axon to pass under that denomination, would have carried
his Nordalbingian Saxony as far as the most northern boundary of the
North-Frisians.

The evidence, then, is in favour of the Nordalbingians having been
Anglo-Saxon in the ninth century, and that under the name Stormarii,
Holsati, and Ditmarsi. Were they equally so in the third, _i.e._, when
Ptolemy wrote, and when the names under which he noticed them were
Saxones and Sigulones? I should not like to say this. The encroachment
upon the Frisian area--the continuity being assumed--may not have begun
thus early. Nay, even the northward extension of the Frisian area may
not have begun. I should not even like to say positively that the Saxons
of Ptolemy were German at all. They may have been Slavonians--a
continuation of the Wagrian and Polabic populations of Eastern Holstein
and Lauenburg.

To say, too, that Ptolemy's term _Saxon_ was a native name would be
hazardous. We can only say that when we get definite information
respecting the districts to which it applied it was _not_ so. It was no
Nordalbingian name to the _Stormarians_, no Nordalbingian name to the
_Holsatians_, no Nordalbingian name to the men of _Ditmarsh_, no
Nordalbingian name to any of the islanders. It was no native name with
any specific import at all. It was a general name applied to the
countries in question, as it was to many others besides; and it was the
Franks who applied it. It had been specific once; but, when it was so,
no one knew who bore it, or who gave it. It may have been Slavonic
applied to Slavonians, or German applied to Germans, or German applied
to Slavonians, or Slavonic applied to Germans. Which was it?

Who bore it? In the first instance the occupants of the northern bank of
the Elbe, and some of the islands of the coast of Holstein and Sleswick;
men of the _wooded districts_ of _Holt_-satia, whose timber gave them
the means of building ships, and whose situation on the coast developed
the habit of using them to the annoyance of their neighbours. This is
all that can be said.

Who spread it abroad? The Romans first, the Franks afterwards. They it
was who called by the name of _Saxon_ men who never so called
themselves, _e.g._, the Angrivarians, the Westphalians, the Saxons of
Upper Saxony.

How did the Romans get it? From the Kelts of Gaul and Britain.

How came the Kelts by it? The usual answer to this: that they got it
from the Saxons themselves, the Saxons being, of c