Читать книгу The Conquest of a Continent; or, The Expansion of Races in America - Grant Madison - Страница 7

III THE NORDIC CONQUEST OF EUROPE

Оглавление

Table of Contents

About 1300 B.C. a blond, blue-eyed race of Libyans appears in Egyptian sculptures. Whence these blonds came or how they got into Libya is not known, but it is interesting to note that blond Berbers are to be found today in the Atlas Mountains of North Africa. These, however, are probably more recent arrivals from the north.

About 1800 B.C. traces of Nordic infiltration appeared among the Hittites. These Nordic conquerors later entered Mesopotamia as the Mitanni and the Kassites, although it may be that they were only the ruling classes of these peoples.

In recorded history the Nordics first appear in the West as Achæans. They came from the North from the Dacian Plains and conquered Greece and Phrygia about 1400 or 1500 B.C.

About 1200 or 1300 B.C. a Nordic people, the Osco-Umbrians, sweeping down from the northeast, entered Italy. They were kindred to the Achæans and were the ancestors of the Latin tribes, including the early Romans. The aboriginal Mediterraneans were driven into southern Italy, where, in Calabria and Apulia, they persist to this day. The contrast between the peoples of North and South Italy is still profound.2

The Continental Nordics, as Celtic tribes, entered Gaul in the ninth century B.C. From the evidence of place names, they passed through South Germany. All Gaul except Aquitania, in the southwest, was overwhelmed.

Spain was conquered by Celtic Nordics about 600 B.C., but their domination was never complete and they soon mingled with the natives. The mixed inhabitants of the peninsula were called Celtiberians by the Romans.

During this same period the British Isles were overrun and thoroughly occupied by Celtic Nordics named Goidels and the Celtic tongue was imposed upon the Mediterranean population, although the latter survived as a race in large numbers, especially in the western parts of England and Ireland. These Celtic-speaking Mediterraneans were, until recently, called "Iberians"; but fifteen hundred years ago the invading Saxons called all the people they found in England "Welsh."

In about 300 B.C. a new wave of Celts entered Gaul and Britain. This time they came from the German plains, speaking a somewhat different form of Celtic. On the Continent they were known as the Belgæ and in the British Isles as the Brythons. They gave their name to the British Islands. By Cæsar's time they had conquered the northern third of Gaul and all of England; but the Roman armies put an end to their farther advance. They did not reach Ireland.

Roman writers describe the Celts in Gaul as pure Nordics and speak of them as forming the ruling classes and military aristocracy until their virtual destruction by Julius Cæsar in his ten years of conquest. His campaigns in Gaul are said to have destroyed a million men, chiefly of the warrior caste.

At the time of their greatest expansion the Gauls sacked Rome (387 B.C.). They pressed no farther south and soon retreated to and remained in Cisalpine Gaul, that is, the valley of the Po and the country north of the Apennines.

The Nordic Gauls or Galatians—to use the Greek form of their name—devastated Greece about 297 B.C. and passed over into Asia Minor. There they settled in what was long known as Galatia, now Angora, the present seat of the Turkish Government. These Galatians were the last Nordics to enter Asia Minor, if we except the armies of the Crusaders.

From the description of the physical characters of the Celtic-speaking tribes they closely resembled the Germanic tribes that followed them into the Roman Empire. Some French anthropologists find that the present-day population of France is nearly four-fifths Alpine and they have decided to call the Alpines "Celts," to avoid admitting that the Celts were physically the same as the hated Germans. This error is not shared by the leading French anthropologists, such as deLapouge, but it has been accepted by some anthropologists.

Careful study of the references to the Celts by classic writers leaves no doubt that the Gauls, Galatians, Belgæ, and Brythons were Nordics as were their successors the Visigoths, Suevi, Alemanni, Burgundians, and, above all, the Franks. In fact, France down to the time of the Reformation was a Nordic land.

Soon after the time when the Belgæ first appear in Europe, Nordic tribes speaking a Germanic dialect are mentioned in history. The first of these tribes to come in conflict with the Romans were the Teutones and Cimbri, who after defeating several Roman armies, were utterly destroyed in 103 B.C. These people were the forerunners of many tribes and nations which emerged, one after another, from the swamps and forests of the north. The original home of most of them seems to have been in Scandinavia, where they had been developing for several thousand years. These newcomers were the latest and final linguistic group to appear in the history of Europe. As Teutonic Nordics they have dominated the scene ever since. The use of the word Teutonic is here purely linguistic in order to distinguish these late comers from the earlier, Celtic-speaking Nordic tribes.

The Teutonic Nordics formed a substantial element among the Belgæ and Brythons and their expansion may well have been the cause of the westward thrust of the latter. The Teutons began to press southward on the Roman Empire early in the Christian era and this pressure continued for some three centuries until the Empire collapsed under their successive invasions.

As said above, the Celts and the Teutons were identical physically and the use of the word "Celtic" cannot be justified as a racial term at the present day. Among living Nordics, those of Celtic origin cannot be distinguished physically from those of German or Scandinavian extraction. Possibly red hair and the psychical peculiarities associated with it may be rather more Celtic than Scandinavian. We find in classical writers the names and description of the barbarians beyond the borders of the Empire. They were all described as blue-eyed, fair or red-haired giants. Height, however, must be considered as relative to that of the Romans, whose legions in the later years of the empire were apparently composed of small men. With each generation the names applied to the barbarian tribes change, but the description of physical characters remains the same.

The finest of these Teutonic barbarians were the Goths who, according to their historian, Jordanes, crossed over from Sweden about 300 B.C. and settled on the banks of the Vistula, whence they expanded into South Russia, which they occupied for centuries. In fact, a remnant of their language (Krim Götisch) was spoken in the Crimea until the seventeenth century. The Gepidæ were a branch of the Goths who lay to the west of the main body, and the Alans, a closely related tribe, were located well to the east. It is interesting to note that some of the Alans, fleeing from the Huns, took refuge in the Caucasus where the Ossetes to this day show occasional Nordic physical characters.

The main body of the Gothic nation was split in two in 375 A.D. by the invasion of the Huns, a Tatar people from Central Asia. Those who took refuge in the west, in South Germany and Gaul, were called Visigoths. A part of the Visigoths, however, fled across the Danube, devastated the provinces of the Byzantine Empire and slew the reigning emperor, Valens, in 378 A.D.

The eastern branch, or Ostrogoths, were conquered by the Huns and remained in Dacia. Later, after Attila's death and the disruption of his empire, the Ostrogoths, under the great Theodoric, invaded Italy and came near to building a unified Italian nation nearly fourteen hundred years ago.

The Visigoths, who had been long in contact with Roman civilization, occupied Gaul. When Attila crossed the Rhine in 451 A.D. they fought on the side of the Romans at Chalons, one of the decisive battles of history, and their king, the Visigothic Theodoric, fell in the battle. The Ostrogoths, on the other hand, were the best troops of the Hunnish host.

The Visigoths entered Spain in 412 A.D. Their allies, the Suevi, conquered and ruled Galicia and the provinces on the Atlantic which now constitute Portugal. The invasion of Spain by the Visigoths resulted in the expulsion of a closely related Teutonic people, the Vandals, who, with their allies, a remnant of the Alans, crossed over into Africa in 428 A.D. On the site of Carthage the Vandals erected a kingdom which lasted a hundred years. They ruled the African coast westward to the Atlantic, conquered and settled in Corsica and under their king, Genseric, sacked Rome in 455 A.D.

These Vandals, originally from Sweden, first appear in history on the Baltic coast, thence they passed down through Central Europe and westward into France and thence into Spain, where they settled and remained until they were driven into Africa. They may have left behind some of their blood to mingle with the later-coming Germanic tribes in Spain. It is possible also, though not probable, that to them are due some of the blond characters still found in the Atlas Mountains. As a race, however, their disappearance is complete.

The Visigoths maintained their control in Spain until 711 A.D. when the Mohammedan Arabs crossed the Straits of Gibraltar and completely defeated the Visigothic armies. Why the power of this people collapsed so suddenly and completely is one of the mysteries of history, but after the great seven days' battle on the Guadalquivir in which their king, Roderick, was slain, the whole peninsula was easily conquered by the Arabs. At this time, it is true, the blood of the Visigoths had been greatly mixed with that of the subject races, resulting perhaps in a weakening of their fighting power.

One of the reasons for the easy conquest of the Visigoths by the Moors lay in the hatred for them as Arians by the old Orthodox Catholic population who regarded their conquerors as heretics, and the assistance rendered by the Jews whom the Visigoths had treated harshly and who are reputed to have induced the Moors to make their invasion.

A remnant of the Visigoths fled northerly into southern Gaul, which was called Gothia Septimania. There the name Visigoths was corrupted into Vigot or Bigot, which was a term of reproach used by the orthodox natives.

It is important to note that the relations between the populations of the Roman Empire and the invading Teutonic Nordics were greatly affected by the fact that the latter were the followers of the schismatic monk Arius who, about 350 A.D., converted the Goths to a Unitarian form of Christianity. The denial of the Trinity by the Barbarians roused a fierce hatred among their subject peoples. Ostrogoths and Visigoths, Vandals and Alans, Burgundians and Lombards, all were Arians. The Franks alone among the Barbarians were converted directly to Orthodox Christianity. This greatly facilitated their conquest of Gaul. In consequence, France for more than a thousand years was regarded as the eldest son of the church.

Down to our time, the aristocracy of Spain, and more especially that of Portugal, shows a marked inheritance of blondness coming down largely from Visigothic and Suevic ancestry. The province of Galicia still retains very appreciable marks of Gothic blood, especially in a high percentage of light-colored eyes.

The Visigoths left behind them in Spain a legacy of names which now are regarded as most typically Spanish, as for instance Rodrigo, Alfonso, Alvarez, Guzman, and Velasquez. In the same manner we find a Nordic legacy of names reaching from Italy into France even where little Nordic blood is left. In other words, while blood dies out, names persist.

At the time of Spanish greatness the predominant blood in the peninsula was still Gothic,3 and the adventurers who went overseas and were lost to the race were of this blood. In Portugal, the one great poet, Camoens,4 and in Spain Cervantes, who was his contemporary, were descendants of the old Gothic nobility and had marked Nordic characteristics, as had the Cid Campeador. The case was the same in Italy5 at this period. The great men were from the northern part of the peninsula. Dante, Michaelangelo, Leonardo Da Vinci, and virtually all of the leading men of the Renaissance were blond Nordics. Columbus himself, supposed to have come from Genoa, is described as having blue eyes and fair hair. In southern France, in the so-called Gothic Septimania and in the country around Toulouse, the home of the Troubadours, Gothic names abound.6 A similar condition prevails throughout France. French names are Gothic, Frankish, or Burgundian today, though disguised by their spelling, as, for example, Joffre from Gotfrid. In the opinion of Count deLapouge, France as late as the settlement of America was more Nordic than is the Germany of today.

The main body of the Visigoths who survived the conquest by the Arabs took refuge in the northwestern part of Spain where they maintained some small kingdoms which ultimately coalesced and became the nucleus of a Christian Spain, which in the course of a seven-hundred-year crusade gradually reconquered the peninsula and finally expelled the Moors in 1492.

The Arabs who conquered Spain, and the Islamized Persians and Moors, had a wonderful period of intellectual expansion during the seventh and following centuries. This amazing outburst of genius, which preserved for us much of the science and learning of the Greeks, came to an end when the Mediterranean Mohammedans began mixing their blood with that of their Negro slaves. Mohammedanism has always appealed to the lower races, especially the Negro, because when they became followers of the Prophet they were admitted to social and racial equality with the superior race. This and the lure of the Negro women ruined the Arab race. Today, all through Africa and Egypt and in parts of Arabia, the so-called Arabs are often Negroid in appearance. In this case polygamy was a racial curse because the richer and abler men had the most slave women and left a larger progeny of half-breed children than did their poorer countrymen.

The exact reverse happened in the case of the Turks, who were originally Alpines from Central Asia strongly mixed with Mongol. They conquered Asia Minor and the nations of Southeast Europe up to and including Hungary. Everywhere they seized the most beautiful women and, being polygamists, the ablest Turks had the most children by the finest women of the subject countries. Thus the Turks bred up as the Arabs bred down. To this day the Turks are the superior race in Asia Minor and have eliminated, at least from the ruling classes, practically all the physical traces of their Asiatic origin.

The women of the Caucasus, especially the Circassians and Georgians, who retain some remnants of the Nordic Alans, have always been noted for their physical beauty. They were in great demand in Turkish Harems.

Incidentally the Kurds are, or rather were, Nordic and it is interesting to note that Saladin, of Crusading fame, was a Kurd.

Concerning other Teutonic Nordics, we need mention only those whose blood enters largely into modern nations. Of these, one of the most interesting peoples were the Burgundians, who settled on the western bank of the upper Rhine in what is now Alsace, and in Burgundian France and French-speaking Switzerland. They were a very promising and flourishing nation until their overthrow in the middle of the fifth century by Attila and his Huns, a tragedy which supplies the subject matter of the Niebelungenlied. Appollonius Sidonius refers to the Burgundians as being seven feet high; while this is an obvious exaggeration, it is interesting to note that in the old Burgundian provinces we find the tallest stature in France today.

When the Lombards first appear in history about 165 A.D. they were in northern Germany. They entered Italy in 568 A.D. and conquered the Peninsula even more thoroughly than had their predecessors, the Ostrogoths. They not only occupied Italy north of the Apennines for three hundred years, but also established several large duchies in the south. The valley of the Po, where they settled, had been for centuries Cisalpine Gaul, and this Lombard territory is today the backbone of modern Italy. The percentage of light-colored eyes around Milan is high, and blondness through this district is as common a characteristic of the peasantry as it is of the aristocracy throughout the rest of Italy.

The Lombards were Arians and were in constant conflict with the Popes and their Orthodox followers and were consequently generally maligned. Just as a similar situation facilitated the conquest of Spain by the Moors, so the destruction of the Lombard Kingdom by the Franks was made the easier by this antagonism.

In passing, we need only remark that there were small bands of other Nordics, who entered Italy as Saxons, Alemanni, and Suevi, and who entered France as Alans and Saxons. These small bands differed in few respects from the larger Nordic peoples and were quickly absorbed in them. All these barbarian tribes were closely related racially.

Before we leave the Alemanni who occupied southwest Germany with Alsace and German-speaking Switzerland, we may note that their name, Alemanni, did not mean 'All Men' in the sense of a mixed company, but rather The Men "par excellence,"—the German "All" being the analogous of the Greek "Pan."

We come next to the Franks, who appear in history about the time of the Battle of Chalons in 451 A.D. in which they took an unimportant part, but in the following centuries they rapidly gained the ascendency throughout Gaul and western Germany. The conquests by the Franks were the most important and enduring of those of the Teutonic Nordics in Continental Europe. We know very little about the Franks from the Romans, although they may have been the Varini, who were located in northwestern Germany in classic times. As a result of the Crusades, Roman Orthodox, as contrasted with Greek Christians, are known as "Ferangi" to this day in the Levant. Being Orthodox Christians and not Arians, the Franks had the support of the Roman Church in all their conquests.

The Flemings of Belgium are remnants of the original Franks who retained their own language. Most of these invaders, like the Franks, Visigoths, Lombards, and Normans, adopted the Latin language of their subject peoples when they settled within the confines of the Roman Empire.

Except in eastern England and northern France the numbers of the conquering Nordics were not sufficient entirely to evict and replace the conquered populations, but they everywhere formed the upper classes and land-owning aristocracy and to this day these same classes in all European nations continue to show, in more or less purity, the physical characters of the Nordic race.

During the Middle Ages, the dominating and war-like Nordics paused long enough from fighting each other to carry on the Crusades and to beat back the onrush of the Saracens at Tours in 732 A.D. They saved Europe from the Mongols in 1241 A.D. at the Battle of Liegnitz (now Wahlstatt) in Silesia where the Duke of Liegnitz and the Nordic nobility, outnumbered five to one, lay dead upon the field of battle; but checked the advance of the Asiatic hordes and saved the budding civilization of Europe from the fate of Asia.

This race supplied the navigators of the expansion period, when the world was for the first time opened up in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and since then they have formed the fighting men, soldiers, sailors, explorers, hunters, adventurers, and frontiersmen of Europe and her colonies.

After mastering the north of France, the Franks subjugated the remnants of the Burgundians and destroyed the Visigothic kingdom which still flourished in the south of Gaul. They also conquered the country on the east bank of the Rhine known as Franconia, and under Charlemagne seized northern Italy. In 800 A.D. Charlemagne revived the Western Roman Empire, which under various guises lasted down to 1807.

Charlemagne's greatest and most difficult conquest, however, was that of the Saxons, who were pure Nordics. They occupied the districts of northwest Germany, centering in Hanover, and even today this part of Germany is still the most Nordic portion of that country.

When Charlemagne reached the Elbe in his conquests he found beyond it the heathen Alpine Wends and from his day down to the World War, the history of Central Europe has been the pushing back of the frontier of Alpine Asia from the Elbe eastward toward the Urals.

These eastern lands were conquered and little by little Christianized and civilized from the west. This process went on as far as the Vistula, where it met the culture, and Greek Orthodox religion, of the Byzantine Empire, which had followed up the rivers of Russia from the Black Sea and had given to Moscovia and to the Ukraine their religion, alphabet, and art.

The Northmen were the last of the Nordic barbarians to appear on the scene. In the ninth and tenth centuries they raided the coasts of Europe from England to Greece. They established themselves as permanent settlers on all the Scottish islands and on many parts of the Scottish coast. In Caithness, the northernmost corner of Scotland, Norse was spoken as late as the seventeenth century. They formed settlements and left place names all around the coasts of Wales and England. In the tenth century as Danes they subjugated northeastern England and imposed their rule east of the line of Watling Street, which runs from London to Chester. These Danes had barely been overcome by the Saxons when a new group of Nordics arrived as Normans from France and conquered England in 1066.

Ireland was attacked by the Norse who came in from the north and by the Danes who entered from the south. The island was overrun by these two peoples who have left many traces in the place names and in the blood of Ireland.

On the Continent the coasts of France and Germany were harried by the Northmen and the country since called Normandy was conquered by them in 911 A.D. The Danish conquest of England, referred to above, must have been largely Norse while, in France, Rollo's followers were probably to an overwhelming extent Danes.

The Norman element in England and to some extent in America down to this very day has supplied a very large proportion of the conquerors, seamen, explorers, and frontiersmen. This same ruling and restless strain showed itself in the individual adventurers who went to South Italy and Sicily, which they thoroughly conquered in the twelfth century. They even attacked the Byzantine Empire. To this day blue eyes in Sicily are called "Norman eyes" and are to some extent characteristic of the upper classes there.

It was in this period that the Norse rovers under Leif Ericson discovered the northeast mainland of America about 1000 A.D., nearly five hundred years before Columbus, who probably knew of their voyages, crossed the Atlantic.

At the time of this Norwegian and Danish expansion, there was a similar outpouring of Swedes who, as Varangians, crossed the Baltic into Russia, which they conquered and ruled for many centuries. The name Varangian is strongly suggestive of Varini or Franks and the name "Russian" means "rowers." The Varangians came across the seas precisely as their ancestors, the Goths, had done a thousand years earlier. After the expansion of this so-called Viking period, Scandinavian activities came to an end.

* * * * *

Man undoubtedly crossed back and forth on dry land from Europe to England in Neolithic and earlier times. In fact, some of the earliest records of man have been found in England and the recent discoveries in Norfolk of chipped implements and hearths show that man made tools and used fire in England before the appearance of the first glaciers—something over a million years ago.

These early species and genera of men largely died out or were exterminated and were succeeded at the beginning of Neolithic times by invasions of the small, dark, long-skulled Mediterranean race which for many thousands of years formed the basis of the population of England, Scotland, and Ireland.

About the beginning of the Bronze Age, some 1800 B.C., a tall, round-skulled type from the Continent called the Beaker Makers appeared on the scene in England. They resembled somewhat the present Dinaric race, a tall, round-skulled branch of the Alpines now found from the Tyrol southward to Albania on the east side of the Adriatic. It is clear that the Beaker Makers entered from the east across the narrow seas and their remains indicate a tall, masterful type which seems to have disappeared to a large extent, although some of the round-skulled, heavily built Englishmen, found numerously among the commercial classes, may be their representatives today.

The racial composition of the British Isles when the Nordic first appeared on the scene may be safely said to have been composed of small, brunet Mediterraneans interspersed with a small number of round-skulled types and including, very probably, remnants of still earlier races.

The Celtic-speaking Nordics appear to have crossed the Rhine into France and the countries to the southwest about 800 B.C. At about the same time they forced their way into the British Isles which they thoroughly conquered. These Nordics were called Goidels or "Q" Celts and their language is represented today by the remnants of Erse in Ireland, Gaelic in Scotland, and Manx on the Isle of Man. These "Q" Celts, as contrasted with the later coming "P" Celts, are now represented by the Macs (meaning son) just as the later Cymric or Brythonic Celts are called "P" Celts because in their language Ap means son.

The aborigines were called Picts in Scotland. These Mediterranean Picts spoke a language related to Hamitic or Egyptian, and many place names of this origin are still to be found.

It is not definitely known whether the Gaelic speech of Scotland is a remnant of early Goidel invasion or whether it was reintroduced from Ireland in the early centuries of our era. The latter appears probable, because the second conquest by the Celts was nearly complete throughout Britain, although it did not reach Ireland. This second subjugation of Britain was by the "P" Celts or Brythons, speaking a Cymric form of Celtic. It occurred in the fourth century B.C. and was so thorough that it is not probable that remnants of the earlier Goidelic speech could have survived in Scotland.

These Brythons were represented on the continent by the Belgæ, who, in Cæsar's time, occupied Gaul between the Rhine and the Seine. A remnant of their speech survives in Brittany as Armorican.

The "P" Celts gave their speech to all England and remnants of it are found in the recently extinct Cornish in Cornwall and in the Cymric of Wales. Both the "Q" Celts and the "P" Celts were, on their arrival in Britain, pure Nordics, but in many cases they soon merged with the aboriginal population. They were everywhere the ruling military class, in Britain as well as in Gaul.

Having imposed their language on the conquered people, they died out almost completely, leaving, as in Wales, their speech on the lips of the little Mediterranean native. Whatever truth there is in the legends of King Arthur and his resistance to the Saxons they clearly indicate a blond, Celtic aristocracy ruling over an underclass of small Mediterraneans. The same condition is indicated in Irish legends where the Celts appear as a distinct, fair-haired military class.

The next Nordic invasion of Britain was by the Saxons from the country around the present duchy of Holstein and by the Angles and Jutes from farther north on the mainland of Denmark or Jutland. These tribes which entered England in the fifth century were probably more purely Nordic than the continental Teutons and this also was true of the Norse and Varangians of a later date. Their conquest was almost completed during the century after their arrival but there was sufficient resistance in the western part of England to postpone its final subjugation for several centuries. However, gradually the population of practically all England and the lowlands of Scotland became purely Nordic. This racial stock was reinforced by the invasion of Danes, who occupied most of northeast England.

The Norsemen settled around the coasts of Ireland, Scotland, England, and, especially, Wales, and added a very considerable contribution to the pure Nordic element of the population.

The next and last invasion of Britain by the Nordics was the Norman conquest in 1066. The Norman leaders and soldiers were pure Nordics from the most Nordic part of France. In fact, the Normans were heathen Danes speaking a Teutonic tongue when they arrived in Normandy in 911 A.D. so that on coming to England they had been in France only a little over one hundred and fifty years. In those years they had accepted Christianity, had learned French, and had become the exponents of the highest culture in Europe. Into England they brought with them many followers of Alpine origin, and the clergy whom they imported was also composed very largely of Latinized Alpines.

At this point we may remark that Wales, especially along the coasts, has a very large Nordic population. It is absurd to distinguish between England, Scotland, North Ireland, and Wales as is done in the census of the United States. We might just as well distinguish between North England and South England on the ground that the first is Anglian and Danish and the other Saxon and Jutish. The lowlands of Scotland are pure English territory and have been such for a thousand years. The Ulster Scots who came to America were only two or three generations removed from the Scottish and English borderers and had not mixed with the native Irish. It is also to be remarked that the Norman conquest of England was that of one Nordic people by another, and that Great Britain and Ireland constitute a group, the membership of which is overwhelmingly Nordic in its racial inheritance.

At the time of the discovery of America, all Europe was far more Nordic than it is today. Germany at that time had not witnessed the expansion of the Alpines of the south and east which is characteristic of the present era. In England, before the industrial revolution created a demand for little brunet Mediterraneans to drive spindles, the Nordic had the field to himself. As farmer, soldier, sailor, explorer, and pioneer he was pre-eminent. The brunet Mediterranean element, formerly called Iberians, had been forced back into the extreme west of England and into Wales, and was not an important economic or political factor. Nor was there any considerable immigration of that racial stock into the American colonies. These were settled primarily by the descendants of the Normans, Saxons, Anglians, and Danes coming from the distinctly Nordic districts of the mother land.

Norfolk and Suffolk were settled by the Angles and afterwards formed a part of the Danish kingdom. As said above the lowlands of Scotland and the English borders were Anglian and Dane, while the coasts and islands of Scotland were everywhere Norse. The Highlands were Celtic with an admixture of Norse, Anglian, and Norman. There were also remnants of the old Mediterranean populations, probably Picts. Curiously enough these Mediterraneans contributed their dark eyes and hair color, but not their short stature. The population of West Scotland has the greatest height of all the peoples of Europe.

Ireland, like England, was settled as we have seen originally by the Neolithic Mediterraneans. They in turn were conquered by the Goidelic or "Q" Celts, blond Nordics who imposed their language on the aborigines. In the ninth century, Ireland was overrun by the Norse and Danes, whose descendants today constitute a very considerable portion of the population. The very name Ireland is Danish. Most of the big blond Irish of today, although they like to claim "Celtic" descent, are, in fact, of Norse, Danish, Saxon, Norman, or Scotch derivation.

The Nordic elements in Ireland were reinforced again and again by the English and Normans, who, from the days of their original entry into the island down to our day have formed the great majority of the nobility and upper classes of the country. The Celtic Goidel in Ireland today is a negligible quantity which cannot be racially identified. The brunet elements in western Ireland, though to some extent Celtic in speech, are descended from the old Neolithic or Mediterranean population of the British Isles, mixed with a primitive, aboriginal race of great antiquity, the Firbolgs.

Ireland has shown a singular power of absorbing its conquerors. The descendants of Danish, Norman, and English settlers consider themselves pure Irish "Celts." It is a strange fact that the English, Scotch, Norman, Danish, and even the French Huguenots who have settled in Ireland have acquired and have handed down an extraordinary temperamental unity. As to language, by the time of Elizabeth the English Pale constituted a part of eastern Leinster, and there English was uniformly spoken. The English language ultimately spread over the whole of Ireland, leaving only a few remnants of Celtic speech in the extreme west.

From the times of James I to those of William III, large numbers of English and Scotch borderers passed over to the northeast corner of the island into the province of Ulster. They were fervent Presbyterians and hated the native Catholic Irish. It was the sons and grandsons of these immigrants who came to America in the eighteenth century and are sometimes miscalled the "Scotch Irish." They had special grievances of their own against England on account of economic restrictions imposed upon their industries.

Before this time a large number of Cromwellian soldiers had settled in Leinster, but not having their own women with them they intermarried with the Catholic Irish and their descendants today are most intensely Irish in national feeling. The Reformation never had much hold on Ireland, so that the Catholic Irish today represent the mixed population of Ireland before the sixteenth century, together with numerous converts from the Scotch and English immigrants.

With this brief survey of the distribution of the Nordic race in Europe down to the time of the discovery of America and the beginning of emigration to the colonies of the New World, we can pass on to one of the most dramatic mass-migrations of man.

From West Central Asia where it was in contact with the Mongoloids on the east, the Nordic race pushed across Europe to the extreme western coasts. We shall show how it traversed the Atlantic Ocean and then in three centuries subdued a continent. Generation after generation it fought its way westward, until it reached the Pacific Ocean, where today it stands confronting Asia and its immemorial rivals, the Mongols, this time on the west.

2 In Geographical Lore of the Time of the Crusades, by J.K. Wright of the American Geographic Society, p. 320, the author says: "In these authorities we find that the differences between the inhabitants of the northern and southern parts of Italy were fully appreciated in the twelfth century. 'The Lombards,' Gunther says, 'are a keen, skillful, and active people; foresighted in counsel; expert in justice; strong in body and spirit, full of life and handsome to look upon, with slight, supple bodies that give them great power of endurance; economical and always moderate in eating and drinking; masters of their hands and mouths; honorable in every business transaction; mighty in the arts and always striving for the new; lovers of freedom and ready to face death for freedom's sake. These people have never been willing to submit to kings.... But what a contrast the people of Apulia in the south present to the Lombards. Dirty, lazy, weak, good-for-nothing idlers that they are.'"

3 The Spanish popular heroes, Don Rodrigo and the Cid Campeador, were Gothic, to judge by their names, as was the brave crusader, Count Raymund of Toulouse. L. Wilser has called attention to the number of Gothic names still in use in the Iberian peninsula: Alfonso or Affonso, Alonzo (Gothic Athalafuns); Alvaro and Alvarez (Gothic Alavair); Bermuy (Gothic Berimud); Bertran (Gothic Bairhtram); Diego and Diaz (Gothic Thiudareiks, Dietrich); Esmeralda; Fernando and its genitive Fernandez (Gothic Ferdinanths); Froilaz and Fruela (Gothic Fravila); Gelmirez (Gelimer); Gomez (Gothic Guma); Gonzalo and Gonzalez (Gothic Gunthimir, Gundemar); Guilfonso (Gothic Viljafuns); Guzman (Gothic Godaman, Gutmann); Ildefonso (Gothic Hildifuns); Isabella; Marques (Gothic Markja); Menendez (Gothic Herminanths); Mundiz and Munnez (Gothic Mundila); Pizarro (Gothic Pitzas); Ramiro (Gothic Radomir or Ragnimir); Ramon and Renmondez (Gothic Ragnimund); Rodrigo and Rodriguez; Ruiz (Gothic Rudoreiks); Sesnandes (Gothic Sisenand); Vasco and Vasquez (Nordic Wasce); Velasquez (Gothic Vilaskja?). See p. 107, vol. II, of book Die Germanen, by Doctor Ludwig Wilser.

4 Describing Camoens, George Edward Woodberry (The Torch, pp. 203-4; New York, 1920) says: "He was of the old blue blood of the Peninsula, the Gothic blood, the same that gave birth to Cervantes. He was blond, and bright-haired, with blue eyes, large and lively, the face oval and ruddy—and in manhood the beard short and rounded, with long untrimmed mustachios—the forehead high, the nose aquiline; in figure agile and robust; in action 'quick to draw and slow to sheathe,' and when he was young, he writes that he had seen the heels of many, but none had seen his heels. Born about the year 1524, of a noble and well-connected family, educated at Coimbra, a university famous for the classics, and launched in life about the court at Lisbon, he was no sooner his own master than he fell into troubles."

5 Wilser cites Woltmann's essay, "Have the Goths disappeared in Italy?," which shows that even in the latter part of the Middle Ages many people lived according to Gothic law; that in some cities there even existed Gothic sections; and that many Gothic names can be traced, as Stavila, Nefila, Leuuia, Hermia, Hilpja, Ansefrida, Gilliefredus, Totila, Vila.

6 In fact, almost all the names of the Troubadours are Teutonic, says Wilser, giving the following examples of French names, with the Teutonic original in parentheses: Arnaut (Arnold); Aimeric (Emerich); Bernart (Bernhard); Bertrand (Bertram); Gaucelm (Walchelm); Gautier (Walther); Guillem (Wilhelm); Guiraut (Gerold); Gunot (Wido); Jaufre or Joffre (Gotfrid); Raimon (Raginmund); Rambaut (Raginbald); Rudel (Rudolf); Savaric (Sabarich). See p. 107, vol. II, of Die Germanen, by Doctor Ludwig Wilser.

The Conquest of a Continent; or, The Expansion of Races in America

Подняться наверх