alchemy of our days a golden harvest: if we cannot undoubtingly accept the details of such legends, they still point out to us at least the course we must pursue to discover the elements of fact upon which the Mythus and Epos rest, and guide us to the period and the locality where these took root and flourished. ----- Footnote 4: It is uncertain from the MSS. whether this lady is to be called Rouwen or Ronwen. The usual English tradition gives her name as Rowena; if this be accurate, I presume our pagan forefathers knew something of a divine personage—Hróðwén—possibly a dialectical form of the _great_ and _glorious_ goddess Hréðe; for whom refer to Chapter X. of this Book. Footnote 5: The story of the treacherous murder perpetrated upon the Welsh chieftains does not claim an English origin. It is related of the Oldsaxons upon the continent, in connexion with the conquest of the Thuringians. See Widukind. Footnote 6: Conf. Nennius, Hist. 37 _seq._, 46 _seq._ Beda, Hist. Ecc. i. 14, 15. Gildas, Hist. § 25. ----- From times beyond the records of history, it is certain that continual changes were taking place in the position and condition of the various tribes that peopled the northern districts of Europe. Into this great basin the successive waves of Keltic, Teutonic and Slavonic migrations were poured, and here, through hundreds of years, were probably reproduced convulsions, terminated only by the great outbreak which the Germans call _the wandering of the nations_. For successive generations, the tribes, or even portions of tribes, may have moved from place to place, as the necessities of their circumstances demanded; names may have appeared, and vanished altogether from the scene; wars, seditions, conquests, the rise and fall of states, the solemn formation or dissolution of confederacies, may have filled the ages which intervened between the first settlement of the Teutons in Germany, and their appearance in history as dangerous to the quiet of Rome. The heroic lays[7] may possibly preserve some shadowy traces of these events; but of all the changes in detail we know nothing: we argue only that nations possessing in so preeminent a degree as the Germans, the principles, the arts and institutions of civilization, must have passed through a long apprenticeship of action and suffering, and have learnt in the rough school of practice the wisdom they embodied in their lives. ----- Footnote 7: