From the book "The Birth of France Warriors, Bishops and Long-Haired Kings" by Katharine Scherman, ISBN 0-394-56089-2, page 101:
From a mythical beginning in Troy, the Franks eventually settled in Pannonia. There the Romans employed the Franks to drive the perverse and rotten Alans out of Pannonia, and because of the hardness and daring of their hearts the Emperor Valentinian called the Trojans Franks. In the Attic tongue Frank means fierce. The Franks now rose against their
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allies and killed the Roman tax collectors, arousing the anger of the emperor, who sent a large force against them. The battle was a draw, but the Franks left the insecurity of Pannonia and traveled northwest to the farthest reaches of the Rhine River where the Germans' strongholds are located. After many years they chose Faramund, and raised him up as the long-haired king above them. Raising up means the raising on a shield of an elected chieftain by his warriors. This was the first time the Franks had a single king, and the unauthenticated Faramund whose name does not appear in written histories before the 7th century, was the direct ancestor of the dynasty of the Merovingians. The tentative date of his election was AD 418.

From the book "The Birth of France Warriors, Bishops and Long-Haired Kings" by Katharine Scherman, ISBN 0-394-56089-2, page 36-7:
The basis of the German society was the family. Gradually the nuclear family grew into an extended sibling group, or tribe, which included non-blood relatives and adopted outsiders. Some tribes had a chief known as a kuning (king), a Teutonic word meaning man of the kin. While the Germans were still nomadic the king's position was largely honorary, and it was not hereditary; he was elected from one of the noble families. His position was dependent on the will of the entire male body of the tribe. The warriors assembled in a field. At the meetings they resolved on war, dispensed justice and, if necessary, elected a new king. They ritualized their choice by raising him on a shield and carrying him around the field. While many of the young men were out winning their places in the sagas, their countrymen in the hinterland pursued lives of unsparing simplicity. The Germans had a manly distaste for tilling the soil, and their domestic pursuits were mainly pastoral.
[page 39]
Herds of cattle constituted their chief wealth and milk, cheese and meat their main diet. They tended to stay in one place only until the pasture gave out. No one owned land. Temporary holdings were assigned to each family at the discretion of the chief. The result was to prevent people from settling into the placidity of soil cultivation and losing their fine enthusiasm for war. They would begin building comfortable houses and then they would no longer be hardened by exposure to the climate as they were in their mud-and-wattle huts. A further deterrent to agriculture was the tribal practice of decimating the countryside around the settlement; besides foiling invasions by the neighbors, this effectively frustrated potential homemakers.
Chastity was expected. It was considered unhealthy for a young man to have intercourse before the age of 20. Though women had no political or property rights, they were surrounded by an atmosphere of reverence. Though the German wife could not go to the assemblies where her armed relatives arranged the fates of her husband and sons, she was with them when they went to battle. She brought food and encouragement to the field, she tended the wounded and rallied the failing courage of her men by representing with tears and bared bosom the horrors of captivity. Marriage was held in deep respect. When a woman married she became the property of her husband. Monogamy was obligatory. Before the wedding the couple exchanged gifts.
[page 40]
She received no feminine trinkets, but a horse, a shield, a lance and a sword! She gave him more weapons. The men wore short, many-colored tunics, leaving their legs bare above the heavy laced boots. Around the waist was a broad deerskin belt studded with bronze bosses, and over the shoulders a cloak of bright colored wool or matched animal skins. On their bare arms they might wear a massive gold arm band and around their necks a twisted gold torque; fastening the cloak at the shoulder was a gold fibula adorned with precious stones. The men's hair, unbound, blowed over their shoulders and their faces were shaven but for long mustaches. The woman's basic garment was a long straight underdress of fine skins or wool; over it she wore an embroidered linen tunic attached at the shoulders with brooches and circled with an embossed leather belt. Her hair fell loose and was bound across the forehead with a fillet of twisted gold wire. The ate lots of wild onions and ripe venison, and oiled their hair with rancid butter. Once married, the woman became a drudge. While her husband's only domestic concern was protection and defense of his property, she worked in the field, tended the herds, managed the household, and reared her children. When he was not off fighting, he spent the idle hours feasting, drinking, quarreling and listening to bards extemporize on his exploits.
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The women bore as many children as possible. When the women accompanied their men to war the entourage included all the children.
[page 55]
One of the barbarian groups living on the right bank of the Rhine in today's Belgium, Holland and West Germany was the Sicambrians, or Salians (so called for their home on the Sala River, the old name for the Yssel in central Netherlands).
[page 56]
The composition of the group fluctuated with the still nomadic tendencies of the tribes, but by the 3rd century AD they had become a recognizable union. The Romans gave the name "Francia" to the lands they inhabited-the right bank of the Rhine from the area of Nijmegen in the Netherlands to the Coblenz in W Germany. In 241 they were first called 'Franks' by the historian Flavius Vospicus. Throughout the 3rd and 4th centuries the Sicanbrian league or the Franks engaged itself in a continuing series of attacks on northeastern Gaul. They were among the less advanced of the Teutons: they used neither horses nor armor, and went into battle half-naked in the old barbarian style, carrying only a primitive casting hatchet. In 276 they swept all the way down to the Pyrenees, capturing 60 Gallic cities. Probus, soldier-emperor, drove them back into their northern marshes. Later the Franks were recruited by the Romans to guard the Romans' Rhine border. In the early part of the 4th century, Constantine the Great inflicted a conclusive defeat on the Franks in their own home ground. Subsequent pretenders to the Imperial throne saw fit to enlist the aid of northern barbarians by rewarding them with Gallic lands. So the Franks began to achieve their heart's desire. Gradually the Franks relaxed their scorn for the drudgery of the plowman. In 358 the Emperor Julian decided that the Franks would make better allies than enemies. So he confirmed them in their occupation of Germania Inferior (today's provinces of Limberg and Brabant in Belgium), and made them 'foederati: they were able to enjoy limited Roman citizenship, and were liable to pay an annual tribute of cattle and to be conscripted into the Roman army. This was the first recognized permanent settlement of Franks in Roman Gaul.
[page 60]
the land that Emperor Julian had conceded to the Franks in Gaul was poor, boggy country compared with that immediately to the south. Eventually therefore, the Franks had to take up the despised toil of peasants. By the middle of the 5th century Franksh settlers occupied the areas of Thérouanne, Arras, Cambrai, and Tournai, in today's northwestern France and Belgium. The gradual occupation of Gaul by the Franks had the character of replacing rather than destroying the old order.
[page 61]
As the Franks metamorphosed into farmers their political focus began to change. In place of the war leaders, who had been elected for temporary purposes, the kuning or king, head of the clan and a peacetime leader, began to emerge as the political principal. Though still dependent on the will of the group, he tended with the years of peace to arrange ii so that the high station stayed in his family. Along with the king's honorary duties, went his responsibility to deal with the Romans: to arrange payment of tribute, to negotiate peace terms after battles, etc. It was preferable, therefore, that the chieftain display other qualities than battle courage and a strong throwing arm. As the position of king became hereditary, the family tended to grow aristocratic; the sons received an education and learned to speak some Latin so they could deal with Roman officialdom. The kuning dynasties grew haphazardly into traditional kingships. The Salian Franks held on to their leading family and in the 6th century began to call them Merovingians and to represent them as the first and only kings of the Franks.