But thus, at any rate, was Brandenburg (BOT or Burg of the BRENNS, whatever these are) first discovered to Christendom, and added to the firm land of articulate History: a feat worth putting on record. Done by Henry the Fowler, in the Year of Grace 928,--while (among other things noticeable in this world) our Knut's great-grandfather, GORMO DURUS, "Henry's Tributary," was still King of Denmark; when Harald BLUETOOTH (Blaatand) was still a young fellow, with his teeth of the natural color; and Swen with the Forked Beard (TVAESKAEG, Double-beard, "TWA-SHAG") was not born;and the Monks of Ely had not yet (by about a hundred years) begun that singing, [Without note or comment, in the old, BOOK OF ELYdate before the Conquest) is preserved this stave;--giving picture, if we consider it, of the Fen Country all a lake (as it was for half the year, till drained, six centuries after), with Ely Monastery rising like an island in the distance; and the music of its nones or vespers sounding soft and far over the solitude, eight hundred years ago and more.
Merie sungen the Muneches binnen Ely Tha Cnut ching rew therby:
Roweth enites near the lant, And here we thes Muneches saeng.
<italic> Merry <end italic> (genially) <italic> sang the Monks in Ely As Knut King rowed <end italic> (rew) <italic> there-by:
Row, fellows <end italic> (knights), <italic> near the land, And hear we these Monks's song. <end italic>
See Bentham's <italic> History of Ely <end italic> (Cambridge, 1771), p, 94.] nor the tide that refusal to retire, on behalf of this Knut, in our English part of his dominions.
That Henry appointed due Wardenship in Brannibor was in the common course. Sure enough, some Markgraf must take charge of Brannibor, --he of the Lausitz eastward, for example, or he of Salzwedel westward:--that Brannibor, in time, will itself be found the fit place, and have its own Markgraf of Brandenburg; this, and what in the next nine centuries Brandenburg will grow to, Henry is far from surmising. Brandenburg is fairly captured across the frozen bogs, and has got a warden and ninth-man garrison settled in it:
Brandenburg, like other things, will grow to what it can.
Henry's son and successor, if not himself, is reckoned to have founded the Cathedral and Bishopric of Brandenburg,--his Clergy and he always longing much for the conversion of these Wends and Huns; which indeed was, as the like still is, the one thing needful to rugged heathens of that kind.
Chapter II.
PREUSSEN: SAINT ADALBERT.
Five hundred miles, and more, to the east of Brandenburg, lies a Country then as now called PREUSSEN (Prussia Proper), inhabited by Heathens, where also endeavors at conversion are-going on, though without success hitherto. Upon which we are now called to cast a glance.
It is a moory flat country, full of lakes and woods, like Brandenburg; spreading out into grassy expanses, and bosky wildernesses humming with bees; plenty of bog in it, but plenty also of alluvial mud; sand too, but by no means so high a ratio of it as in Brandenburg; tracts of Preussen are luxuriantly grassy, frugiferous, apt for the plough; and the soil generally is reckoned fertile, though lying so far northward. Part of the great plain or flat which stretches, sloping insensibly, continuously, in vast expanse, from the Silesian Mountains to the amber-regions of the Baltic; Preussen is the seaward, more alluvial part of this,--extending west and east, on both sides of the Weichsel (VISTULA), from the regions of the Oder river to the main stream of the Memel. BORDERING-ON-RUSSIA its name signifies: BOR-RUSSIA, B'russia, Prussia; or --some say it was only on a certain inconsiderable river in those parts, river REUSSEN, that it "bordered" and not on the great Country, or any part of it, which now in our days is conspicuously its next neighbor.
Who knows?--
In Henry the Fowler's time, and long afterwards, Preussen was a vehemently Heathen country; the natives a Miscellany of rough Serbic Wends, Letts, Swedish Goths, or Dryasdust knows not what;--very probably a sprinkling of Swedish Goths, from old time, chiefly along the coasts. Dryasdust khows only that these PREUSSENwere a strong-boned, iracund herdsman-and-fisher people; highly averse to be interfered with, in their religion especially.
Famous otherwise, through all the centuries, for the AMBER they had been used to fish, and sell in foreign parts.
Amber, science declares, is a kind of petrified resin, distilled by pines that were dead before the days of Adam; which is now thrown up, in stormy weather, on that remote coast, and is there fished out by the amphibious people,--who can likewise get it by running mine-shafts into the sandhills on their coast;--by whom it is sold into the uttermost parts of the Earth, Arabia and beyond, from a very early period of time. No doubt Pytheas had his eye upon this valuable product, when he ventured into survey of those regions,--which are still the great mother of amber in our world.
By their amber-fishery, with the aid of dairy-produce and plenty of beef and leather, these Heathen Preussen, of uncertain miscellaneous breed, contrived to support existence in a substantial manner; they figure to us as an inarticulate, heavy-footed, rather iracund people. Their knowledge of Christianity was trifling, their aversion to knowing anything of it was great.
As Poland, and the neighbors to the south, were already Christian, and even the Bohemian Czechs were mostly Converted, pious wishes as to Preussen, we may fancy, were a constant feeling: but no effort hitherto, if efforts were made, had come to anything.