THE SAXONS IN ENGLAND.
[book I.
power upon the ruins of Roman and British civi-
lization.” The few details which had reached the
historian taught that the strangers were under the
guidance of two brothers, Hengest and Hors : that
their armament was conveyed in three ships or
keels : that it consisted of Jutes, Saxons and An-
gles: that their successes stimulated similar ad-
venturers among their countrymen : and that in
process of time their continued migrations were so
large and numerous, as to have reduced Anglia,
their original home, to a desert1.
Such was the tale of the victorious Saxons in the
eighth century : at a later period, the vanquished
Britons found a melancholy satisfaction in adding
details which might brand the career of their con-
querors with the stain of disloyalty. According to
these hostile authorities, treachery and fraud pre-
pared and consolidated the Saxon triumph. The
wiles of Hengest’s beautiful daughter2 subdued the
mind of the British ruler; a murderous violation
of the rights of hospitality, which cut off the chief-
tains of the Britons at the very table of their hosts,
delivered over the defenceless land to the barba-
rous invader 3 ; and the miraculous intervention of
* Beda, Hist. Eccl. i. 14,15. Gildas, Hist. § 14. Nennius, Hist. § 38.
2 It is uncertain from the MSS. whether this lady is to be called
Rouwen or Ronwen. The usual English tradition gives her name as
Rowena ; if this be accurate, I presume our pagan forefathers knew
something of a divine personage—HroSwdn—possibly a dialectical
form of the great and gU>rious goddess IIre Se ; for whom refer to Chap-
ter X. of this Book.
3 The story of the treacherous murder perpetrated upon the Welsh
chieftains does not claim an English origin. It is related of the Old-
saxons upon the continent, in connexion with the conquest of the
Thmingians. See Widukind.
CH. I.]
SAXON AND WELSH TRADITIONS.
Germanus, the spells of Merlin and the prowess
of Arthur, or the victorious career of Aurelius Am-
brosius, although they delayed and in part avenged,
yet could not prevent the downfal of their people1.
Meagre indeed are the accounts which thus satis-
fied the most enquiring of our forefathers ; yet such
as they are, they were received as the undoubted
truth,-and appealed to in later periods as the earliest
authentic record of our race. The acuter criticism of
an age less prone to believe, more skilful in the ap-
preciation of evidence, and familiar with the fleeting
forms of mythical and epical thought, sees in them
only a confused mass of traditions borrowed from
the most heterogeneous sources, compacted rudely
and with little ingenuity, and in which the smallest
possible amount of historical truth is involved in a
great deal of fable. Yet the truth which such tra-
ditions do nevertheless contain, yields to the al-
chemy of our days a golden harvest : if we cannot
Undoubtingly accept the details of such legends,
they still point out to us at least the course we
must pursue to discover the elements of fact upon
which the Mythus and Epos rest, and guide us to
the period and the locality where these took root
and flourished.
From times beyond the records of history, it is
certain that continual changes were taking place in
the position and condition of the various tribes that
peopled the northern districts of Europe. Into this
great basin the successive waves of Keltic, Teutonic
‘ Conf. Nennius, Hist. 37 ∙sey., 46 seq. Beda, Hist. Ecc. ɪ. 14, 15.
Gildas, Hist. § 25.
B 2