Page:Origin of the Anglo-Saxon Race.djvu/93

Rh in the meres of Old Frisia were constructed have been shown to be composed largely of deposits due to accumulations under ancient pile dwellings, and many of them have been removed for manure and agricultural purposes.

As already mentioned, the original home of the ancestors of the Frisians, Jutes, and Danes appears to have been in the Scandian peninsula, which Ptolemy, the geographer of the second century, understood to have been an island. He places the nations called the Phiresii, Gutæ, and Dauciones all within Scandia. The migration of the Phiresii south-westward has left its traces in certain parts of Jutland, and appears to have been such a very early one that it occurred before the invention of runes by their neighbours the Goths, for no fixed runic monuments have ever been found in any part of Old Frisia. The Daucones were the Dacians or Danes, and they migrated, apparently, after the invention of runes, for fixed monuments with runes are found in Denmark. As already pointed out, one of the strongest proofs of the Scandian connection of the Angles of Northumbria is that they took with them to England a knowledge of runic writing, and have left examples of their runic inscriptions on fixed stone monuments. Not so the Frisians, who, though allied with the Angles, were behind them in the knowledge of letters. The physical appearance of the Frisians at the present day bears witness to the Northern origin of their race, Beddoe says: ‘They are an extremely fair and very comely people. I found the Frisians from the Zuyder Zee through Gröningen (a Saxonised district) to beyond Ems, a taller, longer-faced, more universally blonde and light-eyed folk than the Saxons, the latter being often very hazel-eyed, even when their hair is light.’

Among the indications that communication between