Notes and Queries, Number 42, August 17, 1850 | Page 2

writers seem to have had fewer scruples, and to have admitted the idea without consideration. Thorkelin, the Dane, (when in England to copy out the poem of Beowulf for publication at Copenhagen), gave a very flattering testimony to Forster's notes, in _Bibliotheca Topographica_, vol. ix. p. 891. _et seq._, though I believe he subsequently much modified it. Our own writers who had to remark upon the subject, Sharon Turner, and Wheaton, in his _History of the Northmen_, may be excused from concurring in an opinion in which they had only a verbal interest. Professor Ingram, in his translation of _Othere's Voyage_ (Oxford, 1807, 4to. p. 96. note), gives the following rather singular deduction for the appellation: Quenland was the land of the Amazons; the Amazons were fair and white-faced, therefore _Cwen-Sae_ the White Sea, as Forster had deduced it: and so, having satisfied himself with this kind of Sorites, follows pretty closely in Forster's wake. But that continental writers, who took up the investigation avowedly as indispensable to the earliest history of their native countries, should have given their concurrence and approval so easily, I must confess, astonishes me.
Dahlman, whilst Professor of History at Kiel, felt himself called upon by his situation to edit and explain this work to his countrymen more detailedly than previously, and at vol. ii. p. 405. of the work cited by Mr. Singer gives all Alfred's original notices. I shall at present only mention his interpretation of _Quen Sae_, which he translates _Weltmeer_; making it equivalent to the previous Garseeg or Oceanus. He mentions the reasonings of Rask and Porthan, of Abo, the two exceptions to the general opinion (which I shall subsequently notice), without following, on this point, what they had previously so much more clearly explained. The best account of what had previously been done on the subject is contained in Beckmann's Litteratur der alten Raisen (s. 450.); and incidental notices of such passages as fall within the scope of their works, are found in Schl?zer's _Allgemeine nordische Geschichte_, Thummann's _Untersuchungen_, Walch's _Allgemeine Bibliothek_, Sch?ning's _Gamle nordishe Geographie_, Nyerup's _Historisk-statistik Skildering i aeldre og nyere Tider_, in Sprengel's _Geschichte_, and by W?rbs, in Kruse's _Deutsche Alterth��mer_. Professor Ludw. Giesebrecht published in 1843, at Berlin, a most excellent _Wendische Geschichte_, in 3 vols. 8vo., but his inquiries concerning this Periplus (vol. iii. p 290) are the weakest part of his work, having mostly followed blindly the opinions to which the great fame and political importance of Dahlman had given full credence and authority. He was not aware of the importance of Alfred's notices for the countries he describes, and particularly for the elucidation of the vexed question of Adam of Bremen's Julin and Helmold's _Veneta_, by an investigation of Othere's _Schiringsheal_, and which I endeavoured to point out in a pamphlet I published in the German language, and a copy of which I had the pleasure of presenting, amongst others, to Professor Dahlman himself at the Germanisten Versammlung at L��beck in 1847. To return, however, to the Cwena land and _sae_, it is evident that the commentators, who are principally induced by their bearings to Sweon land to look upon the latter as the White Sea, have overlooked the circumstance that the same name is found earlier as an arm of the Wendel or Mediterranean Sea; and it is evident that one denomination cannot be taken in a double meaning; and therefore, when we find Alfred following the boundaries of Europe from Greece, "Crecalande ut on tone Wendelsae Tnord on tone Garsaege pe man Cwen sae haet", it is certain that we have here an arm of the Wendel Sea (here mistaken for the ocean) that runs from Greece to the north, and it cannot also afterwards be the White Sea. It will be necessary to bring this, in conformity with the subsequent mention of _Cwen-Sae_, more to the northward, which, as I have just said, has been hitherto principally attended to.
In Welsh topography no designation scarcely recurs oftener than Gwent (or, according to Welsh pronunciation, and as it may be written, _Cwent_) in various modifications, as Gwyndyd, Gwenedd, Gynneth, Gwynne, &c. &c.; and on the authority of Gardnor's History of Monmouthshire (Appendix 14.), under which I willingly cloak my ignorance of the Welsh language, I learn that Gwent or Went is "spelt with or without a _G_, according to the word that precedes it, according to certain rules of grammar in the ancient British language, and that Venedotia for North Wales is from the same root." The author might certainly have said, "the same word Latinized." But exactly the same affinity or identity of names is found in a locality that suits the place we are in search of: in an arm of the Mediterranean stretching from Greece northwards; viz. in the Adriatic,