PARTIII.THE HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGEINTRODUCTION.1.Tongue, Speech, Language.—We speak of the “English tongue” or of the “French language”; and we say of two nations that they “do not understand each other’s speech.” The existence of these three words—speech,tongue,language—proves to us that a language is somethingspoken,—that it is a number ofsounds; and that the writing or printing of it upon paper is a quite secondary matter. Language, rightly considered, then, is anorganised set of sounds. These sounds convey a meaning from the mind of the speaker to the mind of the hearer, and thus serve to connect man with man.2.Written Language.—It took many hundreds of years—perhaps thousands—before human beings were able to invent a mode of writing upon paper—that is, of representingsoundsbysigns. These signs are calledletters; and the whole set of them goes by the name of theAlphabet—from the two first letters of the Greek alphabet, which are calledalpha,beta. There are languages that have never been put upon paper at all, such as many of the African languages, many in the South Sea Islands, and other parts of the globe. But in all cases, every language that we know anything about—English, Latin, French, German—existed for hundreds of years before any one thought of writing it down on paper.3.A Language Grows.—A language is anorganismororganic existence. Now every organism lives; and, if it lives, it grows; and, if it grows, it also dies. Our language grows; it is growing still; and it has been growing for manyhundreds of years. As it grows it loses something, and it gains something else; it alters its appearance; changes take place in this part of it and in that part,—until at length its appearance in age is something almost entirely different from what it was in its early youth. If we had the photograph of a man of forty, and the photograph of the same person when he was a child of one, we should find, on comparing them, that it was almost impossible to point to the smallest trace of likeness in the features of the two photographs. And yet the two pictures represent the same person. And so it is with the English language. The oldest English, which is usually called Anglo-Saxon, is as different from our modern English as if they were two distinct languages; and yet they are not two languages, but really and fundamentally one and the same. Modern English differs from the oldest English as a giant oak does from a small oak sapling, or a broad stalwart man of forty does from a feeble infant of a few months old.4.The English Language.—The English language is the speech spoken by the Anglo-Saxon race in England, in most parts of Scotland, in the larger part of Ireland, in the United States, in Canada, in Australia and New Zealand, in South Africa, and in many other parts of the world. In the middle of thefifthcentury it was spoken by a few thousand men who had lately landed in England from the Continent: it is now spoken by more than one hundred millions of people. In the course of the next sixty years, it will probably be the speech of two hundred millions.5.English on the Continent.—In the middle of the fifth century it was spoken in the north-west corner of Europe—between the mouths of the Rhine, the Weser, and the Elbe; and in Schleswig there is a small district which is calledAngelnto this day. But it was not then calledEnglish; it was more probably calledTeutish, orTeutsch, orDeutsch—all words connected with a generic word which covers many families and languages—Teutonic. It was a rough guttural speech of one or two thousand words; and it was brought over to this country by theJutes,Angles, andSaxonsin the year 449. Thesemen left their home on the Continent to find here farms to till and houses to live in; and they drove the inhabitants of the island—theBritons—ever farther and farther west, until they at length left them in peace in the more mountainous parts of the island—in the southern and western corners, in Cornwall and in Wales.6.The British Language.—What language did the Teutonic conquerors, who wrested the lands from the poor Britons, find spoken in this island when they first set foot on it? Not a Teutonic speech at all. They found a language not one word of which they could understand. The island itself was then calledBritain; and the tongue spoken in it belonged to the Keltic group of languages. Languages belonging to the Keltic group are still spoken in Wales, in Brittany (in France), in the Highlands of Scotland, in the west of Ireland, and in the Isle of Man. A few words—very few—from the speech of the Britons, have come into our own English language; and what these are we shall see by-and-by.7.The Family to which English belongs.—Our English tongue belongs to theAryanorIndo-European Familyof languages. That is to say, the main part or substance of it can be traced back to the race which inhabited the high table-lands that lie to the back of the western end of the great range of the Himalaya, or “Abode of Snow.” This Aryan race grew and increased, and spread to the south and west; and from it have sprung languages which are now spoken in India, in Persia, in Greece and Italy, in France and Germany, in Scandinavia, and in Russia. From this Aryan family we are sprung; out of the oldest Aryan speech our own language has grown.8.The Group to which English belongs.—The Indo-European family of languages consists of several groups. One of these is called theTeutonic Group, because it is spoken by theTeuts(or theTeutonic race), who are found in Germany, in England and Scotland, in Holland, in parts of Belgium, in Denmark, in Norway and Sweden, in Iceland, and the Faroe Islands. The Teutonic group consists of three branches—High German,Low German, andScandinavian. HighGerman is the name given to the kind of German spoken in Upper Germany—that is, in the table-land which lies south of the river Main, and which rises gradually till it runs into the Alps.New High Germanis the German of books—the literary language—the German that is taught and learned in schools.Low Germanis the name given to the German dialects spoken in the lowlands—in the German part of the Great Plain of Europe, and round the mouths of those German rivers that flow into the Baltic and the North Sea.Scandinavianis the name given to the languages spoken in Denmark and in the great Scandinavian Peninsula. Of these three languages, Danish and Norwegian are practically the same—their literary or book-language is one; while Swedish is very different. Icelandic is the oldest and purest form of Scandinavian. The following is a table of theGROUP OF TEUTONIC LANGUAGES.TEUTONIC.Low German.High German.Scandinavian.Dutch.Flemish.Frisian.English.Old.Middle.New.IcelandicDansk(or Norsk).Ferroic.Svensk(Swedish).It will be observed, on looking at the above table, that High German is subdivided according to time, but that the other groups are subdivided according to space.9.English a Low-German Speech.—Our English tongue is thelowest of all Low-German dialects. Low German is the German spoken in the lowlands of Germany. As we descend the rivers, we come to the lowest level of all—the level of the sea. Our English speech, once a mere dialect, came down to that, crossed the German Ocean, and settled in Britain, to which it gave in time the name of Angla-land or England. The Low German spoken in the Netherlands is calledDutch; the Low German spoken in Friesland—a prosperous province of Holland—is calledFrisian; and the Low German spoken in Great Britain is calledEnglish. These three languages are extremely like one another; but the Continental language that is likestthe English is the Dutch or Hollandish dialect calledFrisian. We even possess a couplet, every word of which is both English and Frisian. It runs thus—Good butter and good cheeseIs good English and good Fries.10.Dutch and Welsh—a Contrast.—When the Teuton conquerors came to this country, they called the Britons foreigners, just as the Greeks called all other peoples besides themselvesbarbarians. By this they did not at first mean that they were uncivilised, but only that they werenotGreeks. Now, the Teutonic or Saxon or English name for foreigners wasWealhas, a word afterwards contracted intoWelsh. To this day the modern Teuts or Teutons (orGermans, aswecall them) call all Frenchmen and ItaliansWelshmen; and, when a German, peasant crosses the border into France, he says: “I am going into Welshland.”11.The Spread of English over Britain.—The Jutes, who came from Juteland or Jylland—now called Jutland—settled in Kent and in the Isle of Wight. The Saxons settled in the south and western parts of England, and gave their names to those kingdoms—now counties—whose names came to end insex. There was the kingdom of the East Saxons, orEssex; the kingdom of the West Saxons, orWessex; the kingdom of the Middle Saxons, orMiddlesex; and the kingdom of the South Saxons, orSussex. The Angles settled chiefly on the east coast. The kingdom ofEast Angliawas divided into the regions of theNorth Folkand theSouth Folk, words which are still perpetuated in the namesNorfolkandSuffolk. These three sets of Teutons all spoke different dialects of the same Teutonic speech; and these dialects, with their differences, peculiarities, and odd habits, took root in English soil, and lived an independent life, apart from each other, uninfluenced by each other, for several hundreds of years. But, in the slow course of time, they joined together to make up our beautiful English language—a language which, however, still bears in itself the traces of dialectic forms, and is in no respect of one kind or of one fibre all through.CHAPTER I.THE PERIODS OF ENGLISH.1.Dead and Living Languages.—A language is said to be dead when it is no longer spoken. Such a language we know only in books. Thus, Latin is a dead language, because no nation anywhere now speaks it. A dead language can undergo no change; it remains, and must remain, as we find it written in books. But a living language is always changing, just like a tree or the human body. The human body has its periods or stages. There is the period of infancy, the period of boyhood, the period of manhood, and the period of old age. In the same way, a language has its periods.2.No Sudden Changes—a Caution.—We divide the English language into periods, and then mark, with some approach to accuracy, certain distinct changes in the habits of our language, in the inflexions of its words, in the kind of words it preferred, or in the way it liked to put its words together. But we must be carefully on our guard against fancying that, at any given time or in any given year, the English people threw aside one set of habits as regards language, and adopted another set. It is not so, nor can it be so. The changes in language are as gentle, gradual, and imperceptible as the changes in the growth of a tree or in the skin of the human body. We renew our skin slowly and gradually; but we are never conscious of the process, nor can we say at any given time that we have got a completely new skin.3.The Periods of English.—Bearing this caution in mind, we can go on to look at the chief periods in our English language. These are five in number; and they are as follows:—I.Ancient English or Anglo-Saxon,449-1100II.Early English,1100-1250III.Middle English,1250-1485IV.Tudor English,1485-1603V.Modern English,1603-1900These periods merge very slowly, or are shaded off, so to speak, into each other in the most gradual way. If we take the English of 1250 and compare it with that of 900, we shall find a great difference; but if we compare it with the English of 1100 the difference is not so marked. The difference between the English of the nineteenth and the English of the fourteenth century is very great, but the difference between the English of the fourteenth and that of the thirteenth century is very small.4.Ancient English or Anglo-Saxon, 450-1100.—This form of English differed from modern English in having a much larger number of inflexions. The noun had five cases, and there were several declensions, just as in Latin; adjectives were declined, and had three genders; some pronouns had a dual as well as a plural number; and the verb had a much larger number of inflexions than it has now. The vocabulary of the language contained very few foreign elements. The poetry of the language employed head-rhyme or alliteration, and not end-rhyme, as we do now. The works of the poetCaedmonand the great prose-writerKing Alfredbelong to this Anglo-Saxon period.5.Early English, 1100-1250.—The coming of the Normans in 1066 made many changes in the land, many changes in the Church and in the State, and it also introduced many changes into the language. The inflexions of our speech began to drop off, because they were used less and less; and though we never adopted newinflexionsfrom French or from any other language, new Frenchwordsbegan to creep in. In some parts of the country English had ceased to be written in books; the language existed as a spoken language only; and hence accuracy in the use of words and the inflexions of words could not beensured. Two notable books—written, not printed, for there was no printing in this island till the year 1474—belong to this period. These are theOrmulum, byOrmorOrmin, and theBrut, by a monk calledLayamonorLaweman. The latter tells the story of Brutus, who was believed to have been the son of Æneas of Troy; to have escaped after the downfall of that city; to have sailed through the Mediterranean, ever farther and farther to the west; to have landed in Britain, settled here, and given the country its name.6.Middle English, 1250-1485.—Most of the inflexions of nouns and adjectives have in this period—between the middle of the thirteenth and the end of the fifteenth century—completely disappeared. The inflexions of verbs are also greatly reduced in number. Thestrong1mode of inflexion has ceased to be employed for verbs that are new-comers, and theweakmode has been adopted in its place. During the earlier part of this period, even country-people tried to speak French, and in this and other modes many French words found their way into English. A writer of the thirteenth century, John de Trevisa, says that country-people “fondeth [that is, try] with great bysynes for to speke Freynsch for to be more y-told of.” The country-people did not succeed very well, as the ordinary proverb shows: “Jack would be a gentleman if he could speak French.” Boys at school were expected to turn their Latin into French, and in the courts of law French only was allowed to be spoken. But in 1362 Edward III. gave his assent to an Act of Parliament allowing English to be used instead of Norman-French. “The yer of oure Lord,” says John de Trevisa, “a thousond thre hondred foure score and fyve of the secunde Kyng Richard after the conquest, in al the gramer scoles of Engelond children leveth Freynsch, and construeth and turneth an Englysch.” To the first half of this period belong aMetrical Chronicle, attributed toRobert of Gloucester;Langtoft’sMetrical Chronicle, translated byRobert de Brunne; theAgenbite of Inwit, by Dan Michel of Northgate in Kent; and a few others. But to the secondhalf belong the rich and varied productions ofGeoffrey Chaucer, our first great poet and always one of our greatest writers; the alliterative poems ofWilliam LangleyorLanglande; the more learned poems ofJohn Gower; and the translation of the Bible and theological works of the reformerJohn Wyclif.7.Tudor English, 1485-1603.—Before the end of the sixteenth century almost all our inflexions had disappeared. The great dramatist Ben Jonson (1574-1637) laments the loss of the plural endingenfor verbs, becausewentenandhopenwere much more musical and more useful in verse thanwentorhope; but its recovery was already past praying for. This period is remarkable for the introduction of an enormous number of Latin words, and this was due to the new interest taken in the literature of the Romans—an interest produced by what is called theRevival of Letters. But the most striking, as it is also the most important fact relating to this period, is the appearance of a group of dramatic writers, the greatest the world has ever seen. Chief among these wasWilliam Shakespeare. Of pure poetry perhaps the greatest writer wasEdmund Spenser. The greatest prose-writer wasRichard Hooker, and the pithiestFrancis Bacon.8.Modern English, 1603-1900.—The grammar of the language was fixed before this period, most of the accidence having entirely vanished. The vocabulary of the language, however, has gone on increasing, and is still increasing; for the English language, like the English people, is always ready to offer hospitality to all peaceful foreigners—words or human beings—that will land and settle within her coasts. And the tendency at the present time is not only to give a hearty welcome to newcomers from other lands, but to call back old words and old phrases that had been allowed to drop out of existence. Tennyson has been one of the chief agents in this happy restoration.CHAPTER II.THE HISTORY OF THE VOCABULARY OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE.1.The English Nation.—The English people have for many centuries been the greatest travellers in the world. It was an Englishman—Francis Drake—who first went round the globe; and the English have colonised more foreign lands in every part of the world than any other people that ever existed. The English in this way have been influenced by the world without. But they have also been subjected to manifold influences from within—they have been exposed to greater political changes, and profounder though quieter political revolutions, than any other nation. In 1066 they were conquered by the Norman-French; and for several centuries they had French kings. Seeing and talking with many different peoples, they learned to adopt foreign words with ease, and to give them a home among the native-born words of the language. Trade is always a kindly and useful influence; and the trade of Great Britain has for many centuries been larger than that of any other nation. It has spread into every part of the world; it gives and receives from all tribes and nations, from every speech and tongue.2.The English Element in English.—When the English came to this island in the fifth century, the number of words in the language they spoke was probably not overtwo thousand. Now, however, we possess a vocabulary of perhaps more thanone hundred thousand words. And so eager and willinghave we been to welcome foreign words, that it may be said with truth that:The majority of words in the English Tongue are not English. In fact, if we take the Latin language by itself, there are in our language moreLatinwords thanEnglish. But the grammar is distinctly English, and not Latin at all.3.The Spoken Language and the Written Language—a Caution.—We must not forget what has been said about a language,—that it is not a printed thing—not a set of black marks upon paper, but that it is in truest truth atongueor aspeech. Hence we must be careful to distinguish between thespokenlanguage and thewrittenorprintedlanguage; between the language of theearand the language of theeye; between the language of themouthand the language of thedictionary; between themovingvocabulary of the market and the street, and thefixedvocabulary that has been catalogued and imprisoned in our dictionaries. If we can only keep this in view, we shall find that, though there are more Latin words in our vocabulary than English, the English words we possess areusedin speaking a hundred times, or even a thousand times, oftener than the Latin words. It is the genuine English words that have life and movement; it is they that fly about in houses, in streets, and in markets; it is they that express with greatest force our truest and most usual sentiments—our inmost thoughts and our deepest feelings. Latin words are found often enough in books; but, when an English man or woman is deeply moved, he speaks pure English and nothing else. Words are the coin of human intercourse; and it is the native coin of pure English with the native stamp that is in daily circulation.4.A Diagram of English.—If we were to try to represent to the eye the proportions of the different elements in our vocabulary, as it is found in the dictionary, the diagram would take something like the following form:—DIAGRAM OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE.English Words.Latin Words(including Norman-French, which are also Latin).Greek Words.Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Hebrew, Arabic, Hindustani, Persian, Malay, American, etc. etc.5.The Foreign Elements in our English Vocabulary.—The different peoples and the different circumstances with which we have come in contact, have had many results—one among others, that of presenting us with contributions to our vocabulary. We found Kelts here; and hence we have a number of Keltic words in our vocabulary. The Romans held this island for several hundred years; and when they had to go in the year 410, they left behind them six Latin words, which we have inherited. In the seventh century, Augustine and his missionary monks from Rome brought over to us a larger number of Latin words; and the Church which they founded introduced ever more and more words from Rome. The Danes began to come over to this island in the eighth century; we had for some time a Danish dynasty seated on the throne of England: and hence we possess many Danish words. The Norman-French invasion in the eleventh century brought us many hundreds of Latin words; for French is in reality a branch of the Latin tongue. The Revival of Learning in the sixteenth century gave us several thousands of Latin words. And wherever our sailors and merchants have gone, they have brought back with them foreign words as well as foreign things—Arabic words from Arabia and Africa, Hindustani words from India, Persian words from Persia, Chinese words from China, and even Malay words from the peninsula of Malacca. Let us look a little more closely at these foreign elements.6.The Keltic Element in English.—This element is ofthree kinds: (i) Those words which we received direct from the ancient Britons whom we found in the island; (ii) those which the Norman-French brought with them from Gaul; (iii) those which have lately come into the language from the Highlands of Scotland, or from Ireland, or from the writings of Sir Walter Scott.7.The First Keltic Element.—This first contribution contains the following words:Breeches,clout,crock,cradle,darn,dainty,mop,pillow;barrow(a funeral mound),glen,havoc,kiln,mattock,pool. It is worthy of note that the first eight in the list are the names of domestic—some even of kitchen—things and utensils. It may, perhaps, be permitted us to conjecture that in many cases the Saxon invader married a British wife, who spoke her own language, taught her children to speak their mother tongue, and whose words took firm root in the kitchen of the new English household. The names of most rivers, mountains, lakes, and hills are, of course, Keltic; for these names would not be likely to be changed by the English new-comers. There are two names for rivers which are found—in one form or another—in every part of Great Britain. These are the namesAvonandEx. The wordAvonmeans simplywater. We can conceive the children on a farm near a river speaking of it simply as “the water”; and hence we find fourteen Avons in this island.Exalso meanswater; and there are perhaps more than twenty streams in Great Britain with this name. The word appears asExinExeter(the older and fuller form beingExanceaster—the camp on the Exe); asAxinAxminster; asOxinOxford; asUxinUxbridge; and asOusein Yorkshire and other eastern counties. In Wales and Scotland, the hiddenkchanges its place and comes at the end. Thus in Wales we findUsk; and in Scotland,Esk. There are at least eight Esks in the kingdom of Scotland alone. The commonest Keltic name for a mountain isPenorBen(in Wales it isPen; in Scotland the flatter formBenis used). We find this word in England also under the form ofPennine; and, in Italy, asApennine.8.The Second Keltic Element.—The Normans came fromScandinavia early in the tenth century, and wrested the valley of the Seine out of the hands of Charles the Simple, the then king of the French. The language spoken by the people of France was a broken-down form of spoken Latin, which is now called French; but in this language they had retained many Gaulish words out of the old Gaulish language. Such are the words:Bag,bargain,barter;barrel,basin,basket,bucket;bonnet,button,ribbon;car,cart;dagger,gown;mitten,motley;rogue;varlet,vassal,wicket. The above words were brought over to Britain by the Normans; and they gradually took an acknowledged place among the words of our own language, and have held that place ever since.9.The Third Keltic Element.—This consists of comparatively few words—such asclan;claymore(a sword);philabeg(a kind of kilt),kiltitself,brogue(a kind of shoe),plaid;pibroch(bagpipe war-music),slogan(a war-cry); andwhisky. Ireland has given usshamrock,gag,log,clog, andbrogue—in the sense of a mode of speech.10.The Scandinavian Element in English.—Towards the end of the eighth century—in the year 787—the Teutons of the North, called Northmen, Normans, or Norsemen—but more commonly known as Danes—made their appearance on the eastern coast of Great Britain, and attacked the peaceful towns and quiet settlements of the English. These attacks became so frequent, and their occurrence was so much dreaded, that a prayer was inserted against them in a Litany of the time—“From the incursions of the Northmen, good Lord, deliver us!” In spite of the resistance of the English, the Danes had, before the end of the ninth century, succeeded in obtaining a permanent footing in England; and, in the eleventh century, a Danish dynasty sat upon the English throne from the year 1016 to 1042. From the time of King Alfred, the Danes of the Danelagh were a settled part of the population of England; and hence we find, especially on the east coast, a large number of Danish names still in use.11.Character of the Scandinavian Element.—The Northmen, as we have said, were Teutons; and they spoke a dialectof the great Teutonic (or German) language. The sounds of the Danish dialect—or language, as it must now be called—are harder than those of the German. We find akinstead of ach; appreferred to anf. The same is the case in Scotland, where the hard formkirkis preferred to the softerchurch. Where the Germans sayDorf—our English wordThorpe, a village—the Danes sayDrup.12.Scandinavian Words(i).—The words contributed to our language by the Scandinavians are of two kinds: (i) Names of places; and (ii) ordinary words. (i) The most striking instance of a Danish place-name is the nounby, a town. Mr Isaac Taylor2tells us that there are in the east of England more than six hundred names of towns ending inby. Almost all of these are found in the Danelagh, within the limits of the great highway made by the Romans to the north-west, and well-known asWatling Street. We find, for example,Whitby, or the town on thewhitecliffs;Grimsby, or the town of Grim, a great sea-rover, who obtained for his countrymen the right that all ships from the Baltic should come into the port of Grimsby free of duty;Tenby, that isDaneby;by-law, a law for a special town; and a vast number of others. The following Danish words also exist in our times—either as separate and individual words, or in composition—beck, a stream;fell, a hill or table-land;firthorfiord, an arm of the sea—the same as the Danish fiord;force, a waterfall;garth, a yard or enclosure;holm, an island in a river;kirk, a church;oe, an island;thorpe, a village;thwaite, a forest clearing; andvikorwick, a station for ships, or a creek.13.Scandinavian Words(ii).—The most useful and the most frequently employed word that we have received from the Danes is the wordare. The pure English word for this isbeothorsindon. The Danes gave us also the habit of usingtobefore an infinitive. Their word fortowasat; andatstill survives and is in use in Lincolnshire. We find also the following Danish words in our language:blunt,bole(of a tree),bound(on a journey—properlyboun),busk(to dress),cake,call,crop(to cut),curl,cut,dairy,daze,din,droop,fellow,flit,for,froward,hustings,ill,irk,kid,kindle,loft,odd,plough,root,scold,sky,tarn(a small mountain lake),weak, andugly. It is in Northumberland, Durham, Yorkshire, Lincoln, Norfolk, and even in the western counties of Cumberland and Lancashire, that we find the largest admixture of Scandinavian words.14.Influence of the Scandinavian Element.—The introduction of the Danes and the Danish language into England had the result, in the east, of unsettling the inflexions of our language, and thus of preparing the way for their complete disappearance. The declensions of nouns became unsettled; nouns that used to make their plural inaor inutook the more striking plural suffixasthat belonged to a quite different declension. The same things happened to adjectives, verbs, and other parts of language. The causes of this are not far to seek. Spoken language can never be so accurate as written language; the mass of the English and Danes never cared or could care much for grammar; and both parties to a conversation would of course hold firmly to therootof the word, which was intelligible to both of them, and let the inflexions slide, or take care of themselves. The more the English and Danes mixed with each other, the oftener they met at church, at games, and in the market-place, the more rapidly would this process of stripping go on,—the smaller care would both peoples take of the grammatical inflexions which they had brought with them into this country.15.The Latin Element in English.—So far as the number of words—the vocabulary—of the language is concerned, the Latin contribution is by far the most important element in our language. Latin was the language of the Romans; and the Romans at one time were masters of the whole known world. No wonder, then, that they influenced so many peoples, and that their language found its way—east and west, and south and north—into almost all the countries of Europe. There are, as we have seen, more Latin than English words in our own language; and it is therefore necessary to make ourselves acquainted with thecharacter and the uses of the Latin element—an element so important—in English.3Not only have the Romans made contributions of largenumbersof words to the English language, but they have added to it a quite newquality, and given to its genius newpowersof expression. So true is this, that we may say—without any sense of unfairness, or any feeling of exaggeration—that, until the Latin element was thoroughly mixed, united with, and transfused into the original English, the writings of Shakespeare were impossible, the poetry of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries could not have come into existence. This is true of Shakespeare; and it is still more true of Milton. His most powerful poetical thoughts are written in lines, the most telling words in which are almost always Latin. This may be illustrated by the following lines from “Lycidas”:—“It was thatfatalandperfidiousbark,Built in theeclipse, and rigged with curses dark,That sunk so low thatsacredhead of thine!”16.The Latin Contributions and their Dates.—The first contribution of Latin words was made by the Romans—not, however, to the English, but to the Britons. The Romans held this island fromA.D.43toA.D.410. They left behind them—when they were obliged to go—a small contribution of six words—six only, but all of them important. The second contribution—to a large extent ecclesiastical—was made by Augustine and his missionary monks from Rome, and their visit took place in the year596. The third contribution was made through the medium of the Norman-French, who seized and subdued this island in the year1066and following years. The fourth contribution came to us by the aid of the Revival of Learning—rather a process than an event, the dates of which are vague, but which may be said to have taken place in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The Latin left for us by the Romans is calledLatin of the First Period; that brought over by the missionaries from Rome,Latin of theSecond Period; that given us by the Norman-French,Latin of the Third Period; and that which came to us from the Revival of Learning,Latin of the Fourth Period. The first consists of a few names handed down to us through the Britons; the second, of a number of words—mostly relating to ecclesiastical affairs—brought into the spoken language by the monks; the third, of a large vocabulary, that came to us bymouthandear; and the fourth, of a very large treasure of words, which we received by means ofbooksand theeye. Let us now look more closely and carefully at them, each in its turn.17.Latin of the First Period(i).—The Romans held Britain for nearly four hundred years; and they succeeded in teaching the wealthier classes among the Southern Britons to speak Latin. They also built towns in the island, made splendid roads, formed camps at important points, framed good laws, and administered the affairs of the island with considerable justice and uprightness. But, never having come directly into contact with the Angles or Saxons themselves, they could not in any way influence their language by oral communication—by speaking to them. What they left behind them was only six words, most of which became merely the prefixes or the suffixes of the names of places. These six words wereCastra, a camp;Strata(via), a paved road;Colonia, a settlement (generally of soldiers);Fossa, a trench;Portus, a harbour; andVallum, a rampart.18.Latin of the First Period(ii).—(a) The treatment of the Latin wordcastrain this island has been both singular and significant. It has existed in this country for nearly nineteen hundred years; and it has always taken the colouring of the locality into whose soil it struck root. In the north and east of England it is sounded hard, and takes the form ofcaster, as inLancaster,Doncaster,Tadcaster, and others. In the midland counties, it takes the softer form ofcester, as inLeicester,Towcester; and in the extreme west and south, it takes the still softer form ofchester, as inChester,Manchester,Winchester, and others. It is worthy of notice that there are in Scotland no words ending incaster. Thoughthe Romans had camps in Scotland, they do not seem to have been so important as to become the centres of towns. (b) The wordstratahas also taken different forms in different parts of England. Whilecastrahas always been a suffix,stratashows itself constantly as a prefix. When the Romans came to this island, the country was impassable by man. There were no roads worthy of the name,—what paths there were being merely foot-paths or bridle-tracks. One of the first things the Romans did was to drive a strongly built military road fromRichborough, near Dover, to the river Dee, on which they formed a standing camp (Castra stativa) which to this day bears the name ofChester. This great road became the highway of all travellers from north to south,—was known as “The Street,” and was called by the SaxonsWatling Street. But this wordstreetalso became a much-used prefix, and took the different forms ofstrat,strad,stret, andstreat. All towns with such names are to be found on this or some other great Roman road. Thus we haveStratford-on-Avon,Stratton,Stradbroke,Stretton,Stretford(near Manchester), andStreatham(near London).—Over the other words we need not dwell so long.Coloniawe find inColne,Lincoln, and others;fossainFossway,Fosbrooke, andFosbridge;portus, inPortsmouth, andBridport; andvallumin the wordswall,bailey, andbailiff. The Normans called the two courts in front of their castles the inner and outer baileys; and the officer in charge of them was called the bailiff.19.Latin Element of the Second Period(i).—The story of Pope Gregory and the Roman mission to England is widely known. Gregory, when a young man, was crossing the Roman forum one morning, and, when passing the side where the slave-mart was held, observed, as he walked, some beautiful boys, with fair hair, blue eyes, and clear bright complexion. He asked a bystander of what nation the boys were. The answer was, that they were Angles. “No, not Angles,” he replied; “they are angels.” On learning further that they were heathens, he registered a silent vow that he would, if Providence gave him an opportunity, deliver them from thedarkness of heathendom, and bring them and their relatives into the light and liberty of the Gospel. Time passed by; and in the long course of time Gregory became Pope. In his unlooked-for greatness, he did not forget his vow. In the year 596 he sent over to Kent a missionary, called Augustine, along with forty monks. They were well received by the King of Kent, allowed to settle in Canterbury, and to build a small cathedral there.20.Latin Element of the Second Period(ii).—This mission, the churches that grew out of it, the Christian customs that in time took root in the country, and the trade that followed in its track, brought into the language a number of Latin words, most of them the names of church offices, services, and observances. Thus we find, in our oldest English, the words,postolfromapostolus, a person sent;biscop, fromepiscopus, an overseer;calc, fromcalix, a cup;clerc, fromclericus, an ordained member of the church;munec, frommonăchus, a solitary person or monk;preost, frompresbyter, an elder;aelmesse, fromeleēmosŭnē, alms;predician, fromprædicare, to preach;regol, fromregula, a rule. (Apostle,bishop,clerk,monk,priest, andalmscome to us really from Greek words—but through the Latin tongue.)21.Latin Element of the Second Period(iii).—The introduction of the Roman form of Christianity brought with it increased communication with Rome and with the Continent generally; widened the experience of Englishmen; gave a stimulus to commerce; and introduced into this island new things and products, and along with the things and products new names. To this period belongs the introduction of the words:Butter,cheese;cedar,fig,pear,peach;lettuce, lily;pepper,pease;camel,lion,elephant;oyster,trout;pound,ounce;candle,table;marble;mint.22.Latin of the Third Period(i).—The Latin element of the Third Period is in reality the French that was brought over to this island by the Normans in 1066, and is generally calledNorman-French. It differed from the French of Paris both in spelling and in pronunciation. For example, Norman-Frenchwrotepeopleforpeuple;léalforloyal;réalforroyal;réalmforroyaume; and so on. But both of these dialects (and every dialect of French) are simply forms of Latin—not of the Latin written and printed in books, but of the Latin spoken in the camp, the fields, the streets, the village, and the cottage. The Romans conquered Gaul, where a Keltic tongue was spoken; and the Gauls gradually adopted Latin as their mother tongue, and—with the exception of the Brétons of Brittany—left off their Keltic speech almost entirely. In adopting the Latin tongue, they had—as in similar cases—taken firm hold of the root of the word, but changed the pronunciation of it, and had, at the same time, compressed very much or entirely dropped many of the Latin inflexions. The French people, an intermixture of Gauls and other tribes (some of them, like the Franks, German), ceased, in fact, to speak their own language, and learned the Latin tongue. The Norsemen, led by Duke Rolf or Rollo or Rou, marched south in large numbers; and, in the year 912, wrested from King Charles the Simple the fair valley of the Seine, settled in it, and gave to it the name of Normandy. These Norsemen, now Normans, were Teutons, and spoke a Teutonic dialect; but, when they settled in France, they learned in course of time to speak French. The kind of French they spoke is called Norman-French, and it was this kind of French that they brought over with them in 1066. But Norman-French had made its appearance in England before the famous year of ’66; for Edward the Confessor, who succeeded to the English throne in 1042, had been educated at the Norman Court; and he not only spoke the language himself, but insisted on its being spoken by the nobles who lived with him in his Court.23.Latin of the Third Period(ii).Chief Dates.—The Normans, having utterly beaten down the resistance of the English, seized the land and all the political power of this country, and filled all kinds of offices—both spiritual and temporal—with their Norman brethren. Norman-French became the language of the Court and the nobility, the language of Parliament and the law courts, of the universities and the schools, of the Churchand of literature. The English people held fast to their own tongue; but they picked up many French words in the markets and other places “where men most do congregate.” But French, being the language of the upper and ruling classes, was here and there learned by the English or Saxon country-people who had the ambition to be in the fashion, and were eager “to speke Frensch, for to be more y-told of,”—to be more highly considered than their neighbours. It took about three hundred years for French words and phrases to soak thoroughly into English; and it was not until England was saturated with French words and French rhythms that the great poet Chaucer appeared to produce poetic narratives that were read with delight both by Norman baron and by Saxon yeoman. In the course of these three hundred years this intermixture of French with English had been slowly and silently going on. Let us look at a few of the chief land-marks in the long process. In1042Edward the Confessor introduces Norman-French into his Court. In1066Duke William introduces Norman-French into the whole country, and even into parts of Scotland. The oldest English, or Anglo-Saxon, ceases to be written, anywhere in the island, in public documents, in the year1154. In1204we lost Normandy, a loss that had the effect of bringing the English and the Normans closer together. Robert of Gloucester writes his chronicle in1272, and uses a large number of French words. But, as early as the reign of Henry the Third, in the year1258, the reformed and reforming Government of the day issued a proclamation in English, as well as in French and Latin. In1303, Robert of Brunn introduces a large number of French words. The French wars in Edward the Third’s reign brought about a still closer union of the Norman and the Saxon elements of the nation. But, about the middle of the fourteenth century a reaction set in, and it seemed as if the genius of the English language refused to take in any more French words. The English silent stubbornness seemed to have prevailed, and Englishmen had made up their minds to be English in speech, as they were English to the backbone in everything else. Norman-French had, in fact, become provincial, and was spokenonly here and there. Before the great Plague—commonly spoken of as “The Black Death”—of1349, both high and low seemed to be alike bent on learning French, but the reaction may be said to date from this year. The culminating point of this reaction may perhaps be seen in an Act of Parliament passed in1362by Edward III., by which both French and Latin had to give place to English in our courts of law. The poems of Chaucer are the literary result—“the bright consummate flower” of the union of two great powers—the brilliance of the French language on the one hand and the homely truth and steadfastness of English on the other. Chaucer was born in1340, and died in1400; so that we may say that he and his poems—though not the causes—are the signs and symbols of the great influence that French obtained and held over our mother tongue. But although we accepted so manywordsfrom our Norman-French visitors and immigrants, we accepted from them nohabitof speech whatever. We accepted from them no phrase or idiom: the build and nature of the English language remained the same—unaffected by foreign manners or by foreign habits. It is true that Chaucer has the ridiculous phrase, “I n’am but dead” (for “I am quite dead”4)—which is a literal translation of the well-known French idiom, “Je ne suis que.” But, though our tongue has always been and is impervious to foreign idiom, it is probably owing to the great influx of French words which took place chiefly in the thirteenth century that many people have acquired a habit of using a long French or Latin word when an English word would do quite as well—or, indeed, a great deal better. Thus some people are found to call agood house, adesirable mansion; and, instead of the quiet old English proverb, “Buy once, buy twice,” we have the roundabout Latinisms, “A single commission will ensure a repetition of orders.” An American writer, speaking of the foreign ambassadors who had been attacked by Japanese soldiers in Yeddo, says that “they concluded to occupy a location more salubrious.” This is only a foreign language, instead of the simple and homely English: “They made up their minds to settle in a healthier spot.”24.Latin of the Third Period(iii).Norman Words(a).—The Norman-French words were of several different kinds. There were words connected with war, with feudalism, and with the chase. There were new law terms, and words connected with the State, and the new institutions introduced by the Normans. There were new words brought in by the Norman churchmen. New titles unknown to the English were also introduced. A better kind of cooking, a higher and less homely style of living, was brought into this country by the Normans; and, along with these, new and unheard-of words.25.Norman Words(b).—The following are some of the Norman-French terms connected with war:Arms,armour;assault,battle;captain,chivalry;joust,lance;standard,trumpet;mail,vizor. The English word forarmourwasharness; but the Normans degraded that word into the armour of a horse.Battlecomes from the Fr.battre, to beat: the corresponding English word isfight.Captaincomes from the Latincaput, a head.Mailcomes from the Latinmacula, the mesh of a net; and the first coats of mail were made of rings or a kind of metal network.Vizorcomes from the Fr.viser, to look. It was the barred part of the helmet which a man could see through.26.Norman Words(c).—Feudalism may be described as the holding of land on condition of giving or providing service in war. Thus a knight held land of his baron, under promise to serve him so many days; a baron of his king, on condition that he brought so many men into the field for such and such a time at the call of his Overlord. William the Conqueror made the feudal system universal in every part of England, and compelled every English baron to swear homage to himself personally. Words relating to feudalism are, among others:Homage,fealty;esquire,vassal;herald,scutcheon, and others.Homageis the declaration of obedience for life of one man to another—that the inferior is theman(Fr.homme; L.homo) of the superior.Fealtyis the Norman-French form of the wordfidelity. Anesquireis ascutiger(L.), orshield-bearer; for he carried the shield of the knight, whenthey were travelling and no fighting was going on. Avassalwas a “little young man,”—in Low-Latinvassallus, a diminutive ofvassus, from the Keltic wordgwâs, a man. (The formvassaletusis also found, which gives us ourvarletandvalet.)Scutcheoncomes from the Lat.scutum, a shield. Then scutcheon or escutcheon came to meancoat-of-arms—or the marks and signs on his shield by which the name and family of a man were known, when he himself was covered from head to foot in iron mail.27.Norman Words(d).—The terms connected with the chase are:Brace,couple;chase,course;covert,copse,forest;leveret,mews;quarry,venison. A few remarks about some of these may be interesting.Bracecomes from the Old Frenchbrace, an arm (Mod. Frenchbras); from the Latinbrachium. The root-idea seems to be that which encloses or holds up. Thusbracingair is that whichstringsup the nerves and muscles; and abraceof birds was two birds tied together with a string.—The wordforestcontains in itself a good deal of unwritten Norman history. It comes from the Latin adverbforas, out of doors. Hence, in Italy, a stranger or foreigner is still called aforestiere. A forest in Norman-French was not necessarily a breadth of land covered with trees; it was simply landout ofthe jurisdiction of the common law. Hence, when William the Conqueror created the New Forest, he merely took the landout ofthe rule and charge of the common law, and put it under his own regal power and personal care. In land of this kind—much of which was kept for hunting in—trees were afterwards planted, partly to shelter large game, and partly to employ ground otherwise useless in growing timber.—Mewsis a very odd word. It comes from the Latin verbmutare, to change. When the falcons employed in hunting were changing their feathers, ormoulting(the wordmoultis the same asmewsin a different dress), the French shut them in a cage, which they calledmue—frommutare. Then the stables for horses were put in the same place; and hence a row of stables has come to be called amews.—Quarryis quite as strange. The wordquarry, which means a mine of stones,comes from the Latinquadrāre, to make square. But the hunting termquarryis of a quite different origin. That comes from the Latincor(the heart), which the Old French altered intoquer. When a wild beast was run down and killed, the heart and entrails were thrown to the dogs as their share of the hunt. Hence Milton says of the eagle, “He scents his quarry from afar.”—The wordvenisoncomes to us, through French, from the Lat.venāri, to hunt; and hence it meanshunted flesh. The same word gives usvenery—the term that was used in the fourteenth century, by Chaucer among others, for hunting.28.Norman Words(e).—The Normans introduced into England their own system of law, their own law officers; and hence, into the English language, came Norman-French law terms. The following are a few:Assize,attorney;chancellor,court;judge,justice;plaintiff,sue;summons,trespass. A few remarks about some of these may be useful. Thechancellor(cancellarius) was the legal authority who sat behind lattice-work, which was called in Latincancelli. This word means, primarily,little crabs; and it is a diminutive fromcancer, a crab. It was so called because the lattice-work looked like crabs’ claws crossed. Our wordcancelcomes from the same root: it means to make cross lines through anything we wish deleted.—Courtcomes from the Latincorsorcohors, a sheep-pen. It afterwards came to mean an enclosure, and also a body of Roman soldiers.—The proper English word for ajudgeisdeemsterordemster(which appears as the proper nameDempster); and this is still the name for a judge in the Isle of Man. The French word comes from two Latin words,dico, I utter, andjus, right. The word jus is seen in the other French term which we have received from the Normans—justice.—Suecomes from the Old Fr.suir, which appears in Modern Fr. assuivre. It is derived from the Lat. wordsequor, I follow (which gives oursequel); and we have compounds of it inensue,issue, andpursue. —Thetresintrespassis a French form of the Latin trans, beyond or across.Trespass, therefore, means to cross the bounds of right.29.Norman Words(f).—Some of the church terms introducedby the Norman-French are:Altar,Bible;baptism,ceremony;friar;tonsure;penance,relic.—The Normans gave us the wordstitleanddignitythemselves, and also the following titles:Duke,marquis;count,viscount;peer;mayor, and others. A duke is aleader; from the Latindux(=duc-s). Amarquisis a lord who has to ride themarchesor borders between one county, or between one country, and another. A marquis was also called aLord-Marcher. The wordcountnever took root in this island, because its place was already occupied by the Danish nameearl; but we preserve it in the namescountessandviscount—the latter of which means a personin the place of(L.vice) a count.Peercomes from the Latinpar, an equal. The House of Peers is the House of Lords—that is, of those who are, at least when in the House,equalin rank andequalin power of voting. It is a fundamental doctrine in English law that every man “is to be tried by hispeers.”—It is worthy of note that, in general, theFrenchnames for different kinds of food designated thecookedmeats; while the names for thelivinganimals that furnish them areEnglish. Thus we havebeefandox;muttonandsheep;vealandcalf;porkandpig. There is a remarkable passage in Sir Walter Scott’s ‘Ivanhoe,’ which illustrates this fact with great force and picturesqueness:—“‘Gurth, I advise thee to call off Fangs, and leave the herd to their destiny, which, whether they meet with bands of travelling soldiers, or of outlaws, or of wandering pilgrims, can be little else than to be converted into Normans before morning, to thy no small ease and comfort.’“‘The swine turned Normans to my comfort!’ quoth Gurth; ‘expound that to me, Wamba, for my brain is too dull, and my mind too vexed, to read riddles.’“‘Why, how call you those grunting brutes running about on their four legs?’ demanded Wamba.“‘Swine, fool, swine,’ said the herd; ‘every fool knows that.’“‘And swine is good Saxon,’ said the jester; ‘but how callyou the sow when she is flayed, and drawn, and quartered, and hung up by the heels, like a traitor?’“‘Pork,’ answered the swine-herd.“‘I am very glad every fool knows that too,’ said Wamba; ‘and pork, I think, is good Norman-French: and so when the brute lives, and is in the charge of a Saxon slave, she goes by her Saxon name; but becomes a Norman, and is called pork, when she is carried to the castle-hall to feast among the nobles; what dost thou think of this, friend Gurth, ha?’“‘It is but too true doctrine, friend Wamba, however it got into thy fool’s pate.’“‘Nay, I can tell you more,’ said Wamba, in the same tone; ‘there is old Alderman Ox continues to hold his Saxon epithet, while he is under the charge of serfs and bondsmen such as thou, but becomes Beef, a fiery French gallant, when he arrives before the worshipful jaws that are destined to consume him.MyhneerCalf, too, becomes Monsieur de Veau in the like manner; he is Saxon when he requires tendance, and takes a Norman name when he becomes matter of enjoyment.’”30.General Character of the Norman-French Contributions.—The Norman-French contributions to our language gave us a number ofgeneral namesorclass-names; while the names forindividualthings are, in general, of purely English origin. The wordsanimalandbeast, for example, are French (or Latin); but the wordsfox,hound,whale,snake,wasp, andflyare purely English.—The wordsfamily,relation,parent,ancestor, are French; but the namesfather,mother,son,daughter,gossip, are English.—The wordstitleanddignityare French; but the wordskingandqueen,lordandlady,knightandsheriff, are English.—Perhaps the most remarkable instance of this is to be found in the abstract terms employed for the offices and functions of State. Of these, the English language possesses only one—the wordkingdom. Norman-French, on the other hand, has given us the wordsrealm,court,state,constitution,people,treaty,audience,navy,army, and others—amounting in all to nearly forty. When, however, we come to terms denoting labour and work—such as agricultureand seafaring, we find the proportions entirely reversed. The English language, in such cases, contributes almost everything; the French nearly nothing. In agriculture, whileplough,rake,harrow,flail, and many others are English words, not a single term for an agricultural process or implement has been given us by the warlike Norman-French.—While the wordsshipandboat;hullandfleet;oarandsail, are all English, the Normans have presented us with only the single wordprow. It is as if all the Norman conqueror had to do was to take his stand at the prow, gazing upon the land he was going to seize, while the Low-German sailors worked for him at oar and sail.—Again, while the names of the various parts of the body—eye,nose,cheek,tongue,hand,foot, and more than eighty others—are all English, we have received only about ten similar words from the French—such asspiritandcorpse;perspiration;faceandstature. Speaking broadly, we may say that all words that expressgeneral notions, or generalisations, are French or Latin; while words that expressspecificactions or concrete existences are pure English. Mr Spalding observes—“We use a foreign term naturalised when we speak of ‘colour’ universally; but we fall back on our home stores if we have to tell what the colour is, calling it ‘red’ or ‘yellow,’ ‘white’ or ‘black,’ ‘green’ or ‘brown.’ We are Romans when we speak in ageneralway of ‘moving’; but we are Teutons if we ‘leap’ or ‘spring,’ if we ‘slip,’ ‘slide,’ or ‘fall,’ if we ‘walk,’ ‘run,’ ‘swim,’ or ‘ride,’ if we ‘creep’ or ‘crawl’ or ‘fly.’”31.Gains to English from Norman-French.—The gains from the Norman-French contribution are large, and are also of very great importance. Mr Lowell says, that the Norman element came in as quickening leaven to the rather heavy and lumpy Saxon dough. It stirred the whole mass, gave new life to the language, a much higher and wider scope to the thoughts, much greater power and copiousness to the expression of our thoughts, and a finer and brighter rhythm to our English sentences. “To Chaucer,” he says, in ‘My Study Windows,’ “French must have been almost as truly a mother tongue as English. In him we see the first result of the Norman yeastupon the home-baked Saxon loaf. The flour had been honest, the paste well kneaded, but the inspiring leaven was wanting till the Norman brought it over. Chaucer works still in the solid material of his race, but with what airy lightness has he not infused it? Without ceasing to be English, he has escaped from being insular.” Let us look at some of these gains a little more in detail.32.Norman-French Synonyms.—We must not consider asynonymas a word that means exactlythe same thingas the word of which it is a synonym; because then there would be neither room nor use for such a word in the language. A synonym is a word of the same meaning as another, but with a slightly different shade of meaning,—or it is used under different circumstances and in a different connection, or it puts the same idea under a new angle.Beginandcommence,willandtestament, are exact equivalents—are complete synonyms; but there are very few more of this kind in our language. The moment the genius of a language gets hold of two words of the same meaning, it sets them to do different kinds of work,—to express different parts or shades of that meaning. Thuslimbandmember,luckandfortune, have the same meaning; but we cannot speak of alimbof the Royal Society, or of theluckof the Rothschilds, who made theirfortuneby hard work and steady attention to business. We have, by the aid of the Norman-French contributions,floweras well asbloom;branchandbough;purchaseandbuy;amiableandfriendly;cordialandhearty;countryandland;gentleandmild;desireandwish;labourandwork;miserableandwretched. These pairs of words enable poets and other writers to use the right word in the right place. And we, preferring our Saxon or good old English words to any French or Latin importations, prefer to speak ofa hearty welcomeinstead ofa cordial reception; ofa loving wifeinstead of anamiable consort; ofa wretched maninstead ofa miserable individual.33.Bilingualism.—How did these Norman-French words find their way into the language? What was the road by whichthey came? What was the process that enabled them to find a place in and to strike deep root into our English soil? Did the learned men—the monks and the clergy—make a selection of words, write them in their books, and teach them to the English people? Nothing of the sort. The process was a much ruder one—but at the same time one much more practical, more effectual, and more lasting in its results. The two peoples—the Normans and the English—found that they had to live together. They met at church, in the market-place, in the drilling field, at the archery butts, in the courtyards of castles; and, on the battle-fields of France, the Saxon bowman showed that he could fight as well, as bravely, and even to better purpose than his lord—the Norman baron. At all these places, under all these circumstances, the Norman and the Englishman were obliged to speak with each other. Now arose a striking phenomenon. Every man, as Professor Earle puts it, turned himself as it were into a walking phrase-book or dictionary. When a Norman had to use a French word, he tried to put the English word for it alongside of the French word; when an Englishman used an English word, he joined with it the French equivalent. Then the language soon began to swarm with “yokes of words”; our words went in couples; and the habit then begun has continued down even to the present day. And thus it is that we possess such couples aswill and testament;act and deed;use and wont;aid and abet. Chaucer’s poems are full of these pairs. He joins togetherhunting and venery(though both words mean exactly the same thing);nature and kind;cheere and face;pray and beseech;mirth and jollity. Later on, the Prayer-Book, which was written in the years 1540 to 1559, keeps up the habit: and we find the pairsacknowledge and confess;assemble and meet together;dissemble and cloak;humble and lowly. To the more English part of the congregation the simple Saxon words would come home with kindly association; to others, the wordsconfess,assemble,dissemble, andhumblewould speak with greater force and clearness.—Such is the phenomenon called by Professor Earlebilingualism. “It is, in fact,” he says, “a putting of colloquial formulæto do the duty of a French-English and English-French vocabulary.” Even Hooker, who wrote at the end of the sixteenth century, seems to have been obliged to use these pairs; and we find in his writings the couples “cecity and blindness,” “nocive and hurtful,” “sense and meaning.”34.Losses of English from the Incoming of Norman-French.—(i) Before the coming of the Normans, the English language was in the habit of forming compounds with ease and effect. But, after the introduction of the Norman-French language, that power seems gradually to have disappeared; and ready-made French or Latin words usurped the place of the home-grown English compound. Thusdespairpushed outwanhope;suspiciondethronedwantrust;bidding-salewas expelled byauction;learning-knightbydisciple;rime-craftby the Greek wordarithmetic;gold-hoardbytreasure;book-hoardbylibrary;earth-tilthbyagriculture;wonsteadbyresidence; and so with a large number of others.—Many English words, moreover, had their meanings depreciated and almost degraded; and the words themselves lost their ancient rank and dignity. Thus the Norman conquerors put their foot—literally and metaphorically—on the Saxonchair,5which thus became astool, or afootstool.Thatch, which is a doublet of the worddeck, was the name for any kind of roof; but the coming of the Norman-French lowered it to indicate aroof of straw.Whinewas used for the weeping or crying of human beings; but it is now restricted to the cry of a dog.Hidewas the generic term for the skin of any animal; it is now limited in modern English to the skin of a beast.—The most damaging result upon our language was that it entirelystopped the growth of English words. We could, for example, make out of the wordburn—the derivativesbrunt,brand,brandy,brown,brimstone, and others; but this power died out with the coming in of the Norman-French language. After that, instead of growing our own words, weadopted them ready-made.—Professor Craik compares the English and Latin languages to two banks; and says that, when the Normans came over, the account at the English bank was closed, and we drew only upon the Latin bank. But the case is worse than this. English lost its power of growth and expansion from the centre; from this time, it could only add to its bulk by borrowing and conveying from without—by the external accretion of foreign words.
1.Tongue, Speech, Language.—We speak of the “English tongue” or of the “French language”; and we say of two nations that they “do not understand each other’s speech.” The existence of these three words—speech,tongue,language—proves to us that a language is somethingspoken,—that it is a number ofsounds; and that the writing or printing of it upon paper is a quite secondary matter. Language, rightly considered, then, is anorganised set of sounds. These sounds convey a meaning from the mind of the speaker to the mind of the hearer, and thus serve to connect man with man.
2.Written Language.—It took many hundreds of years—perhaps thousands—before human beings were able to invent a mode of writing upon paper—that is, of representingsoundsbysigns. These signs are calledletters; and the whole set of them goes by the name of theAlphabet—from the two first letters of the Greek alphabet, which are calledalpha,beta. There are languages that have never been put upon paper at all, such as many of the African languages, many in the South Sea Islands, and other parts of the globe. But in all cases, every language that we know anything about—English, Latin, French, German—existed for hundreds of years before any one thought of writing it down on paper.
3.A Language Grows.—A language is anorganismororganic existence. Now every organism lives; and, if it lives, it grows; and, if it grows, it also dies. Our language grows; it is growing still; and it has been growing for manyhundreds of years. As it grows it loses something, and it gains something else; it alters its appearance; changes take place in this part of it and in that part,—until at length its appearance in age is something almost entirely different from what it was in its early youth. If we had the photograph of a man of forty, and the photograph of the same person when he was a child of one, we should find, on comparing them, that it was almost impossible to point to the smallest trace of likeness in the features of the two photographs. And yet the two pictures represent the same person. And so it is with the English language. The oldest English, which is usually called Anglo-Saxon, is as different from our modern English as if they were two distinct languages; and yet they are not two languages, but really and fundamentally one and the same. Modern English differs from the oldest English as a giant oak does from a small oak sapling, or a broad stalwart man of forty does from a feeble infant of a few months old.
4.The English Language.—The English language is the speech spoken by the Anglo-Saxon race in England, in most parts of Scotland, in the larger part of Ireland, in the United States, in Canada, in Australia and New Zealand, in South Africa, and in many other parts of the world. In the middle of thefifthcentury it was spoken by a few thousand men who had lately landed in England from the Continent: it is now spoken by more than one hundred millions of people. In the course of the next sixty years, it will probably be the speech of two hundred millions.
5.English on the Continent.—In the middle of the fifth century it was spoken in the north-west corner of Europe—between the mouths of the Rhine, the Weser, and the Elbe; and in Schleswig there is a small district which is calledAngelnto this day. But it was not then calledEnglish; it was more probably calledTeutish, orTeutsch, orDeutsch—all words connected with a generic word which covers many families and languages—Teutonic. It was a rough guttural speech of one or two thousand words; and it was brought over to this country by theJutes,Angles, andSaxonsin the year 449. Thesemen left their home on the Continent to find here farms to till and houses to live in; and they drove the inhabitants of the island—theBritons—ever farther and farther west, until they at length left them in peace in the more mountainous parts of the island—in the southern and western corners, in Cornwall and in Wales.
6.The British Language.—What language did the Teutonic conquerors, who wrested the lands from the poor Britons, find spoken in this island when they first set foot on it? Not a Teutonic speech at all. They found a language not one word of which they could understand. The island itself was then calledBritain; and the tongue spoken in it belonged to the Keltic group of languages. Languages belonging to the Keltic group are still spoken in Wales, in Brittany (in France), in the Highlands of Scotland, in the west of Ireland, and in the Isle of Man. A few words—very few—from the speech of the Britons, have come into our own English language; and what these are we shall see by-and-by.
7.The Family to which English belongs.—Our English tongue belongs to theAryanorIndo-European Familyof languages. That is to say, the main part or substance of it can be traced back to the race which inhabited the high table-lands that lie to the back of the western end of the great range of the Himalaya, or “Abode of Snow.” This Aryan race grew and increased, and spread to the south and west; and from it have sprung languages which are now spoken in India, in Persia, in Greece and Italy, in France and Germany, in Scandinavia, and in Russia. From this Aryan family we are sprung; out of the oldest Aryan speech our own language has grown.
8.The Group to which English belongs.—The Indo-European family of languages consists of several groups. One of these is called theTeutonic Group, because it is spoken by theTeuts(or theTeutonic race), who are found in Germany, in England and Scotland, in Holland, in parts of Belgium, in Denmark, in Norway and Sweden, in Iceland, and the Faroe Islands. The Teutonic group consists of three branches—High German,Low German, andScandinavian. HighGerman is the name given to the kind of German spoken in Upper Germany—that is, in the table-land which lies south of the river Main, and which rises gradually till it runs into the Alps.New High Germanis the German of books—the literary language—the German that is taught and learned in schools.Low Germanis the name given to the German dialects spoken in the lowlands—in the German part of the Great Plain of Europe, and round the mouths of those German rivers that flow into the Baltic and the North Sea.Scandinavianis the name given to the languages spoken in Denmark and in the great Scandinavian Peninsula. Of these three languages, Danish and Norwegian are practically the same—their literary or book-language is one; while Swedish is very different. Icelandic is the oldest and purest form of Scandinavian. The following is a table of the
It will be observed, on looking at the above table, that High German is subdivided according to time, but that the other groups are subdivided according to space.
9.English a Low-German Speech.—Our English tongue is thelowest of all Low-German dialects. Low German is the German spoken in the lowlands of Germany. As we descend the rivers, we come to the lowest level of all—the level of the sea. Our English speech, once a mere dialect, came down to that, crossed the German Ocean, and settled in Britain, to which it gave in time the name of Angla-land or England. The Low German spoken in the Netherlands is calledDutch; the Low German spoken in Friesland—a prosperous province of Holland—is calledFrisian; and the Low German spoken in Great Britain is calledEnglish. These three languages are extremely like one another; but the Continental language that is likestthe English is the Dutch or Hollandish dialect calledFrisian. We even possess a couplet, every word of which is both English and Frisian. It runs thus—
Good butter and good cheeseIs good English and good Fries.
Good butter and good cheese
Is good English and good Fries.
10.Dutch and Welsh—a Contrast.—When the Teuton conquerors came to this country, they called the Britons foreigners, just as the Greeks called all other peoples besides themselvesbarbarians. By this they did not at first mean that they were uncivilised, but only that they werenotGreeks. Now, the Teutonic or Saxon or English name for foreigners wasWealhas, a word afterwards contracted intoWelsh. To this day the modern Teuts or Teutons (orGermans, aswecall them) call all Frenchmen and ItaliansWelshmen; and, when a German, peasant crosses the border into France, he says: “I am going into Welshland.”
11.The Spread of English over Britain.—The Jutes, who came from Juteland or Jylland—now called Jutland—settled in Kent and in the Isle of Wight. The Saxons settled in the south and western parts of England, and gave their names to those kingdoms—now counties—whose names came to end insex. There was the kingdom of the East Saxons, orEssex; the kingdom of the West Saxons, orWessex; the kingdom of the Middle Saxons, orMiddlesex; and the kingdom of the South Saxons, orSussex. The Angles settled chiefly on the east coast. The kingdom ofEast Angliawas divided into the regions of theNorth Folkand theSouth Folk, words which are still perpetuated in the namesNorfolkandSuffolk. These three sets of Teutons all spoke different dialects of the same Teutonic speech; and these dialects, with their differences, peculiarities, and odd habits, took root in English soil, and lived an independent life, apart from each other, uninfluenced by each other, for several hundreds of years. But, in the slow course of time, they joined together to make up our beautiful English language—a language which, however, still bears in itself the traces of dialectic forms, and is in no respect of one kind or of one fibre all through.
1.Dead and Living Languages.—A language is said to be dead when it is no longer spoken. Such a language we know only in books. Thus, Latin is a dead language, because no nation anywhere now speaks it. A dead language can undergo no change; it remains, and must remain, as we find it written in books. But a living language is always changing, just like a tree or the human body. The human body has its periods or stages. There is the period of infancy, the period of boyhood, the period of manhood, and the period of old age. In the same way, a language has its periods.
2.No Sudden Changes—a Caution.—We divide the English language into periods, and then mark, with some approach to accuracy, certain distinct changes in the habits of our language, in the inflexions of its words, in the kind of words it preferred, or in the way it liked to put its words together. But we must be carefully on our guard against fancying that, at any given time or in any given year, the English people threw aside one set of habits as regards language, and adopted another set. It is not so, nor can it be so. The changes in language are as gentle, gradual, and imperceptible as the changes in the growth of a tree or in the skin of the human body. We renew our skin slowly and gradually; but we are never conscious of the process, nor can we say at any given time that we have got a completely new skin.
3.The Periods of English.—Bearing this caution in mind, we can go on to look at the chief periods in our English language. These are five in number; and they are as follows:—
These periods merge very slowly, or are shaded off, so to speak, into each other in the most gradual way. If we take the English of 1250 and compare it with that of 900, we shall find a great difference; but if we compare it with the English of 1100 the difference is not so marked. The difference between the English of the nineteenth and the English of the fourteenth century is very great, but the difference between the English of the fourteenth and that of the thirteenth century is very small.
4.Ancient English or Anglo-Saxon, 450-1100.—This form of English differed from modern English in having a much larger number of inflexions. The noun had five cases, and there were several declensions, just as in Latin; adjectives were declined, and had three genders; some pronouns had a dual as well as a plural number; and the verb had a much larger number of inflexions than it has now. The vocabulary of the language contained very few foreign elements. The poetry of the language employed head-rhyme or alliteration, and not end-rhyme, as we do now. The works of the poetCaedmonand the great prose-writerKing Alfredbelong to this Anglo-Saxon period.
5.Early English, 1100-1250.—The coming of the Normans in 1066 made many changes in the land, many changes in the Church and in the State, and it also introduced many changes into the language. The inflexions of our speech began to drop off, because they were used less and less; and though we never adopted newinflexionsfrom French or from any other language, new Frenchwordsbegan to creep in. In some parts of the country English had ceased to be written in books; the language existed as a spoken language only; and hence accuracy in the use of words and the inflexions of words could not beensured. Two notable books—written, not printed, for there was no printing in this island till the year 1474—belong to this period. These are theOrmulum, byOrmorOrmin, and theBrut, by a monk calledLayamonorLaweman. The latter tells the story of Brutus, who was believed to have been the son of Æneas of Troy; to have escaped after the downfall of that city; to have sailed through the Mediterranean, ever farther and farther to the west; to have landed in Britain, settled here, and given the country its name.
6.Middle English, 1250-1485.—Most of the inflexions of nouns and adjectives have in this period—between the middle of the thirteenth and the end of the fifteenth century—completely disappeared. The inflexions of verbs are also greatly reduced in number. Thestrong1mode of inflexion has ceased to be employed for verbs that are new-comers, and theweakmode has been adopted in its place. During the earlier part of this period, even country-people tried to speak French, and in this and other modes many French words found their way into English. A writer of the thirteenth century, John de Trevisa, says that country-people “fondeth [that is, try] with great bysynes for to speke Freynsch for to be more y-told of.” The country-people did not succeed very well, as the ordinary proverb shows: “Jack would be a gentleman if he could speak French.” Boys at school were expected to turn their Latin into French, and in the courts of law French only was allowed to be spoken. But in 1362 Edward III. gave his assent to an Act of Parliament allowing English to be used instead of Norman-French. “The yer of oure Lord,” says John de Trevisa, “a thousond thre hondred foure score and fyve of the secunde Kyng Richard after the conquest, in al the gramer scoles of Engelond children leveth Freynsch, and construeth and turneth an Englysch.” To the first half of this period belong aMetrical Chronicle, attributed toRobert of Gloucester;Langtoft’sMetrical Chronicle, translated byRobert de Brunne; theAgenbite of Inwit, by Dan Michel of Northgate in Kent; and a few others. But to the secondhalf belong the rich and varied productions ofGeoffrey Chaucer, our first great poet and always one of our greatest writers; the alliterative poems ofWilliam LangleyorLanglande; the more learned poems ofJohn Gower; and the translation of the Bible and theological works of the reformerJohn Wyclif.
7.Tudor English, 1485-1603.—Before the end of the sixteenth century almost all our inflexions had disappeared. The great dramatist Ben Jonson (1574-1637) laments the loss of the plural endingenfor verbs, becausewentenandhopenwere much more musical and more useful in verse thanwentorhope; but its recovery was already past praying for. This period is remarkable for the introduction of an enormous number of Latin words, and this was due to the new interest taken in the literature of the Romans—an interest produced by what is called theRevival of Letters. But the most striking, as it is also the most important fact relating to this period, is the appearance of a group of dramatic writers, the greatest the world has ever seen. Chief among these wasWilliam Shakespeare. Of pure poetry perhaps the greatest writer wasEdmund Spenser. The greatest prose-writer wasRichard Hooker, and the pithiestFrancis Bacon.
8.Modern English, 1603-1900.—The grammar of the language was fixed before this period, most of the accidence having entirely vanished. The vocabulary of the language, however, has gone on increasing, and is still increasing; for the English language, like the English people, is always ready to offer hospitality to all peaceful foreigners—words or human beings—that will land and settle within her coasts. And the tendency at the present time is not only to give a hearty welcome to newcomers from other lands, but to call back old words and old phrases that had been allowed to drop out of existence. Tennyson has been one of the chief agents in this happy restoration.
1.The English Nation.—The English people have for many centuries been the greatest travellers in the world. It was an Englishman—Francis Drake—who first went round the globe; and the English have colonised more foreign lands in every part of the world than any other people that ever existed. The English in this way have been influenced by the world without. But they have also been subjected to manifold influences from within—they have been exposed to greater political changes, and profounder though quieter political revolutions, than any other nation. In 1066 they were conquered by the Norman-French; and for several centuries they had French kings. Seeing and talking with many different peoples, they learned to adopt foreign words with ease, and to give them a home among the native-born words of the language. Trade is always a kindly and useful influence; and the trade of Great Britain has for many centuries been larger than that of any other nation. It has spread into every part of the world; it gives and receives from all tribes and nations, from every speech and tongue.
2.The English Element in English.—When the English came to this island in the fifth century, the number of words in the language they spoke was probably not overtwo thousand. Now, however, we possess a vocabulary of perhaps more thanone hundred thousand words. And so eager and willinghave we been to welcome foreign words, that it may be said with truth that:The majority of words in the English Tongue are not English. In fact, if we take the Latin language by itself, there are in our language moreLatinwords thanEnglish. But the grammar is distinctly English, and not Latin at all.
3.The Spoken Language and the Written Language—a Caution.—We must not forget what has been said about a language,—that it is not a printed thing—not a set of black marks upon paper, but that it is in truest truth atongueor aspeech. Hence we must be careful to distinguish between thespokenlanguage and thewrittenorprintedlanguage; between the language of theearand the language of theeye; between the language of themouthand the language of thedictionary; between themovingvocabulary of the market and the street, and thefixedvocabulary that has been catalogued and imprisoned in our dictionaries. If we can only keep this in view, we shall find that, though there are more Latin words in our vocabulary than English, the English words we possess areusedin speaking a hundred times, or even a thousand times, oftener than the Latin words. It is the genuine English words that have life and movement; it is they that fly about in houses, in streets, and in markets; it is they that express with greatest force our truest and most usual sentiments—our inmost thoughts and our deepest feelings. Latin words are found often enough in books; but, when an English man or woman is deeply moved, he speaks pure English and nothing else. Words are the coin of human intercourse; and it is the native coin of pure English with the native stamp that is in daily circulation.
4.A Diagram of English.—If we were to try to represent to the eye the proportions of the different elements in our vocabulary, as it is found in the dictionary, the diagram would take something like the following form:—
5.The Foreign Elements in our English Vocabulary.—The different peoples and the different circumstances with which we have come in contact, have had many results—one among others, that of presenting us with contributions to our vocabulary. We found Kelts here; and hence we have a number of Keltic words in our vocabulary. The Romans held this island for several hundred years; and when they had to go in the year 410, they left behind them six Latin words, which we have inherited. In the seventh century, Augustine and his missionary monks from Rome brought over to us a larger number of Latin words; and the Church which they founded introduced ever more and more words from Rome. The Danes began to come over to this island in the eighth century; we had for some time a Danish dynasty seated on the throne of England: and hence we possess many Danish words. The Norman-French invasion in the eleventh century brought us many hundreds of Latin words; for French is in reality a branch of the Latin tongue. The Revival of Learning in the sixteenth century gave us several thousands of Latin words. And wherever our sailors and merchants have gone, they have brought back with them foreign words as well as foreign things—Arabic words from Arabia and Africa, Hindustani words from India, Persian words from Persia, Chinese words from China, and even Malay words from the peninsula of Malacca. Let us look a little more closely at these foreign elements.
6.The Keltic Element in English.—This element is ofthree kinds: (i) Those words which we received direct from the ancient Britons whom we found in the island; (ii) those which the Norman-French brought with them from Gaul; (iii) those which have lately come into the language from the Highlands of Scotland, or from Ireland, or from the writings of Sir Walter Scott.
7.The First Keltic Element.—This first contribution contains the following words:Breeches,clout,crock,cradle,darn,dainty,mop,pillow;barrow(a funeral mound),glen,havoc,kiln,mattock,pool. It is worthy of note that the first eight in the list are the names of domestic—some even of kitchen—things and utensils. It may, perhaps, be permitted us to conjecture that in many cases the Saxon invader married a British wife, who spoke her own language, taught her children to speak their mother tongue, and whose words took firm root in the kitchen of the new English household. The names of most rivers, mountains, lakes, and hills are, of course, Keltic; for these names would not be likely to be changed by the English new-comers. There are two names for rivers which are found—in one form or another—in every part of Great Britain. These are the namesAvonandEx. The wordAvonmeans simplywater. We can conceive the children on a farm near a river speaking of it simply as “the water”; and hence we find fourteen Avons in this island.Exalso meanswater; and there are perhaps more than twenty streams in Great Britain with this name. The word appears asExinExeter(the older and fuller form beingExanceaster—the camp on the Exe); asAxinAxminster; asOxinOxford; asUxinUxbridge; and asOusein Yorkshire and other eastern counties. In Wales and Scotland, the hiddenkchanges its place and comes at the end. Thus in Wales we findUsk; and in Scotland,Esk. There are at least eight Esks in the kingdom of Scotland alone. The commonest Keltic name for a mountain isPenorBen(in Wales it isPen; in Scotland the flatter formBenis used). We find this word in England also under the form ofPennine; and, in Italy, asApennine.
8.The Second Keltic Element.—The Normans came fromScandinavia early in the tenth century, and wrested the valley of the Seine out of the hands of Charles the Simple, the then king of the French. The language spoken by the people of France was a broken-down form of spoken Latin, which is now called French; but in this language they had retained many Gaulish words out of the old Gaulish language. Such are the words:Bag,bargain,barter;barrel,basin,basket,bucket;bonnet,button,ribbon;car,cart;dagger,gown;mitten,motley;rogue;varlet,vassal,wicket. The above words were brought over to Britain by the Normans; and they gradually took an acknowledged place among the words of our own language, and have held that place ever since.
9.The Third Keltic Element.—This consists of comparatively few words—such asclan;claymore(a sword);philabeg(a kind of kilt),kiltitself,brogue(a kind of shoe),plaid;pibroch(bagpipe war-music),slogan(a war-cry); andwhisky. Ireland has given usshamrock,gag,log,clog, andbrogue—in the sense of a mode of speech.
10.The Scandinavian Element in English.—Towards the end of the eighth century—in the year 787—the Teutons of the North, called Northmen, Normans, or Norsemen—but more commonly known as Danes—made their appearance on the eastern coast of Great Britain, and attacked the peaceful towns and quiet settlements of the English. These attacks became so frequent, and their occurrence was so much dreaded, that a prayer was inserted against them in a Litany of the time—“From the incursions of the Northmen, good Lord, deliver us!” In spite of the resistance of the English, the Danes had, before the end of the ninth century, succeeded in obtaining a permanent footing in England; and, in the eleventh century, a Danish dynasty sat upon the English throne from the year 1016 to 1042. From the time of King Alfred, the Danes of the Danelagh were a settled part of the population of England; and hence we find, especially on the east coast, a large number of Danish names still in use.
11.Character of the Scandinavian Element.—The Northmen, as we have said, were Teutons; and they spoke a dialectof the great Teutonic (or German) language. The sounds of the Danish dialect—or language, as it must now be called—are harder than those of the German. We find akinstead of ach; appreferred to anf. The same is the case in Scotland, where the hard formkirkis preferred to the softerchurch. Where the Germans sayDorf—our English wordThorpe, a village—the Danes sayDrup.
12.Scandinavian Words(i).—The words contributed to our language by the Scandinavians are of two kinds: (i) Names of places; and (ii) ordinary words. (i) The most striking instance of a Danish place-name is the nounby, a town. Mr Isaac Taylor2tells us that there are in the east of England more than six hundred names of towns ending inby. Almost all of these are found in the Danelagh, within the limits of the great highway made by the Romans to the north-west, and well-known asWatling Street. We find, for example,Whitby, or the town on thewhitecliffs;Grimsby, or the town of Grim, a great sea-rover, who obtained for his countrymen the right that all ships from the Baltic should come into the port of Grimsby free of duty;Tenby, that isDaneby;by-law, a law for a special town; and a vast number of others. The following Danish words also exist in our times—either as separate and individual words, or in composition—beck, a stream;fell, a hill or table-land;firthorfiord, an arm of the sea—the same as the Danish fiord;force, a waterfall;garth, a yard or enclosure;holm, an island in a river;kirk, a church;oe, an island;thorpe, a village;thwaite, a forest clearing; andvikorwick, a station for ships, or a creek.
13.Scandinavian Words(ii).—The most useful and the most frequently employed word that we have received from the Danes is the wordare. The pure English word for this isbeothorsindon. The Danes gave us also the habit of usingtobefore an infinitive. Their word fortowasat; andatstill survives and is in use in Lincolnshire. We find also the following Danish words in our language:blunt,bole(of a tree),bound(on a journey—properlyboun),busk(to dress),cake,call,crop(to cut),curl,cut,dairy,daze,din,droop,fellow,flit,for,froward,hustings,ill,irk,kid,kindle,loft,odd,plough,root,scold,sky,tarn(a small mountain lake),weak, andugly. It is in Northumberland, Durham, Yorkshire, Lincoln, Norfolk, and even in the western counties of Cumberland and Lancashire, that we find the largest admixture of Scandinavian words.
14.Influence of the Scandinavian Element.—The introduction of the Danes and the Danish language into England had the result, in the east, of unsettling the inflexions of our language, and thus of preparing the way for their complete disappearance. The declensions of nouns became unsettled; nouns that used to make their plural inaor inutook the more striking plural suffixasthat belonged to a quite different declension. The same things happened to adjectives, verbs, and other parts of language. The causes of this are not far to seek. Spoken language can never be so accurate as written language; the mass of the English and Danes never cared or could care much for grammar; and both parties to a conversation would of course hold firmly to therootof the word, which was intelligible to both of them, and let the inflexions slide, or take care of themselves. The more the English and Danes mixed with each other, the oftener they met at church, at games, and in the market-place, the more rapidly would this process of stripping go on,—the smaller care would both peoples take of the grammatical inflexions which they had brought with them into this country.
15.The Latin Element in English.—So far as the number of words—the vocabulary—of the language is concerned, the Latin contribution is by far the most important element in our language. Latin was the language of the Romans; and the Romans at one time were masters of the whole known world. No wonder, then, that they influenced so many peoples, and that their language found its way—east and west, and south and north—into almost all the countries of Europe. There are, as we have seen, more Latin than English words in our own language; and it is therefore necessary to make ourselves acquainted with thecharacter and the uses of the Latin element—an element so important—in English.3Not only have the Romans made contributions of largenumbersof words to the English language, but they have added to it a quite newquality, and given to its genius newpowersof expression. So true is this, that we may say—without any sense of unfairness, or any feeling of exaggeration—that, until the Latin element was thoroughly mixed, united with, and transfused into the original English, the writings of Shakespeare were impossible, the poetry of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries could not have come into existence. This is true of Shakespeare; and it is still more true of Milton. His most powerful poetical thoughts are written in lines, the most telling words in which are almost always Latin. This may be illustrated by the following lines from “Lycidas”:—
“It was thatfatalandperfidiousbark,Built in theeclipse, and rigged with curses dark,That sunk so low thatsacredhead of thine!”
“It was thatfatalandperfidiousbark,
Built in theeclipse, and rigged with curses dark,
That sunk so low thatsacredhead of thine!”
16.The Latin Contributions and their Dates.—The first contribution of Latin words was made by the Romans—not, however, to the English, but to the Britons. The Romans held this island fromA.D.43toA.D.410. They left behind them—when they were obliged to go—a small contribution of six words—six only, but all of them important. The second contribution—to a large extent ecclesiastical—was made by Augustine and his missionary monks from Rome, and their visit took place in the year596. The third contribution was made through the medium of the Norman-French, who seized and subdued this island in the year1066and following years. The fourth contribution came to us by the aid of the Revival of Learning—rather a process than an event, the dates of which are vague, but which may be said to have taken place in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The Latin left for us by the Romans is calledLatin of the First Period; that brought over by the missionaries from Rome,Latin of theSecond Period; that given us by the Norman-French,Latin of the Third Period; and that which came to us from the Revival of Learning,Latin of the Fourth Period. The first consists of a few names handed down to us through the Britons; the second, of a number of words—mostly relating to ecclesiastical affairs—brought into the spoken language by the monks; the third, of a large vocabulary, that came to us bymouthandear; and the fourth, of a very large treasure of words, which we received by means ofbooksand theeye. Let us now look more closely and carefully at them, each in its turn.
17.Latin of the First Period(i).—The Romans held Britain for nearly four hundred years; and they succeeded in teaching the wealthier classes among the Southern Britons to speak Latin. They also built towns in the island, made splendid roads, formed camps at important points, framed good laws, and administered the affairs of the island with considerable justice and uprightness. But, never having come directly into contact with the Angles or Saxons themselves, they could not in any way influence their language by oral communication—by speaking to them. What they left behind them was only six words, most of which became merely the prefixes or the suffixes of the names of places. These six words wereCastra, a camp;Strata(via), a paved road;Colonia, a settlement (generally of soldiers);Fossa, a trench;Portus, a harbour; andVallum, a rampart.
18.Latin of the First Period(ii).—(a) The treatment of the Latin wordcastrain this island has been both singular and significant. It has existed in this country for nearly nineteen hundred years; and it has always taken the colouring of the locality into whose soil it struck root. In the north and east of England it is sounded hard, and takes the form ofcaster, as inLancaster,Doncaster,Tadcaster, and others. In the midland counties, it takes the softer form ofcester, as inLeicester,Towcester; and in the extreme west and south, it takes the still softer form ofchester, as inChester,Manchester,Winchester, and others. It is worthy of notice that there are in Scotland no words ending incaster. Thoughthe Romans had camps in Scotland, they do not seem to have been so important as to become the centres of towns. (b) The wordstratahas also taken different forms in different parts of England. Whilecastrahas always been a suffix,stratashows itself constantly as a prefix. When the Romans came to this island, the country was impassable by man. There were no roads worthy of the name,—what paths there were being merely foot-paths or bridle-tracks. One of the first things the Romans did was to drive a strongly built military road fromRichborough, near Dover, to the river Dee, on which they formed a standing camp (Castra stativa) which to this day bears the name ofChester. This great road became the highway of all travellers from north to south,—was known as “The Street,” and was called by the SaxonsWatling Street. But this wordstreetalso became a much-used prefix, and took the different forms ofstrat,strad,stret, andstreat. All towns with such names are to be found on this or some other great Roman road. Thus we haveStratford-on-Avon,Stratton,Stradbroke,Stretton,Stretford(near Manchester), andStreatham(near London).—Over the other words we need not dwell so long.Coloniawe find inColne,Lincoln, and others;fossainFossway,Fosbrooke, andFosbridge;portus, inPortsmouth, andBridport; andvallumin the wordswall,bailey, andbailiff. The Normans called the two courts in front of their castles the inner and outer baileys; and the officer in charge of them was called the bailiff.
19.Latin Element of the Second Period(i).—The story of Pope Gregory and the Roman mission to England is widely known. Gregory, when a young man, was crossing the Roman forum one morning, and, when passing the side where the slave-mart was held, observed, as he walked, some beautiful boys, with fair hair, blue eyes, and clear bright complexion. He asked a bystander of what nation the boys were. The answer was, that they were Angles. “No, not Angles,” he replied; “they are angels.” On learning further that they were heathens, he registered a silent vow that he would, if Providence gave him an opportunity, deliver them from thedarkness of heathendom, and bring them and their relatives into the light and liberty of the Gospel. Time passed by; and in the long course of time Gregory became Pope. In his unlooked-for greatness, he did not forget his vow. In the year 596 he sent over to Kent a missionary, called Augustine, along with forty monks. They were well received by the King of Kent, allowed to settle in Canterbury, and to build a small cathedral there.
20.Latin Element of the Second Period(ii).—This mission, the churches that grew out of it, the Christian customs that in time took root in the country, and the trade that followed in its track, brought into the language a number of Latin words, most of them the names of church offices, services, and observances. Thus we find, in our oldest English, the words,postolfromapostolus, a person sent;biscop, fromepiscopus, an overseer;calc, fromcalix, a cup;clerc, fromclericus, an ordained member of the church;munec, frommonăchus, a solitary person or monk;preost, frompresbyter, an elder;aelmesse, fromeleēmosŭnē, alms;predician, fromprædicare, to preach;regol, fromregula, a rule. (Apostle,bishop,clerk,monk,priest, andalmscome to us really from Greek words—but through the Latin tongue.)
21.Latin Element of the Second Period(iii).—The introduction of the Roman form of Christianity brought with it increased communication with Rome and with the Continent generally; widened the experience of Englishmen; gave a stimulus to commerce; and introduced into this island new things and products, and along with the things and products new names. To this period belongs the introduction of the words:Butter,cheese;cedar,fig,pear,peach;lettuce, lily;pepper,pease;camel,lion,elephant;oyster,trout;pound,ounce;candle,table;marble;mint.
22.Latin of the Third Period(i).—The Latin element of the Third Period is in reality the French that was brought over to this island by the Normans in 1066, and is generally calledNorman-French. It differed from the French of Paris both in spelling and in pronunciation. For example, Norman-Frenchwrotepeopleforpeuple;léalforloyal;réalforroyal;réalmforroyaume; and so on. But both of these dialects (and every dialect of French) are simply forms of Latin—not of the Latin written and printed in books, but of the Latin spoken in the camp, the fields, the streets, the village, and the cottage. The Romans conquered Gaul, where a Keltic tongue was spoken; and the Gauls gradually adopted Latin as their mother tongue, and—with the exception of the Brétons of Brittany—left off their Keltic speech almost entirely. In adopting the Latin tongue, they had—as in similar cases—taken firm hold of the root of the word, but changed the pronunciation of it, and had, at the same time, compressed very much or entirely dropped many of the Latin inflexions. The French people, an intermixture of Gauls and other tribes (some of them, like the Franks, German), ceased, in fact, to speak their own language, and learned the Latin tongue. The Norsemen, led by Duke Rolf or Rollo or Rou, marched south in large numbers; and, in the year 912, wrested from King Charles the Simple the fair valley of the Seine, settled in it, and gave to it the name of Normandy. These Norsemen, now Normans, were Teutons, and spoke a Teutonic dialect; but, when they settled in France, they learned in course of time to speak French. The kind of French they spoke is called Norman-French, and it was this kind of French that they brought over with them in 1066. But Norman-French had made its appearance in England before the famous year of ’66; for Edward the Confessor, who succeeded to the English throne in 1042, had been educated at the Norman Court; and he not only spoke the language himself, but insisted on its being spoken by the nobles who lived with him in his Court.
23.Latin of the Third Period(ii).Chief Dates.—The Normans, having utterly beaten down the resistance of the English, seized the land and all the political power of this country, and filled all kinds of offices—both spiritual and temporal—with their Norman brethren. Norman-French became the language of the Court and the nobility, the language of Parliament and the law courts, of the universities and the schools, of the Churchand of literature. The English people held fast to their own tongue; but they picked up many French words in the markets and other places “where men most do congregate.” But French, being the language of the upper and ruling classes, was here and there learned by the English or Saxon country-people who had the ambition to be in the fashion, and were eager “to speke Frensch, for to be more y-told of,”—to be more highly considered than their neighbours. It took about three hundred years for French words and phrases to soak thoroughly into English; and it was not until England was saturated with French words and French rhythms that the great poet Chaucer appeared to produce poetic narratives that were read with delight both by Norman baron and by Saxon yeoman. In the course of these three hundred years this intermixture of French with English had been slowly and silently going on. Let us look at a few of the chief land-marks in the long process. In1042Edward the Confessor introduces Norman-French into his Court. In1066Duke William introduces Norman-French into the whole country, and even into parts of Scotland. The oldest English, or Anglo-Saxon, ceases to be written, anywhere in the island, in public documents, in the year1154. In1204we lost Normandy, a loss that had the effect of bringing the English and the Normans closer together. Robert of Gloucester writes his chronicle in1272, and uses a large number of French words. But, as early as the reign of Henry the Third, in the year1258, the reformed and reforming Government of the day issued a proclamation in English, as well as in French and Latin. In1303, Robert of Brunn introduces a large number of French words. The French wars in Edward the Third’s reign brought about a still closer union of the Norman and the Saxon elements of the nation. But, about the middle of the fourteenth century a reaction set in, and it seemed as if the genius of the English language refused to take in any more French words. The English silent stubbornness seemed to have prevailed, and Englishmen had made up their minds to be English in speech, as they were English to the backbone in everything else. Norman-French had, in fact, become provincial, and was spokenonly here and there. Before the great Plague—commonly spoken of as “The Black Death”—of1349, both high and low seemed to be alike bent on learning French, but the reaction may be said to date from this year. The culminating point of this reaction may perhaps be seen in an Act of Parliament passed in1362by Edward III., by which both French and Latin had to give place to English in our courts of law. The poems of Chaucer are the literary result—“the bright consummate flower” of the union of two great powers—the brilliance of the French language on the one hand and the homely truth and steadfastness of English on the other. Chaucer was born in1340, and died in1400; so that we may say that he and his poems—though not the causes—are the signs and symbols of the great influence that French obtained and held over our mother tongue. But although we accepted so manywordsfrom our Norman-French visitors and immigrants, we accepted from them nohabitof speech whatever. We accepted from them no phrase or idiom: the build and nature of the English language remained the same—unaffected by foreign manners or by foreign habits. It is true that Chaucer has the ridiculous phrase, “I n’am but dead” (for “I am quite dead”4)—which is a literal translation of the well-known French idiom, “Je ne suis que.” But, though our tongue has always been and is impervious to foreign idiom, it is probably owing to the great influx of French words which took place chiefly in the thirteenth century that many people have acquired a habit of using a long French or Latin word when an English word would do quite as well—or, indeed, a great deal better. Thus some people are found to call agood house, adesirable mansion; and, instead of the quiet old English proverb, “Buy once, buy twice,” we have the roundabout Latinisms, “A single commission will ensure a repetition of orders.” An American writer, speaking of the foreign ambassadors who had been attacked by Japanese soldiers in Yeddo, says that “they concluded to occupy a location more salubrious.” This is only a foreign language, instead of the simple and homely English: “They made up their minds to settle in a healthier spot.”
24.Latin of the Third Period(iii).Norman Words(a).—The Norman-French words were of several different kinds. There were words connected with war, with feudalism, and with the chase. There were new law terms, and words connected with the State, and the new institutions introduced by the Normans. There were new words brought in by the Norman churchmen. New titles unknown to the English were also introduced. A better kind of cooking, a higher and less homely style of living, was brought into this country by the Normans; and, along with these, new and unheard-of words.
25.Norman Words(b).—The following are some of the Norman-French terms connected with war:Arms,armour;assault,battle;captain,chivalry;joust,lance;standard,trumpet;mail,vizor. The English word forarmourwasharness; but the Normans degraded that word into the armour of a horse.Battlecomes from the Fr.battre, to beat: the corresponding English word isfight.Captaincomes from the Latincaput, a head.Mailcomes from the Latinmacula, the mesh of a net; and the first coats of mail were made of rings or a kind of metal network.Vizorcomes from the Fr.viser, to look. It was the barred part of the helmet which a man could see through.
26.Norman Words(c).—Feudalism may be described as the holding of land on condition of giving or providing service in war. Thus a knight held land of his baron, under promise to serve him so many days; a baron of his king, on condition that he brought so many men into the field for such and such a time at the call of his Overlord. William the Conqueror made the feudal system universal in every part of England, and compelled every English baron to swear homage to himself personally. Words relating to feudalism are, among others:Homage,fealty;esquire,vassal;herald,scutcheon, and others.Homageis the declaration of obedience for life of one man to another—that the inferior is theman(Fr.homme; L.homo) of the superior.Fealtyis the Norman-French form of the wordfidelity. Anesquireis ascutiger(L.), orshield-bearer; for he carried the shield of the knight, whenthey were travelling and no fighting was going on. Avassalwas a “little young man,”—in Low-Latinvassallus, a diminutive ofvassus, from the Keltic wordgwâs, a man. (The formvassaletusis also found, which gives us ourvarletandvalet.)Scutcheoncomes from the Lat.scutum, a shield. Then scutcheon or escutcheon came to meancoat-of-arms—or the marks and signs on his shield by which the name and family of a man were known, when he himself was covered from head to foot in iron mail.
27.Norman Words(d).—The terms connected with the chase are:Brace,couple;chase,course;covert,copse,forest;leveret,mews;quarry,venison. A few remarks about some of these may be interesting.Bracecomes from the Old Frenchbrace, an arm (Mod. Frenchbras); from the Latinbrachium. The root-idea seems to be that which encloses or holds up. Thusbracingair is that whichstringsup the nerves and muscles; and abraceof birds was two birds tied together with a string.—The wordforestcontains in itself a good deal of unwritten Norman history. It comes from the Latin adverbforas, out of doors. Hence, in Italy, a stranger or foreigner is still called aforestiere. A forest in Norman-French was not necessarily a breadth of land covered with trees; it was simply landout ofthe jurisdiction of the common law. Hence, when William the Conqueror created the New Forest, he merely took the landout ofthe rule and charge of the common law, and put it under his own regal power and personal care. In land of this kind—much of which was kept for hunting in—trees were afterwards planted, partly to shelter large game, and partly to employ ground otherwise useless in growing timber.—Mewsis a very odd word. It comes from the Latin verbmutare, to change. When the falcons employed in hunting were changing their feathers, ormoulting(the wordmoultis the same asmewsin a different dress), the French shut them in a cage, which they calledmue—frommutare. Then the stables for horses were put in the same place; and hence a row of stables has come to be called amews.—Quarryis quite as strange. The wordquarry, which means a mine of stones,comes from the Latinquadrāre, to make square. But the hunting termquarryis of a quite different origin. That comes from the Latincor(the heart), which the Old French altered intoquer. When a wild beast was run down and killed, the heart and entrails were thrown to the dogs as their share of the hunt. Hence Milton says of the eagle, “He scents his quarry from afar.”—The wordvenisoncomes to us, through French, from the Lat.venāri, to hunt; and hence it meanshunted flesh. The same word gives usvenery—the term that was used in the fourteenth century, by Chaucer among others, for hunting.
28.Norman Words(e).—The Normans introduced into England their own system of law, their own law officers; and hence, into the English language, came Norman-French law terms. The following are a few:Assize,attorney;chancellor,court;judge,justice;plaintiff,sue;summons,trespass. A few remarks about some of these may be useful. Thechancellor(cancellarius) was the legal authority who sat behind lattice-work, which was called in Latincancelli. This word means, primarily,little crabs; and it is a diminutive fromcancer, a crab. It was so called because the lattice-work looked like crabs’ claws crossed. Our wordcancelcomes from the same root: it means to make cross lines through anything we wish deleted.—Courtcomes from the Latincorsorcohors, a sheep-pen. It afterwards came to mean an enclosure, and also a body of Roman soldiers.—The proper English word for ajudgeisdeemsterordemster(which appears as the proper nameDempster); and this is still the name for a judge in the Isle of Man. The French word comes from two Latin words,dico, I utter, andjus, right. The word jus is seen in the other French term which we have received from the Normans—justice.—Suecomes from the Old Fr.suir, which appears in Modern Fr. assuivre. It is derived from the Lat. wordsequor, I follow (which gives oursequel); and we have compounds of it inensue,issue, andpursue. —Thetresintrespassis a French form of the Latin trans, beyond or across.Trespass, therefore, means to cross the bounds of right.
29.Norman Words(f).—Some of the church terms introducedby the Norman-French are:Altar,Bible;baptism,ceremony;friar;tonsure;penance,relic.—The Normans gave us the wordstitleanddignitythemselves, and also the following titles:Duke,marquis;count,viscount;peer;mayor, and others. A duke is aleader; from the Latindux(=duc-s). Amarquisis a lord who has to ride themarchesor borders between one county, or between one country, and another. A marquis was also called aLord-Marcher. The wordcountnever took root in this island, because its place was already occupied by the Danish nameearl; but we preserve it in the namescountessandviscount—the latter of which means a personin the place of(L.vice) a count.Peercomes from the Latinpar, an equal. The House of Peers is the House of Lords—that is, of those who are, at least when in the House,equalin rank andequalin power of voting. It is a fundamental doctrine in English law that every man “is to be tried by hispeers.”—It is worthy of note that, in general, theFrenchnames for different kinds of food designated thecookedmeats; while the names for thelivinganimals that furnish them areEnglish. Thus we havebeefandox;muttonandsheep;vealandcalf;porkandpig. There is a remarkable passage in Sir Walter Scott’s ‘Ivanhoe,’ which illustrates this fact with great force and picturesqueness:—
“‘Gurth, I advise thee to call off Fangs, and leave the herd to their destiny, which, whether they meet with bands of travelling soldiers, or of outlaws, or of wandering pilgrims, can be little else than to be converted into Normans before morning, to thy no small ease and comfort.’
“‘The swine turned Normans to my comfort!’ quoth Gurth; ‘expound that to me, Wamba, for my brain is too dull, and my mind too vexed, to read riddles.’
“‘Why, how call you those grunting brutes running about on their four legs?’ demanded Wamba.
“‘Swine, fool, swine,’ said the herd; ‘every fool knows that.’
“‘And swine is good Saxon,’ said the jester; ‘but how callyou the sow when she is flayed, and drawn, and quartered, and hung up by the heels, like a traitor?’
“‘Pork,’ answered the swine-herd.
“‘I am very glad every fool knows that too,’ said Wamba; ‘and pork, I think, is good Norman-French: and so when the brute lives, and is in the charge of a Saxon slave, she goes by her Saxon name; but becomes a Norman, and is called pork, when she is carried to the castle-hall to feast among the nobles; what dost thou think of this, friend Gurth, ha?’
“‘It is but too true doctrine, friend Wamba, however it got into thy fool’s pate.’
“‘Nay, I can tell you more,’ said Wamba, in the same tone; ‘there is old Alderman Ox continues to hold his Saxon epithet, while he is under the charge of serfs and bondsmen such as thou, but becomes Beef, a fiery French gallant, when he arrives before the worshipful jaws that are destined to consume him.MyhneerCalf, too, becomes Monsieur de Veau in the like manner; he is Saxon when he requires tendance, and takes a Norman name when he becomes matter of enjoyment.’”
30.General Character of the Norman-French Contributions.—The Norman-French contributions to our language gave us a number ofgeneral namesorclass-names; while the names forindividualthings are, in general, of purely English origin. The wordsanimalandbeast, for example, are French (or Latin); but the wordsfox,hound,whale,snake,wasp, andflyare purely English.—The wordsfamily,relation,parent,ancestor, are French; but the namesfather,mother,son,daughter,gossip, are English.—The wordstitleanddignityare French; but the wordskingandqueen,lordandlady,knightandsheriff, are English.—Perhaps the most remarkable instance of this is to be found in the abstract terms employed for the offices and functions of State. Of these, the English language possesses only one—the wordkingdom. Norman-French, on the other hand, has given us the wordsrealm,court,state,constitution,people,treaty,audience,navy,army, and others—amounting in all to nearly forty. When, however, we come to terms denoting labour and work—such as agricultureand seafaring, we find the proportions entirely reversed. The English language, in such cases, contributes almost everything; the French nearly nothing. In agriculture, whileplough,rake,harrow,flail, and many others are English words, not a single term for an agricultural process or implement has been given us by the warlike Norman-French.—While the wordsshipandboat;hullandfleet;oarandsail, are all English, the Normans have presented us with only the single wordprow. It is as if all the Norman conqueror had to do was to take his stand at the prow, gazing upon the land he was going to seize, while the Low-German sailors worked for him at oar and sail.—Again, while the names of the various parts of the body—eye,nose,cheek,tongue,hand,foot, and more than eighty others—are all English, we have received only about ten similar words from the French—such asspiritandcorpse;perspiration;faceandstature. Speaking broadly, we may say that all words that expressgeneral notions, or generalisations, are French or Latin; while words that expressspecificactions or concrete existences are pure English. Mr Spalding observes—“We use a foreign term naturalised when we speak of ‘colour’ universally; but we fall back on our home stores if we have to tell what the colour is, calling it ‘red’ or ‘yellow,’ ‘white’ or ‘black,’ ‘green’ or ‘brown.’ We are Romans when we speak in ageneralway of ‘moving’; but we are Teutons if we ‘leap’ or ‘spring,’ if we ‘slip,’ ‘slide,’ or ‘fall,’ if we ‘walk,’ ‘run,’ ‘swim,’ or ‘ride,’ if we ‘creep’ or ‘crawl’ or ‘fly.’”
31.Gains to English from Norman-French.—The gains from the Norman-French contribution are large, and are also of very great importance. Mr Lowell says, that the Norman element came in as quickening leaven to the rather heavy and lumpy Saxon dough. It stirred the whole mass, gave new life to the language, a much higher and wider scope to the thoughts, much greater power and copiousness to the expression of our thoughts, and a finer and brighter rhythm to our English sentences. “To Chaucer,” he says, in ‘My Study Windows,’ “French must have been almost as truly a mother tongue as English. In him we see the first result of the Norman yeastupon the home-baked Saxon loaf. The flour had been honest, the paste well kneaded, but the inspiring leaven was wanting till the Norman brought it over. Chaucer works still in the solid material of his race, but with what airy lightness has he not infused it? Without ceasing to be English, he has escaped from being insular.” Let us look at some of these gains a little more in detail.
32.Norman-French Synonyms.—We must not consider asynonymas a word that means exactlythe same thingas the word of which it is a synonym; because then there would be neither room nor use for such a word in the language. A synonym is a word of the same meaning as another, but with a slightly different shade of meaning,—or it is used under different circumstances and in a different connection, or it puts the same idea under a new angle.Beginandcommence,willandtestament, are exact equivalents—are complete synonyms; but there are very few more of this kind in our language. The moment the genius of a language gets hold of two words of the same meaning, it sets them to do different kinds of work,—to express different parts or shades of that meaning. Thuslimbandmember,luckandfortune, have the same meaning; but we cannot speak of alimbof the Royal Society, or of theluckof the Rothschilds, who made theirfortuneby hard work and steady attention to business. We have, by the aid of the Norman-French contributions,floweras well asbloom;branchandbough;purchaseandbuy;amiableandfriendly;cordialandhearty;countryandland;gentleandmild;desireandwish;labourandwork;miserableandwretched. These pairs of words enable poets and other writers to use the right word in the right place. And we, preferring our Saxon or good old English words to any French or Latin importations, prefer to speak ofa hearty welcomeinstead ofa cordial reception; ofa loving wifeinstead of anamiable consort; ofa wretched maninstead ofa miserable individual.
33.Bilingualism.—How did these Norman-French words find their way into the language? What was the road by whichthey came? What was the process that enabled them to find a place in and to strike deep root into our English soil? Did the learned men—the monks and the clergy—make a selection of words, write them in their books, and teach them to the English people? Nothing of the sort. The process was a much ruder one—but at the same time one much more practical, more effectual, and more lasting in its results. The two peoples—the Normans and the English—found that they had to live together. They met at church, in the market-place, in the drilling field, at the archery butts, in the courtyards of castles; and, on the battle-fields of France, the Saxon bowman showed that he could fight as well, as bravely, and even to better purpose than his lord—the Norman baron. At all these places, under all these circumstances, the Norman and the Englishman were obliged to speak with each other. Now arose a striking phenomenon. Every man, as Professor Earle puts it, turned himself as it were into a walking phrase-book or dictionary. When a Norman had to use a French word, he tried to put the English word for it alongside of the French word; when an Englishman used an English word, he joined with it the French equivalent. Then the language soon began to swarm with “yokes of words”; our words went in couples; and the habit then begun has continued down even to the present day. And thus it is that we possess such couples aswill and testament;act and deed;use and wont;aid and abet. Chaucer’s poems are full of these pairs. He joins togetherhunting and venery(though both words mean exactly the same thing);nature and kind;cheere and face;pray and beseech;mirth and jollity. Later on, the Prayer-Book, which was written in the years 1540 to 1559, keeps up the habit: and we find the pairsacknowledge and confess;assemble and meet together;dissemble and cloak;humble and lowly. To the more English part of the congregation the simple Saxon words would come home with kindly association; to others, the wordsconfess,assemble,dissemble, andhumblewould speak with greater force and clearness.—Such is the phenomenon called by Professor Earlebilingualism. “It is, in fact,” he says, “a putting of colloquial formulæto do the duty of a French-English and English-French vocabulary.” Even Hooker, who wrote at the end of the sixteenth century, seems to have been obliged to use these pairs; and we find in his writings the couples “cecity and blindness,” “nocive and hurtful,” “sense and meaning.”
34.Losses of English from the Incoming of Norman-French.—(i) Before the coming of the Normans, the English language was in the habit of forming compounds with ease and effect. But, after the introduction of the Norman-French language, that power seems gradually to have disappeared; and ready-made French or Latin words usurped the place of the home-grown English compound. Thusdespairpushed outwanhope;suspiciondethronedwantrust;bidding-salewas expelled byauction;learning-knightbydisciple;rime-craftby the Greek wordarithmetic;gold-hoardbytreasure;book-hoardbylibrary;earth-tilthbyagriculture;wonsteadbyresidence; and so with a large number of others.—Many English words, moreover, had their meanings depreciated and almost degraded; and the words themselves lost their ancient rank and dignity. Thus the Norman conquerors put their foot—literally and metaphorically—on the Saxonchair,5which thus became astool, or afootstool.Thatch, which is a doublet of the worddeck, was the name for any kind of roof; but the coming of the Norman-French lowered it to indicate aroof of straw.Whinewas used for the weeping or crying of human beings; but it is now restricted to the cry of a dog.Hidewas the generic term for the skin of any animal; it is now limited in modern English to the skin of a beast.—The most damaging result upon our language was that it entirelystopped the growth of English words. We could, for example, make out of the wordburn—the derivativesbrunt,brand,brandy,brown,brimstone, and others; but this power died out with the coming in of the Norman-French language. After that, instead of growing our own words, weadopted them ready-made.—Professor Craik compares the English and Latin languages to two banks; and says that, when the Normans came over, the account at the English bank was closed, and we drew only upon the Latin bank. But the case is worse than this. English lost its power of growth and expansion from the centre; from this time, it could only add to its bulk by borrowing and conveying from without—by the external accretion of foreign words.