On the Land of Ditmarsh, and the Mark Confederation
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XXIII.—On the Land of Ditmarsh, and the Mark Confederation. Communicated by BENJAMIN WILLIAMS, Esq. F.8.A. and F.R.G.S. in a Letter to Rear- Admiral SMYTH, K.S.F., F.S.A. fyc. fyc. Bead November 26, 1857. November 9th, 1857. MY DEAE ADMIRAL, THAT excellent scholar the lamented Kemble has pointed out the correspond- ence which exists between the mortuary urns of our ancestors, the borderers on the Elbe and the Eider, and many of our own. The same correspondence may be expected to be found in the institutions we have in common, and I now beg to submit to the Society of Antiquaries some account of probably the most striking example of the old Mark Confederation,8 the foundation of our elective institutions. In the republican community of Ditmarsh—which existed till the promulgation of the new Danish Code of Laws in 1554—we may see the germ of our power of self- government and of our jury system. Their system of house-marks was certainly once in use amongst our own yeomen, although now nearly obsolete; a system which throws, I think, considerable light on the papers on the Hide of Land and certain Manorial Customs, which, through your encouragement, I submitted to the Society, and which are printed in Volumes XXXIII. and XXXV. of the Archseologia. "Well does Professor Dahlmann call the attention of " those who discover the spirit of freedom and honour only in mountainous countries, such as Switzerland and the Tyrol, to the north-western extremity of Germany, washed by the North Sea, a tract of country not undistinguished in the Middle Ages. Here, for centuries, flourished the truest freedom, not only within the fortified Hanseatic towns, but in open fields, on the open low lands from Fly, Upper Lauer, Ems, Jahde, to the northern side of the Eider, the home of our North Frisians. The hat of the noble free Frisian of the Seven Seelandes was a terrible war-badge for him who respected but slightly the property of men who 8 The reader is referred to Kemble's " Saxons in England " for an explanation of the markland—the uncultivated land that bordered the settlement. The modern words marches and lords marchers are only •corruptions of A.-S. mearc. 4 c 372 On the Lmd of Ditmarsh, enjoyed their federation, their lands, and their rights, or who hoped to fetter that arm which waged continual warfare with the floods of the North Sea. Situated between the Prisians of the Great Confederation and the brave Northern ^Frisians of Holstein, the independent people of Ditmarsh have claimed and cultivated a small corner of the globe."a This interesting land, situated between the mouths of the Elbe and the Eider, on the western coast of the province of Schleswig, is not more than seven (German) miles long, from Lunden in the north to Brunsbuttel in the south, and from three to four miles wide from the western coast to the eastern boundary, beyond Alversdorp. This powerful commonwealth of a bold peasantry (reminding us of the Odelsbondin of Norway), which maintained for centuries an isolated and strange independence, consisted of not more than from 40,000 to 50,000 souls, of whom fully 6,000 were armed men; and they long succeeded in warding off all supremacy as not assimilating to the constitution of the country. A purely agricultural community—for their two small but principal towns were little else— they retained freedom in honourable peasantry, and knew how to preserve their landed property untaxed, without lords' tribute or lords' service, and to maintain a peculiarly matured state of cultivation, with unrestricted freedom of trade, and with judges chosen from their own body, so that an old chronicler of Ditmarsh could well say, " We have neither lord nor head, and do what we will."b Pro- fessor Michelsen has remarked, that he who wishes to study the condition of the peasantry in its original freedom and in all its bearings, should not resort to Central Germany, where on every side he will meet with palpable traces of their servitude, but should rather seek the Prisian races, or, still better, the common- wealth of Ditmarsh, as developed in its Book of Rights. ° Prom this precise district formerly emigrated some of those tribes which succeeded in eifecting a permanent settlement in England. Here dwelt the " wondering borderers of the Elbe and the Eider," as Kemble called them, rovers who wondered at the spoils of Roman cultivation they found in England. These were the tf Nortliudi trans-Albim sedentes" of the Annales Laurish. and Einhardi (quoted by Pertz, i. 184—186), also called the Marcomanni or Nordalbingii by * Neocorus der Dithmersche, von Dr. F. C. Dahlmann. Kiel, 1818. b Johann Adolfis genannt Neocorus, Chronik des Landes Dithmarschen, von Professor F. C. Dahlmann., 2 vols. 8vo. Kiel, 1827. 0 Sammlung Altdithmarscher Reehtsquellen von A. L. J. Michelsen. Altona, 1842. His former work has also been consulted, Urkunden-sammlung zur Geschicht von Dithmerschen. Kiel, 1839; and the same author's Nordfriesland im Mittelalter. Schleswig, 1828. and the Mark Confederation, 37-3 Hrabanus Maurus at the beginning of the ninth century. (See Kemble, in Archseol. XXVIII. 334) The main part of the waters of the Elbe were formerly <liverted from their present channel by an immense island of sand (Sandfoert) which lay off the western coast of Ditmarsh, causing them to flow in a stream parallel to the coast;, and, till the year 1500 at least, they actually passed through the western peninsula of Ditmarsh, and discharged themselves into the Eider. Busen was then a considerable island, and there were others, which are laid down in Neocorus's map. The tribes of the Angeln were the immediate neighbours of the Ditmarshers, and sailed down the Eider. The provincial language of Ditmarsh, as spoken in the present day, is a dialect of the Platt Deutsch; three centuries ago it was the nearest approach to Early English of any of the Anglo-Saxon off-shoots.a The following list of names of places, ex- tracted from King Waldemar's ErdbucJi (Census Danice in Langebek, Script. Her. Danic. vol. vii.) of the beginning of the thirteenth century, will enable the reader to judge approximately in what degree these Northmen gave the names of their own towns to their settlements on or near our coast; more might be added:— Ro, or Ruye, or Eythse, Stening," Worthing, Ore, Hethe, Rumso, Boking, Swanso, Vinblsesae or Vintblseso, Holby, Grumby, and Withby. The Ditmarshers have also a Lund, nemus, and Lunden, but the latter town rose only in the middle ages. Our heathendom was also nearly allied, as the following list of places in Ditmarsh will testify: Wodenslag, Erestede (Ereia), Herstede (Hertha), Hemmingstede, formerly Ham, Heme, and Hamste (from Thor-Hama or Jupiter Hamoys), Sonnenwohld, Mondestempel, and Marskammer. There is also a marked similarity in our family-names, witness the following list of families in Ditmarsh in the fifteenth century: Bute, Butteler, Evers, Greeve, Hartman, Hemming, Harder, Helman, Habie, Jerriman, Portman, Rise, Suwell, Weneman, and Wilder. "When we consider," said Kemble, "the extent of the former tribes (and in Ditmarsh there were Geshlechts of 200 families bearing the same name) we shall not be surprised to see them reproduced on our own shores." This interesting land received its first settlers from Eriesland and Saxony,0 and a The similarity of their proverbs and phrases is remarkable; ex. gra. Flo und ebb, Sink oder swim, Slick un slamm, Quit und frie, &c. The most important publication in the Ditmarsh language is a pleasing collection of pastoral poems, called " Quickborn " (Hamburgh, 1857), to which is prefixed a precis of the language by Professor Miillenhoff of Kiel. See a notice in the Gent. Mag. for Nov. 1857. b The termination ing is Gothic, pratus, pascuum (Lye), as in Keadm<7, &c. 0 It is worthy of remark that the men of Frisian and the men of Saxon descent were oftea in opposition in the troublous times which succeeded the Eeformation. 4c2 374 On the Land of Ditmarsh, later settlers from "Westphalia and other places. The great emigrating tribe from Friesland, the Vogdemannen, established itself in two marks on the sea-shore, in the so-called marsh. They called themselves, after their dwelling-place, the North and South Vogdemannen, on which account both of the marks inhabited by them received in later times the names of the North and South Strand. The emigrating tribe from Saxony—-amongst whom that of the "Woldesmenner was the most important—settled in the midst of the country, in the so-called Geest,» further inland than the marsh, in two other marks, which afterwards received the names of North and South Hamme. It was only in later times that to these four marks a fifth district was added, the Meldorper Dofft. The land was known in the latter half of the eighth century as Thiatmaresgaha; and it is recorded that about this time the Ditmarshers fought with the East Saxons under Duke Hassio. The population must have been considerable. Numerous weapons and instruments of the bronze period have been found in the land, and are now preserved in the Danish museums and at Berlin. Prom the four original marks, Charlemagne, in the year 804, when the land had become united to the French kingdom, formed a distinct Christian Ga (German, Gau). The tithe was appointed and the great baptism held twice a-year, when no Ditmarsher could absent himself under the penalty of death. Seven parishes only are recorded in the ninth century. Early in this century the land appertained to the bishopric of Bremen; but yet it was only after long struggles with the Dukes of Saxony and the Counts of Holstein and Denmark, and after the battle of BornhSvede, at the beginning of the thirteenth century, that the bishop's lordship was recognised, so that the old mark system, which could not be said to be altogether annihilated during the short dominion of the distant French, had the necessary time to consolidate itself, and to become a great Mark Confederation.