The Ethnology of the British Islands Part 13

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 compa.s.s.

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 to A.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 islands A.D. 1639.

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

_Fohr._--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 into _u_-, and the _h_- being omitted, as Duns-_um_, Utters-_um_, Midl-_um_, &c.--and this is a sure sign of Frisian occupancy. In Fohr, too, the language is still current.

Of _Sylt_, 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 name _Saxon_ to 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.

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name shews, is Frisian also; although, with a few exceptional localities in the very fenny districts, the language has been replaced by the German.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 sanct.i.ty in the eyes of the Angle wors.h.i.+pper of the G.o.ddess 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, const.i.tuted 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 is _prima facie_ evidence of their being Frisian; for we should certainly argue that if Norfolk and Ess.e.x 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 a.s.sumed. The Frisian of Oldenburg can be traced 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 as A.D. 1452 the following inscription which was found on a font in Pelvorm was _un_-intelligible to the natives of Ditmarsh, who carried it off--"disse hirren Dope de have wi thon ewigen Ohnthonken mage lete, da schollen osse 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 dop di ha wi tun iwagen Unthonken mage leat, thiar skell us Biarner un kra.s.sent 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 before A.D. 1452.

That we are justified in a.s.suming 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 Ess.e.x, 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 the _Stormarii_, _Holtsati_, and _Ditmarsi_ were 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 repet.i.tion 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.

_Saxony_ and _Saxon_ we have seen to be, for the most part, general names for certain populations of considerable magnitude, populations which when investigated in detail have been Ostphali, Angrarii, Stormarii, &c., &c. Ptolemy alone a.s.signs to the word a _specific_ power, and in Ptolemy alone is the country of the Saxons the definite circ.u.mscribed area of a special population. Ptolemy, as has been already shewn, places the _Saxons on the neck of the Chersonese_ to 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 Dorsets.h.i.+re and Norfolk.

Before this point comes under consideration we must ask a question already suggested as to the _Saxons_ of 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 be shewn to have existed or need be a.s.sumed, 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 a.s.sumed,--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.

a.s.suming, 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 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 pa.s.s 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 a.s.sumed--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. They may have been Slavonians--a continuation of the Wagrian and Polabic populations of Eastern Holstein and Lauenburg.

To say, too, that Ptolemy's term _Saxon_ was a native name would be hazardous. We can only say that when we get definite information respecting the districts to which it applied it was _not_ so. It was no Nordalbingian name to the _Stormarians_, no Nordalbingian name to the _Holsatians_, no Nordalbingian name to the men of _Ditmarsh_, 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 the _wooded districts_ of _Holt_-satia, whose timber gave them the means of building s.h.i.+ps, 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.

Who spread it abroad? The Romans first, the Franks afterwards. They it was who called by the name of _Saxon_ men 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. a.s.suredly, 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 Westphalians _Old-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 -_s.e.x_ in the names Es-_s.e.x_, Wes-_s.e.x_, Sus-_s.e.x_, and Middle-_s.e.x_.

2. The name _Sax_-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 an _eponymus_.

3. The story about _nime eowre Seaxas_=_take your daggers_, and the deduction from it, that _Saxons_ meant _dagger-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 Germans _Saxon_.

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 evidently _Saxon_ than 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-_s.e.x_ is Saxon, and, as _Saxon_, something notably different from Suffolk which is _Angle_? It may have been so; yet the minutest ethnology ever applied has failed in detecting the _differentiae_. They have, indeed, been a.s.sumed, and an unduly broad distinction between the dialect of Angle and the dialects of Saxon origin has been drawn; but the distinction is unreal. Angle _North_umberland and Saxon _Sus_s.e.x differ from each other, not because they are Angle and Saxon, but because they are _north_ern and _south_ern counties. And so on throughout. The difference between Angle and Saxon Britain has ever been a.s.sumed to be _real_, whereas it may be but _nominal_.

Let us suppose it to be the latter, and _Saxon_ to have been the British name of the _Angle_--nothing more. What do names like Sus-_s.e.x_, &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. a.s.sume, 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 called _Angle_-land having been no _Angle_ but 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 subjects _Saxon_, he should change the name to _Angle_, is as unlikely as that a King of Prussia should propose that all Germany should be known as _Austria_. Of course, if the evidence in favour of the word _Saxon_ being 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. _Saxon_ is always a name that some one _may_ give to some one else, never one that he necessarily bears himself.

Were the conquerors, then, of Sus-_s.e.x_, &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 equally _Saxon_ in the eyes of the degenerate Romans and the corrupted Britons whom they conquered.

We are still dealing with the origin of the _name_. 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 as _Saxons_, and not as _Englishmen_. The only doubt has been as to how far it was _exclusively_ Keltic--_i.e._, non-Germanic.

Will the supposition of its being Keltic account for _all_ the facts connected with it? No. It will not account for the Finlanders using it.

They, like the Kelts, call the Germans _Saxon_. This, then, is a fresh condition to be satisfied. The hypothesis which does this is, that the name _Saxo_ was 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 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, the _prima facie_ evidence 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-_s.e.x_, &c., being Nordalbingian. All that we get from the British counties ending in -_s.e.x_ is, 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 that _Angle_ and _Saxon_ are, 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 names _Saxon_ and _Saxony_. 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, Britain, and Gaul, but because a great number of Germans were called by the name of a small tribe, just as the h.e.l.lenes of Thessaly, Attica, and Peloponnesus were called by the Romans, _Greeks_. The true _Graeci_ were a tribe of dimensions nearly as small in respect to the h.e.l.lenes at large as the Saxons of Ptolemy were to the Germans in general (perhaps, indeed, they were not h.e.l.lenic at all); yet it was the _Graeci_ whom the Romans identified with the h.e.l.lenes. No one, however, believes that the Graeci extended themselves to the extent of the term _Graecia_. 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 word _Saxon_.

_Saxon_, then, like _Greek_, was a general name. Nevertheless, they were specific _Saxons_ just as they were specific _Graeci_. These were the _Saxons_ of Ptolemy. When that author wrote, I believe them to have been either _Frisian_ or _Slavonians_, 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.