lent to
those of the three, and since it is desirable to have a common title for
all the Germanic colonists of Britain, whenever it is necessary to speak
of them together, we shall employ the late and, strictly speaking,
incorrect form of "Anglo-Saxons" for this purpose. Similarly, in order
to distinguish the earliest pure form of the English language from its
later modern form, now largely enriched and altered by the addition of
Romance or Latin words and the disuse of native ones, we shall always
speak of it, where distinction is necessary, as Anglo-Saxon. The term is
now too deeply rooted in our language to be again uprooted; and it has,
besides, the merit of supplying a want. At the same time, it should be
remembered that the expression Anglo-Saxon is purely artificial, and was
never used by the people themselves in describing their fellows or their
tongue. When they did not speak of themselves as Jutes, English, and
Saxons respectively, they spoke of themselves as English alone.

CHAPTER II.

THE ENGLISH BY THE SHORES OF THE BALTIC.

From the notices left us by Baeda in Britain, and by Nithard and others
on the continent, of the habits and manners which distinguished those
Saxons who remained in the old fatherland, we are able to form some idea
of the primitive condition of those other Saxons, English, and Jutes,
who afterwards colonized Britain, during the period while they still all
lived together in the heather-clad wastes and marshy lowlands of Denmark
and Northern Germany. The early heathen poem of _Beowulf_ also gives us
a glimpse of their ideas and their mode of thought. The known physical
characteristics of the race, the nature of the country which they
inhabited, the analogy of other Germanic tribes, and the recent
discoveries of pre-historic archaeology, all help us to piece out a
fairly consistent picture of their appearance, their manner of life, and
their rude political institutions.

We must begin by dismissing from our minds all those modern notions
which are almost inevitably implied by the use of language directly
derived from that of our heathen ancestors, but now mixed up in our
conceptions with the most advanced forms of European civilisation. We
must not allow such words as "king" and "English" to mislead us into a
species of filial blindness to the real nature of our Teutonic
forefathers. The little community of wild farmers and warriors who lived
among the dim woodlands of Sleswic