Cornell University Library arV13974 Is English a German language? / 3 1924 031 287 307 olin.anx IS ENGLISH. A GERMAN LANGUAGE? BY. Prof. Dr. GEORGE STEPHENS, F.S.A. LOND. AND ^EDINB. ; HON. DR. OF LETTERS, CAMBRIDGE. LONDON: WM. ALLEN, & STORR, CAXTON HOUSE, PATERNOSTER' SQUARE. 1890. x Cornell University Library The original of this book is in the Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924031287307 IS ENGLISH A GERMAN LANGUAGE? BY Prof. Dr. GEORGE STEPHENS, F.S.A. LOND. AND EDINB. ; HON. DR. OF LETTERS .CAMBRIDGE. LONDON : WM. ALLEN & STORR, CAXTON HOUSE, PATERNOSTER SQUARE. 1890. a E.V. (SraMttUg 2nacxibtto TO THE REV. G. T. BROWNE, B.D., DISNEY PROF. OF ARCHAEOLOGY, CAMBRIDGE, ENGLAND. IS ENGLISH A GERMAN LANGUAGE ? These rapid remarks were made in the shape of a popular Lecture in the Danish Capital a few days ago, and may also be useful to British and American readers. They were given in answer to a question often askt, especially in the North : " Why is the Northern language, called English, so unlike the other Northern dialects, as they now are, in modern Scandinavia ? " Properly speaking, there is no English language, no Scandinavian, no Danish, or Swedish, or Norwegian; no French, or German, or Italian, or any other, in Europe, Asia, Africa, America. What is called English, and the rest, is an always-chang- ing conventional tung, chiefly fixt by the seat of Govern- ment and its local literature should such exist, and in " civilized " lands by Public Schools, Universities and the Police of Public Instruction. What really is, and always has been, is Dialects, and Dialects within and crossing Dialects, mixt ever-sliding folk- talks, the result of many causes — loose Migrations, Emigra- * 6 IS ENGLISH A GERMAN LANGUAGE ? tions, Immigrations ; continual wars, Civil and Uncivil ; many chiefs but no center; the little " Rike " altering with every King-feud ; contact with other lands in foray or commerce, and with other talks from slave-folks and slave- servants ; the in-coming of foreigners, which has always taken place, and which silently influences the home-speech ; even mere personal or family defects or peculiarities in the pronunciation of certain sounds or letters. Not till we get settled rule, a certain amount of civilization, one King and his Chancery, or Literary tung, can we speak of a language in a practical sense ; and the fact is, even then, that the masses go on with their local vernacular, knowing little of the polisht orthodox book-craft. Of course, as Communi- cation and Schools become universal, this last " fact " will pass away or be modified. Now when speaking of old Scandinavian folk-talks, we should know something of what they were. What do we know ? Very little ; only that the oldest are Danish and Swedish ; and that the Norse-Icelandic is a mixt in much a modern tung, remarkable for having kept so many costly yore-day heirlooms, for its loans from Old English, Keltic, and Romance, and for its rich and valuable literature. Icelandic is so difficult, it never can be popular. Hence, the forcing of Icelandic on young people in the schools is a great mistake. They learn little more than some hard Grammar, which they soon forget. Should they have time in Danish schools, let them learn Swedish, as Dansk should" be taught in the Swedish schools. People seem to forget, practically, that one hour's distance from the Danish Capital is the old and musical Swedish parlance, spoken by nearly five millions of clan-fellows. Should each province do this, translations from and to the three Scandinavian WHAT IS OLD SCANDINAVIAN? 7 languages would almost cease, and the Northern book- market would command near ten million readers. Should there be spare school-hours still left, next teach English. This is now so different, tho sprung from Scandi- navian, that it cannot spoil it ; whereas German is now so near the modern Northern, that it daily more and more Germanizes it— gratis. The only thanks Scandinavia gets for thus, at its own expense, Germanizing its youth is, a new scientific " Law," that Scandinavia speaks a North- German dialect. All we have, all our literature old and new, in Scandinavia and England and our Colonies and the United States of America, is now rubricated and annext by our cousins as German, North-German, under the general denominator, " Teutonic," " German," " Germansk," " Deutsch," and the like. But the great question now before us is Old Scandina- vian. Let us discuss it quietly. What are our helps in forming some idea of the Northern dialects one to two thousand years ago ? The first is the Runic Monuments, of which the oldest are the Old-Northern, with the longer FUTHORC (alphabet), while the younger are the Scan- dinavian, with the shorter stave-row of sixteen letters. The oldest class dates in Scandinavia from the time of Christ, or earlier ; in England from the fifth century. But even then, some runes in England had been modified to suit the language ; this olden stave-row must therefore have been brought from its Northern home some centuries earlier. Such letters could only come from a place which had them. But no Runes have ever been found outside the North and its colonies. No Saxons or Germans had the Art of Writing, till they borrowed it from the Roman Empire and the Western Church. They had not even the word RUNE 8 IS ENGLISH A GERMAN LANGUAGE ? for a letter, and all their oldest inscriptions are in Latin letters and the Latin tung.^ In the North the Old-Northern or longer Futhorc gradually lays aside many staves, so that in the eighth and ninth centuries the short or Scandinavian is mostly employed. But Latin culture and the Latin Church could not be resisted ; first the sixteen staves were added to, so as to get as many characters as the Roman alphabet, and the order also was altered from the FUTHORC (as beginning with F, U, etc.) to the A, B, C, of the Latin.f The Roman pressure growing stronger and stronger, by the twelfth age Runes of all kinds had largely disappeared, tho used and protected by the clergy. Locally, however, they remained in use until after the Reformation. For the same reason the Old-Northern stave-row fell away by the eighth or ninth century in the colony England ; and when the later Wikings brought their later runes with them to the iland, * The Scando-Gothic word RUN, RUN A, etc., a whisper, talk, secret, counsel, etc. — still left in our modern English to ROUN or ROUND, to whisper — has nothing whatever to do with the Scando-Anglic RUN, a Runic letter, which has never been found outside the North and its colonies. Apart from " Roman Empire " inscriptions, all the oldest in "Germany" are carved by the Christian Church to its members, Clergy or Nuns or others, in the language of the Church, Latin. Also, no single bilingual risting (Latin and the local mother-tung) or biliteral (Latin and Runic staves) has ever been found in "Germany." Not till we reach the middle age can be found in " Germany " any monument bearing the local mother-tung. t The O. N. stave-row consisted of from twenty-four to upwards of thirty letters ; from its first six staves (F, U, t>, O, R, C) it was named FUTHORC ; this word being the first of the three letter- clusters into which it was originally divided. ENGLISH AND ITS DIALECTS. 9 they had no root, were an exception against the stream, and soon fell away. The fine Keltic-decorated Rune-crosses in the He- of Man are a unique group, all Christian, and distinctly Norse in dialect. But Runic pieces, often hard to translate, and whether classified as fixt or wanderers, are very scarce ; they have been destroyed by tens of thousands ; and in the best case they commonly only bear some few words. We must, therefore, fall back on another sort of writing, that on Manuscripts, skin or paper. We here speak of things in the mother- tung, not in Latin or Romance. Now how old are these ? The oldest in Europe in a yet spoken Scando-Gothic talk are the English. They begin at the date " about 600 after Christ," and so continue on, from different folk- lands. If we now take English Runic and manuscript things together, we find territorial vernaculars everywhere, but specially three great dialects, or rather dialect-groups : the North-English or Northumbrian, the Midland, the Wessex or Southern or South-English, vulgarly called Anglo-Saxon. Even then, as far back as we can go, these three dialect-groups differed much from each other. But in England we have thus elbow-room and material, and as to chief features can trace English from Old to Early, from Early to Middle, from Middle to Later — more or less the Elizabethan schools — and so to Modern English. In Old- English we are struck by its rich vocalic and consonantic play, its olden nominal pronominal and adjectival endings, verbal forms and peculiarities of construction in prose and noble stave-rime verse. With the turn of the' kaleidoscope we see in Early English great changes, interminglings, incoming Romance, new analogies ; in Middle English, IO IS ENGLISH A GERMAN LANGUAGE? thousands of words dead, most grammatical forms slurred or changed, while thro both periods stave-rime verse holds on. Later English shows increasing simplifications, but also the battle of dialects as to what should be the future language of Britain. For instance, in Shakespear's time we had side by side, and sometimes intermixt on the same page, in the Present tense Indicative three systems : the North- English, with the S-ending in all the singular and all the plural; the Midland, with the pi. in -EN: the Southern, with the 2nd sing, in ST, 3rd. sing, and all the pi. in -TH. No one could then even guess how the strife would end in the distant future. The actual upshot was curious enough. With some few exceptions in Verse and High Prose, we now have only the 2nd sing, in -ST, and the 3rd in -S ; in all the plural every ending has disappeared ! So we reach Modern English, with its fragments of antiquity cropping out amid the new, its large percentage of Romance and Outlandish words and constructions, its Grammar reduced to a minimum, its immense wealth of words, and shortness of expression, its gradual softening or absence of gutturals and the introduction of sounds mild and melodious. So comes it that it is now largely mono- syllabic — the richest but simplest and strongest speech the world has yet seen, the Universal Language of Universal Culture. And in this strange interweaving of Scando- Gothic and Romance, its rings of gold and silver, fitting it for its destiny, it remains essentially a Scandinavian and largely a Danish tung. Turn we now to Scandinavia. What is the date of its ink-script, also confining ourselves to the mother-tung ? The SCANDO-GOTHIC, ENGLISH, SCANDIAN. II earliest vellums are Norse-Icelandic, a little before the year 1200, and onward. But these first writings, besides largely varying from the "classical Icelandic" of the fourteenth year-hundred, also show local dialects. Then Swedish, about the last quarter of the thirteenth century, and onward, also with dialectic differences. And so Denmark, about middle of the thirteenth age, and onward, also with shire- talks. It is also noteworthy that all the oldest Anglo-Scandian skin books contain some Runic letters still left, instead of the answering Latin staves, a thing never found in any Saxon or German MS. Now what does such a date as the year 1200 or 1300 mean ? It means, scientifically and practically, the Middle- age and the Middle-English period. Where then are out corresponding materials for Old Scandinavian and Early Scandinavian ? Nowhere, save some Runic bits. At this moment the folk-tungs of Dalecarlia and Gotland and Smoland, of Tronyem and South and West Norway, of Skone and Sealand and Jutland, are far from each other. Many Danes cannot understand landsmen, as little as many Swedes, or Norwegians, or Frenchmen, or Germans, or Italians can. How far did they differ in the first five or ten centuries after Christ ? There is a wondrous gradation from old-sounding form- rich Swedish to slur-sounding monosyllabic Jutlandish. Was there any such comparative variety and gradation in the primitive days, and had this some influence on the settle- ments and dialects in England ? We know very little of this, from paucity of Runic pieces, but should think so, for the oldest talks in England — so strikingly different from the " German," while nearly allied to Frisic and Saxon — 12 IS ENGLISH A GERMAN LANGUAGE? must already have been partly formed in the Northern homeland. So our oldest English Runic and Parchment writings will help to fill the gap of materials in the North, and therefore will assist in reading the oldest Runic in- scriptions in the Northern folklands. And this the more, because Britain is an iland, and long kept what it had with little change ; tho, like the other " barbarian " shores, it was early a word-borrower from Roman Culture and Western Christianity. Scandinavia, on the other hand — for the Sound is only a connecting link — is a continent, landfast with Saxons and Germans, and in various ways, dynastic, political, social, and commercial, became, as it now is, largely influenced by their dialects and ideas. Add hereto that the Northern tungs, more than all others in the Scando-Gothic group, have been fundament- ally changed by internal local development. As far back as their skin-books go, they differ widely from the Scando-Gothic generally, the best denominator for the Northern, the Saxon, and the German complex of local talks, including our own Scando-Anglo-Frisic. A. What, shortly and broadly, is the mark of the common Scando-Gothic ? It is : t i. The Article PREfixt. 2. The Infinitive in -AN. 3. NO Reflective or Middle verb, which is only partly seen in the Masso-Gothic, and that quite unlike the Scandian Reflective in -S. The JVfceso-Gothic alone has a distinct passive verb. SCANDO-GOTHIC : ENGLISH : NORTHERN. 1 3 B. Opposed to this, what is the note of the oldest Manuscript Scandinavian ? 1. A late POST-article, very slowly developing from an emphatic pronoun placed between the noun and an adjective, and then gradually added to the noun without such con- nection with a following adjective. 2. The Infinitive in A or IE. 3. A Reflective or Middle verb in -S creeping in, and then usual. C. What distinguishes the oldest Manuscript English ? 1. As elsewhere where the Article is found, it is PREfixt. 2. In the earliest North-English or Northumbrian the -N of the Infinitive is dying out, and the ending is -A or -iE, or some other vowel, sometimes even the whole vowe.l is gone. But at the same period and in the same land, in Midland and especially in South English, the -AN or -EN of the Infinitive mostly remains down to about the year i/oo, or between that and 1/50, according to the dialect. - ' 3. No Reflective or Middle verb has ever been found in - S in English old or new, still less the curious Norse- Icelandic Reflective in MK (MIKj, etc. The English Reflective adopted the dat. or ac. of HE, the Scandinavian HAN (in which word the N is an added particle). 14 IS ENGLISH A GERMAN LANGUAGE ? Now how does all this bear upon our subject ? In this way. As far back as our own and Northern and Foreign annals and traditions go, the English have always been Northmen, peaceful or warlike clans or settlers at an early date, beginning soon after the time of Christ, fiercely strengthened by the " Heptarchy/' and culminating in the " Wiking period." They came from various parts, on the whole from Scando-Frisland, chiefly from Denmark, and brought with them the art of writing in the shape of Runes, an extensive Mythology and rich Heroic legends. Suddenly, early in this century, the great Danish linguist Professor Rasmus Kristian Rask — necessarily ignorant of the Runic finds and studies, and linguistic materials and dialect-schools which have flowed in upon us since his time* — was pleased to announce a discovery, that English was a German language, not a Northern. What reasons had he for this ? Many. Most of them we will pass by. They are obsolete, have now no meaning in the face of the enor- mous strides made by Runology and Dialectology during the last half century. The really important are three, as follows : "' Roughly speaking, the whole of the rich olden Northumbrian material, Runic and Manuscript, was unknown to Rask'- in any scientific sense. He publisht his theory in 1830. The Ruthwell Cross was first triumphantly handled by Kemble in 1843. The Durham Ritual was not printed till 1840 (by Stevenson), whose many errors were corrected by Skeat in 1879. The Lindisfarne and Rush worth Glosses to the four Evangelists date from 1854 to 1865, but the first correct edition (by Skeat) in 1871-1887. Other things I pass by. No single English Runic monument was known to Rask. He died in 1832. rask's "discovery." 15 1. When found, the Article is PREfixt in the oldest English, Saxon, and German, but POST-fixt in the North. Good. But this place of the Article, THE MAN or MAN THE, is often accidental in tungs of the same family, and may change in the same land. So in Scandi- navia. Runes and Skin-books show that, when creeping in there, it is PREfixt, not AFfixt. The facts are clear. The Northern Post-article began to bud little earlier than the year 1000, was long rare, and even yet has not pene- trated into large folkships in North and South Jutland. Unhappily this theory, that the Prefixt Article stampt the land as German, was not only scientifically false but politi- cally disastrous. It was taken up by the German philologer Jacob Grimm, who hounded on the German Professors and Schoolmasters ; Jutland was claimed as German because it had this Article ; Prussia made use of the cry for its own perfidious purposes against its weak neighbor, and by force and fraud deprived Denmark not only of German Holstein, but also of the old Danish folkland Slesvig, and there it now extirpates the Danish tung with fire and sword. 2. The Book-infinitive of Scandia ends in -A or -M> but in the primitive South-English and Saxon and German in -AN, afterwards -EN. Therefore English is German. Good. But we now know that this nasalizing of the -N is a mere local development, a question of time. Far back in Scando-Gothic the ending is -AN, then -EN, then -A or -M or a vowel, then the vowel falls away, as in Jutlandish and other Northern talks and in English, a two- syllable verb becoming a monosyllable. Runics in England l6 IS ENGLISH A GERMAN LANGUAGE? give examples of this -N still left, and Runics in the North show a few similar instances, while the oldest but later Scandian MSS. have no N. This argument, however, from the presence or absence of the Infinitive in -N cuts both ways, for also in large sweeps of German land was this -N lost long long ago, while the other Germans kept it. Were then the N-less Northumbrian territories thereby made orthodox Scandinavian provinces ? If so, the Northumbrian half of Britain was Scandinavian, while the rest was German, at one and the same time ; both populations having come from the same Northern home, and both using the same Northern Runes, which were unknown out of Scandinavia. By parity of reasoning, the N-less German folklands were Scandinavian, and should be annext by a United Scandinavia. The hard fact simply is, that the Northumbrian talks had undergone a like rapid revolutionary simplifying devel- opment as the oldest manuscript Scandinavian. This change principally consisted in a phenomenon easy to under- stand, the immense slurring or assimilation or disappearance of the N in all parts of speech. But this we cannot see in Scandinavia, for want of sufficient ancient pieces behind and older than the skin-books. In England we can, because we there have the proper materials for comparison. Mastering the cause why, as to primitive North-English, we can use it as a key to unlock the otherwise so mysterious oldest Scandinavian book-languages. 3rd and last, the Reflective verb in -S. This remarkable form is unknown in living Scando-Gothic, save in the pro- vince of Scandinavia. Its upcome there is clear. All its dialects had the accusative reflective pronoun SIK, self, to SCANDINAVIAN REFLECTIVE IN -S. 1 7 self or selves, each other. It was often added to a verb, and created a Reflective Verb. Thus SPYRIA (our to SPEIR, ask, enquire, try to find) produced SPYRIA SIK, to ask for oneself enquire. But by degrees the SIK was shortened to SK, thereafter was sounded as ST, SZ, STZ, etc. Then it was dipt to a simple S, and in this shape forms the distinctive Scandinavian Reflective Verb. Its manufacture began late in the tenth century, perhaps holpen by obscure lingerings of the Mseso-Gothic Reflective verb . in SIK, and is now common in all Scandinavia. So this SIK (in its various local spellings) being originally almost universal in common Scando-Gothic, abounds in the Saxon and German branches, and was utilized in them also as a kind of verbal affix. But in this group the SIK was always spoken in full, as in Maeso-Gothic, was never shortened to S. The upshot was that this Saxon-German verbal use of SIK ceast to grow, remained exceptional, and never formed a regular Reflective Verb as in the Northern lands, with their SIK dipt to a bare S. As this SIK is an important word, I will be tedious for one moment. In Mceso-Gothic, one of many Gothic dialects now lost, whose differences we therefore cannot trace, we have : Gen. s. SEINA ; dat. s. SIS, the end S in the other Scando-Gothic tungs softened to R, as so often in all languages/ ac. s. SIK. In Norse-Icel. gen. SIN; dat. SER (the final S softened to R) ; ac. SIK. In Swedish one single example of gen. s. SIN; no dat.; SIK, SIG ac. (and used for dat.) 1 8 IS ENGLISH A GERMAN LANGUAGE? In Fceroese dat. S^ER; ac. SEG, also used for dat. In Dansk only the ac. SIK, SIG, which also supplies the dat. In Dutch gen. ZIJNS (the gen. ending in S added) ; ac. (and dat.) ZICH. In German, etc., gen. SEIN ; ac. (and dat.) SIH, SICH. In Frisic all dead. Thus no SIK, as in O. E. Of course, the Latin SUI, SIBI, SE are parallel forms. Then comes a branch of the dat. SER (for or to or by oneself or itself), in most Scando-Gothic tungs used as an emphatic adverb or adj., and also in compounds. This is lost in common book-English. But in North-English writers, in the Lowlands, and here and there in provincial English it is left, spelt SER, SERE, SAIR. From this word has grown a provincial Swedish SJERA, to put by itself, to separate. More universal is the adjective Pronoun, in Maeso- Gothic SEINS, in the other Scando-Gothic talks SIN, his, her, its. This is the rare Old-English SIN. Per aspera ad astra ; we are now better able to follow this whole contention, with regard to the absolute non- existence of this Reflective Verb in England ! But here starts up another question, Mixt Dialects, so often denied, but all alive notwithstanding. Colonies founded from various folkships are exposed to- surprising changes. Hun- SIK, SER, SIN IN ENGLISH. 19 dreds of word-stems are lost, others come in, forms alter, word-fall and Syntax are shaken, things from the surrounding population are introduced. Only look at what is now going on among the millions of Scandinavian people in America, the jumble of patois, the mass of barbarous English, the upcoming of new forms, and all this in spite of the conser- vative help of a powerful Scandian Press ! So always has it been. So it was in the first England as to this Scando- Gothic SIK. As far as I know, this ac. SIK as well as the dat. SER have never been seen or heard of in England, even with the help of the Wiking settlements. We once had the Pronominal adjective SIN, but this was very scarce and early died out, somewhere near the year noo. Thus we have lost the whole stem. But as the first English had so early lost this SIK, they could not build up a Re- flective Verb in -S, even if they would ! Another surprising fact of the same exceptional kind. All the Scando-Gothic tungs had a neuter-ending -AT or -T (dialectic Z, etc.), and more or less keep it to this day. In olden Danish we have even an interesting NT for T, as for instance SINT BARN for SIT BARN (his, her, its barn [child]), the N assimilated with the following T. But this neuter T is unknown in Old and New English, save in t>^ET, THAT (now the Scand. DET); HW^ET, WHAT (HVAD in mod. Sw. and D,, KVAT— with many provincial variations, from KA to HOT, in Norse) ; and the Sc. G. (HITA, HINT, HITT, HIT, ES, etc.) IT, in Scand. now nearly supplanted by DET and its slurrings (DiE, 'ET, etc.). English is therefore neither Northern nor German. How can folks lean on such broken logic in the nine- 20 IS ENGLISH A GERMAN LANGUAGE ? teenth century? Even in the venerable Maeso-Gothic, where this neuter -AT or -T is so abundant, it is often popularly ignored, absent. Most surprising, of all, it has not the universal T in WHAT, for it says : Nom. s. masc. HWAS, fern. HWO, nt. HWA. Ac. s. masc. HWANA, fem. HWO, nt. HWA. So much for " iron laws," and theoretical " analogy." Then as to another point in the modern split between English and Scandinavian word-progress in certain direc- tions. This is an important subject; the idea that a like result always means copying, has caused mistakes endless. I have no time to lose, but ask indulgence for one example. I choose an everyday word, for it is everyday words which tell. The common Northern and English Prepositions, MID, MID, MM J>, MED, etc., and WI D, VTD, VED, etc., besides many other significations, especially near, can interchange (be used promiscuously) in the sense of in company with, as master of, using. But in late and present English MID has "gone dead" as a Preposition, and is only left in one word, MIDWIFE, the woman MID=WITH another as a helper ; and even here it is not a Preposition, but a compound-link. In Scandi- navia, roughly speaking, the absolute opposite has taken place. VID, VED, is there obsolete for WITH, and is chiefly employed for near, near by, by. MID, MED is now the Scandian vocable for WITH. But here comes in another distinct literary Northern patois, the Faeroese. There, MED is dead for WITH ; the NEUTERS. — MID AND WITH. 21 correct term is VID, exactly as in modern English. As I suppose, no one will be so hardy as to say, that we have mechanically borrowed from the far-off Faeroes, or they from us. It is only parallel development. What, now, is the result of this whole debate ? In my eyes, we must follow facts, not theories, in word-lore as in ^ the natural sciences. No one now defends the glaring absurdity (universal in my time, a giant now nearly slain) that Icelandic was the mother-tung of all Scandinavia/ some thousands of years before the iland itself was found and inhabited, so that the antique Danish and Swedish groups were children of the perplext mixt iland-speech. We must bow to facts and common-sense. English came from the Rune-land Scandinavia, but thro various settle- ments with dialects differing then as now. The study of Anglic and Scandian must go together. We can historically follow this process of Colony- languages with reference to the North. All admit that England was partly or largely settled thence, not much later than the Christian era. None will deny that the second outflow was chiefly from West Norway to Iceland. And we know that the third was the Norse settlement of the Faeroes. Now there is an answering chronological speech-sinking in these three language-groups. English, wherever it came from, is confessedly the most Scando- Gothic of the three. Icelandic is the next oldest in forms, with special archaisms on the one hand and loans on the other. Faeroese is the latest, locally twisted in many ways. In all these folklands, as in Scandia itself, there has been and is endless change, and the dialects show enormous variations. This is also the case in England. 22 IS ENGLISH A GERMAN LANGUAGE ? The oldest Northumbrian and Midland monuments, Runic and Roman-lettered, to about a.d. 900 — thus handing down local talks far older than the later Wiking inroads of the ninth and tenth age — show a language (o» dialect-group) as far apart from the oldest MS. Scandian (dialect-group) as is well possible. Things specially Wiking-Scandinavian are absent in this Northumbrian (dialect-group). Things special in this Northumbrian are absent in the Wiking-Scandian. Again, written pieces in England not far from the Wiking time, even in provinces more or less repeopled by Wiking settlers, show how local talks which had sprung from them and which largely continue to this day — tho keeping certain characteristics — widely differ from the older dialects. But as in the South-west of England, so in the North- east. All the talk-groups, whether " Wiking " or no, doggedly agree in this: they have no Post-article and no Reflective Verb in -S. And why ? Because, when these later Wiking hordes reacht our shores, especially in the Dane-lag, they had no such novelties in their own Scan- dinavian home. They, therefore could not give to us what they had not themselves. IF a couple of Post-article nouns turn up in later English, and IF one or two disputed Reflectives (BASK and BUSK) are really such and not Keltic, they are so late in date that they belong to the Northern settlers in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, when hundreds of other Scandinavian things were added to our vocabulary. In one word, as far as we know up to to-day, the oldest OLDEST ANGLO-SCANDIAN ONE GROUP. %T, English is the key to the olden Scandian and its Runes. Wash the Romance and Keltic from the face of English, and we find Old-Northern. Wash the Saxon, and German and Finnish and Keltic varnish from Scandinavian, and we see Old-English.* English for England ; Scandinavian for Scandinavia ; Scando-Anglic for Scando-Anglia ! The above is the result to which I have come after living and wandering for many years in the North itself, and after carefully studying its Runes and dialects, its literature old and new, and its antiquities. I give these general remarks, written as plainly and popularly as the subject permits, comprest into the smallest compass. They are offered by an humble student in friendly linguistic aid of the manly protest by Mr. PAUL B. DU CHAILLU, in his valuable volumes on the Wiking Age, against the modern traffic in the Germanization of England and the English. GEORGE STEPHENS. Cheapinghaven, Denmark, March $th, 1890. By English I mean, as I have said, the group of English dialects in Britain ; by Scandinavian, the group of Northern dialects in Scandinavia. English was as little Swedish or Danish as Danish was Swedish or Swedish Danish. But 1500 years ago they all agreed in the main, as far as facts and monuments can be taken to prove anything, and stand in glaring contrast to anything known to us as German. London : Simmons & Botten, Printers, 4a, Shoe Lane, E.C. LATELY PUBLISH!", BY THE SAME AUTHOR. 'THE OLD-NORTHERN RUNIC MONUMENTS OF SCANDINAVIA AND ENGLAND, now first col- lected and deciphered. Folio. With Runjc' Alphabets and •hundreds of splendid Facsimiles and Illustrations. Vol., I, 1866—7, Vol. 2, 1877— 8, Vol. 3. 1884. Fifty Shillings each. Vol. 4 is preparing. HANDBOOK OF THE OLD-NORTHERN RUNIC MONUMENTS, all the O. N. pieces in the three folios gathered into one quarto, with all the O. N. illustrations, etc. Forty Shillings. 1884. . . _ THE RUNIC HALL in the Danish Okh Northern' Museum. Imp. 8vo. With Chemitypes. 1868. Two- Shillings and Sixpence (Same, Danish^text, Two kroner.) A MACBETH, EARL SIWAREKAND DUNDEE. A contribution to Scottish History from the Rune-finds of Scandinavia. Imp. Svo. With Chemitypes. 1876. T.ro Shillings. (Same, Danish text, One krone.) THUNOR THE THUNDERER, a Scandinavian, Font of ^bout the year 1000.' Imp. 8vo. With Chemitypes, etc. 1878. Six Shillings. (Same, Danish text, Three and a half kroner.) STUDIES ON NORTHERN MYTHOLOGY, 8vo. With many illustrations. 1883. Eight Shillings.