Isle of Wight, as members of a confederacy known as that of the Gewissas. These were apparently sworn or assured allies.
Among these Gewissas or confederates, Saxons and Frisians were probably the greatest in number. From what is known of their descendants on the Continent, they were people of a blonde complexion, so that the prevailing ethnological character of the people of Wessex agrees with that of the present inhabitants of Friesland and North Germany.
At the time Bede wrote contemporary evidence existed of the two chief tribes, who, under the name Gewissas, made up the West Saxon State. At that time the Isle of Wight was under its own chiefs or Kings, subordinate only to the Kings of Wessex; and there are some references which point to a government of the Meon country, or south-east part of Hampshire, at one time by Princes, apart from the direct rule of the Wessex Sovereigns. The Jutes of the Isle of Wight certainly, and those of the south-east part of Hampshire possibly, were under their own local administration at the time when Daniel, Bishop of Winchester, informed the Venerable Bede of the political condition of his diocese. There is no room for doubt concerning the accuracy of Bede’s statement, for it has been proved by archæological and anthropological researches. The remains of the Saxon period which have been brought to light by the spade in the Isle of Wight, and much more recently in the Meon valley, are all of the Kentish type, and, like them, exhibit a distinct resemblance to similar relics which have been found in Northern countries from which the Jutes or Goths migrated—i.e., Gothland and some of the Danish isles, as well as Jutland.
One of the Danish isles at the present time is named Mön, or Moen, and as the Danish ö or oe is in sound like the French eu,[1] it is practically the same in sound as the
- ↑ Warsaae, J. J., ‘Danes and Norwegians in England,’ Preface, v, vi.
