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228
COPENHAGEN.
Chap. XV.
the terms which we now use having become
obsolete in Denmark, just as “the English of the New
Englanders ” appears antiquated to London society of
the present century, though all those quaint expressions
were court parlance in the days of Charles II. One of
the very early chroniclers declares “ the English
language, as they spoke it in the time of Canute the
Great, differs only a little from the Danish, because
the Angles had come from Jutland, wherefore their
language was called by the writer Cimbric, and this they
spoke in the provinces which lay north of the Thames.”
Without entering too deeply into a subject beyond
my depth, I merely remark that when later we visited
Jutland we were still more forcibly struck with the great
similarity of the two languages; and recollect one thing
—we none of us understand one word of North country
patois: and beyond the fact that the Danish Jo (yöe) is
the ancestor of the classic Yau of the north country boor,
I am perfectly ignorant on this subject.
Unfortunately, people are too apt to exaggerate these
resemblances; and when Bretons assert they find
themselves “ quite at home ” on the Cornish coast and
among the mountains of Wales, and Danes declare
that the Yorkshire dialect is as familiar to them as
their mother tongue, you must make allowance for a
little embellishment. Professor Worsaae having written
so excellent an account of this vexed question in his
work, unluckily out of print, entitled ‘ The Northmen
in England,’ no more need be said on the subject; still
I own I have no patience with the Anglo-Saxon party,
who wish to ignore the Northmen, and prove that the
greatness of England is to be derived from a fallen
German race. Who in their senses will for one
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