2. _The account of Hengist's and Horsa's landing, has elements which are fictional rather than historical_--_a._ Thus "when we find Hengist and Horsa approaching the coasts of Kent in three keels, and Aelli effecting a landing in Sussex with the same number, we are reminded of the Gothic tradition which carries a migration of Ostrogoths, Visigoths, and Gepidae, also in three vessels, to the mouths of the Vistula." _b._ The murder of the British chieftains by Hengist is told _totidem verbis_, by Widukind, and others of the Old Saxons in Thuringia. _c._ Geoffry of Monmouth relates also, how "Hengist obtained from the Britons as much land as could be enclosed {6} by an ox-hide; then, cutting the hide into thongs, enclosed a much larger space than the granters intended, on which he erected Thong Castle--a tale too familiar to need illustration, and which runs throughout the mythus of many nations. Among the Old Saxons, the tradition is in reality the same, though recorded with a slight variety of detail. In their story, a lap-full of earth is purchased at a dear rate from a Thuringian; the companions of the Saxon jeer him for his imprudent bargain; but he sows the purchased earth upon a large space of ground, which he claims, and, by the aid of his comrades, ultimately wrests it from the Thuringians." 3. _There is direct evidence in favour of there having been German tribes in England anterior to_ A.D. 447.--_a._ At the close of the Marcomannic war, Marcus Antoninus transplanted a number of Germans into Britain.--Dio Cassius, lxxi. lxiii. _b._ Alemannic auxiliaries served along with Roman legions under Valentinian. _c._ The _Notitia utriusque imperii_, of which the latest date is half a century earlier than the epoch of Hengist, mentions, as an officer of State, the _Comes littoris Saxonici per Britannias_; his government extending along the coast from Portsmouth to the Wash.