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Engle, Saxon, and Jute all belonged to the same Low-German branch of the Teutonic family; and at the moment when history discovers them they were being drawn together by the ties of a common blood, common speech, common social and political institutions.
He could be pathetic, ironic, playful, mordant, musing, at will. He was sure in his tone, was low-German in "Till Eulenspiegel," courtly and brilliant in "Don Juan," noble and bitterly sarcastic in "Don Quixote," childlike in "Tod und Verklärung." His orchestra was able to accommodate itself to all the folds and curves of his elaborate programs, to find equivalents for individual traits.
The captain of our vessel was a Norwegian, the first officer was a Mexican, the chief engineer an American, the purser a low-German, the chief steward an Oaxaca indian, and the cook a Filipino. Never was I so glad to reach a resting-place, never so relieved, as when we got our baggage and our sick man safely on board.
It is quite true that, strictly speaking, the forms with Th-d, are Low- German, and those with D-t, High-German, but before we trust ourselves to this division for historical purposes, we must remember three facts: that Proper Names frequently defy Grimm's Law; that in High-German MSS. much depends on the locality in which they are written; that High-German is not in the strict sense of the word a corruption of Low- German, and, at all events, not, as Grimm supposed, chronologically posterior to Low-German, but that the two are parallel dialects, like Doric and Aeolic, the Low-German being represented by the earliest literary documents, Gothic and Saxon, the High-German asserting its literary presence later, not much before the eighth century, but afterwards maintaining its literary and political supremacy from the time of Charlemagne to the present day.
Those who, with Grimm , admit a transition of Low into High-German, and deny that the change of Gothic Th into High- German D took place before the sixth or seventh century, will find it difficult to account, in the first century, for the name of Deudorix, a German captive, the nephew of Melo the Sigambrian, mentioned by Strabo . In the oldest German poem in which the name of Dietrich occurs, the song of Hildebrand and Hadebrand, written down in the beginning of the ninth century , we find both forms, the Low-German Theotrih, and the High-German Deotrih, used side by side.
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