ABSTRACT

In view of the prominence of Frisians in Beowulf, it is not surprising that Joast Halbertsma (1789-1869), ‘the Frisian Grimm’, should have taken an interest in the poem from an early date, and in the relationship of Frisian to Anglo-Saxon (see further Halbertsma 1838 and Stanley 1990). More surprising is his early statement here, in his account of a Frisian noble family, Het geslacht det Van Haren’s. Fragmenten, Deventer 1829, of an argument all too familiar in departments of English studies a century and a half later. The paragraph (kindly supplied, with translation, by Rolf H.Bremmer Jr), comes from his ‘Preface’, pp. v-vi.