Notes
Virtually no particulars are known of the ealiest generations of Franks.
A good introduction to the Merovingian Franks is found in Gene Gurney's,"Kindoms of Europe", on pages 52-54 :
"That race of people which had been driving the Celts westward for six orseven hundred years was finally making its way into Gaul. They had beenheld back only by Roman Skill. This race as a general name was calledTeutonic, but it divided into many different nations. The people werelarge-limbed, blue-eyed, and light-haired. They all spoke a language likerough German, and all had the same religion, beleiving in the greatwarlike gods, Odin, Thor, and Frey.They worshiped them at stone altars,and expected to live with them in the hall of heroes after death - thatis, all so-called who were brave and who were chosen by the
'Valkyr', or 'slaughter-choosing godess', to die nobly in battle. Cowardswere sent to dwell with Hela, the pale, gloomy godess of death.
They had lived for at least five hundred years in the center of Europe ,now and then attacking their neighbors, when they were harassad byanother, fiercer race, who was pushing them from the east. The chieftribes were the Goths, who conquered Rome and settled in Spain; theLongbeards, or Lombards, who spread over the north of Italy; theBurgundians (burg or town people), who held all the country around theAlps; the Swabians and Germans, who stayed in the middle of Europe; theSaxons, who dwelt around the south of the Baltic, and finally conquered
south Britain; the Northmen, who found a home in Scandanavia; and theFranks, who had been long settled on the Rivers Sale, Meuse, and Rhine.
There were two tribes of Franks - the Salian, from the River Sale, andthe Ripuarian. They were great horsemen and dreadful pillagers, and theSalians had a family of kings, which, like the kings of all the othertribes, were supposed to have been descended from Odin. The king wasalways of this family, called Meerwings, after Meerwing - or Merovech -the son of Pharamond, one of the first chiefs." The anglicised name forthe Meerwing would be "Merovingian".
Matman posted to soc.genealogy.medieval on 28 May 1997:
Subject: Re: PHARAMOND
"Faramund is not mentioned by Roman historians of the 4-5th centuries orGregory of Tours (c.570/90), hence most modern historians omit anyreference to him as a historical person. The reason why he turns up in somany genealogies etc, is that the 8th century Liber Historiae Francorum(ch.5) says that Faramund was the son of Sunno and father of Chlodio.
Now Sunno is known from the earlier sources: GT II, 9 quotes (?) a Romansource which says he was one of the chieftains who invaded Gaul and weredefeated by the Romans (c.389 AD), and elsewhere, GT reports thetradition that Meroveus was the son of Chlodio.
Historians have tended to regard Faramund as an invention to bridge thegap between Sunno and Clodio, and so establish a dubious dynasticcontinuity."
Luke Stevens comments:
Actually, the Liber Historiae Francorum makes Faramund the son ofMarcomir (Sunno being mentioned as king, but not in the genealogy), inturn the son of Priam of Troy, in a display of gross confusion. In theking lists Faramund is almost always reckoned as the first king of theFranks. All the sources mentioning Faramund are somewhat late, so wecannot be certain whether he was even real.
Faramund's ancestry is sometimes traced back to Sicambrian kings of thefifth century BC, or even further, but this is based entirely on a forgedchronicle composed by Johannes Trithemius in the 16th century.
