2.32.49 on Mon, 16 Jun 2014 18:33:07 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions H. H. HOWORTH-The Ethnologyof Germany. 175 indisputable,is based upon veryfrail evidence indeed,and we are constrainedto alter our pictureaccordingly. This makes it veryimportant that we shouldmake suLreof everystep. In a formerpaper I have arguedthat the accountsof the set- t]einentof the Saxons on the English coasts,as containedin the Anglo-SaxonChronicle, are forthe mostpart as fabulousas the storyof Romulus,and that farfrom their having come here in the middleof the fifthcentury, and settled as conquerors,that they came at least a centuryearlier, and that theysettled here largelyas colonists. Since I wrotethat paper I have met with otherevidence which had previouslyescaped me, and which all tendsto strengthenthe view thereput forth. Prosperof Tyre,who wrote a Chrolniclewhich reaches from A.D. 378 to 456, tells us expresslythat in the 18th year of Theodosius,i.e., in A.D.441, Britain,after suffering from many pre- vious attacks,submitted to theSaxons. " Brittaniaeusque ad hoc tempusvariis cladibus eventibusquelatae, in (litionemSaxonum rediguntur."("Mon. Hist. Britt.,"lxxxii) This is quite incon- sistentwith the usual date of the Conquestas given by the Anglo-SaxonChronicle and by Bede. Constantius,Bishop of Lyons,who flourishedduring the fifth century,and wrotea lifeof Saint Germanus,and miaybe accepted as a contemporarywitness, describes how his hero,on his visitto Britain,which took place, as we knowfrom Prosper of Aquitaine, in 429, led the Britons against the Picts and Saxons, in the famnousHallelujah victory. This also is many yearsbefore the, date generallyreceived for the invasion of Hengist and his people,and if the site of the battle is to be identified,as Ussher and othersargued, with Maes Garmon,near Mold,in Flintshire, thenthe Saxons werenot onlyin Britain,but had also penetrated into its veryrecesses. These two authorswere actuallycontemporaries of the facts theyrelate, and theirevidence is ofimmensely greater value than Bede or the compilationof the tenth century,which goes by the name ofthe Anglo-SaxonChronicle. I have shownhow many of the names in the latter narrative are formedout of naines of towns- but another fact in the recordmakes us see what an artificialand untrustworthy narrative it is. Lappenberg,with his usual acumen,was, I believe,the firstto draw attentionto this. He says the es ents ip the Saga of the Aescings, or foundersof the Kingdom of Kelnt,take place in an eighttimes repeated cycle of eightyears, and adds, " If so manytraces of fctiondid not betraya poetic sourcefrom which these meagrechronicles derived their narra- tive,yet must those numbers awaken suspicion,"etc. (Op. cit.77.) Thlusin 449, Yortigerninvites the Angolesto Britain. In This content downloaded from 185.2.32.49 on Mon, 16 Jun 2014 18:33:07 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 176 H. H. HOWORTH.-Tlhe,Ethnology of Germnany. 457 the Britons foughtagainst the invadersat Crecganford.In 465 Hengist and Aesc foughtwith the Welsh at Ebbsfleet. In 473 theyagain defeatedthe Welsh. In 488, 40 years after his arrival,i.e., fivetimes 8 years, Hengist died. Aesc then reigned 24 years,i.e., three times 8. (Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, passirn). From this point, for 80 years, we hear nothing of Kent, save of the successionof the threekings, " Octa or Ocha, the son of Eric or' ALsc, Eormenric and Aithelbert,who is named in 568; he reigned48 years,and his successors,Ead- bald and Earconbehrt,each 24." (Lappenberg,75.) Similarly,AElla is said to have landed in 477, and to have foughtwith the Welsh in 485. Such artificialnumbers show how purelyconventional the chronologyis. But it is morethan conventional,it is inconsistentwith itself. Thus, Bede gives us both the year 449 and 459 as the beginningof the joint reigns of Marcian and Valentinian,the formerin his Historyand the latterin his Chronicon,the rightyear being 450; and yet thisis the crucial date of his chronology,for he tells us the Saxons landed duringtheir reign. If it was duringtheir reign, as he asserts,and as the Chronicle,following him, also asserts,it Vwas clearlyneither in 448 nor 449, butin 450, or one ofthe sevensuc- ceeding years. But the factis, that the date 448 is a purely artificialone. As Mr. Skene has argued,it is foundedon an erroneousconstruction of a passage in Gildas (who apparently puts the arrivalof the Saxons afterthe third consulship of Aetius, whichwas in 446), and a manipulationof the story of Constantius, aboutthe Hallelujah victoryover the Saxons,which Bede under- standsas of the second visit of Germanus,while Constantius clearlyrefers it to thefirst. This date of Bede's is thereforeof no value, and it is the cardinaldate upon whichthe artificialchro- nologyof the Anglo-SaxonChronicle has been based. Now, in the " HistoriaBritonum," which in its earliestshape was probably not later than Bede, but, as I believe, earlier, we have three differentdates for the arrival of the Saxons, the latestof whichis 428. This date occursonly in the Harleian MS., which was writtenin 954. There we are told that Vortigernbegan to reign in the joint consulship of Theodo- sius and Valentinian, i.e., in 425. Four years afterthis, and in the consulshipof Felix and Taurus,i.e., in 428, theSaxons first arrived. This date seems to me to be clearlydeduced from Con- stantius,and to coincidewith that of theHallelujah victory,and the firstmission of St. Germanus,nor does it occurin the other copies of the Historia Britonum. The next date is apparently based on Britishtraditions. In this we are told that fromnthe firstyear of the arrivalof the Saxons to the fourthyear of King MIerviniwas 429 years. This eintryis as old as theedition of the This content downloaded from 185.2.32.49 on Mon, 16 Jun 2014 18:33:07 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions HI. H. HOWORTH.-The Ethnologyof Germany. 177 HistoriaBritonum," published in 821,which was thefourth year of King Mervin,and thus puts the Saxon invasionin 392,which as Mr. Skene,to whomI owe a great deal of my matteras to these dates,says, corresponds well withthe oldestWelsh chrono- logical tables,and that preservedin the Red Book of Hergest,a MS. of the thirteenthcentury, which says that fromthe reignof Vortigernto thebattle of Badon was 128 years.