Now we know, by name at least, five of the tribes who are thus connected by a common worship--mysterious and obscure as it is. They are the Reudigni, the Aviones, the Eudoses, the Suardones, and the Nuithones. Two others we know by something more than name--the Varini and the Langobardi. The eighth is our own parent stock--the _Angli_. Such is one of the earliest notices of the old creed of our German forefathers; and, fragmentary and indefinite as it is, it is one of the fullest which has reached us. I subjoin the original text, premising that, instead of _Herthum_, certain MSS. read _Nerthum_. "----Langobardos paucitas nobilitat: plurimis ac valentissimis nationibus cincti, non per obsequium sed prœliis et periclitando tuti sunt. Reudigni deinde, et Aviones, et _Angli_, et Varini, et Eudoses, et Suardones, et Nuithones, fluminibus aut silvis muniuntur: nec quidquam notabile in singulis, nisi quod in commune Herthum, id est, Terram matrem colunt, eamque intervenire rebus hominum, invehi populis, arbitrantur. Est in insula Oceani Castum nemus, dicatumque in eo vehiculum, veste contectum, attingere uni sacerdoti concessum. Is adesse penetrali deam intelligit, vectamque bobus feminis multâ cum veneratione prosequitur. Læti tunc dies, festa loca, quæcumque adventu hospitioque dignatur. Non bella ineunt, non arma sumunt, clausum omne ferrum; pax et quies tunc tantùm nota, tunc tantùm amata, donec idem sacerdos satiatam conversatione mortalium deam templo reddat; mox vehiculum et vestes, et, si credere velis, numen ipsum secreto lacu abluitur. Servi ministrant, quos statim idem lacus haurit. Arcanus hinc terror, sanctaque ignorantia, quid sit id, quod tantùm perituri vident."--"De Moribus Germanorum," 40. What connects the passage with the ethnology of Heligoland? Heligoland is, probably, the _island of the Holy Grove_. Its present name indicates this--_the holy land_. Its position in the main sea, or _Ocean_, does the same. So does its vicinity to the country of Germans. At the same time it must not be concealed from the reader that the Isle of Rugen, off the coast of Pomerania, has its claims. It is an island--but not an island of the _Ocean_. It is full of religious remains--but those remains are _Slavonic_ rather than _German_. I believe, for my own part, that the seat of the worship of _Earth the Mother_, was the island which we are now considering.