The Project Gutenberg eBook ofEncyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, "English Language" to "Epsom Salts"This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.Title: Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, "English Language" to "Epsom Salts"Author: VariousRelease date: February 17, 2011 [eBook #35306]Language: EnglishCredits: Produced by Marius Masi, Don Kretz and the OnlineDistributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ENCYCLOPAEDIA BRITANNICA, 11TH EDITION, "ENGLISH LANGUAGE" TO "EPSOM SALTS" ***
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.
Title: Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, "English Language" to "Epsom Salts"Author: VariousRelease date: February 17, 2011 [eBook #35306]Language: EnglishCredits: Produced by Marius Masi, Don Kretz and the OnlineDistributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
Title: Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, "English Language" to "Epsom Salts"
Author: Various
Author: Various
Release date: February 17, 2011 [eBook #35306]
Language: English
Credits: Produced by Marius Masi, Don Kretz and the OnlineDistributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ENCYCLOPAEDIA BRITANNICA, 11TH EDITION, "ENGLISH LANGUAGE" TO "EPSOM SALTS" ***
Articles in This Slice
ENGLISH LANGUAGE.In its historical sense, the nameEnglishis now conveniently used to comprehend the language of the English people from their settlement in Britain to the present day, the various stages through which it has passed being distinguished as Old, Middle, and New or Modern English. In works yet recent, and even in some still current, the term is confined to the third, or at most extended to the second and third of these stages, since the language assumed in the main the vocabulary and grammatical forms which it now presents, the oldest or inflected stage being treated as a separate language, under the title ofAnglo-Saxon, while the transition period which connects the two has been calledSemi-Saxon. This view had the justification that, looked upon by themselves, either as vehicles of thought or as objects of study and analysis, Old English or Anglo-Saxon and Modern English are, for all practical ends, distinct languages,—as much so, for example, as Latin and Spanish. No amount of familiarity with Modern English, including its local dialects, would enable the student to read Anglo-Saxon, three-fourths of the vocabulary of which have perished and been reconstructed within 900 years;1nor would a knowledge even of these lost words give him the power, since the grammatical system, alike in accidence and syntax, would be entirely strange to him. Indeed, it is probable that a modern Englishman would acquire the power of reading and writing French in less time than it would cost him to attain to the same proficiency in Old English; so that if the test of distinct languages be their degree of practical difference from each other, it cannot be denied that “Anglo-Saxon” is a distinct language from Modern English. But when we view the subject historically, recognizing the fact that living speech is subject to continuous change in certain definite directions, determined by the constitution and circumstances of mankind, as an evolution or development of which we can trace the steps, and that, owing to the abundance of written materials, this evolution appears so gradual in English that we can nowhere draw distinct lines separating its successive stages, we recognize these stages as merely temporary phases of an individual whole, and speak of the English language as used alike by Cynewulf, by Chaucer, by Shakespeare and by Tennyson.2It must not be forgotten, however, that in this wide sense the English language includes, not only the literary or courtly forms of speech used at successive periods, but also the popular and, it may be, altogether unwritten dialects that exist by their side. Only on this basis, indeed, can we speak of Old, Middle and Modern English as the samelanguage, since in actual fact the precisedialectwhich is now the cultivated language, or “Standard English,” is not the descendant of that dialect which was the cultivated language or “Englisc” of Alfred, but of a sister dialect then sunk in comparative obscurity,—even as the direct descendant of Alfred’s Englisc is now to be found in the non-literary rustic speech of Wiltshire and Somersetshire. Causes which, linguisticallyconsidered, are external and accidental, have shifted the political and intellectual centre of England, and along with it transferred literary and official patronage from one form of English to another; if the centre of influence had happened to be fixed at York or on the banks of the Forth, both would probably have been neglected for a third.
The English language, thus defined, is not “native” to Britain, that is, it was not found there at the dawn of history, but was introduced by foreign immigrants at a date many centuries later. At the Roman Conquest of the island the languages spoken by the natives belonged all (so far as is known) to the Celtic branch of the Indo-European or Indo-Germanic family, modern forms of which still survive in Wales, Ireland, the Scottish Highlands, Isle of Man and Brittany, while one has at no distant date become extinct in Cornwall (seeCelt: Language). Brythonic dialects, allied to Welsh and Cornish, were apparently spoken over the greater part of Britain, as far north as the firths of Forth and Clyde; beyond these estuaries and in the isles to the west, including Ireland and Man, Goidelic dialects, akin to Irish and Scottish Gaelic, prevailed. The long occupation of south Britain by the Romans (A.D.43-409)—a period, it must not be forgotten, equal to that from the Reformation to the present day, or nearly as long as the whole duration of modern English—familiarized the provincial inhabitants with Latin, which was probably the ordinary speech of the towns. Gildas, writing nearly a century and a half after the renunciation of Honorius in 410, addressed the British princes in that language;3and the linguistic history of Britain might have been not different from that of Gaul, Spain and the other provinces of the Western Empire, in which a local type of Latin, giving birth to a neo-Latinic language, finally superseded the native tongue except in remote and mountainous districts,4had not the course of events been entirely changed by the Teutonic conquests of the 5th and 6th centuries.
The Angles, Saxons, and their allies came of the Teutonic stock, and spoke a tongue belonging to the Teutonic or Germanic branch of the Indo-Germanic (Indo-European) family, the same race and form of speech being represented in modern times by the people and languages of Holland, Germany, Denmark, the Scandinavian peninsula and Iceland, as well as by those of England and her colonies. Of the original home of the so-called primitive Aryan race (q.v.), whose language was the parent Indo-European, nothing is certainly known, though the subject has called forth many conjectures; the present tendency is to seek it in Europe itself. The tribe can hardly have occupied an extensive area at first, but its language came by degrees to be diffused over the greater part of Europe and some portion of Asia. Among those whose Aryan descent is generally recognized as beyond dispute are the Teutons, to whom the Angles and Saxons belonged.
The Teutonic or Germanic people, after dwelling together in a body, appear to have scattered in various directions, their language gradually breaking up into three main groups, which can be already clearly distinguished in the 4th centuryA.D., North Germanic or Scandinavian, West Germanic or Low and High German, and East Germanic, of which the only important representative is Gothic. Gothic, often called Moeso-Gothic, was the language of a people of the Teutonic stock, who, passing down the Danube, invaded the borders of the Empire, and obtained settlements in the province of Moesia, where their language was committed to writing in the 4th century; its literary remains are of peculiar value as the oldest specimens, by several centuries, of Germanic speech. The dialects of the invaders of Britain belonged to the West Germanic branch, and within this to the Low German group, represented at the present day by Dutch, Frisian, and the various “Platt-Deutsch” dialects of North Germany. At the dawn of history the forefathers of the English appear to have been dwelling between and about the estuaries and lower courses of the Rhine and the Weser, and the adjacent coasts and isles; at the present day the most English or Angli-form dialects of the European continent are held to be those of the North Frisian islands of Amrum and Sylt, on the west coast of Schleswig. It is well known that the greater part of the ancient Friesland has been swept away by the encroachments of the North Sea, and thedisjecta membraof the Frisian race, pressed by the sea in front and more powerful nationalities behind, are found only in isolated fragments from the Zuider Zee to the coasts of Denmark. Many Frisians accompanied the Angles and Saxons to Britain, and Old English was in many respects more closely connected with Old Frisian than with any other Low German dialect. Of the Geatas, Eotas or “Jutes,” who, according to Bede, occupied Kent and the Isle of Wight, and formed a third tribe along with the Angles and Saxons, it is difficult to speak linguistically. The speech of Kent certainly formed a distinct dialect in both the Old English and the Middle English periods, but it has tended to be assimilated more and more to neighbouring southern dialects, and is at the present day identical with that of Sussex, one of the old Saxon kingdoms. Whether the speech of the Isle of Wight ever showed the same characteristic differences as that of Kent cannot now be ascertained, but its modern dialect differs in no respect from that of Hampshire, and shows no special connexion with that of Kent. It is at least entirely doubtful whether Bede’s Geatas came from Jutland; on linguistic grounds we should expect that they occupied a district lying not to the north of the Angles, but between these and the old Saxons.
The earliest specimens of the language of the Germanic invaders of Britain that exist point to three well-marked dialect groups: the Anglian (in which a further distinction may be made between the Northumbrian and the Mercian, or South-Humbrian); the Saxon, generally called West-Saxon from the almost total lack of sources outside the West-Saxon domain; and the Kentish. The Kentish and West-Saxon are sometimes, especially in later times, grouped together as southern dialects as opposed to midland and northern. These three groups were distinguished from each other by characteristic points of phonology and inflection. Speaking generally, the Anglian dialects may be distinguished by the absence of certain normal West-Saxon vowel-changes, and the presence of others not found in West-Saxon, and also by a strong tendency to confuse and simplify inflections, in all which points, moreover, Northumbrian tended to deviate more widely than Mercian. Kentish, on the other hand, occupied a position intermediate between Anglian and West-Saxon, early Kentish approaching more nearly to Mercian, owing perhaps to early historical connexion between the two, and late Kentish tending to conform to West-Saxon characteristics, while retaining several points in common with Anglian. Though we cannot be certain that these dialectal divergences date from a period previous to the occupation of Britain, such evidence as can be deduced points to the existence of differences already on the continent, the three dialects corresponding in all likelihood to Bede’s three tribes, the Angles, Saxons and Geatas.
As it was amongst theEngleor Angles of Northumbria that literary culture first appeared, and as an Angle orEngliscdialect was the first to be used for vernacular literature,Englisccame eventually to be a general name for all forms of the vernacular as opposed to Latin, &c.; and even when the West-Saxon of Alfred became in its turn the literary or classical form of speech, it was still called Englisc orEnglish. The origin of the nameAngul-Seaxan(Anglo-Saxons) has been disputed, some maintaining that it means a union of Angles and Saxons, others (with better foundation) that it meantEnglish Saxons, or Saxons of England or of the Angel-cynn as distinguished from Saxons of the Continent (seeNew English Dictionary, s.v.). Its modern use is mainly due to the little band of scholars who in the 16th and 17th centuries turned their attention to the long-forgotten language of Alfred and Ælfric, which, as it differed so greatly fromthe English of their own day, they found it convenient to distinguish by a name which was applied to themselves by those who spoke it.5To these scholars “Anglo-Saxon” and “English” were separated by a gulf which it was reserved for later scholarship to bridge across, and show the historical continuity of the English of all ages.
As already hinted, the English language, in the wide sense, presents three main stages of development—Old, Middle and Modern—distinguished by their inflectional characteristics. The latter can be best summarized in the words of Dr Henry Sweet in hisHistory of English Sounds:6“Old English is the period offullinflections (nama,gifan,caru), Middle English oflevelledinflections (naame,given,caare), and Modern English oflostinflections (name,give,care=nām,giv,cār). We have besides two periods of transition, one in whichnamaandnameexist side by side, and another in which finale[with other endings] is beginning to drop.” Bylostinflections it is meant that only very few remain, and those mostly non-syllabic, as the-sin stones and loves, the-edin loved, the-rin their, as contrasted with the Old English stán-as, lufað, luf-od-eand luf-od-on, þá-ra. Each of these periods may also be divided into two or three; but from the want of materials it is difficult to make any such division for all dialects alike in the first.
As to the chronology of the successive stages, it is of course impossible to lay down any exclusive series of dates, since the linguistic changes were inevitably gradual, and also made themselves felt in some parts of the country much earlier than in others, the north being always in advance of the midland, and the south much later in its changes. It is easy to point to periods at which Old, Middle and Modern English were fully developed, but much less easy to draw lines separating these stages; and even if we recognize between each part a “transition” period or stage, the determination of the beginning and end of this will to a certain extent be a matter of opinion. But bearing these considerations in mind, and having special reference to the midland dialect from which literary English is mainly descended, the following may be given as approximate dates, which if they do not demarcate the successive stages, at least include them:—
Dr Sweet has reckoned Transition Old English (Old Transition) from 1050 to 1150, Middle English thence to 1450, and Late or Transition Middle English (Middle Transition) 1450 to 1500. As to the Old Transition see further below.
TheOld Englishor Anglo-Saxon tongue, as introduced into Britain, was highly inflectional, though its inflections at the date when it becomes known to us were not so full as those of the earlier Gothic, and considerably less so than those of Greek and Latin during their classical periods. They corresponded more closely to those of modern literary German, though both in nouns and verbs the forms were more numerous and distinct; for example, the Germangutenanswers tothreeOld English forms,—gódne,gódum,gódan;gutertotwo—gódre,gódra;liebtentotwo,—lufodonandlufeden. Nouns had four cases.Nominative,Accusative(only sometimes distinct),Genitive,Dative, the latter used also with prepositions to express locative, instrumental, and most ablative relations; of a distinctinstrumentalcase only vestiges occur. There were several declensions of nouns, the main division being that known in Germanic languages generally as strong and weak,—a distinction also extending to adjectives in such wise that every adjective assumed either the strong or the weak inflection as determined by associated grammatical forms. The first and second personal pronouns possessed a dual number =we two,ye two; the third person had a complete declension of the stem he, instead of being made up as now of the three stems seen inhe,she,they. The verb distinguished the subjunctive from the indicative mood, but had only two inflected tenses, present and past (more accurately, that of incomplete and that of completed or “perfect” action)—the former also used for the future, the latter for all the shades of past time. The order of the sentence corresponded generally to that of German. Thus from King Alfred’s additions to his translation of Orosius: “Donne þy ylcan dæge hi hine to þæm ade beran wyllað þonne todælað hi his feoh þaet þær to lafe bið æfter þæm gedrynce and þæm plegan, on fif oððe syx, hwilum on ma, swa swa þaes feos andefn bið” (“Then on the same day [that] they him to the pile bear will, then divide they his property that there to remainder shall be after the drinking and the sports, into five or six, at times into more, according as the property’s value is”).
The poetry was distinguished by alliteration, and the abundant use of figurative and metaphorical expressions, of bold compounds and archaic words never found in prose. Thus in the following lines from Beowulf (ed. Thorpe, l. 645, Zupitza 320):—
Stræt wæs stán-fáh, stig wisodeGumum ætgædere. gúð-byrne scánHeard hond-locen. hring-iren scirSong in searwum, þa hie to sele furðumIn hyra gry′re geatwum gangan cwomon.
Stræt wæs stán-fáh, stig wisode
Gumum ætgædere. gúð-byrne scán
Heard hond-locen. hring-iren scir
Song in searwum, þa hie to sele furðum
In hyra gry′re geatwum gangan cwomon.
Trans.:—
The street was stone-variegated, the path guided(The) men together; the war-mailcoat shone,Hard hand-locked. Ring-iron sheer (bright ring-mail)Sang in (their) cunning-trappings, as they to hall forthIn their horror-accoutrements going came.
The street was stone-variegated, the path guided
(The) men together; the war-mailcoat shone,
Hard hand-locked. Ring-iron sheer (bright ring-mail)
Sang in (their) cunning-trappings, as they to hall forth
In their horror-accoutrements going came.
The Old English was a homogeneous language, having very few foreign elements in it, and forming its compounds and derivatives entirely from its own resources. A few Latin appellatives learned from the Romans in the German wars had been adopted into the common West Germanic tongue, and are found in English as in the allied dialects. Such werestræte(street,via strata),camp(battle),cásere(Cæsar),míl(mile),pín(punishment),mynet(money),pund(pound),wín(wine); probably alsocyriće(church),biscop(bishop),læden(Latin language),cése(cheese),butor(butter),pipor(pepper),olfend(camel, elephantus),ynce(inch, uncia), and a few others. The relations of the first invaders to the Britons were to a great extent those of destroyers; and with the exception of the proper names of places and prominent natural features, which as is usual were retained by the new population, few British words found their way into the Old English. Among these are namedbroc(a badger),bréc(breeches),clút(clout),púl(pool), and a few words relating to the employment of field or household menials. Still fewer words seem to have been adopted from the provincial Latin, almost the only certain ones being castra, applied to the Roman towns, which appeared in English ascæstre,ceaster, now found in composition as -caster, -chester, -cester, andculina(kitchen), which gavecylen(kiln). The introduction and gradual adoption of Christianity, brought a new series of Latin words connected with the offices of the church, the accompaniments of higher civilization, the foreign productions either actually made known, or mentioned in the Scriptures and devotional books. Such weremynster(monasterium),munuc(monk),nunne(nun),maesse(mass),schol(school),œlmesse(eleemosyna),candel(candela),turtle(turtur),fic(ficus),cedar(cedrus). These words, whose number increased from the 7th to the 10th century, are commonly calledLatin of the second period, the Latin of the first period including the Latin words brought by the English from the continent, as well as those picked up in Britain either from the Roman provincials or the Welsh. The Danish invasions of the 8th and 10th centuriesresulted in the establishment of extensive Danish and Norwegian populations, about the basin of the Humber and its tributaries, and above Morecambe Bay. Although these Scandinavian settlers must have greatly affected the language of their own localities, but few traces of their influence are to be found in the literature of the Old English period. As with the greater part of the words adopted from the Celtic, it was not until after the dominion of the Norman had overlaid all preceding conquests, and the new English began to emerge from the ruins of the old, that Danish words in any number made their appearance in books, as equally “native” with the Anglo-Saxon.
The earliest specimens we have of English date to the end of the 7th century, and belong to the Anglian dialect, and particularly to Northumbrian, which, under the political eminence of the early Northumbrian kings from Edwin to Ecgfrið, aided perhaps by the learning of the scholars of Ireland and Iona, first attained to literary distinction. Of this literature in its original form mere fragments exist, one of the most interesting of which consists of the verses uttered by Bede on his deathbed, and preserved in a nearly contemporary MS.:—
Fore there neid faerae . naenig uuiurthitthonc snotturra . than him tharf sie,to ymb-hycggannæ . aer his hin-iongae,huaet his gastae . godaes aeththa yflaes,aefter deoth-daege . doemid uueorthae.
Fore there neid faerae . naenig uuiurthit
thonc snotturra . than him tharf sie,
to ymb-hycggannæ . aer his hin-iongae,
huaet his gastae . godaes aeththa yflaes,
aefter deoth-daege . doemid uueorthae.
Trans.:—
Before the inevitable journey becomes not anyThought more wise than (that) it is needful for him,To consider, ere his hence-going,What, to his ghost, of good or ill,After death-day, doomed may be.
Before the inevitable journey becomes not any
Thought more wise than (that) it is needful for him,
To consider, ere his hence-going,
What, to his ghost, of good or ill,
After death-day, doomed may be.
But our chief acquaintance with Old English is in its West-Saxon form, the earliest literary remains of which date to the 9th century, when under the political supremacy of Wessex and the scholarship of King Alfred it became the literary language of the English nation, the classical “Anglo-Saxon.” If our materials were more extensive, it would probably be necessary to divide the Old English into several periods; as it is, considerable differences have been shown to exist between the “early West-Saxon” of King Alfred and the later language of the 11th century, the earlier language having numerous phonetic and inflectional distinctions which are “levelled” in the later, the inflectional changes showing that the tendency to pass from the synthetical to the analytical stage existed quite independently of the Norman Conquest. The northern dialect, whose literary career had been cut short in the 8th century by the Danish invasions, reappears in the 10th in the form of glosses to the Latin gospels and a service-book, often called theRitual of Durham, where we find that, owing to the confusion which had so long reigned in the north, and to special Northumbrian tendencies,e.g.the dropping of the inflectional n in both verbs and nouns, this dialect had advanced in the process of inflection-levelling far beyond the sister dialects of Mercian and the south, so as already to anticipate the forms of Early Middle English.
Among the literary remains of the Old English may be mentioned the epic poem of Beowulf, the original nucleus of which has been supposed to date to heathen and even continental times, though we now possess it only in a later form; the poetical works of Cynewulf; those formerly ascribed to Cædmon; several works of Alfred, two of which, his translation of Orosius and ofThe Pastoral Careof St Gregory, are contemporary specimens of his language; the Old English or Anglo-Saxon Chronicle; the theological works of Ælfric (including translations of the Pentateuch and the gospels) and of Wulfstan; and many works both in prose and verse, of which the authors are unknown.
The earliest specimens, the inscriptions on the Ruthwell and Bewcastle crosses, are in a Runic character; but the letters used in the manuscripts generally are a British variety of the Roman alphabet which the Anglo-Saxons found in the island, and which was also used by the Welsh and Irish.7Several of the Roman letters had in Britain developed forms, and retained or acquired values, unlike those used on the continent, in particular(d f g r s t). The lettersqandzwere not used,qbeing represented bycw, andkwas a rare alternative toc;uorvwas only a vowel, the consonantal power ofvbeing represented as in Welsh byf. The Runes calledthornandwēn, having the consonantal values now expressed bythandw, for which the Roman alphabet had no character, were at first expressed byth, ð (a contraction for ɣɣ or ɣh), andvoru; but at a later period the characters þ and Þ were revived from the old Runic alphabet. Contrary to Continental usage, the letterscand(g) had originally only their hard or guttural powers, as in the neighbouring Celtic languages; so that words which, when the Continental Roman alphabet came to be used for Germanic languages, had to be written withk, were in Old English written withc, ascêne= keen,cynd= kind.8The key to the values of the letters, and thus to the pronunciation of Old English, is also to be found in the Celtic tongues whence the letters were taken.
The Old English period is usually considered as terminating 1120, with the death of the generation who saw the Norman Conquest. The Conquest established in England a foreign court, a foreign aristocracy and a foreign hierarchy.9The French language, in its Norman dialect, became the only polite medium of intercourse. The native tongue, despised not only as unknown but as the language of a subject race, was left to the use of boors and serfs, and except in a few stray cases ceased to be written at all. The natural results followed.10When the educated generation that saw the arrival of the Norman died out, the language, ceasing to be read and written, lost all its literary words. The words of ordinary life whose preservation is independent of books lived on as vigorously as ever, but the literary terms, those that related to science, art and higher culture, the bold artistic compounds, the figurative terms of poetry, were speedily forgotten. The practical vocabulary shrank to a fraction of its former extent. And when, generations later, English began to be used for general literature, the only terms at hand to express ideas above those of every-day life were to be found in the French of the privileged classes, of whom alone art, science, law and theology had been for generations the inheritance. Hence each successive literary effort of the reviving English tongue showed a larger adoption of French words to supply the place of the forgotten native ones, till by the days of Chaucer they constituted a notable part of the vocabulary. Nor was it for the time being only that the French words affected the English vocabulary. The Norman French words introduced by the Conquest, as well as the Central or Parisian French words which followed under the early Plantagenets, were mainly Latin words which had lived on among the people of Gaul, and, modified in the mouths of succeeding generations, had reached forms more or less remote from their originals. In being now adopted as English, they supplied precedents in accordance with which other Latin words might be converted into English ones, whenever required; and long before the Renascence of classical learning, though in much greater numbers after that epoch, these precedents were freely followed.
While the eventual though distant result of the Norman Conquest was thus a large reconstruction of the English vocabulary,the grammar of the language was not directly affected by it. There was no reason why it should—we might almost add, no way by which it could. While the English used their ownwords, they could not forget their ownwayof using them, the inflections and constructions by which alone the words expressed ideas—in other words, their grammar; when one by one French words were introduced into the sentence they became English by the very act of admission, and were at once subjected to all the duties and liabilities of English words in the same position. This is of course precisely what happens at the present day:telegraphandtelegrammake participletelegraphingand pluraltelegrams, andnaïvethe adverbnaïvely, precisely as if they had been in the language for ages.
But indirectly the grammar was affected very quickly. In languages in the inflected or synthetic stage the terminations must be pronounced with marked distinctness, as these contain the correlation of ideas; it is all-important to hear whether a word isbonusorbonisorbonasorbonos. This implies a measured and distinct pronunciation, against which the effort for ease and rapidity of utterance is continually struggling, while indolence and carelessness continually compromise it. In the Germanic languages, as a whole, the main stress-accent falls on the radical syllable, or on the prefix of a nominal compound, and thus at or near the beginning of the word; and the result of this in English has been a growing tendency to suffer the concluding syllables to fall into obscurity. We are familiar with the cockneywinder,sofer,holler,Sarer,Sunder,would yer, for window, sofa, holla, Sarah, Sunday, would you, the various final vowels sinking into an obscure neutral one now conventionally spelter, but formerly represented by finale. Already before the Conquest, forms originallyhatu,sello,tunga, appeared ashate,selle,tunge, with the terminations levelled to obscure ě; but during the illiterate period of the language after the Conquest this careless obscuring of terminal vowels became universal, all unaccented vowels in the final syllable (excepti) sinking intoe. During the 12th century, while this change was going on, we see a great confusion of grammatical forms, the full inflections of Old English standing side by side in the same sentence with the levelled ones of Middle English. It is to this state of the language that the namesTransitionandPeriod of Confusion(Dr Abbott’s appellation) point; its appearance, as that of Anglo-Saxon broken down in its endings, had previously given to it the suggestive if not logical appellation of Semi-Saxon.
Although the written remains of the transition stage are few, sufficient exist to enable us to trace the course of linguistic change in some of the dialects. Within three generations after the Conquest, faithful pens were at work transliterating the old homilies of Ælfric, and other lights of the Anglo-Saxon Church, into the current idiom of their posterity.11Twice during the period, in the reigns of Stephen and Henry II., Ælfric’s gospels were similarly modernized so as to be “understanded of the people.”12Homilies and other religious works of the end of the 12th century13show us the change still further advanced, and the language passing into Early Middle English in its southern form. While these southern remains carry on in unbroken sequence the history of the Old English of Alfred and Ælfric, the history of the northern English is an entire blank from the 11th to the 13th century. The stubborn resistance of the north, and the terrible retaliation inflicted by William, apparently effaced northern English culture for centuries. If anything was written in the vernacular in the kingdom of Scotland during the same period, it probably perished during the calamities to which that country was subjected during the half-century of struggle for independence. In reality, however, the northern English had entered upon its transition stage two centuries earlier; the glosses of the 10th century show that the Danish inroads had there anticipated the results hastened by the Norman Conquest in the south.
Meanwhile a dialect was making its appearance in another quarter of England, destined to overshadow the old literary dialects of north and south alike, and become the English of the future. The Mercian kingdom, which, as its name imports, lay along themarchesof the earlier states, and was really a congeries of the outlying members of many tribes, must have presented from the beginning a linguistic mixture and transition; and it is evident that more than one intermediate form of speech arose within its confines, between Lancashire and the Thames. The specimens of early Mercian now in existence consist mainly of glosses, in a mixed Mercian and southern dialect, dating from the 8th century; but, in a 9th-century gloss, the so-called Vespasian Psalter, representing what is generally held to be pure Mercian. Towards the close of the Old English period we find some portions of a gloss to the Rushworth Gospels, namely St Matthew and a few verses of St John xviii., to be in Mercian. These glosses, with a few charters and one or two small fragments, represent a form of Anglian which in many respects stands midway between Northumbrian and Kentish, approaching the one or the other more nearly as we have to do with North Mercian or South Mercian. And soon after the Conquest we find an undoubted midland dialect in the transition stage from Old to Middle English, in the eastern part of ancient Mercia, in a district bounded on the south and south-east by the Saxon Middlesex and Essex, and on the east and north by the East Anglian Norfolk and Suffolk and the Danish settlements on the Trent and Humber. In this district, and in the monastery of Peterborough, one of the copies of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, transcribed about 1120, was continued by two succeeding hands to the death of Stephen in 1154. The section from 1122 to 1131, probably written in the latter year, shows a notable confusion between Old English forms and those of a Middle English, impatient to rid itself of the inflectional trammels which were still, though in weakened forms, so faithfully retained south of the Thames. And in the concluding section, containing the annals from 1132 to 1154, and written somewhere about the latter year, we find Middle English fairly started on its career. A specimen of this new tongue will best show the change that had taken place: