rman. But in all the little hamlets between, the well-built
old-fashioned farm-houses, with gable-ends of vast breadth, and massive
thatched roofs that make two-thirds of the height of the house, and a
stork's nest on the chimney, and a cow-house at the end, are Frisian;
and, if you can overhear what they say amongst themselves, you find
that, without being English it is somewhat like it. _Woman_ is the word
which sounds strangest to both the German and the Dane, and, it is
generally the first instance given of the peculiarity of the Frisian
language. "Why can't they speak properly, and say _Kone_?" says the
Dane. "_Weib_ is the right word," says the German. "Who ever says
_woman_?" cry both. The language has not been reduced to writing;
indeed, the little that has been done with it is highly discreditable to
the Sleswick-Holstein Church Establishment. It is spoken by upwards of
thirty thousand individuals; and when we remember that the whole
population of Denmark is less than that of London and the suburbs, we
see at once that a large proportion of it has been less heeded in
respect to its spiritualities than the Gaels and Welsh of Great Britain.

You may distinguish a Frisian parish as the Eton grammar distinguishes
nouns of the neuter gender. It is _omne quod exit in -um_; for so end
nine out of ten of the Frisian villages. Now, throughout the whole
length and breadth of the Brekkel_ums_, and Stad_ums_, &c., that lie
along the coast, from Ripe north to Hus_um_ south, there is not one
church service that is performed in Frisian, or half-a-dozen priests who
could perform it. No fraction of the Liturgy is native; nor has it ever
been so. Danish there is, and German there is; German, too, of two
kinds--High and Low. The High German is taught in the schools, and that
well; so well, that nowhere are the answers of the little children more
easily understood by such travellers as are not over strong in their
language than in the _Friese_ country. Nevertheless, it is but a
well-taught lesson; and by no means excuses the neglect of the native
idiom.

As things are at present, this is, perhaps, all for the best. The
complaint lies against the original neglect of the Frisian; and its
_gravamen_ is the sad tale it so silently tells of previous
centralization--by which is meant arbitrary and unjustifiable
oppression; for at no distant time back, the Frisians must have formed a
very considerable proportion of the Sleswickers, and,