ellers in the basins of the Rhine
and the Danube, we have accounts by Caesar and by Tacitus.[2] After
this there is a dearth of information; the Christian missionaries to
the Germans thought it their duty to cover the former beliefs and
rites of their converts in oblivion, and abstained from giving
information about them. What we know is drawn from Church writers.
The Eddas belong to a much more developed stage of Teutonic life;
they tell their own tale, which will be noticed in its turn.

[Footnote 2: Caesar, _B. Gall._ vi. 21. Tacitus, _Germania_.]

The early Germans dwelt in scattered settlements surrounded by the
great forests and marshes which then covered Central Europe. Every
one has read the description of the brave and warlike people of whom
the Romans justly stood so much in awe, and knows about their fierce
blue eyes and their fair hair, their tall stature, their battle-cries
and charges, their hardy habits and strict morals. As the Roman
writers describe them, they are by no means savages. They do not live
in towns, but migrate from one spot to another, the community
cultivating the land it takes possession of, on a system of common
ownership with rotation of occupants. The women did the hard work,
Tacitus says; the men spent their time in the chase and in fighting.
They had an organisation beyond that of the village, being arranged
in what we may call hundreds and shires, each district having to
furnish so many men for war, electing its own heads and holding
meetings for various purposes. Amidst these local and tribal
divisions they did not forget that they were a nation different from
other nations, and invasion found them a united people. The religious
expression of this is to be found in the legend which represents the
three great divisions of the nation as descended alike from the god
Mannus, son of the earth-born Tuisco; hymns were sung to the latter
as the father of the German race. It was by hymns that this people
remembered things which were important.

The Early German Gods.--There is a national god, then; and other gods
of whom Tacitus tells us are national too, not local or tribal. The
tribes to the south of the Baltic worship Herthus, which, Tacitus
says, is their name for Terra Mater, Mother Earth. The other gods he
mentions are called by Roman names. They worship Mercury, he says, as
their principal god; on certain days they worship him with human
sacrifices. They also worship Mars and Herc