did when the laws of the Old Frisian republic were composed, and when the so-called Old Frisian was the language of the country. So they did in the sixteenth century, when the popular poet, Gysbert Japicx, wrote in the Middle Frisian; and so they do now—when, under the auspices of Postumus and Hettema, we have[9] Frisian translations of Shakespeare's "As You Like it," "Julius Cæsar," and "Cymbeline."

Now the oldest Frisian is older than the oldest Dutch; in other words, of the two languages it was the former which was first reduced to writing. Yet the doctrine that it is the mother-tongue of the Dutch, is as inaccurate as the opposite notion of its being a mere provincial dialect. I state this, because I doubt whether the Dutch forms in -n, could well be evolved out of the Frisian in -r, or -a. The -n belongs to the older form,—which at one time was common to both languages, but which in the Frisian became omitted as early as the tenth century; whereas, in the Dutch, it remains up to the present day.

If the Frisian differ from the Dutch, it differs still more from the proper Low German dialects of Westphalia, Oldenburg, and Holstein; all of which have the differential characteristics of the Dutch in a greater degree than the Dutch itself.

The closest likeness to the Frisian has ceased to exist as a language. It has disappeared on the Continent. It has changed in the island which adopted it. That island is Great Britain.

No existing nation, as tested by its language, is so near the Angle of England as the Frisian of Friesland. This, to the Englishman, is the great element of its interest.[10]

The history of the Frisian Germans must begin with their present distribution. They constitute the present agricultural population of the province of Friesland; so that if Dutch be the language of the towns, it is Frisian which we find in the villages and lone farm-houses. And this is the case with that remarkable series of islands which runs like a row of breakwaters from the Helder to the Weser, and serves as a front to the continent behind them. Such are Ameland, Terschelling, Wangeroog, and the others—each with its dialect or sub-dialect.

But beyond this, the continuity of the range of language is broken. Frisian is not the present dialect of Groningen. Nor yet of Oldenburg generally—though in one or two of the fenniest villages of that duchy a remnant of it still continues to be spoken; and is known to philologists and antiquarians as the Saterland dialect.

It was spoken in parts of East Friesland as late as the middle of the last century—but only in parts; the Low German, or Platt-Deutsch, being the current tongue of the districts around.

It is spoken—as already stated—in Heligoland.

And, lastly, it is spoken in an isolated locality as far north as the Duchy of Sleswick, in the neighbourhood of Husum and Bredsted.

It was these Frisians of Sleswick who alone, during the late struggle of Denmark against Germany,[11] looked upon the contest with the same indifference as the frogs viewed the battles of the oxen. They were not Germans to favour the aggressors from the South, nor Danes to feel the patriotism of the Northmen. They were neither one nor the other—simply Frisians, members of an isolated and disconnected brotherhood.

The epithet free originated with the Frisians of Friesland Proper, and it has adhered to them. With their language they have preserved many of their old laws and privileges, and from first to last, have always contrived that the authority of the sovereigns of the Netherlands should sit lightly on them.

Nevertheless, they are a broken and disjointed population; inasmuch, as the natural inference from their present distribution is the doctrine that, at some earlier period, they were spread over the whole of the sea-coast from Holland to Jutland, in other words, that they were the oldest inhabitants of Friesland, Oldenburg, Lower Hanover, and Holstein. If so, they must have been the Frisii of Tacitus. No one doubts this. They must also have been the Chauci of that writer, the German form of whose names, as we know from the oldest Anglo-Saxon poems, was Hocing. This is not so universally admitted; nevertheless, it is difficult to say who the Chauci were if they were not Frisians, or why we find[12] Frisians to the north of the Elbe, unless the population was at one time continuous.

When was this continuity disturbed? From the earliest times the sea-coast of Germany seems to have been Frisian, and from the earliest times the tribes of the interior seem to have moved from the inland country towards the sea. Their faces were turned towards Britain; or, if not towards Britain, towards France, or the Baltic. I believe, then, that as early as 100 B.C. the displacement of some of the occupants of the Frisian area had begun; this being an inference from the statement of Cæsar, that the Batavians of Holland were, in his own time, considered to have been an immigrant population. From these Batavians have come the present Dutch, and as the present Dutch differ from the Frisians of A.D. 1851, so did their respective great ancestors in B.C. 100—there, or thereabouts. But the encroachment of the Dutch upon the Frisian was but slow. The map tells us this. Just as in some parts of Great Britain we have Shiptons and Charltons, whereas in others the form is Skipton and Carlton; just as in Scotland they talk of the kirk, and in England of the church;[2] and just as such differences are explained by the difference of dialect on the[13] part of the original occupants, so do we see in Holland that certain places have the names in a Dutch, and others in a Frisian form. The Dutch compounds of man are like the English, and end in -n. The Frisians never end so. They drop the consonant, and end in -a; as Hettema, Halberts-ma, &c. Again—all three languages—English, Dutch, and Frisian—have numerous compounds of the word hám=home, as Threekingham, Eastham, Petersham, &c. In English the form is what we have just seen. In Holland the termination is -hem, as in Arn-hem, Berg-hem. In Frisian the vowel is u, and the h is omitted altogether, e.g., Dokk-um, Borst-um, &c.

Bearing this in mind, we may take up a map of the Netherlands. Nine places out of ten in Friesland end in -um, and none in -hem. In Groningen the proportion is less; and in Guelderland and Overijssel, it is less still. Nevertheless, as far south as the Maas, and in parts of the true Dutch Netherlands, where no approach to the Frisian language can now be discovered, a certain per-centage of Frisian forms for geographical localities occurs.[3]

The remainder of the displacement of the Frisians was, most probably, effected by the introduction[14] of the Low Germans of the empire of Charlemagne, into the present countries of Oldenburg and Hanover; and I believe that the same series of conquests, which then broke up the speakers of the Frisian, annihilated the Germanic representatives of the Anglo-Saxons of England; since it is an undeniable fact that of the numerous dialects of the country