heir
respective successors, any more than the Durotriges, or Iceni of England
were the ancestors to the Anglo-Saxons of Dorsetshire and Norfolk.

Before this point comes under consideration we must ask a question
already suggested as to the _Saxons_ of the ninth century. Were they
Frisians or Angles?

Strongly impressed with the belief that no third division of the Saxon
section of the Germans beyond that represented by the Angles of Hanover
and the Old Saxons of Westphalia can be shewn to have existed or need
be assumed, I have thus limited the problem, although the third question
as to the probability of their having been something different from
either may be raised. I also believe that the Frisians reached Sleswick
by an extension of their frontier, this being the reason why the
original continuity of their area is assumed,--at the same time
admitting the possibility of their having come by sea, in which case no
such continuity is necessary. What we find on the Eyder, and also on the
Elbe may fairly be supposed to have once been discoverable in the
intermediate country.

Assuming, then, an original continuity of the Frisian area from Sleswick
to the Elbe anterior to the conquest of Ditmarsh and Holsatia by the
present Low German occupants to be a fair inference from the present
distribution of the North Frisians, and the history of their known and
recorded displacements, we may ask how far it follows that this
displacement was effected by the ancestors of the present Holsteiners;
in other words, how far it is certain that the present Holsteiners
succeeded immediately to the Frisians. There is a question here; since
the continuity may have been broken by a population which was itself
broken-up in its turn. It may have been broken by Angle inroads even as
early as the time of Tacitus. If so, the order of succession would not
be 1. Frisian, 2. Low German, but 1. Frisian, 2. Angle or Anglo-Saxon,
3. Low German.

The Holsati, Stormarii, and Ditmarsi were, most probably, _Angle_. That
they were not the ancestors of the present Low-Dutch is nearly certain.
The date is too early for this. It was not till some time after the
death of Charlemagne that the spread of that section of the German
family reached Holstein. That they were not Frisian is less certain, but
it is inferred from the manner in which they are mentioned by the native
poet already quoted; who, if he had considered the Frisians to have been
sufficiently S