The Ethnology of the British Colonies and Dependencies Part 2

The ancient tribes of Normandy were _Celtic_. Hence, when the third element of the present Norman population was introduced, all that was not Italian was Welsh--just as it was in Picardy and Orleans, and just as it was _not_ in Gascony and Poitou. _There_ the old element was Iberic.

The _third element_--just alluded to--was Germanic; Germanic of different kinds, but chiefly Frank or Burgundian.

The _fourth_ great element was the Norse or Scandinavian; introduced by the so-called _Sea-kings_ of Denmark and Norway in the ninth and tenth centuries. These, as the empire of Charlemagne declined, insulted and dismembered it. They converted Neustria in _Normandy_=_the country of the Northmen_. The exact amount of their influence has not been ascertained; nor is the investigation easy. The process, however, by which we measured the original extent of the Frisian area is applicable to that of the Northmen. There are Norse names for French localities. Of these the most important are the compounds of -_tot_, -_fleur_, and -_bec_; like Yve-_tot_, Har-_fleur_, and Caude-_bec_.

FRENCH. NORSE. ENGLISH.

-tot toft _village_.

-fleur flot _stream_.

-bec beck _brook_.[11]

Names of places thus ending are almost exclusively limited to Normandy; occurring, even there, most numerously within a few miles of either the sea or the Seine.

Furthermore, there is a fresh element suggested by a term of the "Not.i.tia Utriusque Imperii," a doc.u.ment of the latter end of the fourth century. This is _Litus Saxonic.u.m per Britannias_, a tract extending from the Wash to Portsmouth. Now the opposite sh.o.r.e of the continent was a _litus Saxonic.u.m_ also; within which lay Normandy. I believe that these Saxons were part of the same branch of Germans which invaded England; in other words, that portions of France, like portions of England, were _Anglicized_; the two processes differing in respect to their extent and duration. What was general and permanent on the island, was partial and temporary on the continent. That there were Saxons at Bayeux in the tenth century is a.s.serted by express evidence.

Taking in the account the preceding invasions, and remembering that, both from Germany and Italy, Normandy is one of the most distant of the French provinces, we arrive at the following a.n.a.lysis.

The Channel Islanders are what the Normans are.

The Normans are Romanized Celts; the Roman element being somewhat less than it is elsewhere.

The Frank and Burgundian elements are also less.

But a Saxon element is greater.

And a Norse element is pre-eminently Norman.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] "Natural History of Man," p. 197.

[2] The form in _c_ and _sk_ (_Skipton_ and _Carlton_) being of Danish, whilst those in _ch_ and _sh_ are of Anglo-Saxon origin.--_See_ "Quarterly Review," No. CLXIV.

[3] The details of this investigation are given in full in the present writer's "Taciti Germania with Ethnological notes," now in course of publication.

[4] I include in this term the so-called old Saxons of Westphalia.

[5] The original pa.s.sage is as follows:--"???tt?a? d? t?? ??s?? ????

t??a p???a????p?tata ????s?, as??e?? te e?? a?t?? ???st? ?f?st??e?, ???ata d? ?e?ta? t??? ???es? t??t??? ??????? te ?a? F??ss??e? ?a? ?? t?

??s? ?????? ???tt??e?. ??sa?t? d? ? t??de t?? ????? p???a????p?a fa??eta? ??sa ?ste ??? p?? ?t?? ?at? p?????? ?????de eta??st?e??? ???

???a??? ?a? pa?s?? ?? F??????? ?????s??."--Procop. B. G. iv. 20.

Reasons which have induced me to go farther than any previous writer in respect to the importance of the Frisian element in the Anglo-Saxon invasion, and to believe that instead of _Saxon_ being a native German name for any portion of the Germanic population, it was only a Celtic and Roman term for the Germans of the sea-coast, and (amongst these) for the Frisians most especially, are given, at large, in my ethnological edition of the "Germania of Tacitus."

[6] S?f?tat?? d' ??eta???ta? t?? ????? ??t??, ?a? ??aat??? ????ta??

?a? t?? pa?a??? ???? ????s? t? s?????ata, ?a? p???ata ?a? ?????

??t???? ??a??s?????? ?t??, ?? fas?.

[7] This was probably the case with the Callaici.

[8] The famous Knighthood of Malta--_without fear_, but (though, perhaps, the best of its cla.s.s) not _without reproach_, has no place here. Its ethnology belongs to the different countries which it dignified by its valour, or dishonoured by its profligacy.

[9] This I believe to have been the case with the ancient Greeks also; though the proof would require an elaborate monograph.

[10] The two together have led to a doctrine which has been best developed by Fallmerayer. It is this--_that the modern Greeks are Sclavonians_. The Russian school are the chief believers of this. In the few countries where ethnology is scientific rather than political, the more moderate opinion of the modern Greeks being a mixed stock prevails.

[11] Or _beck_.

CHAPTER II.

DEPENDENCIES IN AFRICA.

THE GAMBIA SETTLEMENTS.--SIERRA LEONE.--THE GOLD COAST.--THE CAPE.--THE MAURITIUS.--THE NEGROES OF AMERICA.

_The Gambia._--All our settlements on the Gambia are in the Mandingo country.

Of all the true and unequivocal Negroes, the Mandingos are the most civilized; the basis of their civilization being Arab, and their religion that of the Koran. Hence, they have priests, or Marabouts, the use of the Arabic alphabet, and a monotheistic creed.

Of all the Negroes, too, the Mandingos are the most commercial, not as mere slave-dealers, but as truly industrial merchants.

Of all the families of the African stock, with the exception of the Kaffres, the Mandingo is the most widely spread. It also falls into numerous divisions and subdivisions. Hence the term has a twofold power.

Sometimes it is a generic name for a large group; sometimes the designation of a particular section of that group. The Mandingos of the Lower Gambia are Mandingos in the restricted meaning of the word.

For the Mandingo tribes, when we use the term in a general sense, the most convenient cla.s.sification is into the _Mahometan_ and the _Pagan_.

That this division should exist is natural; since, with the exception of the Wolofs, the Mandingos are the most northern of all the western Negroes, and, consequently, those who are most in contact with the Mahometan Arabs, and the equally Mahometan Kabyles of Barbary and the Great Desert,--a fact sufficient to account for the monotheistic creeds of the northern tribes.

As for the Paganism of the others, we must remember how far southwards and inland the same great stock extends--indefinitely towards the interior, and as far as the back of the Ashanti country, in the direction of the equator.

This prepares us for finding Mandingos at our next settlement.

_Sierra Leone._--The native populations which encircle this settlement are two--the _Timmani_ towards the north, and _Bullom_ towards the south.

Both are Negroes of the most typical kind, in respect to their physical conformation.

Both are Pagans.

Both speak what seem to be mutually unintelligible languages, but which have an undoubted relationship to each other, and to the numerous Mandingo dialects as well. It is this which induces me to place them in the same section with the more civilized Africans of the Gambia.

It is safe to say that they are amongst the rudest members of the stock; indeed it is only in the eyes of the etymologist that they are Mandingo at all. Practically, they, and several tribes like them, are Mandingo, in the way that a wolf is a dog, or a goat a sheep.

The Bullom and Timmani are the frontagers to Sierra Leone; and it was with Bullom and Timmani potentates that the land of the settlement was bargained for. The settlers themselves are of different origin. Mixed beyond all other populations of Africa, the occupants of Free Town are in the same category with the Negroes of Jamaica and St. Domingo; concerning whom we can only predicate that they have dark skins, and that they come from Africa. The a.n.a.lysis of their several origins, and their distribution amongst the separate branches of the African family, would be one of the most difficult feats in minute ethnology; and this would be but a fraction of the investigation. When the several countries which supplied the several victims of the slave-trade had been ascertained, the complicated question of _intermixture_ would stand over; and there we should find lineages of every degree of hybridism--children, whose ancestors originated on different sides of Africa, themselves the parents of a lighter-coloured offspring, the effect of European intercourse.

At present it is sufficient to state that the nucleus of the Free Town population consists of what is called the _Maroon_ Negroes. These were slaves of Jamaica, who, having recovered their freedom during the Spanish dominion in the island, were removed, by the English, in the first instance to Nova Scotia, and afterwards to their present locality.