FOOTNOTES:

He with Ealhild,Faithful peace-weaver,[157]For the first time,Of theHreth-kingSought the home,East of Ongle,Of Eormenric,The fierce faith-breaker.

Now, although the usual notions respecting the locality of the great Gothic empire of Hermanric are rather invalidated than confirmed by this extract, the relation between theHrethsandOngleis exactly that between theReudigniandAngli. Neither are there other facts wanting which would bring the rule of Hermanric as far north as the latitude of the Angli, though not, perhaps, so far east. His death is said to have been occasioned by the revolt of twoRhoxalanianprinces. Now the Rhoxalani were, at least, as far north as the Angli, however much farther they may have lain eastwards.

But in the same poem we meet with the name in the simple formHræd; for, when we remember that one of the Icelandic notices of Reidhgotaland is that it lay tothe east of Poland, we may fairly infer that Reidhgotaland was the country of the nation mentioned in the following passage:—

Eadwine I sought and Elsa,Ægelmund and Hungar,And the proud hostOf the With-Myrgings;Wulfhere I sought and Wyrnhere;[158]Full oft war ceas'd not there,When theHræds'army,With hard swords,AboutVistula'swoodHad to defendTheir ancient native seatAgainst the folk of Ætla.

Such faint light then as can be thrown upon the Reudigni of Tacitus disconnects them with the Angli both geographically and ethnologically, connecting them with the Prussians, and placing them on the Lower Vistula.

The Aviones.—The Aviones are either unknown to history, or known under the slightly modified form ofChaviones. Maximian conquers them aboutA.D.289. His Panegyrist Mamertinus associates them with the Heruli. Perhaps, theObiiare the same people. If so, they cross the Danube in conjunction with the Langobardi, and are mentioned, as having done so, by Petrus Patricius.

TheEudoseswill be noticed when Ptolemy's list comes under consideration.

So will theSuardones.

No light has ever been thrown on theNuithones.

Over and above the Saxons, to whom a special chapter will be devoted,Ptolemy'slist contains:—

1.The Sigulones.—The Saxons lay to the north of Elbe, on the neck of the Chersonese, and[159]the Sigulones occupied the Chersonese itself, westwards. Two populations thus placed between the Atlantic and the Baltic, immediately north of the Elbe, leave but little room for each other.

"Then," writes Ptolemy, "come—

"2.The Sabalingii.—then—

"3.The Kobandi.—above these—

"4.The Chali.—and above them, but more to the west—

"5.The Phundusii.—more to the east—

"6.The Charudes.—and most to the north of all—

"7.The Cimbri."

8.The Pharodinilay next to the Saxons, between the Rivers Chalusus and Suebus.

Tacitus' geography is obscure; Ptolemy's is difficult. One wants light. The other gives us conflicting facts. Neither have the attempts to reconcile them been successful. The first point that strikes us is the difference of the names in the two authors. No Sigulones and Sabalingii in Tacitus. No Nuithones and Reudigni in Ptolemy. Then there is the extremely northern position which the latter gives the Cimbri. His Charudes, too, cannot well be separated from Cæsar's Harudes. Nevertheless, their area is inconveniently distant from the seat of war in the invasion of Gaul under Ariovistus, of whose armies the Harudes form a part. The River Chalusus is reasonably[160]considered to be the Trave. But the Suebus is not the Oder; though the two are often identified: inasmuch as the geographer continues to state that after the Pharodini come "the Sidini to the river Iadua" (the Oder?), "and, after them, the Rutikleii as far as the Vistula."

Zeuss has allowed himself to simplify some of the details by identifying certain of the Ptolemæan names with those of Tacitus. Thus he thinks that, by supposing the original word to have beenΣφαρόδ-ινοι, theΦαρόδιν-οιandSuardon-es may be made the same.Kobandi, too, he thinks may be reduced toChaviones, orAviones. Thirdly, by the prefixΦ, and the insertion of N,Eudos-es may be converted intoΦουνδοῦσ-ιοι.

Those who know the degree to which the modern German philologists act upon the doctrine thatTruth is stranger than Fiction, and, by unparallelled manipulations reconcile a so-called iron-bound system of scientific letter-changes with results as extraordinary as those of the Keltic and Hebraic dreamers of the last century, will see in such comparisons as these nothing extraordinary. On the contrary, they will give them credit for being moderate. And so they are: for it is extremely likely that whilst Tacitus got his names from German, Ptolemy gothisfrom Keltic, or Slavonic, sources; and if such be the case, a very considerable latitude is allowable.[161]

Yet, even if we make the Cobandi, Aviones; the Phundusii, Eudoses; and the Pharodini, Suardones (probably, also, theSweordwere, of the Traveller's Song), the geographical difficulties are still considerable. Saxons on the neck of the Chersonese (say in Stormar) with Sigulones (say in Holstein) to the west of them are fully sufficient to stretch from sea to sea; butbeyond(and this we must suppose to be in awesterlydirection) are the Sabalingii, and then the Kobandi; above (north of) these the Chali (whom we should expect to be connected with the river Chalusus), and west of these the Phundusii. Similar complications can easily be added.

The meaning of the wordSabalingiiis explained, if we may assume a slight change in the reading. How far it is legitimate, emendatory critics may determine; but by transposing the B and L, the word becomesSa-lab-ingii. The Slavonic is the tongue that explains this.

1. The Slavonic name of theElbeisLaba; and—

2. The Slavonic forTransalbian, as a term for the populationbeyond the Elbe, would beSa-lab-ingii. This compound is common. The Finns of Karelia are calledZa-volok-ian, because they live beyond thevolokorwatershed. The Kossacks of the Dnieper are calledZa-porog-ian, because they live beyond theporogorwaterfall.[162]The population in question I imagine to have been calledSa-lab-ingian, because they lived beyond the Laba, or Elbe.

Now a name closely akin toSalabingianactually occurs at the beginning of the Historical period. The population of the Duchy of Lauenburg is (then) Slavonic. So is that of south-eastern Holstein; since the Saxon area begins with the district of Stormar. So is that of Luneburg. And the name of these Slavonians of the Elbe isPo-lab-ingii(on the Elbe), just asPo-mor-aniais the countryon the sea. Of thePo-labingians, then, theSa-labingii were the section belonging to that side of the Elbe to which the tribe that used the term didnotbelong. Such are the reasons for believing the name to be Slavonic.

There are specific grounds, of more or less value, then, for separating the Angli from, at least, the following populations—the Varini, the Reudigni, the Eudoses, the Phundusii, the Suardones, the Pharodini, and the Sabalingii (Salabingii?); indeed, the Sigulones and Harudes seem to be the only Germans of two lists. The former, I think, was Frisian rather than Angle, the latterOldSaxon rather than Anglo-Saxon; for, notwithstanding some difficulties of detail which will be noticed in another chapter, theCharudesmust be considered the Germans of theHartz. The Sigulones, being placed so definitely to thewest[163]of the Saxons, were probably the Nordalbingians of Holsatia.[19]

The last complication which will be noticed is in the following extract from Ptolemy.—"But of the inland nations far in the interior the greatest are that of theSuevi Angeili, who are east of the Longobardi, stretching to the north, as far as the middle parts of the river Elbe, that of theSuevi Semnones, who, when we leave the Elbe, reach from the aforesaid (middle) parts, eastwards, as far as the River Suêbus, and that of the Buguntæ next in succession, extending as far as the Vistula."—Lib. ii. c. xi.

This connexion of the Angles with the Suevi requires notice; though it should not cause any serious difficulty. The termSuevi, orSuevia, is used in a very extensive signification, denoting the vast tracts east of the better known districts of Germany; and in a similar sense it is used by both Tacitus and Cæsar. The notion of any specific connection with theSueviof Suabia is unnecessary.

It has already been stated that in the Traveller's Song the Kingdom of Hermanric is placedeast of Ongle. Either this means that the one country was east of the other, in the way that Hungary is east of the Rhine, or else an unrecognized[164]extension must be given to one of the two areas.

In one part of the poem in question the form is notOnglebutEngle—

"MidEnglum ic wæs, and mid Swæfum—WithEngles I was, and with Sueves."—Line121.

The result of the previous criticism is—

1. That the Angli of Germany distinguished, by the use of that form of speech which afterwards became Anglo-Saxon, from the Slavonians of south-eastern Holstein, Lauenburg, Luneburg, and Altmark, from the Old Saxons of Westphalia, and from the Frisians of the sea-coast between the Ems and Elbe, occupied, with the exceptions just suggested, the northern two-thirds of the present Kingdom of Hanover.

2. That they were the only members of the particular section of the German population to which they belonged,i.e., the section using the Anglo-Saxon rather than the Old Saxon speech.

Their relations to the population of the Cimbric Chersonese will form the subject of the next chapter.

FOOTNOTES:[15]Zeuss ad vv.Rugiani,Warnabi.[16]From the "Germania of Tacitus with Ethnological Notes."[17]As a general rule, I believe that the combination -ing, represents a German, the combination -igna Slavonic, word.[18]In v.Jutæ.[19]SeeChapter ix.

[15]Zeuss ad vv.Rugiani,Warnabi.

[16]From the "Germania of Tacitus with Ethnological Notes."

[17]As a general rule, I believe that the combination -ing, represents a German, the combination -igna Slavonic, word.

[18]In v.Jutæ.

[19]SeeChapter ix.

[165]

THE SAXONS—OF UPPER SAXONY—OF LOWER OR OLD SAXONY.—NORDALBINGIANS.—SAXONS OF PTOLEMY.—PRESENT AND ANCIENT POPULATIONS OF SLESWICK-HOLSTEIN.—NORTH-FRISIANS.—PROBABLE ORIGIN OF THE NAME SAXON.—THE LITTUS SAXONICUM.—SAXONES BAJOCASSINI.

Theethnologist of England has to deal with a specific section of those numerous Germans, who, in different degrees of relationship to each other, have been known, at different times, under the name ofSaxon; a name which has by no means a uniform signification, a name which has been borne by every single division and subdivision of the Teutonic family, the Proper Goths alone excepted. At present, however, he only knows that the counties of Es-sex, Sus-sex, and Middle-sexare the localities of the East-Saxons, the South-Saxons, and the Middle-Saxons, respectively; that in the sixth and seventh centuries there was a Kingdom of Wes-sex, or the West-Saxons; thatAngleandSaxonwere nearly convertible terms; and that Anglo-Saxonis the name of the English Language in its oldest known stage. How these names came to be so nearly synonymous, or how certain south-eastern counties of England and a German[166]Kingdom on the frontier of Bohemia, bear names so much alike as Sus-sexandSax-ony, are questions which he has yet to solve.

The German Kingdom of Saxony may be disposed of first. It is chiefly in name that it has any relation to the Saxon parts of England. In language and blood there are numerous points of difference. The original population was Slavonic, which began to be displaced by Germans from the left bank of the Saale as early as the seventh century; possibly earlier. The language of these Slavonians was spoken in the neighbourhood of Leipsic as late as the fourteenth century, and at the present time two populations in Silesia and Lusatia still retain it—the Srbie, and Srskie. Sorabi, Milcieni, Siusli, and Lusicii, are the designations of these populations in the time of Charlemagne; and, earlier still, they were included in the great name of Semnones. It is only because they were conquered from that part of Germany which was calledSaxoniaorSaxenland, or else because numerous colonies of the previously reduced Saxons of the Lower Weser were planted on their territory, that their present name became attached to them. Slavonic in blood, and High German in language, the Saxons of the Upper Elbe, or the Saxons of Upper Saxony, are but remotely connected with the ancestors of the Anglo-Saxons of Britain.[167]

In Upper Saxony, at least, the name is not native.

LowerSaxony was the country on theLowerElbe, and also of theLowerWeser, and until the extension of the name to the parts about Leipsic and Dresden, was simply known asSaxonia, or the Land of theSaxones; at least, the qualifying adjectiveLowermade no part of the designation.Saxonywas what it was called by the Merovingian Franks, as well as the Carlovingians who succeeded them. Whether, however, any portion of theindigenæso called itself is uncertain. In the latter half of the eighth century it falls into three divisions, two of which are denoted by geographical or political designations, and one by the name of a native population.

The present district ofWest-phalia was one of them; its occupants being calledWest-falahi,West-falai,West-fali. These were the Saxons of the Rhine. Contrasted with these, theEast-phalians (Ost-falai,Ost-falahi,Ost-fali,Oster-leudi,Austre-leudi,Aust-rasii), stretched towards the Elbe.

Between the two, descendants of theAngri-varii of Tacitus, and ancestors of the present Germans of the parts aboutEngern, lay theAngr-arii, orAng-arii.

An unknown poet of the eighth century, but[168]one whose sentiments indicate a Saxon origin, thus laments the degenerate state of his country:

"Generalis habet populos divisio ternos,Insignita quibus Saxonia floruit olim;Nomina nunc remanent virtus antiqua recessit.DeniqueWestfalosvocitant in parte manentesOccidua; quorum non longe terminus amneA Rheno distat? regionem solis ad ortumInhabitantOsterleudi, quos nomine quidamOstvalosalii vocitant, confinia quorumInfestant conjuncta suis gens perfida Sclavi.Inter predictos media regione moranturAngarii, populus Saxonum tertius; horumPatria Francorum terris sociatur ab Austro,Oceanoque eadem conjungitur ex Aquilone."

The conquest of Charlemagne is the reason for the language being thus querulous; for, unlike Upper Saxony, the Saxony of the Lower Weser, the Saxony of the Angrivarii, Westfalii, and Ostfalii, was truly the native land of an old and heroicGermanpopulation, of a population which under Arminius had resisted Rome, of a population descended from the Chamavi, the Dulgubini, the Fosi, and the Cherusci of Tacitus, and, finally, the land of a population whose immediate and closest affinities were with the Angles of Hanover, and the Frisians of Friesland, rather than with the Chatti of Hesse, or the Franks of the Carlovingian dynasty.

How far are these the Saxons of Sus-sex, Es-sex,[169]and Middle-sex? Only so far as they were Angles; and, except in the parts near the Elbe, they were other than Angle. This we know from their language, in which a Gospel Harmony, in alliterative metre, a fragmentary translation of the Psalms, and a heroic rhapsody called Hildubrant and Hathubrant have come down to us.

The parts where the dialects of these particular specimens were spoken are generally considered to have been the country about Essen, Cleves, and Munster; and, although closely allied to the Anglo-Saxon of England, the Westphalian Saxon is still a notably different form of speech. It was the Angle language in its southern variety, or (changing the expression) the Angle was the most northern form of it.

We have seen thatSaxonyandSaxonwere no native terms on the Upper Elbe. Were they so in the present area—in Westphalia, Eastphalia, and the land of the Angrivarii? Tacitus knows no such name at all; and Ptolemy, the first writer in whom we find it, attaches it to a population of the Cimbric Peninsula. Afterwards, in the third and fourth centuries it is applied by the Roman and Byzantine writers in a general sense, to those maritime Germans whose piracies were the boldest, and whose descents upon the Provinces of Gaul and Britain were most dreaded. Yet nowhere can we find a definite tract of country[170]upon which we can lay our finger and saythis is the land of Saxons, saving only the insignificant district to the north of the Elbe, mentioned by Ptolemy. From the time of Honorius to that of Charlemagne,Saxois, likeFranc, a general term applied, indeed, to the maritime Germans rather than those of the interior, and to those of the north rather than the south, yet nowhere specifically attached to any definite population with a local habitation and a name to match. Whenever we come to detail, the Saxons of the Roman writers become Chamavi, Bructeri, Cherusci, Chauci, or Frisii; while the Frank details are those of the Ostphali, Westphali, and Angrivarii.

But the Frank writers under the Merovingian and Carlovingian dynasties are neither the only nor the earliest authors who speak of the Hanoverians and Westphalians under the general name ofSaxon. The Christianized Angles of England used the same denomination; and, as early as the middle of the eighth century, Beda mentions the Fresones, Rugini, Dani, Huni,Antiqui Saxones, Boructuarii.—Hist. Eccles.5, 10. Again—the Boructuarii, descendants of the nearly exterminated Bructeri of Tacitus, and occupants of the country on the Lower Lippe, are said to have been reduced by the nation of theOld Saxons(a gente Antiquorum Saxonum). In other records we find the epithetAntiquitranslated by the native[171]wordeald(=old) and the formation of the compoundAltsaxones—Gregorius Papa universo populo provinciæAltsaxonum(vita St. Boniface). Lastly, the Anglo-Saxon writers of England use the termEald-Seaxan(=Old-Saxon). And this form is current amongst the scholars of the present time; who call the language of theHeliand, of the so-calledCarolinian Psalmsand ofHildebrant and Hathubrant, theOld-Saxon, in contradistinction to theAnglo-Saxon of Alfred, Cædmon, and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. The authority of the Anglo-Saxons themselves justifies this compound; yet it is by no means unexceptionable. Many a writer has acquiesced in the notion that the Old-Saxon was neither more nor less than the Anglo-Saxon in a continental locality, and the Anglo-Saxon but the Old-Saxon transplanted into England. Again—the Old-Saxons have been considered as men who struck, as with a two-edged sword, at Britain on the one side, and at Upper Saxony on the other, so that the Saxons of Leipsic and the Saxons of London are common daughters of one parent—the Saxons of Westphalia.

The exact relations, however, to the Old-Saxons and the Anglo-Saxons seem to have been as follows:—

The so-called Old-Saxon is the oldWestphalian[172]—

The so-called Anglo-Saxon the oldHanoverianpopulation.

Their languages were sufficient alike to be mutually intelligible, and after the conversion of the Angles of England, who became Christianized aboutA.D.600, the extension of their own creed to the still Pagan Saxons of the Continent became one of the great duties to the bishops and missionaries of Britain; who, although themselves of Hanoverian rather than Westphalian extraction, looked upon the whole stock at large as their parentage, and called their cousins (so to say) in Westphalia, and their brothers in Hanover, by the collective termOld-Saxon.

All the Angles, then, of theSaxoniaof the Frank and British writers of the eighth century were Saxon, though all the Saxons were not Angle.

Eastphalia, the division which must have been the mostAngle, reached as far as the Elbe.

But there was, also, a Saxony beyond Eastphalia, a Saxony beyond the Elbe; the country of theSaxones Transalbiani; other names for its occupants beingNord-albingi(=men to the north of the Elbe), and Nord-leudi (=North people). The poet already quoted, writes—

Saxonum populus quidam, quos claudit ab AustroAlbis sejunctim positos Aquilonis ad axem.HosNordalbingospatrio sermone vocamus.

[173]In this case as before,Saxonis a generic rather than a particular name. The facts that prove this give us also the geographical position of the Nordalbingians. They fell into three divisions:

1. TheThiedmarsi,Thiatmarsgi, orDitmarshers, whose capital was Meldorp—primi ad Oceanum Thiatmarsgi, et eorumecclesia Mildindorp—

2. TheHolsati,Holtzati, orHoltsætan, from whom the present Duchy of Holstein takes its name—dicti a sylvis, quas incolunt.[20]The river Sturia separated the Holsatians from—

3. TheStormarii, or people ofStormar; of whom Hamburg was the capital—Adam Bremens:Hist. Eccles.c. 61.

These are the Nordalbingians of the eighth century. Before we consider their relations to the Westphalian and Hanoverian Saxons the details of the present ethnology of the Cimbric Peninsula are necessary. At the present moment Holstein, Stormar, and Ditmarsh are Low German, or Platt-Deutsch, districts; the High German being taught in the schools much as English is taught in the Scotch Highlands. Eydersted also is Low German, and so are the southern and eastern parts of Sleswick. Not so, however, the western. Facing the Atlantic, we find an[174]interesting population, isolated in locality, and definitely stamped with old and original characteristics. They are as different from the Low Germans on the one side as the Dutch are from the English; and they are as little like the Danes on the other. They are somewhat bigger and stronger than either; at least both Danes and Germans may be found who own to their beingbigger if not better. They shew, too, a greater proportion of blue eyes and flaxen locks; though these are common enough on all sides. That breadth of frame out of which has arisen the epithetDutch-built, is here seen in its full development; with a sevenfold shield of thick woollen petticoats to set it of. So that there are characteristics, both of dress and figure, which sufficiently distinguish theNorth-Frisianof Sleswick from the Dane on one side and the German on the other.

It is only, however, in the more inaccessible parts of their country that thedifferentiæof dress rise to the dignity of a separate and independentcostume. They do so, however, in some of those small islands which lie off the coast of Sleswick; three of which are supposed to have been thethree islands of the Saxons, in the second and third centuries. A party, which the writer fell in with, fromFöhr, were all dressed alike, all in black, all in woollen, with capes over[175]the heads instead of bonnets. "Those," says the driver, who was himself half Dane and half German, "are from Föhr. They have been to Flensburg to see one of their relations. He is a sailor. They are all sailors in Föhr. Some of them, perhaps, smugglers—they all dress so—I can't speak to them—my brother can—he has been in England, and an Englishman can talk to them—they talk half Danish and half Platt-Deutsch, and half English—more than half. They were Englishmen once—a good sort of people—took no part in the war—did not much care for the Danes, though the Danes took pains to persuade them—so did the Germans, but they did not much care for the Germans either—strong men—good soldiers—good sailors—Englishmen, but not like the Englishmen I've seen myself. My brother's been in London and America, and can talk with them."

What is thus said about their English-hood is commonly believed by the Danes and Germans of the Frisian localities. They are English in some way or other, though how no one knows exactly. And many learned men hold the same view. It is a half-truth. They are more English, and, at the same time, more Dutch, than any of their neighbours; more so than either Dane or German, but for all that they are something that is neither English nor Dutch. They areFrisians[176]of the same stock as the Frisians of Friesland, whom they resemble in form, and dress, and manners, and speech, and temper, and history. But from the Frisians of the south they have been cut off for many centuries, partly by the hand of man, partly by the powers of Nature, partly by invasions from Germans, and partly by overwhelming inbreaks of the Ocean. There is a Frisian country in the south (the present Province of Friesland), and there is a Frisian country in the north (the tract which we are speaking of); and these are parts of theterra firma. But the Friesland that lay between the two is lost—lost, though we know where it is. It is at the bottom of the sea: forfeited, like the lava-stricken plains of Sicily, of Campania, and of Iceland, in the great game of Man against Nature—for it is not everywhere that Man has been the winner. The war of the Frisians against the sea has been the war not of the Titans against Jove, but of the Amphibii against Neptune.

Every Frisian—Frieseas he calls himself—is an agriculturist, and it is only in the villages that the Frisian tongue is spoken. In the towns of Ripe, Bredsted, and Husum, small as they are, there is nothing but Danish and German. But in all the little hamlets between, the well-built old-fashioned farm-houses, with gable-ends of vast breadth, and massive thatched roofs that make[177]two-thirds of the height of the house, and a stork's nest on the chimney, and a cow-house at the end, are Frisian; and, if you can overhear what they say amongst themselves, you find that, without being English it is somewhat like it.Womanis the word which sounds strangest to both the German and the Dane, and, it is generally the first instance given of the peculiarity of the Frisian language. "Why can't they speak properly, and sayKone?" says the Dane. "Weibis the right word," says the German. "Who ever sayswoman?" cry both. The language has not been reduced to writing; indeed, the little that has been done with it is highly discreditable to the Sleswick-Holstein Church Establishment. It is spoken by upwards of thirty thousand individuals; and when we remember that the whole population of Denmark is less than that of London and the suburbs, we see at once that a large proportion of it has been less heeded in respect to its spiritualities than the Gaels and Welsh of Great Britain.

You may distinguish a Frisian parish as the Eton grammar distinguishes nouns of the neuter gender. It isomne quod exit in -um; for so end nine out of ten of the Frisian villages. Now, throughout the whole length and breadth of the Brekkelums, and Stadums, &c., that lie along the coast, from Ripe north to Husum[178]south, there is not one church service that is performed in Frisian, or half-a-dozen priests who could perform it. No fraction of the Liturgy is native; nor has it ever been so. Danish there is, and German there is; German, too, of two kinds—High and Low. The High German is taught in the schools, and that well; so well, that nowhere are the answers of the little children more easily understood by such travellers as are not over strong in their language than in theFriesecountry. Nevertheless, it is but a well-taught lesson; and by no means excuses the neglect of the native idiom.

As things are at present, this is, perhaps, all for the best. The complaint lies against the original neglect of the Frisian; and itsgravamenis the sad tale it so silently tells of previous centralization—by which is meant arbitrary and unjustifiable oppression; for at no distant time back, the Frisians must have formed a very considerable proportion of the Sleswickers, and, at the beginning of the Historical period, the majority. And yet it was not thought of Christianizing them through their own tongue; a tongue which, because it has never been systematically reduced to writing, conscientious clergymen say is incapable of being written. As if the Frisian of Friesland, the Frisian of the south, had not been the language of law and poetry for more than eight[179]hundred years, and, as if it were a bit harder to write, or print, the northern dialect of the same, than it was for Scotland to have a literature. For the tongue is no growth of yesterday. It may, possibly, be as much older as any other tongue of the Peninsula as the Welsh is older than the English. That it is older than some of them is certain. Amateur investigators of it there are, of course. Outzen, the pastor of Brekkelum, was the father of them; and honourable mention is due to the present clergyman in Hacksted. As a general rule, however, the religion of Sleswick has been centralized.

The literature, as far as it has been collected, consists of a wedding-song of the fifteenth century, to be found in Camerarius, with addition of, perhaps, a dozen suchmorceauxas the following approaches to song, epigram, and ballad, respectively.

Læt foammen kom ins jordt to meh,Ik hêv en blanken daaler to deh,Di væl ik deh vel zjönke,Dæ sjællt du beh meh tjönke,Læt foammen, &c.

Ik[21]væl for tusend daaler ejDat ik het haad of vaas,Den lüp ik med den rump ombejEn vöst ekj vær ik var.

[180]

Diar kam en skep bi Sudher SiöeMe tri jung Fruers ön di Floot.Hokken wiar di fördeorst?Dit wiar Peter Rothgrun.Hud säät hi sin spooren?Fuar Hennerk Jerkens düür.Hokken kam tö Düür?Marrike sallef,Me Krük en Bekker ön di jen hundh,En gulde Ring aur di udher hundh.Jü nöödhight höm en sin Hinghst in,Död di Hingst Haaver und Peter wün.Toonkh Gott fuar des gud dei.Al di Brid end bridmaaner of wei,Butolter Marri en Peter allüning!Jü look höm ün to KestEn wildh höm nimmer muar mest.

Little woman come in the yard to me,I have a white dollar for thee;I will give it youSo that you think of me.

I would not for a thousand dollars,That my head were off,Then should I run with my trunk,And know (wiss) not where I was.

There came a ship by the South Sea,With three young wooers on the flood;Who was the first?[181]That was Peter Rothgrun.Where set he his tracts?For Hennerk Jerken's door.Who came to door?Mary-kin herself,With a pitcher (crock) and beaker in the one hand,A gold ring on the other hand.She pressed him and his horse (to come) in,Gave the horse oats and Peter wine.Thank God for this good day!All the brides and bridesmen out of the way!Except Mary and Peter alone.She locked him up in her box,And never would miss him more.

This was what became of Peter; who is, perhaps, the most legendary and heroic of the North-Frisians—so that the development in this line lies within a small compass.

The Isle of Nordstand is Low German (Platt-Deutsch) in language, but in blood and pedigree is Frisian; as, indeed, it was in speech up toA.D.1610. Then came a great inundation, which destroyed half the cattle of the island, and beggared its inhabitants; who were removed by their hard-hearted lord the Count of Gottorp to the continent, and replaced by Low Germans.

The island of Pelvorm is in the same category with Nordstand, the population being essentially Frisian though the Platt-Deutsch form of speech has replaced the native dialect; which was spoken in both islandsA.D.1639.[182]

Amrom partially preserves it; though the Frisian character is less marked than in—

Föhr.—Here all the names which in English would end in -ham, in High German in -heim, in Low German in -hem, and in Danish in -by(as Threking-ham, Mann-heim, Arn-hem, Wis-by) take the form in -um, the vowel being changed intou-, and theh- being omitted, as Duns-um, Utters-um, Midl-um, &c.—and this is a sure sign of Frisian occupancy. In Föhr, too, the language is still current.

OfSylt, the southern part has its names in the Frisian form; as Horn-um, Mors-um, &c. The northern half, however, is Danish, and the villages end in -by.

Such is the present area of North-Frisians; which we shall see lies north of that of the Nordalbingians.

Nevertheless, the present writer believes that, either there was no difference whatever between the Angles and the Saxons, or that the Saxons were North-Frisians.

Let us, for a while, allow the nameSaxonto be so little conclusive as to the ethnological position of these same Nordalbingians as to leave the question open.

The first fact that meets us is the existence of the Frisians of Holland not only south of the Elbe but south of Weser.[183]

East Friesland, as its name shews, is Frisian also; although, with a few exceptional localities in the very fenny districts, the language has been replaced by the German.

Notwithstanding, too, its sanctity in the eyes of the Angle worshipper of the Goddess Hertha, Heligoland at the beginning of the Historical period was not exactly Angle. It was what the opposite coast was—Frisian. And Oldenburg was Frisian as well; indeed the whole area occupied by the two great nations of antiquity—the Frisii and Chauci—was neither Old-Saxon nor Angle-Saxon. It differed from each rather more than they differed from each other, and, accordingly, constituted a separate variety of the German tongue.

So that there were, and are, two Frisian areas, one extending no farther north than the Elbe, and the other extending no farther south than the Eyder.

And between these two lies that of the Nordalbingians. This alone isprimâ facieevidence of their being Frisian; for we should certainly argue that if Norfolk and Essex were English, Suffolk was English also. Of course, it might not be so: as intrusion and displacement might have taken place; but intrusion and displacement are not to be too lightly and gratuitously assumed. The Frisian of Oldenburg can be traced[184]up to the Elbe, and the Frisian of Sleswick can be followed down to the Eyder.

Eydersted, however, and Holstein are Low German. Were they always so? Of Eydersted, Jacob Sax, himself a Low German of the district, writes,A.D.1610, that "the inhabitants besides the Saxon, use their own extraordinary natural speech, which is the same as the East and West Frisian."

For Ditmarsh the evidence is inconclusive. But one or two names end in -um.

As early asA.D.1452 the following inscription which was found on a font in Pelvorm wasun-intelligible to the natives of Ditmarsh, who carried it off—"disse hirren Döpe de have wi thön ewigen Ohnthonken mage lete, da schollen össe Berrne in kressent warde"="this here dip (font) we have let be made as an everlasting remembrance: there shall our bairns be christened in it." Clemens translates this into the present Frisian of Amrom, which runs thus—"thas hirr döp di ha wi tun iwagen Unthonken mage leat, thiar skell üs Biarner un krassent wurd." Still, Clemens thinks that the dress and domestic utensils of the present Ditmarshers are more Frisian than Platt-Deutsch. Now whatever the ancient tongue of Ditmarsh may have been, it was not the present Platt-Deutsch; yet, if it were Frisian, it had become obsolete beforeA.D.1452.[185]

That we are justified in assuming an original continuity between the North and South Frisian areas may readily be admitted. There are, of course, reasonable objections against it—the want of proof of Frisian character of the language of Ditmarsh being the chief. Still, the principle which would lead us to predicate of Suffolk what we had previously predicated of Norfolk and Essex, induces us to do the same with the district in question, and to argue that if Eydersted, to the North, and the parts between Bremen and Cuxhaven, to the South, were Frisian, Ditmarsh, which lay between them, was Frisian also.

But this may have been the case without the Nordalbingians being Frisian; since an Angle movement, northward and westward, may easily have taken place in the sixth, seventh, or eighth centuries; in which case theStormarii,Holtsati, andDitmarsiwere Angle; intrusive, non-indigenous, and, perhaps, of mixed blood—but still Angle.

I am not prepared, however, to go further at present upon this point than to a repetition of a previous statement, viz.: that if the Saxons of Anglo-Saxon England were other than Angles under a different name, they were North-Frisians.

SaxonyandSaxonwe have seen to be, for the most part, general names for certain populations[186]of considerable magnitude, populations which when investigated in detail have been Ostphali, Angrarii, Stormarii, &c., &c. Ptolemy alone assigns to the word aspecificpower, and in Ptolemy alone is the country of the Saxons the definite circumscribed area of a special population. Ptolemy, as has been already shewn, places theSaxons on the neck of the Chersoneseto the north of the Chauci of the Elbe, and to the East of the Sigulones—there or thereabouts in Stormar. He also gives them three of the islands off the coasts of Holstein and Sleswick; though it is uncertain and unimportant which three he means. Hence, the Saxons of Ptolemy, truly Nord-albingian, coincide in locality with the subsequent Stormarii, the Sigulones being similarly related to the Holsatians. Yet neither the Saxones nor the Sigulones may have been the ancestors to their respective successors, any more than the Durotriges, or Iceni of England were the ancestors to the Anglo-Saxons of Dorsetshire and Norfolk.

Before this point comes under consideration we must ask a question already suggested as to theSaxonsof the ninth century. Were they Frisians or Angles?

Strongly impressed with the belief that no third division of the Saxon section of the Germans beyond that represented by the Angles of Hanover and the Old Saxons of Westphalia can[187]be shewn to have existed or need be assumed, I have thus limited the problem, although the third question as to the probability of their having been something different from either may be raised. I also believe that the Frisians reached Sleswick by an extension of their frontier, this being the reason why the original continuity of their area is assumed,—at the same time admitting the possibility of their having come by sea, in which case no such continuity is necessary. What we find on the Eyder, and also on the Elbe may fairly be supposed to have once been discoverable in the intermediate country.

Assuming, then, an original continuity of the Frisian area from Sleswick to the Elbe anterior to the conquest of Ditmarsh and Holsatia by the present Low German occupants to be a fair inference from the present distribution of the North Frisians, and the history of their known and recorded displacements, we may ask how far it follows that this displacement was effected by the ancestors of the present Holsteiners; in other words, how far it is certain that the present Holsteiners succeeded immediately to the Frisians. There is a question here; since the continuity may have been broken by a population which was itself broken-up in its turn. It may have been broken by Angle inroads even as early as the time of Tacitus. If so, the order of succession[188]would not be 1. Frisian, 2. Low German, but 1. Frisian, 2. Angle or Anglo-Saxon, 3. Low German.

The Holsati, Stormarii, and Ditmarsi were, most probably,Angle. That they were not the ancestors of the present Low-Dutch is nearly certain. The date is too early for this. It was not till some time after the death of Charlemagne that the spread of that section of the German family reached Holstein. That they were not Frisian is less certain, but it is inferred from the manner in which they are mentioned by the native poet already quoted; who, if he had considered the Frisians to have been sufficiently Saxon to pass under that denomination, would have carried his Nordalbingian Saxony as far as the most northern boundary of the North-Frisians.

The evidence, then, is in favour of the Nordalbingians having been Anglo-Saxon in the ninth century, and that under the name Stormarii, Holsati, and Ditmarsi. Were they equally so in the third,i.e., when Ptolemy wrote, and when the names under which he noticed them were Saxones and Sigulones? I should not like to say this. The encroachment upon the Frisian area—the continuity being assumed—may not have begun thus early. Nay, even the northward extension of the Frisian area may not have begun. I should not even like to say positively that the Saxons of Ptolemy were German at all.[189]They may have been Slavonians—a continuation of the Wagrian and Polabic populations of Eastern Holstein and Lauenburg.

To say, too, that Ptolemy's termSaxonwas a native name would be hazardous. We can only say that when we get definite information respecting the districts to which it applied it wasnotso. It was no Nordalbingian name to theStormarians, no Nordalbingian name to theHolsatians, no Nordalbingian name to the men ofDitmarsh, no Nordalbingian name to any of the islanders. It was no native name with any specific import at all. It was a general name applied to the countries in question, as it was to many others besides; and it was the Franks who applied it. It had been specific once; but, when it was so, no one knew who bore it, or who gave it. It may have been Slavonic applied to Slavonians, or German applied to Germans, or German applied to Slavonians, or Slavonic applied to Germans. Which was it?

Who bore it? In the first instance the occupants of the northern bank of the Elbe, and some of the islands of the coast of Holstein and Sleswick; men of thewooded districtsofHolt-satia, whose timber gave them the means of building ships, and whose situation on the coast developed the habit of using them to the annoyance of their neighbours. This is all that can be said.[190]

Who spread it abroad? The Romans first, the Franks afterwards. They it was who called by the name ofSaxonmen who never so called themselves,e.g., the Angrivarians, the Westphalians, the Saxons of Upper Saxony.

How did the Romans get it? From the Kelts of Gaul and Britain.

How came the Kelts by it? The usual answer to this: that they got it from the Saxons themselves, the Saxons being, of course, Germans. But the main object of the present chapter has been to shew the extremely unsatisfactory nature of the evidence of any Germans having so called themselves. Assuredly, if they stopped at the present point, the reasons for believing the name to have been native would be eminently unsatisfactory. The best fact would be in the language of Beda, who, as we have seen, called the WestphaliansOld-Saxons. But Beda often allowed himself to use the language of his authorities, most of whom wrote in Latin, and some of whom were Gauls or Britons.

But four fresh ones can be added—

1. There is the element -sexin the names Es-sex, Wes-sex, Sus-sex, and Middle-sex.

2. The nameSax-neot was that of a deity, whom the Old Saxons, on their conversion to Christianity, were compelled to foreswear. This gives us the likelihood of its being the name of aneponymus.[191]

3. The story aboutnimeþ eowre Seaxas=take your daggers, and the deduction from it, thatSaxonsmeantdagger-men, is of no great weight; with the present writer, at least. Still, as far as it goes, it is something.

4. The Finlanders call the GermansSaxon.

The necessity of getting as far as we can into the obscure problems connected with this word is urgent. One part of England is more evidentlySaxonthan another; at least, it bears certain outward and visible signs of Saxonism which are wanting elsewhere. What are we to say to this? That Es-sexis Saxon, and, asSaxon, something notably different from Suffolk which isAngle? It may have been so; yet the minutest ethnology ever applied has failed in detecting thedifferentiæ. They have, indeed, been assumed, and an unduly broad distinction between the dialect of Angle and the dialects of Saxon origin has been drawn; but the distinction is unreal. AngleNorthumberland and SaxonSussex differ from each other, not because they are Angle and Saxon, but because they arenorthern andsouthern counties. And so on throughout. The difference between Angle and Saxon Britain has ever been assumed to bereal, whereas it may be butnominal.

Let us suppose it to be the latter, andSaxonto have been the British name of theAngle—nothing[192]more. What do names like Sus-sex, &c., indicate? Not that the population was less Angle than elsewhere, but that it was more Roman or British—an important distinction.

Again—certain Frisians are stated by Procopius to have dwelt in Britain; though Beda makes no mention of them. Assume, however, that the Saxons of the latter writer were the Frisians of the former, and all is plain and clear. But, then, they should be more unlike the Angles than they can be shewn to have been.

But why refine upon these points at all? Why, when we admit the Nordalbingians to have been Angle, demur to their having called themselves Saxons? I do this because I cannot get over the fact of the king who first decreed that his kingdom should be calledAngle-land having been noAnglebut a West-Saxon. That he should give the native German name precedence over the Roman and Keltic is likely; but that, by calling himself and his immediate subjectsSaxon, he should change the name toAngle, is as unlikely as that a King of Prussia should propose that all Germany should be known asAustria. Of course, if the evidence in favour of the wordSaxonbeing native was of a certain degree of cogency, we must take the preceding improbability as we find it; but no such cogent evidence can be found.Saxonis always a name that some[193]onemaygive to some one else, never one that he necessarily bears himself.

Were the conquerors, then, of Sus-sex, &c., other than Nordalbingian? I do not say this. I only say that the evidence of their coming from the special district of Holstein does not lie in their name. Germans from the south of the Elbe would—according to the preceding hypothesis—have been equallySaxonin the eyes of the degenerate Romans and the corrupted Britons whom they conquered.

We are still dealing with the origin of thename. The Franks and Romans diffused and generalized, the Kelts suggested, it. That the name was Keltic is undenied and undeniable. The Welsh and Gaels know us to the present moment asSaxons, and not asEnglishmen. The only doubt has been as to how far it wasexclusivelyKeltic—i.e., non-Germanic.

Will the supposition of its being Keltic account forallthe facts connected with it? No. It will not account for the Finlanders using it. They, like the Kelts, call the GermansSaxon. This, then, is a fresh condition to be satisfied. The hypothesis which does this is, that the nameSaxowas applied by the Slavonians of the Baltic as well as by Kelts of the coasts of Gaul and Britain to the pirates of the neck of the Chersonese,—the Slavonic designation being[194]adopted by the Finlanders just as the Keltic was by the Romans.

And this supplies an argument in favour of the name having been native, since a little consideration will shew that, when two different nations speak of a third by the same name, theprimâ facieevidence is in favour of the population to whom it is applied by their neighbours applying it to themselves also.

Yet this is no proof of its being German: nor yet of the men of Wes-sex, &c., being Nordalbingian. All that we get from the British counties ending in -sexis, that in certain parts of the island, the British name for certain German pirates prevailed over the native, whereas, in others, the native prevailed over the British.

If this be but a trifling conclusion in respect to its positive results, it is one of some negative value; inasmuch, as when we have shewn thatAngleandSaxonare, to a great extent, the same names in different languages, we have rid ourselves of the imaginary necessity of investigating such imaginary differences as the difference of name, at the first view, suggests. We have also ascertained the historical import of the spread of the namesSaxonandSaxony. They spread, not because certain Saxons originating in a district no bigger than the county of Rutland, bodily took possession of vast tracts of country in Germany,[195]Britain, and Gaul, but because a great number of Germans were called by the name of a small tribe, just as the Hellenes of Thessaly, Attica, and Peloponnesus were called by the Romans,Greeks. The trueGræciwere a tribe of dimensions nearly as small in respect to the Hellenes at large as the Saxons of Ptolemy were to the Germans in general (perhaps, indeed, they were not Hellenic at all); yet it was theGræciwhom the Romans identified with the Hellenes. No one, however, believes that the Græci extended themselves to the extent of the termGræcia. On the contrary, every one admits that it was only the import of the name which became enlarged. And this I believe to have been the case with the wordSaxon.

Saxon, then, likeGreek, was a general name. Nevertheless, they were specificSaxonsjust as they were specificGræci. These were theSaxonsof Ptolemy. When that author wrote, I believe them to have been eitherFrisianorSlavonians, without saying which—Frisians, if we look for their affinities to the south of the Elbe; Slavonians, if we seek them to the east of the Bille.

Between the time of Ptolemy and the end of the fourth century, the name grew into importance, and became a name of terror to the Romans, Gauls, and Britons, who applied it to the northern Germans of the sea-board in general.[196]

The spread of the name along the sea-coast began in the fourth century. Claudian alludes to a naval victory over them

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