Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 60, No. 374, December, 1846

The customs of the Ditmarschers could not fail to be interesting. That of the Fenstern or Windowing is romantic, and perilous to boot. At dead of night, when all good people are asleep, young gallants cross the marshes and downs for miles to visit the girls of their acquaintance, or it may be the girl of fairest form and most attractions. Arrived at the house, they scale the walls, enter a window, and drop into the chamber of the lady, who lies muffled up to the chin on a bed of down, having taken care to leave a burning lamp on the table, and fire in the stove, that her nocturnal callers may have both light and warmth. Upon the entrance of her visitor, she politely asks him to be seated – his chair being placed at the distance of a few feet from the bed. They converse, and the conversation being brought to an end, the gallant takes his departure either by the door or window. Some opposition has been shown of late to this custom by a few over-scrupulous parents; but the fathers who are bold enough to put bolts on their doors or windows, are certain of meeting with reprisals from the gallants of the district. The Fenstern is subject to certain laws and regulations, by which those who practise it are bound to abide. Another curious custom, and derived like the former from the heathen, was the dance performed at the churching of women up to the close of the last century – the woman herself wearing a green and a red stocking, and hopping upon one leg to church. The Friesic women are small and delicately formed: their skin, beautifully soft and white, is protected most carefully against the rough atmosphere by a mantle, which so completely covers the face, that both in winter and summer little can be seen beyond the eyes of the women encountered in the open streets. The generally sombre hue of the garments renders this muffling the more remarkable; for it is customary for the relatives of those who are at sea to wear mourning until the return of the adventurers. Skirt, boddice, apron, and kerchief, all are dark; and the cloth which so jealously screens the head and face from the sun and storm, is of the same melancholy hue.

The churchyards testify to the fact, that a comparatively small number of those who, year after year, proceed on their perilous expeditions, return to die at home. The monuments almost exclusively record the names of women – a blank being left for that of the absent husband, father, or brother, whose remains are possibly mouldering in another hemisphere. Every device and symbol sculptured in the churchyard has reference to the maritime life, with which they are all so familiar. A ship at anchor, dismasted, with broken tackle, is a favourite image, whilst the inscription quaintly corresponds with the sculptured metaphor. It is usual for the people to erect their monuments during life, and to have the full inscriptions written, leaving room only for the date of the decease. In the island of Fœhr and elsewhere, the custom still prevails of hiring women to make loud lamentations over the body, as it is carried homewards and deposited in the earth. The churches are plain to rudeness, and disfigured with the most barbarous wood carvings of our Saviour, of saints, and popes. These rough buildings are, for the most part, of great antiquity, and traditions tell of their having been brought from England. There can be no doubt that British missionaries were here in former days. At the time of the Reformation, the islanders refused to change their faith; but once converted to Lutheranism, they have remained stanch Protestants ever since, and maintain a becoming veneration for their pastors. The clergy are natives of the islands, and therefore well acquainted with the Friesic dialect, in which they preach. Their pay is necessarily small, and is mostly raised by the voluntary contributions of the parishioners. As may be supposed, the clergy have much influence over the people, especially on the smaller islands, where the inhabitants have but little intercourse with strangers. Temperance societies have been established by the pastors. Brandy, tea, and coffee, came into general use throughout the islands about a century ago, and ardent drinking was in vogue until the interference of the clergy. The Ditmarschers especially, who are allowed to distil without paying excise duties, carried the vice of drunkenness to excess; but they are much improved.

The greatest diversity of languages, or rather of dialects, exists in the islands, arising probably from the fact of Friesic not being a written language. The dialect of the furthest west approaches nearer to English than any other. The people of Amrum are proud of the similarity. They retain the th of the old Icelandic, and have a number of words in which the resemblance of their ancient form of speech to the old Anglo-Saxon English is more apparent than in even the Danish of the present day; as, for instance, Hu mani mile? How many miles? Bradgrum, bridegroom; theenk, think, &c. In many of the words advanced by Mr Kohl, that gentleman evidently betrays an unconsciousness of their being synonymous with the modern Danish; and, therefore, strikingly inimical to his favourite theory of the especial Friesic descent of the English people and language. Little or nothing is known of the actual geographical propagation of the old Friesic. At present it is yielding to the Danish and the Low German in the duchies of Sleswig and Holstein. Many names are still common amongst the people, which seem to have descended from the heathen epoch, and which are, in fact, more frequently heard than the names in the "Roman Calendar," met with elsewhere. Des, Edo, Haje, Pave, Tete, are the names of men; Ehle, Tat, Mantje, Ode, Sieg, are those of women. None of them are known amongst any other people. Much confusion exists with respect to the patronymic, there being no surnames in use in many of the islands. If a man were called Tete, his son Edo would be Edo Tetes; and then, again, Tat, the wife of the Edo, would be Tat Edos, and his son Des, Des Edos; whilst Des's son Tete would be Tete Des's, and so on in the most troublesome and perplexing combinations.

The Frieslanders, like other northern nations, are superstitious, and they have a multitude of traditions or sagas, some of them very curious and interesting. We must pass over these instructive myths – always the rarest and most striking portion of a people's history – more cursorily than we could wish, and cite a few only of the most peculiar. The island of Sylt, which is the richest in remains of höogen, the celts of heathen heroes, &c., lays claim to the largest number of Märchen. The most characteristic of all is that of de Mannigfuel, the "colossal ship," (or world,) which was so large that the commander was obliged to ride about the deck in order to give his orders: the sailors that went aloft as boys came down greyheaded, so long a time having elapsed whilst they were rigging the sails. Once, when the ship was in great peril, and the waters were running high, the sailors, disheartened by their protracted watching and labour, threw out ballast in order to lighten the vessel, when, lo! an island arose, and then another, and another still, till land was formed – the earth being, according to the sailors' notion, the secondary formation. Once – many ages afterwards – when the Mannigfuel was endeavouring to pass through the Straits of Dover, the captain ingeniously thought to have the side of the vessel, nearest Dover, rubbed with white soap, and hence the whiteness of the cliffs at Dover. The achievements recounted of de Mannigfuel are endless. The following explanation of the formation of the Straits of Dover is found in a Friesic saga: – Once upon a time, a queen of England, the land to the west of the North Sea, and a king of Denmark, the land to the east of the North Sea, loved each other, and plighted troth; but, as it happened, the king proved faithless, and left the poor queen to wear the willow. England was then joined to the Continent by a chain of hills called Höneden; and the queen, desiring to wreak vengeance on her false wooer and his subjects, summoned her people around her, and setting them to work for seven years in digging away these hills, at the end of the seventh year the waves pushed furiously through the channel that had been dug, and swept along the coasts of Friesland and Jutland, drowning and carrying away 100,000 persons. To this very hour the Jutland shores yearly tremble before the fatal vengeance of the slighted queen. The Frieslanders are so wedded to this marvellous geological myth, that they insist upon its historical foundation. In some versions 700, in others 7000, in others again, even 700,000 men are said to have been employed in this gigantic undertaking.

Another allegorical saga is the narrative of the share taken by the man in the moon in the matter of the daily ebbing and flowing of the sea. His chief, or indeed only occupation, seems to be to pour water from a huge bucket. Being somewhat lazy, the old gentleman soon grows weary of the employment, and then he lies down to rest. Of course whilst he is napping, the water avails itself of the opportunity to return to its ordinary level.

The constellation of the Great Bear, or Charles's Wain, is, according to the Frieslanders, the chariot in which Elias and many other great prophets ascended into heaven. There being now-a-days no individual sufficiently pious for such a mode of transit, it has been put aside, with other heavenly curiosities, its only office being to carry the angels in their nocturnal excursions throughout the year. The angel who acts as driver for the night, fixes his eye steadily upon the centre point of the heavenly arch, (the polar star,) in order that the two stars of the shaft of the chariot may keep in a straight line with the celestial focus. The rising and setting of the sun is thus explained: – A host of beautiful nymphs receive the sun beneath the earth in the western hemisphere, and cutting it into a thousand parts, they make of it little air balloons, which they sportively throw at the heavenly youths, who keep guard at the eastern horizon of the earth. The gallant band, not to be outdone by their fair antagonists, mount a high ladder, and when night has veiled the earth in darkness, toss back the golden balls, which, careering rapidly through the vault of heaven, fall in glittering showers upon the heads of the celestial virgins of the west. The children of the sky, having thus diverted themselves through the night, they hasten at dawn of day to collect the scattered balls, and joining them into one huge mass, they bear it upon their shoulders, mid singing and dancing, to the eastern gates of heaven. The enchanting rosy light which hovers round the rising orb is the reflection of the virgins' lovely forms, who, beholding their charge safely launched upon its course, retire, and leave it, as we see it, to traverse the sky alone.

The following exquisite tradition connects itself with that brief season when, in the summer of the far north, the sun tarries night and day above the horizon. All-fader had two faithful servants, of the race of those who enjoyed eternal youth, and when the sun had done its first day's course, he called to him Demmarik, and said, "To thy watchful care, my daughter, I confide the setting sun that I have newly created; extinguish its light carefully, and guard the precious flame that no evil approach it." And the next morning, when the sun was again about to begin its course, he said to his servant Koite, "My son, to thy trusty hand I remit the charge of kindling the light of the sun I have created, and of leading it forth on its way." Faithfully did the children discharge the duties assigned to them. In the winter they carefully guarded the precious light, and laid it early to rest, and awakened it to life again only at a late hour; but, as the spring and summer advanced, they suffered the glorious flame to linger longer in the vault of heaven, and to rejoice the hearts of men by the brightness of its aspect. At length the time arrived when, in our northern world, the sun enjoys but brief rest. It must be up betimes in the morning to awaken the flowers and fruit to life and light, and it must cast its glowing beams across the mantle of night, and lose no time in idle slumber. Then it was that Demmarik, for the first time, met Koite face to face as she stood upon the western edge of heaven, and received from the hands of her brother-servant the orb of light. As the fading lamp passed from one to the other, their eyes met, and a gentle pressure of their hands sent a thrill of holy love through their hearts. No eye was there save that of the All-fader, who called his servants before him, and said, "Ye have done well; and as recompense, I permit ye to fulfil your respective charges conjointly as man and wife." Then, Demmarik and Koite, looking at each other, replied – "No, All-fader! disturb not our joy; let us remain everlastingly in our present bridal state; wedded joy cannot equal what we feel now as betrothed!" And the mighty All-fader granted their prayer, and from that time they have met but once in the year, when, during four weeks, they greet each other night after night; and then, as the lamp passes from one to the other, a pressure of the hand and a kiss calls forth a rosy blush on the fair cheek of Demmarik which sheds its mantling glow over all the heavens, Koite's heart the while thrilling with purest joy. And should they tarry too long, the gentle nightingales of the All-fader have but to warble Laisk tudrück, laisk tudrück! öpik! "Giddy ones, giddy ones! take heed!" to chide them forward on their duty.

With a lovelier vision, reader! we could not leave you dwelling upon the rugged but, to the heart's core, thoroughly poetic Frieslander. Let us leave the gentle Demmarik and devoted Koite to their chaste and heavenly mission, and with a bound leap into Denmark, whither Mr Kohl, in his forty-fourth volume of travels, summons us, and whither we must follow him, although the prosaic gentleman is somewhat of the earth, earthy, after the blessed imitations we have had, reader – you and we – of the eternal summer's day faintly embodied in the vision of that long bright day of the far north!

Should any adventurous youth sit down to Mr Kohl's volume on Denmark, and, half an hour afterwards, throw the book in sheer disgust and weariness out of the window, swearing never to look into it again, let him be advised to ring the bell, and to request Mary to bring it back again with the least possible delay. Having received it from the maid of all work's horny hand, let the said youth begin the book again, but, as he would a Hebrew Bible, at the other end. He may take our word for it there is good stuff there, in spite of the twaddle that encountered him erewhile at Hamburg. Mr Kohl has been won by aldermanic dinners in the chief city of the Hanseatic League, as Louis Philippe was touched by aldermanic eloquence and wit in the chief city of the world, and he babbles of mercantile operations and commercial enterprise, until the heart grows sick with fatigue, and is only made happy by the regrets which the author expresses – just one hour after the right time – respecting his inability to enlarge further upon the fruitful and noble theme of the monetary speculations of one of the richest and most disagreeable communities of Europe.

Before putting foot on Danish ground, Mr Kohl is careful to make a kind of solemn protest touching Germanic patriotism, lest, we presume, he should be suspected of taking a heretical view of the question at issue at the present moment between the Sleswig-Holstein provinces and the mother-country Denmark. It is not for us to enter into any political discussions here, concerning matters of internal government which are no more business of ours than of his Majesty Muda Hassim, of the island of Borneo; but we must confess our inability to understand why such a terrific storm of patriotic ardour has so suddenly burst forth in Germany, respecting provinces which, until recently, certainly up to the time when the late king gave his people the unasked-for boon of a constitution, were perfectly happy and contented under the Danish rule, to which they had been accustomed some five or six hundred years.2 It is only since the assembly of the states was constituted, that the Sleswig Holsteiners have been seized with the Germanic furor– a malady not a little increased by the inflammatory harangues of needy demagogues, and the pedantic outpourings of a handful of professors stark-mad on the subject of German liberty. If there is one thing more absurd than another, upon this globe of absurdity, it is the cant of "nationality," "freedom," "fatherland," "brotherhood," &c. &c., which is dinned into your ears from one end of Germany to the other; but which, like all other cants, is nothing but so much wind and froth, utterly without reason, stamina, or foundation. We should like to ask any mustached and bearded youth of Heidelberg or Bonn, at any one sober moment of his existence, to point out to us any single spot where this boasted "nationality" is to be seen and scanned. Will the red-capped, long-haired Bursch tell us when and where we may behold that "vaterland" of which he is eternally dreaming, singing, and drinking? Why, is it not a fact that, to a Prussian, an Austrian or a Swabian is an alien? Does not a Saxe-Coburger, a Hessian, and any other subject of any small duchy or principality, insist, in his intense hatred of Prussia, that the Prussians are no Germans at all; that they have interests of their own, opposed to those of the true German people; and that they are as distinct as they are selfish? You cannot travel over the various countries and districts included under the name of Germany, without learning the thorough insulation of the component parts. The fact is forced upon you at every step. Mr Kohl himself belongs to none of the states mentioned. He is a native of Bremen – one of the cities of that proud Hanseatic League which certainly has never shown an enlarged or patriotic spirit with reference to this same universal "vaterland." Arrogant and lordly republics care little for abstractions. They have a keen instinct for their own material interests, but a small appreciation of the glorious ideal. We ask, again, where is this all pervading German patriotism?

We have said that Mr Kohl is a great traveller. We withdraw the accusation. He has written forty odd volumes, but they have been composed, every one of them, in his snug stube, at Bremen, or wheresoever else he puts up, under the influence of German stoves, German pipes, and German beer. A great traveller is a great catholic. His mind grows more capacious, his heart more generous, as he makes his pilgrimages along this troubled earth, and learns the mightiness of Heaven, the mutability and smallness of things temporal. Prejudice cannot stand up against the knowledge that pours in upon him; bigotry cannot exist in the wide temple he explores. The wanderer "feels himself new-born," as he learns, with his eyes, the living history of every new people, and compares, in his judgment, the lessons of his ripe manhood with the instruction imparted in his confined and straitened youth. If it may be said that to learn a new language is to acquire a new mind, what is it to become acquainted, intimately and face to face, with a new people, new institutions, new faiths, new habits of thought and feeling? There never existed a great traveller who, at the end of his wanderings, did not find himself, as if by magic, released of all the rust of prejudice, vanity, self-conceit, and pride, which a narrow experience engenders, and a small field of action so fatally heaps up. We will venture to assert that there is not a monkey now caged up in the zoological gardens, who would not – if permitted by the honourable Society – return to his native woods a better and a wiser beast for the one long journey he has made. Should Mr Kohl, we ask, behave worse than an imprisoned monkey? We pardon M. Michelet when he rants about la belle France, because we know that the excited gentleman – eloquent and scholarly as he is – is reposing eternally in Paris, under the drapeau, which fans nothing but glory into his smiling and complacent visage. When John Bull, sitting in the parlour of the "Queen's Head," smoking his clay and swallowing his heavy, with Bob Yokel from the country, manfully exclaims, striking Bob heartily and jollily on the shoulder, "D – n it, Bob, an Englishman will whop three Frenchmen any day!" we smile, but we are not angry. We feel it is the beer, and that, like the valiant Michelet, the good man knows no better. Send the two on their travels, and talk to them when they come back. Well, Mr Kohl has travelled, and has come back; and he tells us, in the year of grace 1846, that the crown-jewel in the diadem of France is Alsace, and that the Alsatians are the pearls amongst her provincialists – the Alsatians, be it understood, being a German people, and, as far as report goes, the heaviest and stupidest that "vaterland" can claim. The only true gems in the Autocrat's crown are, according to the enlightened Kohl, the German provinces of Liefland, Esthonia, and Courland. All the industry and enterprise of the Belgians come simply from their Teutonic blood; the treasures of the Danish king must be looked for in the German provinces of Sleswig and Holstein. This is not all. German literature and the German tongue enjoy advantages possessed by no other literature and language. English universities are "Stockenglisch," downright English; the French are quite Frenchy; the Spanish are solely Spanish; but German schools have taken root in every part of the earth. At Dorpat, says Mr Kohl, German is taught, written, and printed; and therefore the German spirit is diffused throughout all the Russias. At Kiel the same process is going forward on behalf of Scandinavia. The Slavonians, the Italians, and Greeks, are likewise submitting, nolens volens, to the same irresistible influence. The very same words may be found in M. Michelet's book of "The People," – only for German spirit, read French.

Mr Kohl proceeds in the same easy style to announce the rapid giving way of the Danish language in Denmark and the eager substitution of his own. He asserts this in the teeth of all those Danish writers who have started up within the last fifty years, and who have boldly and wisely discarded the pernicious practice (originating in the German character of the reigning family) of expressing Danish notions in a foreign tongue. He asserts it in the teeth of Mrs Howitt and of the German translators, whom this lady calls to her aid, but who have very feebly represented that rich diction and flexible style so remarkable in the Danish compositions referred to, and so much surpassing the power of any other northern tongue. We should do Mr Kohl injustice if we did not give his reason for regarding the Danish language as a thing doomed. He was credibly informed that many fathers of families were in the habit of promising rewards to their children if they would converse in German and not in Danish! Hear this, Lord Palmerston! and if, on hearing it, you still allow the rising generation, at our seminaries, to ask for du pang and du bur, and to receive them with, it may be, a silver medal for proficiency, the consequences be on your devoted head!

Denmark has been comparatively but little visited by the stranger. She offers, nevertheless, to the antiquary, the poet, and the artist, materials of interest which cannot be exceeded in any other district of the same extent. Every wood, lake, heath, and down, is rich in historical legends or mythical sagas; every copse and hill, every cave and mound, has been peopled by past superstition with the elf and the sprite, the ellefolk and nissen. Her history, blending with that of her Scandinavian sisters, Norway and Sweden, is romantic in the extreme – whether she is traced to the days of her fabulous sea-kings, or is read of in the records of those who have chronicled the lives of her sovereigns in the middle ages. The country itself, although flat, is picturesque, being thickly interspersed with lakes, skirted by, and embosomed in, luxuriant beech woods; whilst ever and anon the traveller lights upon some ancient ruin of church or tower, palace or hermitage, affecting, if only by reason of the associations it awakens with an age far more prosperous than the present. The existence of the Danish people, as a nation, has been pronounced a miracle. It is hardly less. Small and feeble, and surrounded by the foreigner on every side, Denmark has never been ruled by a conqueror. Amid the rise and fall of other states, she has maintained her independence – now powerful and victorious, now depressed and poor, but never succumbing, never submitting to the stranger's yoke. Her present dynasty is the oldest reigning European family. It dates back to Christian I. – himself descended in a direct female line from the old kings of Scandinavia – who, as Duke of Oldenburg, was chosen king by the states in 1448.