Reference on Numbers of Saxons

Eduard Selleslagh edsel at glo.be
Fri Dec 1 16:20:36 UTC 2000


----- Original Message -----
From: <JoatSimeon at aol.com>
Sent: Tuesday, November 28, 2000 8:14 AM

> In fact, when it emerges into the light of documentary day, Old English is a
> remarkably conservative West Germanic language still mutually comprehensible
> with the ancestors of Netherlandish, Frisian, and Low German, not to mention
> the nascent Scandinavian tongues.  Which is why English missionaries were so
> important in the conversion of the continental Germans.

[Ed Selleslagh]

I don't know that much about the conversion of the Germans, but I always
learned that in the (Frankish and Ingwaeonic) Low Countries most missionaries
were Irish, like the legendary (possibly mythical) Sint Brandaen (St. Brendan).
I wonder if they spoke some Low-Germanic language as well. There are also other
traces of Irish influence in legends, e.g. that of the Irish princess (later
declared martyr-saint) Dympna (Dumna), patron saint of the mentally ill,
treated in families in the Flemish town of Geel.

On the other hand, it is quite true that it is hard to determine whether some
texts are OE or Old Dutch (e.g. the famous pre-1100 'Hebban olla vogala nestas
bigunnan, hinase hic enda thu' text found in Oxford, I think). The main problem
here is the extreme scarcity of Old Dutch texts: the Franks and their
Flemish/Dutch descendants wrote mostly in Latin (fortunately sometimes with
glosses).

Ed.



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