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unto them by a great way. Sea-weeds or Reike, rushes and reeds
growing upon the washes and meeres, serve them to twist for cords to
make their fishing nets with. These poore soules and sillie creatures
are faine to gather a slimie kind of fattie mud or oase, with their very
hands, which they drie against the wind rather than the Sunne ; and
with that earth, for want of other fewell, they make fire to seeth their
meat (such as it is) and heat the inward parts of their bodie, readie to
be starke and stiffe againe with the chilling North wind. No other
drinke have they but raine water, which they save in certaine ditches
after a shower, and those they dig at the very entrie of their cottages.
And yet see ! this people (as wretched and miserable a case as they
bee in) if they were subdued at this day by the people of Rome, would
say (and none sooner than they) that they lived in slaverie. Pliny,
Natural History, Book XVI. Chap. I.
The ambassadors Verritus and Maloriges (in Frisic probably Fred-
dens und Malrichsen) were complimented by an invitation to the
theatre of Pompey, to witness a public entertainment. Being re-
garded as rustics, or rather semi-barbarians, they were not conducted
to the box reserved for the imperial and royal diplomatic circle, but
shown to seats in the second tier. Enquiring of their valet de place
who the dignitaries were in the conspicuous lodge occupied by the
foreign ministers, they were told that these were their Excellencies,
the ambassadors from the kings and the great nations of the earth.
Upon this, they exclaimed, "Na worum schält wi denn do nich sitten ?
Sin wir Freschen denn nich eben so god as de annern ? Wat ji Römers
nich, det de Dütschen bater upkloppen känt, un mehr Trü un Globen
häft as de alle tosomen !" which Tacitus expresses in a very pompous,
Italian, and un-Frisic way : "nullos mortalium armis aut fide ante
Germanos esse." They now made their way, without ceremony, to
the diplomatic box, and took their seats with the other ambassadors,
which, as Tacitus says, was well received, as a sample of primitive
spirit, "comiter a visentibus exceptum quasi impetus antiqui." Kohl,
Vol. II, p. 325.
