LL-L 'History' 2006.07.21 (03) [E]

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L O W L A N D S - L * 21 July 2006 * Volume 03
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From: 'Ben J. Bloomgren' <godsquad at cox.net>
Subject: LL-L 'History' 2006.07.20 (05) [E]

"Deutsche Dogge",
which is known to the world as Great Dane, although they have nothing to do
with Denmark.

Gabriele and all, I have never heard Dogge among my German friends. Is this
a Lowland substraight or something? What's the etymology of the English word
dog?
Ben

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From: Paul Finlow-Bates <wolf_thunder51 at yahoo.co.uk>
Subject: LL-L 'History' 2006.07.20 (05) [E]

    Gabriele wrote:

    Blame it all on Charlie Chaplin, will you! Tsk.

Nah, the other clown.
 
Paul Finlow-Bates

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From: Wesley Parish <wes.parish at paradise.net.nz>
Subject: LL-L 'History' 2006.07.20 (01) [E]

On Fri, 21 Jul 2006 03:02, Lowlands-L wrote:

> From: Tom Mc Rae <t.mcrae at uq.net.au>
> Subject: LL-L 'Genetics' 2006.07.19 (03) [E]
>
> On 20/07/2006, at 8:05 AM, Obiter Dictum <obiterdictum at mail.ru> wrote:
> > Subject: LL-L 'Genetics' 2006.07.19 (01) [E]
> >
> > Hi Ron,
> >
> > Why, it sounds like Anlo-Saxons just _literally_ *out-bred* Britons.
> > Вывели¸
> > (vyvely) them like pests (= outmarried, outborn, outnumbered and finally
> > crouded
> >
> > out). Ne?
>
> I think it was Alexander Pope who wrote the wonderful poem "The True Born
> Englishman" that gives a realistic pedigree of such a person
> based on the numerous invasions. Well worth a read if you can track it
> down.

Daniel Defoe (1660-1731)

The True Born Englishman
(excerpt)

Thus from a mixture of all kinds began,
That het'rogeneous thing, an Englishman:
In eager rapes, and furious lust begot,
Betwixt a painted Britain and a Scot.
Whose gend'ring off-spring quickly learn'd to bow,
And yoke their heifers to the Roman plough:
>From whence a mongrel half-bred race there came,
With neither name, nor nation, speech nor fame.
In whose hot veins new mixtures quickly ran,
Infus'd betwixt a Saxon and a Dane.
While their rank daughters, to their parents just,
Receiv'd all nations with promiscuous lust.
This nauseous brood directly did contain
The well-extracted blood of Englishmen.

Which medly canton'd in a heptarchy,
A rhapsody of nations to supply,
Among themselves maintain'd eternal wars,
And still the ladies lov'd the conquerors.

The western Angles all the rest subdu'd;
A bloody nation, barbarous and rude:
Who by the tenure of the sword possest
One part of Britain, and subdu'd the rest
And as great things denominate the small,
The conqu'ring part gave title to the whole.
The Scot, Pict, Britain, Roman, Dane, submit,
And with the English-Saxon all unite:
And these the mixture have so close pursu'd,
The very name and memory's subdu'd:
No Roman now, no Britain does remain;
Wales strove to separate, but strove in vain:
The silent nations undistinguish'd fall,
And Englishman's the common name for all.
Fate jumbled them together, God knows how;
What e'er they were they're true-born English now.

The wonder which remains is at our pride,
To value that which all wise men deride.
For Englishmen to boast of generation,
Cancels their knowledge, and lampoons the nation.
A true-born Englishman's a contradiction,
In speech an irony, in fact a fiction.
A banter made to be a test of fools,
Which those that use it justly ridicules.
A metaphor invented to express
A man a-kin to all the universe.

For as the Scots, as learned men ha' said,
Throughout the world their wand'ring seed ha' spread;
So open-handed England, 'tis believ'd,
Has all the gleanings of the world receiv'd.

Some think of England 'twas our Saviour meant,
The Gospel should to all the world be sent:
Since, when the blessed sound did hither reach,
They to all nations might be said to preach.

'Tis well that virtue gives nobility,
How shall we else the want of birth and blood supply?
Since scarce one family is left alive,
Which does not from some foreigner derive.

Notes

This poem (which was enormously popular) was written in answer to The
Foreigners: a Poem (1700) by William Tutchin, an attack on William III as a
foreigner.

Extracted from a website for the delectation of us lowlanders.

Wesley Parish

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From: Helge Tietz <helgetietz at yahoo.com>
Subject: LL-L 'History' 2006.07.20 (01) [E]

Dear Lowlanders,
 
Just a few thoughts about the discussion of the Germanic and Celtic/Pictish
origins of the ingenuous British population. I find it difficult to believe that
the number of Anglo-Saxon would not be more than 10.000-200.000 and that those
few Anglo-Saxons invaded and subdued Celtic Britain.
 
To start with, the Angles must have left there homes almost completely since in
modern continental Anglia in Slesvig-Holsten the place names are almost
exclusively Scandinavian, so I can only assume that those Scandinavian settlers
who make up the population of present day Angel found a deserted country which
they called after the previous occupants. The same is actually valid for the rest
of Jutland, only a handful North-Sea-Germanic place names remain though once it
was fully in the hands of the Jutes and previously the Teutones and Chimbri
(those names are also present in Himmerland and Thy), the bulk of the place names
are nowadays Dano-Scandinavian. So were did all the Angles and Jutes go? The
process of migrations to Britain was obviously a slow one moving gradually down
the cost to what is these days West-Vlaanderen and they probably left a note on
the Holland’s dialects, on Zeeuws and West-Vlaams but it appears that large
numbers went across to what is these days England. The Frisians were obviously a
part of them as well, we find place names ion Britain referring to them
(Frizington etc.). In the old days it was much easier to colonize and move over
sea than over land and that resulted into a huge migration to Britain once the
Celts made a pact with them and opened the doors for them. How the settlement
took place is, whatever attempts are made, not really known to us but it appears
that since they were allies there was a side-by-side between Celts and
Anglo-Saxons. Moreover, many historians assume that many Celts were actually
quite "urbanized" since the Roman times and lived in cities such as London while
many parts of the English country side was left vacant and have simply been taken
up by the Anglo-Saxons. Only on the Western peripheral fringes of Roman Britain
and, of course, outside the Roman boundaries the Celts remained rural in large
numbers so the Anglo-Saxon settlement fiddled out simply because of lack of
vacant country side, or simply stopped at the old Roman frontiers, subsequently
those areas remained Celtic speaking.  The few remaining rural Celtic occupiers
of rural England probably assimilated with the newcomers within a generation or
two since they were not enemies. How peaceful this process underwent is difficult
to estimate, by the amount of violence, ethnic cleansing etc. neither Celts,
Romans or Anglo-Saxon will have a clean sheet, violence was an accepted form of
executing power in those days and and still is in many parts of the world and it
was common to describe the opposition as barbaric. Segregation might have been
the case from both the urban Celts and rural Anglo-Saxons for a while just as
there has been class segregation etc. but I can imagine that the urban Celtic
upper class quickly mixed with the rural Anglo-Saxon upper class, I think class
and status was more important than ethnic origin in those days, aristocratic
Europe is ethnically as diverse as anything. Moreover, slowly the rural
Anglo-Saxon population started moving into the cities permanently as well and
once they proved to be skilful crafters and traders they quickly mingled with the
urban Celts.
 
I can imagine that the urbanized Celts accepted Anglo-Saxon rule right from the
start as long as the Anglo-Saxon kept their hands from disturbing trade and life
in the cities, and why should the Angles do that since they themselves will
benefit from supplying the urban Celts with agricultural products? One has top
keep in mind that friendly contacts between the Celts in Roman Britain and the
Anglo-Saxons must have been established long before the collapse of the Roman
empire and trade and contacts between them were much more frequent then with
those Celts outside the Roman boundaries so a pact between the Celts in Roman
Britain and the Anglo Saxons was the logical consequence to uphold the benefits
of trade in the North Sea region. Roman Britain must have looked attractive to
many Anglo-Saxons with its more developed infrastructure so many of them made the
move across peacefully and I cannot recall any historic evidence that this lead
to economic hardship in Britain, just to the contrary, probably both the
urbanized Celts and the recently arrived rural Anglo-Saxons benefited and trade
flourished. A bit mysterious to me is the participation of the Saxons since they
are still present as such on the mainland. My assumption is that parts of the
Saxon lands were either overpopulated or perhaps are under threat from the
westwards-pushing Slavonic peoples and many chose to try their luck
west-over-sea, as I might call it like that.
 
A word to the apparent English-German conflict. Since I simply reject the idea of
a German nation existing on ethnic-cultural principles and have doubts about any
nation and nationalism I find this very artificial. The German national state was
founded much rather to make trade easier at the beginning industrial revolution
(Deutscher Zollverein) and it was regarded as beneficial if there would be a
common trade language in that area which became High German, just as French was
in France etc., which subsequently lead to discrimination of all other languages
in that common trade area, we all know the story from there...but it has nothing
to do with the ethnicity of its interior population, just look at Germany's place
names and their origin, that is a telling story of the ethnic diversity.... 
 
Groeten vun
 
Helge  

----------

From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
Subject: History

Moin, Helge!

> so I can only assume that those Scandinavian settlers who make up the 
> population of present day Angel found a deserted country which they 
> called after the previous occupants.

Well, maybe we shouldn't jump to this conclusion.  There's no doubt that the
populations of Mainland Anglia, Jutland and Saxony were greatly decreased due to
emigration to Britain.  However, I would be very surprised to find out that the
areas were actually deserted.  I much rather assume that the remaining
populations came to be assimilated and absorbed by the new majorities. 
Assumedly, all these tribes were genetically very closely related, and those were
the days before "proper" surnames were developed, which would explain the
apparent lack of Anglian traces on the Mainland.

Apparently the same happened elsewhere, such as in areas of today's Poland and
Eastern Germany that used to be inhabited by East Germanic nations, Alans and
others before Slavs arrived and made the area culturally and linguistically
largely Slavonic, followed in the western parts of this region by a Germanic
takeover which culturally and linguistically absorbed these Slavonic nations that
were of partially Germanic and Iranian descent.

It would be interesting to look at special features of Southern Jutish and
northernmost Low Saxon dialects as possible traces of Anglian substrates and then
to compare these with special features of modern and pre-modern English dialects
of regions that are known to have been settled primarily by Angles.  I wonder if
anything like that has ever been attempted.

So far we mostly assumed that Jutish linguistic features such as
"un-Scandinavian" preposing of definite articles were due to Saxon influences at
this meeting place of North and West Germanic.  However, I feel we ought to look
at the possibility of this being due to an Anglian substrate as well.  One of the
indicators of this being a possibility may be the fact that these features are
found not only in Southern Jutish (which has a history of direct contacts with
Low Saxon) but in other Jutish varieties as well, decreasing gradually as you go
north.  Another feature of this sort may be the absence of "tones"* following
similar isoglosses.  

* While Danish is not usually considered tonal like Norwegian, Swedish and other
Scandinavian varieties, I go along with others in assuming that the Danish
glottal interruption (_stød_) is a remnant of the old "dipping" tone that is
preserved farther north.  Occurrence of this feature is greatly decreased in
Jutland, completely absent in the south, namely in areas known to have been
inhabited by Anglians.

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron

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