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name shews, is Frisian also; although, with a few exceptional localities in the very fenny districts, the language has been replaced by the German.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 is primâ facie evidence 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 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 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 before A.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 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 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.