Frisians

FRISIANS, —in classical Latin Frisii, in mediaeval Latin Frisones or Frisiones, and on inscriptions of the later empire sometimes Frisaevones,— a people of Teutonic stock, who, at their first appearance in history, are found in possession of the same district of Europe which they still, at least partially, occupy. So far as can be judged they have never been of an aggressive disposition, and it is not improbable that at one time they may have possessed a much wider territory than history usually assigns them. The boundaries of Frisia proper are the Scheldt towards the west, and the Weser towards the east, and it never extended far inland from the coast of the German Ocean. But there is also a district of Schleswig in Denmark, extending along the west coast from the Eider northwards to Töndern, in which the common language still gives evidence of a Frisian population; the same may be said of the neighbouring islands of For, Silt, Heligoland, &c.; and it is no improbable supposition that not only the Ditmarsch district to the south of the Eider, but also the whole maritime country westward to the Weser, was at an earlier period in the hands of distinctly Frisian tribes. If the presence of geographical names ending in urn, the Frisian equivalent to the German heim and the Saxon ham, may be taken as sufficient evidence of Frisian occupation, Dr Latham, in his notes to the Germania of Tacitus, has elaborately shown that there have been Frisian settlements as far north in Denmark as the Lijmfiord, and as far east as the islands of Funen and Zealand. By the older historians of Denmark and the countries of Lower Germany, the Frisian district in Denmark is frequently called Frisia Minor or Lesser Frisia, which, however, must not be confounded with the unexplained distinction which Tacitus makes between Frisii Majores and Frisii Minores.

The history of the Frisians, in spite of the labours of a few investigators like Wiarda and Richthofen, has hitherto been left in many respects in a very fragmentary and untrustworthy condition; and rash assertions of uncritical chroniclers have undisputed currency. For this neglect the principal reason is undoubtedly the fact that the people have, at least in modern times, displayed no strong political individuality, but have allowed themselves peacefully to be merged in more powerful nationalities. The reader who wishes may find the legendary history of the Frisian heroes traced from the 4th century b.c. in Furmius’s Annalium Phrisicorum Libri Tres, Franeker, 1699, or in the quaintly-illustrated volumes of Westphal’s Scriptores rerum Dani-carum, which comprise Petrus Sax De prc.cipuis rebus gestis Frisiorum septentrionalium breviter descriptis et iconice adumbratis libri sex ; Suffridus Petri De antiq. et orig. Frisiorum ; Antonius Heimreich, Supplementa ad Chronicon Frisiae seρtentr., &c.

The Frisians were so far rendered tributary by Drusus that they continued to pay to the Romans a tax of oxhides until the foolish exactions of Olennius, who demanded that all the hides should be of a certain superlative quality drove them to revolt in 28 A.D. They defeated the Roman forces under Lucius Apronius, and though Corbulo obtained hostages for their future loyalty, and “gave them a senate, magistrates, and a constitution” (Tacitus, Ann. xi. 20), their subjugation was little more than nominal. About 57 A.D. a body of Frisians took possession of lands reserved for the Roman soldiers; and, instead of removing at the threat of the Roman governor, they sent their chiefs to Rome to obtain imperial sanction for their occupancy. In the 13th book of his Annals, Tacitus tells how the chiefs, Verritus and Malorix, as he calls them, excited the amusement and admiration of the people by taking, unasked, their seat among the senators in Pompey’s theatre, when they heard that strangers from nations distinguished by their bravery and friendship to the Romans were advanced to that honourable position. Nero gave them both the Roman franchise, but refused to sanction the presumption of their tribe, who were afterwards expelled from the district which they had sought to colonize.

It is not till the new power of the Franks was beginning to lay the foundations of its empire that the Frisians again come prominently into notice; but it appears probable that in the meantime they had shared with their neighbours, the Angles and the Saxons, in the conquest of England and Scotland, though to what extent it is impossible to ascertain. The Frankish king, Dagobert I. (622-638), sought to secure a footing among them by erecting a mission church at U trecht on the Frisian frontiers, but the Frisians captured the place and destroyed the church. The preaching of Amandus aud Eligius had little effect, and the honour of being the first successful missionary among the Frisians was left to Wilfrid of York, who in 677-678 was hospitably received by the king Aldegild (Adgillus or Aldgisl). Under Aldegild’s successor Radbod a persecution of the new faith ensued, and though Radbod was driven from West Friesland by King Pippin, after the battle of Dorstadt in 689, he maintained his independence in Eastern Frisia, and Christianity was safe only as far as the wavering frontier of the Franks extended. On Pippin’s death, Radbod not only recovered his western territory, but sailed up the Rhine as far as Cologne, and defeated Charles Martel. His successor, Aldegild II., was again driven eastward; the western districts fell finally into the power of the Franks; and Willibrord, the missionary, who had begun his labours in the country about 700, obtained a permanent see at Utrecht. The last independent prince of the Frisians, Poppo, was defeated by Charles Martel in 754, and Charlemagne still further extended the Frankish authority. At the same time he granted the Frisians important privileges, gave them the title of freemen, and allowed them to choose their own podestat (potestas), who should govern them under the protection of the empire. About this time the country of the Frisians was divided into three distinct districts :—Western Frisia, stretching from the Sincfal to the Fly or Flevum, that is, from the modern Zwiu (a branch of the Scheldt northward of Bruges) to the Meuse; Middle Frisia, from the Fly to the Laubach, that is, from the Meuse to the Zuyder Zee; and Eastern Frisia, from the Zuyder Zee to the Weser. At the treaty of Verdun (843) Frisia went with Lotharingia; at the treaty of Mersen (870) the district between the Laubach and the Weser was assigned to the kingdom of the Eastern Franks, while the rest, with Lotharingia, passed to the kingdom of the Western Franks; in 880 the whole country was again united with Germany; and in 911, when Lotharingia recognized Charles, the king of the West, Frisia adhered to Conrad, the king of the East. The history of West Frisia gradually loses itself in that of the bishopric of Utrecht and the countship of Holland,—the first count of Holland, Thierry L, being the son of Gerulph, count of Frisia, and practically continuing the Frisian line. In 1248 William of Holland, having become emperor, restored to the Frisians in his country their ancient liberties in reward for the assistance they had rendered him in the siege of Aix la-Chapelle; but in 1254 they revolted, and William lost his life in the contest which ensued. William IV. received a new donation of West Frisia in 1345. Meanwhile, the rest of the Frisians in the more eastern districts maintained their independence, and for a long time governed themselves after a very simple republican fashion. Each of the seven confederated Frisian maritime states— “Sieben Friesischen Seelande”—had its own administration, and consisted of a number of locally independent districts, ï or matters of general concern there was an annual assembly at the Upstalsbom, or “Tree of the Superior Court,” near Aurich. According to Okko Leding, who in 1878 published at Emden an interesting study on Die Freiheit der Friesen im Mittelalter und ihr Bund mit den Versammlungen bei Upstalsbom, it appears that these assemblies were allowed to fall into desuetude in the first half of the 13th century, were resumed from 1323 to 1327, anew discontinued, and again resumed in 1361. The counts disappear in East Frisia about the end of the 11th century, and in Middle Frisia after 1233. Though in religious matters nominally subject to the bishopric of Bremen, it was not till the crusade of 1234, aud the famous defeat of the Stedingers (a people of the Weser marches) in the battle of Altenesch or Oldenesch, that the Frisians really recognized the authority of the Romish Church. In the course of the 14th century the whole country was in a state of anarchy; petty lordships sprang into existence, the interests of the common weal were forgotten or disregarded, and district carried on hostilities against district. Thus the Fetkoopers or Fatmongers, as they were called, of Ostergo, had endless feuds with the Schieringers or Eelfishers of Westergo.

This state of matters favoured the attempts of the counts of Holland to push their conquests further, but the main body of the Frisians were still independent when the countship of Holland passed into the hands of Philip the Good of Burgundy. Philip laid claim to the whole country, but the people appealed to the protection of the empire, and Frederick III. in August 1457 recognized their direct dependence on the empire, and called on Philip to bring forward formal proof of his rights. Philip’s successor, Charles the Rash, summoned an assembly of notables at Enckhuysen in 1469, in order to secure their homage; but the conference was without result, and the duke’s attention was soon absorbed by other and more important affairs. In 1498 Maximilian detached the country between the Laubach and the Fly from the empire, and gave it as a fief to Albert of Saxony, but it was the Schieringers alone (the name had by this time become the title of the popular faction) who submitted uncomplainingly to the arrangement, and the Fetkoopers, or faction of the nobility, had to be put down by force of arms. This the duke did with the utmost severity, and his successors carried out his despotic policy with only too faithful consistency.

In Eastern Frisia the anarchy was brought to a close by the formation of a confederation established in 1430, and the election of Edzard Cirksena to the office of president. Ulrich, the successor of Edzard, was made count of the country between the Ems and the Weser by the emperor Frederick III. in 1454. In the early part of the IGth century the Reformation was introduced by Edzard I., who patronized the preaching of Meister Jörgen von der Düre, or Magister A portanus, as he was called in Latin. Under the Countess Anna, who ruled during the minority of her son Edzard II., the countship became, mainly through the agency of John a Lasco, the seat of a very flourishing Protestant church, and the refuge of the persecuted of many lands. Edzard II. proved an able ruler, published a body of laws for his people in 1515, introduced primogeniture into his family, extended his authority over Harlinger-land and Jever, and was appointed by Charles V. governor of Groningen. His successor, Edzard III., was made a prince of the empire by Ferdinand III. in 1654. By the death of Charles Edzard, in 1744, the male line of the dynasty came to an end, and the king of Prussia took possession of the countship. After various vicissitudes, it was ceded to Hanover, in 1815.

The Frisian language is a member of the Low German branch of the Teutonic, and presents special interest to the English philologist as the nearest of all extant forms to the Saxon basis of his own tongue. It is still spoken in the country districts of the present province of West Friesland; in a much more Germanized condition it still exists in Saterland, in East Friesland; in strangely differentiated dialects it holds its own in many of the islands along the coast; and, in spite of the encroachments of Low German on the one hand, and Danish on the other, it survives in the country between Husum and Töndern. Among its peculiarities may be mentioned the dropping of the final n, which is such a favourite termination in German (thus even ma for man, as in Halbertsma, the proper name); the use of sk for the German sch and English sh, and of t for tho German k; and, still more remarkable, the modification of k and g into ts when these letters precede e or i, as in tserke for kerke, t,e., kirk, church. The explanation of this last peculiarity may perhaps be found in tho contact of the Frisian with Slavonic languages, in which the modification is sufficiently common.

A brief sketch of Frisian grammar was published along with the poems of Gysbert Japicx; but the first separate treatment of the older forms of ,the language was by Rask, whose Frisisk Sproglaere (Copenhagen, 1825; German translation by Buss, Freiburg, 1834) brought him into controversy with Grimm, who, in his Deutschen Grammatik, devoted some attention to the same subject. Moritz Heyne has also given a good treatment of Frisian in his Kurze Laut-und Flexionslehre der Altgermanischen Sprachstämmc, 1874. Richthofen’s Altfriesisches Wörterbuch, Göttingen, 1840, practically supplanted the older work of Wiarda (Aurich, 1786), and its position has not been affected by the publication of Haan Hattema’s Idioticon Frisicum, Leeuwarden, 1874. Outzen’s Glossarium der Friesischen Sprache (unfortunately a posthumous publication from very illegible manuscripts), Copenhagen, 1837, deals mainly with North Frisian. For West Frisian we have the posthumous and incomplete Lexicon Frisicum (A-Feeor), by Justus Halbertsma, The Hague, 1874; and for East Frisian lexicography we have materials in Ehrentraut’s Friesisches Archiv, Oldenburg, 1847-54, 2 vols., Posthumus and Halbertsma’s Onze reis naar Sageltesland, Franeker, 1836, and J. Cadovius Müller’s Memoriale linguae frisicae, written in the early part of the 18th century, and published by Dr Kiikel-han, 1875. J. ten Doornkaat Koolman began in 1877 a Wörterbuch der Ostfriesischen Sprache, which, along with much irrelevant matter, contains valuable contributions to the subject. The Ostfriesisches Wörterbuch, by Sturenburg (1857), is a dictionary, not of Frisian, but of the Low German spoken in East Friesland, which has incorporated comparatively few Frisian words. A list of Frisian personal names forms an appendix to Outzen’s Glossarium ; and Bernhard Brons, in his Friesische Namen und Mittheilungen Dir über, Emden, 1877, furnishes lists of East, West, and North Frisian Christian names, and a collection of Frisian family names, with the dates at which they make their first appearance in church books or other historical documents.

For the older forms of the language the sources are unfortunately scanty: no great literary monument like that of the Heliand or the Nibelunglied has been preserved, and the investigator has mainly to depend on the various legal codes or collections which were formed in the course of the 14th and 15th centuries, and have been published by Richthofen, Friesische Rechtsquellen, Berlin, 1840. The great Lev Frisionum is composed in Latin, and only contains a few Frisian terms, of comparatively small linguistic importance. The date of its recension is also a matter of conjecture, as there is no contemporary evidence either internal or external. By the older investigators it was assigned a high antiquity; but the more modern are for the most part of opinion that it is not earlier than the reign of Charlemagne. Haan Hettema in his Oude Fricsche Wetten gives 802-804 as the probable date; while Richthofen thinks there are three portions, the first composed for use in Middle Frisia in the reign of Charles Martel or of Pippin, another for use in all Frisia, composed after Charlemagne’s conquest in 785, and a third or supplementary and emendatory portion composed in 802. The first edition of tho Lex Frisionum was published by B. J. Herold in his Originum ac Germanicarum Antiquitatum libri, Basel, 1557, but he gives no indication of the source of the manuscripts which he employed. Since his day there have been no fewer than than 13 editions—Lindenbrog, Codex legum Antiquarum, Frankfort, 1613; Sibrand Siccama, Lex Frisionum, Franeker, 1617; Schotanus, Beschryυingβ van de Heerlyckheit van Frieslandt, 1664; Gartner, Saτonum leges très: accessit Lex Fris., Leipsic, 1730; Georgisch, Corpus juris Germanici, Halle, 1738; Schwartzenberg, Groot Placaat en Charterboek van Friesland, Loeuwarden, 1768; Canciani, Barbarorum leges antiquae, Venice, 1781; Walter, Corpus juris German., Berlin, 1824; Gaujpp, Lex Fris. , Breslau, 1832; Richthofen, Friesische Rechtsquellen, Berlin, 1840; De Wall, Lex Fris., &c., Amsterdam, 1850; Hettema, Oude Fr. Wetten, Leeuwarden, 1851; and, finally, Richthofen in Pertz’s Mon. Germanice hist., vol. xv., Hanover, 1863. Though it has been supposed that Lindenbrog and Siccama may have had access to some manuscript authority in addition to Herold’s recension, there is no proof that such was the case; and the text still remains to all intents in the same state as when Herold left it. Some investigators have, owing to this absence of original evidence, even cast doubts on the authenticity of the code, but a comparison of the laws with undoubtedly genuine Frisian remains authorizes its acceptance. “I am convinced,” says Richthofen, “that no man in the time of Herold, not to say in our own time, could have devised such a forgery as the Heroldian text.” Among the minor collections of Frisian laws in Frisian, Low German and Latin are tho “seventeen general acts or Kürenf dating from the close of the 12th century, according to Richthofen, but of much earlier origin according to Leding—the Upstalsbom laws of 1323, the local laws of Rüstring, and of the Brockmannen or inhabitants of Brockmerland, published by Wiarda; the “Emsiger Domen,” or Emsig decisions, published by Hettema, Leeuwarden, 1830; the Fivelgo laws,‘published by Hettema, Dokkum, 1841; and the Hunsingo Küren in the 2d volume of the Groningen transactions of the society “pro excolendo jure patrio,” 1778. The title chosen by Wiarda for the laws of Rüstring—the Asegabuch, — though it has become perhaps the best known word of the whole Frisian vocabulary, is in reality not a genuine Frisian form, and never occurs in a Frisian document. The correct expression, according to Richthofen (Altfries. Wörterbuch, s.v. “Asebok”), would have been Asebok or Asekbok, the former equivalent to the book out of which the “a” or law is to be seen, and the latter to tho book in which the law is to be sought. In West Frisia the native language holds much tho same relation to Dutch as the Scottish language holds to English in Scotland: it has no legal or educational position, but it preserves among the peasantry a considerable degree of vitality, and is even cultivated in a literary way by a small patriotic school. The chief place among West-Frisian authors is duo to Gysbert or Gilbert Japicx, rector at Bolsward, whose Fricsche Rijmlerye was first published at Bolsward in 1668, and has since been frequently reprinted—at Leeuwarden in 1681; at Franeker, 1684; with aglossary by Epkema, 2 vols., Leeuwarden, 1824; and under the editorship of Dykstra, 1853. The volume contains secular, and especially humorous, poems, fifty of the Psalms of David and other religious pieces, a number of letters, one or two prose essays, and fragments of the “Customs” of Leeuwarden. A popular comedy called Waatze Gribbert’s Brilloft, or Gribbcrt's Bridal, dates from the beginning of the 18th century. The first edition appeared in 1812, at Leeuwarden, and the second in 1820, and there have been several since. Among the writers who have published in West Frisian during the 19th century, it is sufficient to mention Salverda Posthumus, J. H. Halbertsma, Deketh, Windsma, Van der Veen, and Dykstra. A society for the study of Frisian was founded in 1829 at Franeker—“Friesch genootschap voor geschied-oudheid-en taalkunde,”—and since 1852 it has published ajournai called De vrije Fries. Other Frisian periodicals are Forjü my net, “Forget me not;” the Sιoannc-blummen, a Leeuwarden annual; and De Byekocr. In North Frisian the most valuable literary monument is De gidtshals, i.c., the Geizhals, or Curmudgeon , a comedy, composed by J. P. Hunsen, in the Silt dialect. The minor remains have been collected by De Vries, in his Nordfricsische Sprache nach der Moringer Mundart, Leyden, 1860; and by Johansen in Die Nordfriesische Sprache nach der Föhringcr und Amrumer Mundart, Kiel, 1862.

There is one book which, more than any other, has attracted the attention of other than Frisian scholars. If the 0era Linda book, as it is called, could be accepted as genuine, it would be, after Homer and Hesiod, the oldest document of European origin; but unfortunately it must be recognized as nothing more than a brilliant forgery. The first part of the manuscript, the book of the followers of Adela, professes to have been copied in 1256 from an ancient original, and gives an account of Neptune, Minerva, Minos, and other personages of classical antiquity, which would make them out to be of Frisian origin. According to J. Beckering Vinckers— who published De Oncchtheid van het Oera Linda bôk aangetoond uit de waartaal waarin het is geschrevcn, in 1875, and Wie heeft het Ocra Linda Bock geschreven in 1877—the real author is Cornelis Over de Linden, a ship-carpenter in the Royal docks at Den Helder, who was born in 1811, and died in 1873, and who appears to have forged the document for the purpose of giving importance to his invectives against the church, and of shedding dignity on his family, which is traced by the book back for about two thousand years.

Besides the works indicated above the following may be mentioned :—Ubbo Emmius, Rerum Frisicarum historia, Leyden, 1616; Pirius Winsemius, Chronique .... van Friesland, Franeker, 1622; Wiarda, Ostfries. Geschichte, vols. 1-9, Aurich, 1791-1813, vol. 10, Bremen, 1817; Clement, Lebens- u. Leidensgeschichte Frieslands der Friesen, Kiel, 1845; Suur, Geschichte der Häuptlinge Ostfricslands, Emden, 1846; Klopp, Gesch. Ostfrieslands, Weener, 1868-69; Friedländer, Ostfries. Urkundenbuch, Emden, 1874