Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 3, 1892.djvu/438

 430 time of the Teutonic and Kimbrian invasion into Gaul and Italy, had no lack of athletic springiness and nimbleness of foot. Their performances were the wonder of the Romans, who were astounded to see Teutoboch, or Teutobod, jump over six horses. The dangerous sword- and spear-dances of the Germans, performed by their youth in a state of nakedness; the extraordinary swiftness of their foot warriors (velocitas peditum), which Tacitus also mentions; and their manifold gymnastic exercises during the Middle Ages—not to speak of our present Turn-Vereine in North and South—forbid the notion of flat-footedness being a Teutonic characteristic at all.

Professor John Rhys, on his part, says:—"Nobody now regards the bulk of the South Germans as of the same race as the tall, light-haired people of North Germany, or the Teutonic element of a somewhat similar type in this country." This sweeping assertion wants a great deal of modification. Compared with the North, the South of Germany shows, no doubt, a greater percentage of men of middle height, with brown hair and dark eyes. The explanation is to be found partly in some remnants of Rhaetian, Keltic, and Roman population, which became blended with their German conquerors; partly in later invasions and wars, which also left their mark.

Yet, take even a country like Bavaria—the largest, next to German Austria, in the southof our Fatherland. There, the statistics drawn up in all the schools, in accordance with Professor Virchow's suggestion, show that in Bavaria there are 66 per cent. of grey or blue eyes, and only 34 of brown ones; 54 per cent. of fair hair, 41 of brown, and only 5 per cent. of black, hair; 85 per cent. of white-skinned and only 15 per cent. of somewhat brownish-skinned, people. In these statistics, I need not say, the Jews are also included, who in Germany are more numerous than in any other European country, Russia excepted.

Again, in the coloured maps I have before me—and the communication of which, when they came out some years