THE GIFT OF '.. pronounce the more difficult sounds, or combinations of sounds. Thus some children say de for the, free for three. The sound '^ Or very short sentences, such as ' How d'you do ? ' The ' Life ' of a Language 3 TH is as diflScult to them as it is to most European nations. So, too, S is often dropped, as in, 'ing for sing, or turned into an H, as when a child says harry for sorry. In this it shows a fellow-feeling with the Greeks, who dropped an S between two vowels, and also changed a-i-crTrjfii into Unrjfi.1. Again, hardly any young children can pronounce an E, just as educated English- men in general now pronounce no E's except those immediately before a vowel. Some persons throughout their life never learn to pronounce one or other of these sounds. We must remember that different people are differently constituted, both in the formation of their mouths and in their power of accurate imitation ; and that what is hard to one is not always hard to another, though all prefer a short word to a long one, a single to a double consonant. Thus children almost always clip their longer or harder words, as pocket-handkerchief is degraded into pochy-nantcher, or something of the kind, and star into 'tar. So far we have spoken of the way in which single words are picked up ; we next come to the way in which these are combined in sentences ; and now grammar makes its appear- ance. How then do children learn English grammar 1 Plainly, in the same way as they learn the words, by imitation, and for the most part unconsciously. They do not learn the cases or other inflexions of each word separ- ately, but as they hear papa's used in a way implying possession on the part of papa, so Franks is used where possession by Frank is implied, and this process is extended to all words by 'analogy' — that is, words which resemble other words (for instance as being nouns, or verbs) are treated in the same way. This principle of ' analogy ' is extended by children further than the practice of the English language at present allows. So we get us's, w^s, foots, oxes, lended, hurted. This use of new forms is checked by ' chaff ' on the part of their brothers and sisters, by admonition from parents, and by noticing the correct 4 History of Etiglisk inflexions of these 'irregular' words when they hear them said, or see them written, so that each fresh generation is not allowed to change and simplify the language at its pleasure. We have already had some hints that these tendencies to change the language are not confined to children. And we may now look more in detail into the ways in which a language changes. In doing this we shall confine ourselves as much as possible to recent times. But as all languages change gradually, and as English at the present day is changing at a remarkably slow rate, it will be necessary sometimes to go back two or three centuries or more in order to observe the changes which are and have been taking place. (1) The desire for ease of pronunciation, the preference for an easy sound, or a short word, is the cause of many changes, as w« saw in the case of children. Thus many names of places or surnames have been shortened while their old and longer form is retained in the spelling. Thus Cirencester is pronounced Cicester ; Leominster, Lemster ; Marjoribanks, March- banks. In the same way we write boatswain, but say bd'sun, and most of its members call the University the 'Varsity. 'Bus for omnibus is a very recent instance of this shortening of a word, since the thing itself has only been introduced within the last sixty years. So too our many silent letters, which we write but do not pronounce, the K in kruwe and knight, the W in write, represent sounds which have been dropped since 1500, and some of them in much more recent times. Again, two hard (or ' breathed ' i) sounds, two soft (or ' voiced ' i) letters are easier to pronounce together. Thus we say, ' he rubbed,' but ' he crept,' though the termination is evidently, to begin with, the same in both words. ^ The difference between ' breath ' and ' voice ' is made by the vocal chords. In a ' voiced ' letter (such as B) the breath is modified by the vocal chords iu a ' breathed ' letter (snch as P) it is not. A vowel is, of course, made witli 'voice,' but this is modified by the shape of the mouth and position of the tongue, which form a ' resonance-chamber, ' somewhat like the mouth of a trumpet. The ^ Life' of a Language 5 (2) We saw in the case of children that they imitate the usual inflexions beyond what the practice of the language allows. This is called 'false analogy.' Thus the commonest form of the past tense of verbs, in -e,d, has been gaining ground in English. We now say ' he helped,' and not ' he holp,' seethed, and not sod.^ Beseeched is now trying to gain its position in the language as the past tense of beseech, instead of besought, and may be found in the newspapers at all events. So Bunyan uses catcht for caught, and this form, sometimes in the shape hetch'd or eoteh'd, is commonly heard, though it is still branded as 'vulgar,' as was no doubt the case with helped and many other ' regular ' past tenses when they were first used. There has been a similar levelling in the declension of substantives. The old plural of cow was ky, as it still is in ' Lowland Scotch,' the descendant of one of the Old English dialects. ' Analogy ' has made this into cows. So too the plural horses has become established in English since 1500,^ the old plural being Aors«, the same as the singular. It seems to be a mere accident that the child's plurals, foots and oxes, are not now the correct English forms. If we pass from changes in pronunciation and grammar to changes in the stock of words or ' vocabulary ' of the language, we shall see further alterations. (3) New words come in to express new ideas or things newly discovered. These are sometimes made up from two or more words or parts of words already in the language, as steamboat, type^writer ; often by making a Latin or Greek com- pound and cutting off its termination to make it like the numerous words of this kind already in the language. In this way we have got telegraph, telephone, phonograph, and many others. Sometimes we join a Greek or Latin tail to an English head, and produce a monstrous word like 1 Gen. XXV. 29, ' Aud Jacob sod pottage.' Seethe is now only used intran- sitively. ^ But horses is to be found much earlier. 6 History of English cablegram, though this is not really more extraordinary than our attaching an ending or ' suffix ' like -able, which comes to us from Latin through French, to a purely English word like Ime, as in lovable. But cablegram, being a new word, strikes us as unusual, while lovable does not. One of the most recent additions to the language is the verb to boycott, not, as we know, a compound word of any kind, but merely a proper name applied in a new sense, being the name of the gentleman. Captain Boycott, who first, suffered from the process now marked out by the term. We cannot exactly give its birthday, but the word was born in the end of the year 1880.^ At first applied only to persons, it is now used of things as well. We not only say ' he was boycotted,' but a member of Parliament lately spoke of the Government 'boycotting the Paris Exhibition.' Like other new words received into the language, it is inflected like any other English word, and we can speak of 'boycottmg',' 'boycotters,' just as we say 'he telegraphic?,' 'telegraphm^,' ' telephones,' applying the ordinary English inflexions by imitating other words, unconsciously, just as a child does.^ Sometimes too new words are introduced which are formed from the stock of the language itself (such as hnovnngness, unknowable), not to mark out any new thing, but either because they are found useful from their shortness, or to express some shade of meaning which has no word attached to it, or per- haps for no reason that we can see. These sometimes gain admission into the language through being used by some author. Thus Sir Walter Scott introduced (or reintroduced) the substantive following, meaning ' body of retainers.' Cole- ridge established reliable and reliability. (4) Then too sometimes one word crowds another out of the language and takes its place, just as the brown or 'Hanover' rat has driven the native black rat out of England. The 1 See Skeat, Principles of English Etymology, First Series, p. 6. '^ The word haa also been naturalised in German, appearing in the form Boycottieriing. The ' Life' of a Language 7 victorious word may be wholly new, or the two words may have existed side by side for generations, as is still the case with higin commence herb plant like similar and a host of other pairs. But if we compare English of the present day with the English of the Authorised Version of ■ the Bible, or with Shakespeare, we shall see that many words have been superseded by others. Thus — wont ty accustomed come to pass by happen draught by haul sundry by various anon by directly just as wire may very possibly turn telegraph out of the English language. (5) But words not only change their form, are born and die, but also shift their meaning more or less completely. Thus, as we know, prevent ^ meant merely ' anticipate ' when the Bible and Prayer-book were written, it now means ' stop,' and cannot be used in its older sense. Artillery ^ originally meant warlike machines, and is used of Jonathan's bow and arrows in the Bible. It can now mean nothing but cannon. Fowl^ in the Bible meant any bird, as in the phrase 'the fowls of the air,' and retains this meaning in the words derived from it, fowler, wild-fowl ; it now means one kind of bird only, a chicken. So meat meant any food, as when Elijah ' went in' the strength of that meat,' which was ' cakes ' or loaves.* These are merely some specimens of the ways in which the language has been altering in recent times. We can see from many of these examples that the change has not stopped 1 Matt. xvii. 25. Collect for the Seventeenth Sunday after Trinity. 2 1 Sam. XX. 40. ' Gen. i. 20. * 1 Kings xix. 8. 8 History of English yet. There are some people still alive who say, 'erh, and 'umble. Both these, layloch for lilac, pardner for partTier, and perhaps Prooshia for Prussia, were the 'correct' or received pronunciation at the beginning of the century. Many per- sons now think it correct to pronounce the H in where, when, which a generation ago was never heard except from Scotchmen or Irishmen who had never dropped the sound. Perhaps in a generation or two it will be once more univer- sally pronounced. Now all changes in language must begin from some indi- vidual person, though we can hardly hope to trace the process throughout. From one man they spread to a family, a school, or college. If they do not gain ground outside these, they remain as family, school, or coUege slang. If they spread to a district, they become part of a local dialect. If they are imitated by the whole nation, they of course become part of its language. Now no two persons are alike in their pro- nunciation, or in the words ^ which they use by preference. There are few persons who do not at some time or other invent words, mostly for a joke, or use an old word in a new sense. Thus the conditions necessary for starting some change in the language are constantly present, and people are inclined to imitate what they hear, whether it is new or old. And, as a fact, we have seen that English is constantly changing. And yet we know that the Bible, translated in 1611,^ and Shakespeare's plays, written a few years earlier, are in the main readily intelligible so far as the language is concerned, to the silent reader at least, though, if we heard them read as they were pronounced by the translators and author, they would certainly sound very strange. How is it then that a language does not change more rapidly ? what are the causes which preserve it 1 (1) The use of language is to express our thoughts to 1 The language of the Bible is really older than the date of our translation, as will be seen later on. The 'Life' of a Language 9 others, and plainly in order to do so we must use language which they understand. This is one of the chief causes which hinders the spread of slang, since it is not readily understood outside the circle in which it grew up, and is consequently soon dropped. (2) Imitation, if it is the means by which changes in language spread, also tends much oftenerto keep it the same. By imitating other people, our talk (or what we write) tends on the whole to a sort of average, steering midway between extremes of pronunciation and style. Thus, though one form of imitation, the copying of the commoner forms of grammar by ' analogy,' has a tendency to level ' irregularities ' of gram- mar (such as Iml'p), yet the imitation of the ordinary speech tends to keep the forms the same as before. (3) We always prefer what we are used to. New words or grammatical forms strike people who hear them as unusual, and therefore as ' incorrect.' This is especially the case in a country where many people are educated, since the most highly educated class sets the standard of language, and these persons are particularly hostile to change. And, besides this, books, if they are really first-rate, are read for generations, as has been the case with the Authorised Version of the Bible, the Pilgrim's Progress, and Shakespeare. These do not alter. Other writers model their style on them. And people in their talk naturally imitate to some extent, for the most part unconsciously, the books which they read, though we never speak quite ' like a book,' so that thus we come round again to the second head. There are many persons to be found in the country districts whose talk is obviously modelled on the English Bible. This literary influence and influence of the educated class is unusually strong at the present day, and consequently it is far harder for the language to change to any great and obvious extent. But at any time the conserva- tive forces in language will fall under one of these three heads : (1) The necessity of being understood ; (2) Imitation of the 10 History of English average speech of those with whom we conie in contact ; (3) Preference for what we are used to, or for what the educated classes are used to, and which they tell us is ' correct.' Of these conservative influences the first is by far the strongest. Besides the processes of change in a living language, and the forces which prevent this change from being rapid, we must also say something of the way in which it repairs its waste like a living body. As this is a part of the change which takes place in language, something has been said of it already. We have seen that words have a constant tendency to wear down. This loss usually stops before the word becomes un- intelligible or ambiguous, but not always. Thus right in ' I have done it righi^ fair in ' So, faw and softly, John he cried,' stand for rigMe and foire, where the final E once marked them as adverbs. There is now no distinction between the adjec- tive and the adverb apart from the context. Again, as we have seen, words become obsolete altogether. Now in English this waste is and has long been repaired and the fresh words needed have been supplied chiefly by borrowing from other languages. But this is exceptional among lan- guages in general, and even in English borrowing is rare till a considerable time after the Norman Conquest. The usual way in which fresh words are made is by forming compound words, as in German at the present day. And we can trace the stages of their formation. First,^ we have a loose compound, two words put together but hardly joined into one word. As examples of this class we may take two or three of the compound words which Shakespeare uses, sky-aspiring, senseless-obstinate, eagle-winged. Now the sense of these words is the same whether we write each of them as one word or two ; they have not acquired ^ Whitney, Language and its Study, p. 71, etc. The 'Life ' of a Language 1 1 any sense different from the sum of the parts composing them.i Besides this, we more naturally pronounce them with an accent on each part, and, if we think for a moment, we shall see that every English word has one main accent and no more. These combinations of words then are merely two words put close to one another and have not become joined into a single word. They are compounds of the loosest kind. Secondly, we have an example of a closer compound in the name Newfoundland. We can still see its derivation clearly ; no part of it has begun to wear down. But, in the first place, it has only one main accent, and is thus one word ; and secondly, it has a special meaning of its own different from the joint meaning of the words composing it. Originally given to an island off the mouth of the St. Lawrence, because it was the land then most recently discovered (in much the same way as a certain college at Oxford is called New College), it is no longer applied to any newly -discovered country, ^s according to its derivation it might be, but is crystallised or hardened into a name for one particular country. Thus the combination of the three words new found land has become a new word with a new meaning. An ex- cellent example of the difference made by uniting two words into a compound with one accent is blackbird. We can say 'the crow is a black bird,' but certainly not, 'the crow is a blackbird.' Thirdly, we have the combination drawn still tighter in needful. This word, like Newfoundland, is shown by its single accent to be really one word, and its meaning is not the same as that of the sum of the parts that make it up. It does not mean 'full of need,' but 'needed' or necessary. Thus the second part full, though we can easily see from what separate word it is derived, does not retain its meaning, it has become little more than a sufBx, such as the -ed in needed. But besides ^ Earle, Eaglish Prose, p. 50. 12 History of English this, as the accent falls upon the earlier syllable,^ the Jul has begun to wear down, being pronounced less distinctly than its free brother full, and having this fact marked by the omission of the second L. Fourthly, we have compounds which have been so much worn down that they no longer show clearly from what they are derived. No one would suppose that the -ly in tr%ly was originally a distinct word like -ful in needful. And yet, if we look at the older form of English, we shall see that such is the case ; -ly is the worn-down form of -Uce^ the dative case of He, ' a body ' (as in ZycA-gate, the gate at the entrance of a churchyard), and so truly originally means ' with a true body or shape.' So too -ship in friendship, lordship, is originally a distinct word meaning 'shape,' and so state or condition. Again, -hood in manhood, -head in Godhead, is a distinct word, h&d, in Old English, meaning ' position in society,' ' state,' or ' quality,' so that manhood meant and means still the qualities of a man. And -less in needless is the same word as loose (Idas is the old form) ; thus needless means ' loose, or free from need.' In some of these compounds the latter part of the word has become disguised either in consonant or vowel. The reason is that, as the accent falls further back on the main part of the word, the latter part was not so fully pro- nounced, and consequently was often shortened in some way for ease of pronunciation. And its different pronunciation from the free word with which it was identical would not strike any one as strange. As soon as a compound word is definitely formed, those who use it seldom think of its derivation, even when it is still so obvious as in needful and Newfoundland, or in selfish. It is well to bear in mind these facts about the formation of compound words, since they are most important in the ' Also, no doubt, 'because in saying it we do not think of -fid as identical with fidl, and so do not feel bound to pronounce it the same. 2 So in Somersetshire they still say ' 'ard-like,' ' quiet-like.' — Transactions of the Philological Society, 1875-76, p. 197. The ' Life ' of a Language 1 3 history of language. Think how many different ideas may be expressed, for instance, by compounding the one verb hear with various prepositions and suffixes. There are forbear, hearing, overhearing, underhearing (in Shakespeare), bearable, im- hearable. And later on we shall see more clearly what an important part this formation of compound words has probably played in making our language. CHAPTEE II DIALECTS AND LANGUAGES The difference between a dialect and a language — How one grows out of the other — English as an example of this — How the relationship of two languages can be proved. Before speaking of the relation to each other of dialects and languages it will be well to understand what these two words mean. To begin with, in speaking of the English language as opposed to dialects, we often mean that form of the language which is used in books and by the educated classes, as opposed to the local speech of different parts of the country, which is seldom written. But in fact, as we shall see more clearly further on, this literary language is merely one dialect out of many, which, with some admixture of other dialects, has by force of circumstances gained a predominant position. But it is only one dialect after all. The same is the case with the French and German which we read in books, and which educated Frenchmen and Germans imitate in their talk. It will be well then to call this ' standard ' English the literary dialect, for the English language includes all dialects of English. What then is a language as opposed to a dialect 1 We speak of the German language and of the English language, while we call the varieties of speech in Devonshire, Lancashire, Northumberland, and the Scotch Lowlands dialects of English. The principle on which we distinguish languages from dialects Dialects and Langtiages i s must be this, that those who speak one dialect of a language can be more or less well understood by those who speak another, whereas those who speak English and German are not mutually intelligible. It is a question of degree, for as a matter of fact dialects may and do develop into languages. We shall see their relation better if we take the steps by which language diverges. We have seen already, and it is easy for each of us to notice, that no two persons speak quite alike. Further, each family, from one member of it copying another, has common peculiarities of speech. Some of these spread to a district, and so we have the beginnings of a local dialect. We saw in the last chapter that there are certain conservative forces which tend to keep language as it was before. If these are removed or weakened the language will go on diverging, so that (1) Personal or family peculiarities of speech will develop into (2) Local dialects, which again may in time become (3) Distinct languages, such as English and German. This will be clearer if we take an imaginary instance of the process. Suppose two English Families Robinson to be cast upon a desert island without books. Each family will have some peculiarities in pronunciation and in the stock of words which it uses. If it should happen that both families have a diffi- culty in pronouncing some sound, E, or TH, or S, it is plain that this sound will die out among the community, for the children will never hear it and so cannot imitate it. As for those peculiarities which extend to one family only, as well as those which are certain to crop up afterwards (since no two people speak quite alike), some of these will be generally adopted, and some will not, according as the rest choose (unconsciously) to imitate them. In any case words will get clipped so as to be easier to pronounce (as has happened with hdsun and 'bus), grammar will be simplified by analogy (as catch'd, and ' I 1 6 History of English see'd it '). And these changes will not all be the same as those which establish themselves in England at the same time, though some, no doubt, will be. Further, as to their stock of words. Those words which neither family happens to be fond of will die out of the lan- guage ; their children cannot imitate what they never hear. In this way too the names of all animals will be lost except of such as exist on the island, or which may be preserved in stories handed down. And if the families come from a town they will not know the ordinary names for many agricultural implements, and if they invent these, they will give them different names from those which are in use in England. They will also invent words, and give old words new mean- ings. Thus their speech will diverge from ordinary English. For they have no need to be intelligible except to each other. They have only each other's speech to imitate. And we have said that they are to have no books. Therefore their speech vrill soon become a distinct dialect of English. And if they are left undisturbed long enough (perhaps four or five cen- turies would be required), they will be unintelligible to English- men who may rediscover them, — that is, they wUl have developed a distinct language. Now, in order that their speech may vary, a family, village, or tribe need not necessarily be separated from the rest of their nation by the sea. A forest, a river, mere distance were until recent times quite enough to separate one village or tribe from another so that strong local peculiarities could grow up. As long as they act together even occasionally, as by forming alliances for war, there will be strong influences at work to prevent them from becoming quite unintelligible to each other. As soon as intercourse between them ceases altogether, the divergence goes on unchecked. And litera- ture in very early times had very little influence in keeping the dialects together. For it was not made permanent by being written down ; and if a fable, or legend, or poem spread Dialects and Languages 1 7 from one tribe to another, the person who repeated it naturally adapted it to his own dialect. At the present time everything tends to level dialects ; to make the speech of the whole country similar. For the forests have been cleared, or at least have good roads through them, rivers have been bridged, railways have brought the different districts close to one another, children are taught ' standard ' English in schools ; there is a common literature in this one dialect, and most people can read it ; every one tries to copy the speech or dialect of the educated classes ; the whole country is one State. In former times none of these influences were present. And yet there are still plenty of traces left of the older condition of things. Lancashire people, talking to each other, are, both from their pronunciation and from the local words which they use, hard enough for the ' Southerner ' to under- stand. There are plays, or dialogues, and poems in this dialect, and the poems of William Barnes in the dialect of Dorsetshire. A Scotchman or Irishman can generally be detected by his use of vAll for shall, as when he says ' I vAll be fourteen next May.' Then there is the peculiar way of pro- nouncing E found in Northumberland, the Northumberland ' burr ' as it is called, and the Devonshire U, like a French U, or ii in German. There are plenty of local words or local uses of words in most districts, as in the Midlands they say 'to be starved with cold and clemmed with hunger.' And many of these local forms of speech are of great antiquity. The Midland nohhit ( = only) is found in Wycliffe (1388), who wrote Midland EnglisL And the Lowland Scotch (or modern Northumbrian) use of till for to, as in ' till hame,' intill, is found in some of the earliest English which we possess, which is in the Northumbrian dialect (see p. 146). As we have seen then, before the world was civilised the conditions necessary for producing dialects were present every- where. And a migration of a tribe or tribes even to a small C 1 8 History of English distance, as, for instance, to the other side of a community of different race and language, or, as in the case of the English, across a sea, was sufficient to stop intercourse almost or alto- gether, and consequently remove all necessity for the emigrants to make their stay-at-home relations understand them, as well as all possibility of one part imitating the other. And there was no fixed or standard literary dialect in which poems were composed, though there may have been a poetical style. Hence two parts of the same tribe, two families of the same village, would, when separated, develop different languages, since the peculiarities which each had would become fixed, and fresh differences would crop up,^ till in course of time two distinct languages were formed, as in the case of the language of Schleswig-Holstein and English. We know from history that the Angles came from Schles- wig-Holstein, and the Saxons and Frisians, who also settled in ' Britain ' (as it was then), came from the part immediately to the south and west of this. Their speech was thus, to begin with, the same as Low German or Platt-Deutsch and Frisian or ' Friese.' Now an Englishman cannot understand those languages unless he learns them almost as he might learn French or Latin, since each dialect or language has diverged from its older form.^ And yet there are a great many resemblances both in the grammar and in the stock of words, which mark the common origin of the languages. As the rhyme says — ' Bread, butter, and cheese, Is good English, and good Friese.' We know, then, in this case^ from History that the re- semblances between English on the one hand, and Frisian ' We shall see later on that it requires several centuries for two dialects to diverge so much that the one is quite unintelligible to those who speak the other. ^ See Appendix B. ^ The derivation of French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Eomansch, and Wallachian as distinct languages from the Low or popular Latin is also known from history. Dialects and Languages 1 9 and Low German on the other, are due to the fact that these languages were once one and the same language. Can we conclude, wherever we find similar resemblances between two or more languages, that these also are due to the same cause, to their having been originally one language ? Let us see what are the other possible causes of a general resemblance between two languages. These are — (1) Chance. (2) One language borrowing from another. (3) It may be said, ' There is a natural way of expressing ideas in language.' (1) Words do occasionally resemble each other by accident. Cura, is very much like care, both in form and meaning, but the two words have nothing to do with each other. The same is true of whole and oA-os. But if we find large numbers of words alike in two or more languages, we plainly cannot attribute this to chance or coincidence. (2) English is full of words borrowed from Latin, either directly or through French. Can there then be such a general borrowing by one language from another as to make it appear that the two languages are originally connected ? There are certain essential words in a language, for instance, the pronouns, and names for near relations, and (almost always) the simple numerals, ^ which, first, a language cannot have done without until they were supplied from a foreign speech, and which, in the second place, are much too commonly used, too familiar, too firmly rooted in the language to be changed for foreign words. Occasionally, it is true, such a word is changed. In English, for instance, we have adopted wnde from French onch, which comes from Latin avunculus, and dropped our ' In many parts of Wales the English numerals are commonly used by the Welsh-speaking inhabitants. 20 History of English native word iam. So too second (French, from Latin secundus) has taken the place of other as a numeral, except in the phrase ' every other day ' ( = ' every second day ')} But English has borrowed more words than any European language. And if we find many words of the sort mentioned above corre- sponding in two languages, this cannot be due to borrowing even in English. And then no language ever borrows its grammar, the in- flexions of its verbs and substantives. An Englishman might know Latin or German ever so well, and yet he would not feel the least inclination to make the genitive of jackass, jackatis, or the plural of hare, haren. Rather we transfer our own grammar to foreign words which we adopt, and say ' he telegraph«pdTr)p frater V brother ' , Latin f). bhu(Sir.=be) fui 4>rjy6i \ fagus J bhid (Sib-;) \ flidi (Per/. 0/ findo) J History of English B. be beech bite P. PH {Ihiglish f). pitdr (fflr.) 5raT^/5 pater } fatter pad (_Skr.) TToS-a I foot ped-em , TTtoAos pullus ) foal diro of, oflf cTKawTeiv sbave (Old English scafan) It appears that an example of the shifting of B to P cannot be found in the languages which we have selected. An original P has sometimes remained unchanged.^ GH {Skr. h, Gr. x, Lat. h, f, g). hams-a ( = swan, Shr.) Xnv (h)anser vehere ' Guttural ' (or Palatal) Series 6 {Skr.i). K (or hard c, KH Skr. 5). {Eng. h).^ goose (gans, Gothic and German) ■wain {Old Eng. wsegn) 1 See Skeat, Principles of English Etymology, First Series, pp. 137, 138. ^ Originally often or always guttwral, as in German ch ; e.g. in night pro- nounced nicht. English related to other Languages 29 GH (Skrr. h, Gr. x, Lat. h, f, g). . & {Skr. j). janu yovu genu jnd {Skr) gno-sco gelu gelidus {F)tpyov K (or hard o, Skr. 9). " kneel knowi cool cold work vvK-ra. noct-em KH [Eng. h). Kapha cord- la I ■is / cornu jata (Sir.) ) k-Ka-fov V centum j niglit heait horn hund(-red) There is another series about which a word or two must be said, though the subject is far too complicated to be followed out at all thoroughly here. It appears that in the original language there were certain sounds resembling ' gutturals,' but differing from them in that they had a tendency to join a W to the GH, G, or K, just like a Q in English. Now W is of course a labial, a sound formed by the lips, and sometimes this W has got the better of the G or K, and converted the sound altogether into a labial, or even into a dental, where the vowel following it made this easier to say, ^ though sometimes, on the other hand, all trace of the W disappears. Thus we get quatuor in Latin, iria-vpes and Tea-crapes in Greek, pedwar in ^ The K was of course still pronounced at the time when English spelling became fixed. ^ In forming B and I the tongue is very nearly in the right position for- pronouncing a dental letter, D or T. 36 History of English Welsh, fiower in Old, and four in Modern English. The original form is supposed to have been qetwar. And for other reasons as well the examples do not always work out so clearly as those given above. We have seen that even in these the aspirates of the original language (DH, BH, GH) especially assume various forms in the languages which we have grouped together — Greek, Latin, and Sanskrit, since each of these had its own tendency to shift particular sounds. And we saw that a still more extensive shifting has taken place in High German. So too the Law has been made difficult to follow by further changes in English, or some one or more of the other languages.^ Old English ]>me^ is connected with Latin tego, but the C has since been softened, and the word has become thatch. And in other cases one consonant has pre- served another close to it (just as two sticks tied together are harder to break or bend than each is separately), as, for instance, the Latin stella (for ster-ula) is the same word as English star. But ^en from the examples given above the connection of the languages comes out clearly, and the result is tjie same if we compare examples from the remaining languages of the Indo-European family. The argument is this : If we assume the rule, the connection of the languages is clear, and on no other ground but their connection with each other can the regular correspondence of the consonants be explained. This rule is also most necessary to bear in mind in order to derive words correctly, for derivation or etymology is not a matter of guess-work, but requires a knowledge of the laws of sound of the language or languages through which a word has passed, and of the shape which the word would thus assume in it or them. For instance, castle and cas- tellvm are evidently the same word. But if castle were one of the words which both English and Latin inherited ' Some of these have been formulated in what are known as Vemer's and Grassmann's Laws. '^ ]' = th. English related to other Languages 3 1 from the original Indo-European language, the C would appear in English as H, since it would have been a part of the Teutonic language before English and German and the other Teutonic dialects separated froin each other — that is, at the time when the sound of C or K was in all words altered to KH or H by our Teutonic ancestors. Just as if we were to find a coat hung up in a room where pastilles or sulphur had recently been burnt, and it had no special smell, we should conclude that it had been brought into the room after the fumigation took place. Now, as a matter of fact, we happen to know that the word ca&ile was brought into English from Latin at or after our conversion to Christianity, and became more widely spread ^ from its use by Edward the Confessor's Norman friends, and from the castles built by William the Conqueror and others, the French word which they used being almost exactly similar to the Latin one from which both it and the English word were derived. But we could have known that English borrowed the word directly or indirectly from Latin simply by means of Grrimm's ' Law,' the ' Law ' or rule of the regular correspondence of consonant sounds in certain languages, which Grimm did not make or pass but discovered. In the same way we cannot connect call with KaA.e?v. 1 With a change of meaning. In English it originally meant 'village.' CHAPTER IV THE INDO-EUROPEAN FAMILY OF LANGUAGES Divisions of the Indo-European family of languages — Position of Sanskrit — The other branches — Impossibility of grouping these.^ We may then conclude that English, Greek, Latin, Sanskrit, and the other languages of the Indo-European family are all related to each other, that they were in fact once mere dialects of one Indo-European speech, and that they developed into separate languages when the tribes or nations which spoke these dialects parted off from each other, and there was thus no longer any intercourse between them to keep those who spoke one dialect intelligible to those who spoke another. On the opposite page will be found a plan of tJie branches or divisions into which the Indo-European family of languages has parted. A question which has often been asked is, ' Which of these languages is the oldest ? ' by which must be meant ' Which of them is most like the primitive language 1 ' In order to answer this question it is plainly necessary to find out what the original language was like, and how can this be done when no fragment of it has survived 1 Of course it is im- possible to reconstruct it completely, but it is possible to find out with some approach to accuracy what the primitive form 1 See Whitney, Language and its Sttidj/; and Schrader, Sprachvergleichung und Urgeschichte. The Indo-European Family of Languages 3 3 was by comparing the varieties of a particular word in the different kindred languages, and judging what form could, according to the laws of language which we know, lie at the root of them all. Among these laws of language are the 'Lg0S!- .■^^ ^etiu - CoMBfiaA SsLLomtr) \ .^^THONl. # (t*I!» T-jiS- olie) I Koif^ ^ttjAtxrga)^ A plan of this kind is perhaps somewhat misleading, see below, p. 38, etc. Dead languages are enclosed in brackets. Of course too the earlier single form of language in each branch is dead, and no specimen of these has been preserved. There were doubtless many other languages, and even branches of language, which have perished, leaving no trace in writing behind them. Probably these, if we had them, would serve to bridge over with inter- mediate forms many of the wide gaps between the branches. Some of the less important known dialects are omitted in the plan. 34 History of English following : (1) An easier sound is not changed to a harder one. (2) Languages do not increase the length of a word, except occasionally to make it easier to pronounce,^ or in order to modify its meaning by adding what are called suflSxes, and case or personal endings. But the conclusions as to the primitive form of words are plainly liable to mistake, and are altered as fresh laws or uniformities are discovered according to which language changes. It was formerly thought that in Sanskrit we should almost always find a very close copy of the primitive Indo-European language. But Sanskrit often has A in words where the European languages have E or 0, and yet there is the strongest reason for supposing that both E and belong to the original form in the Indo-European language. In fact, it now appears that Sanskrit is close to the primitive language rather in its consonants than in its vowels, Greek being a more faithful copy of the original vowels, which are a no less important part of a language. And even as regards the consonants Sanskrit has not got a monopoly of old forms. We said, for instance, that it modifies or softens K into 9 ( = S).^ The original sound must have been some sort of K, for K is found in other languages, such as Greek (Skr. fato, Gr. IkAtov, Lat. centum), and Q could never have changed to this sound, which is harder to pronounce. In the same way Sanskrit softens G to J, and ylvos is less altered from the primitive word than Sanskrit jan ; even the English form kin is here nearer to the primitive language than Sanskrit. On the whole, however, we may say that Sanskrit gives us forms more nearly resembling those in the primitive language than any other language does, though Greek is not far 'behind. This is not unnatural, as the oldest works in Sanskrit date from before 1000 B.C., and it has been a dead language (such • e.g. e-scuyer (esquire, now ieuyer) from scutariv,s. ^ So Latin C ( = K) has been softened in French into f or Ch : redpere — recevoir, cantare — chanter. The Indo-European Family of Languages 35 as Latin is now), and therefore unchangeable, since about 500 B.C. If we had such early specimens of Latin or of a Teutonic language, they might have been as little altered from the primitive speech. We must, therefore, remember that Sanskrit is not the original Indo-European language, but merely one of its descendants, like Latin and English, only, on the whole, less altered than the rest. Accordingly English is not derived from Sanskrit. Thus we get our first knowledge of the different languages at all kinds of periods. Sanskrit, as we have seen, supplies the earliest documents. The Homeric poems in Greek are of some date between 1000 and 700 B.C. On the other hand, the earliest writing in Lithuanian which we possess dates only from the sixteenth century A.D. Of course this makes a great difference to the 'antiquity' of any language, since languages are always changing, always becoming less like their primitive form. On the other hand, this change goes on at very different rates in different languages. English in the last 900 years has altered to an extraordinary extent, and Modern Persian is like it in this respect. On the other hand, Lithuanian, which comes almost latest within the field of our knowledge, has some wonderfully old-fashioned forms, retain- ing, for instance, 'verbs in /tt,' — that is, it has as person- endings -mi, -si, -ii, like Greek or Sanskrit. We have a relic of these in English in ' I a-m.' We may now say a word or two about some of these re- lated languages, though the map and plan for the most part explain themselves. Sanskrit is the language of the Indo-European invaders of India, who entered it from the North, probably not very long before the earliest works which we possess in the language were composed. Sanskrit or something like it was at first, of course, the ordinary spoken language of the people ; but about 500 B.C. it ceased to be spoken, though it was still used as a sacred and literary language, just as Latin was commonly 36 History of English used for learned works down to quite recent times,^ and is still in use in the services of the Eoman Catholic Church. Closely allied to Sanskrit are the spoken languages of the northern half of India, such as Hindustani, Hindi, and Mahratti, as -well as the language of the Gypsies. The Cunei- form Inscriptions (cuneus = wedge) are the Old Persian writings in wedge-shaped or arrow-headed letters found on the walls of Persepolis and elsewhere, containing records of the reigns of Darius, Xerxes, and other kings of Persia from about 500 B.C. The inscriptions at Nineveh and Babylon, though written with similar letters, are in an entirely different language. By Zend is meant the language in which the Zend- Avesta, the sacred book of the Old Persians, was written, which was brought to India by the Parsees, who migrated there to preserve their religion when . Persia was conquered by the Mahometans. Parsi is the language spoken and written by the Parsees shortly before their migration. The Old Slavonic, or Church Slavonic, is the language into which the Bible was translated for the ancestors of the Bulgarians late in the ninth century a.d. It is still used in the services of the Russian Church, like Latin further west. The Old Prussian was the language of North-East Prussia, now displaced by Platt-Deutsch and literary High German. Of Lithuanian enough has been said already, and the relations of the Teutonic languages to each other will be discussed later on. The earliest writings in any Celtic language (except some inscriptions) are Irish, late in the eighth century a.d. The Celtic languages, at the time when our first adequate know- ledge of them begins, have already been greatly altered from what is known to have been their primitive form. The Goidels must have settled in Britain before the Brythonic branch of the Celts. They were driven west by the Brythons, ^ e.g. many of Lord Bacon's works were in Latin. The Indo-European Family of Languages 3 7 and afterwards, when the English came over, many of the Brythons were driven to seek refuge among the Goidels. Except in the Scotch Highlands, Galloway, the Isle of Man, and Ireland, the Goidels finally adopted the Brythonic language or dialect.^ Latin was not the only language of ^ the Indo-European family spoken in the Italian peninsula. There are consider- able remains both of Umbrian and Oscan (the language of the Samnites), showing both that these were related to Latin and yet that the three languages had diverged very widely from each other. The dldest Latin inscription which aifords clear information about the language is still to be read on one of the tombs of the Scipios (about 250 B.C.) The other languages of Italy are dead, and have left no descendants, but Latin has numerous children still alive which are often called the Eomance languages. These are not descended directly from the literary Latin which we read, the language written and spoken by educated men at Rome, but from the ' vulgar ' dialect of the soldiers, colonists, and traders, by whom the knowledge of Latin was brought into the provinces. And there are still remaining enough docu- ments of different periods to show the steps by which French and the other Eomance languages were formed from Latin. .These languages are especially interesting to us, since one of them," namely French, has contributed a very large number of words to Modern English, as we shall see presently. The Greek language was split up into numerous dialects. The Doric forms in the Choruses of Greek Tragedies (the rest of which are in Attic Greek), the dialect of Herodotus and of Homer, will remind us of this. But Attic became the prevail- ing form of speech, and spread more or less over the whole extent of Alexander's conquests. It was in this popular Attic (' the common dialect,' ij kow^ SiaXeKTos) that the New Testament was written, and upon it that modern literary ' Ehys, Cdtic Britain. 38 History of English Greek is founded, and from constant imitation has become once more a very close copy of its original. We have now glanced at the various branches into which the original Indo-European language has become divided. Can these be further classified so that, for instance, the North ^fiuropean languages shall form one group, the South European another, and so on ? The attempt has often been made, but on the whole it is impossible to carry this grouping very far. Sanskrit and the Old Persian languages undoubtedly have so many characteristics common to both, and besides, have so many words in common which are not shared by the other Indo-European languages, that we may believe that there was a time, after the tribes speaking the other dialects became separated from them, when the ancestors of the Hindoos and Persians still lived close to one another, the dialect of the one tribe being still intelligible to the men of the other, so that, for instance, improvements in their weapons made by the one tribe became known to the other and carried their name with them. The same seems to have been the case with the ancestors of the Lithuanians and the Slavs. But when we try to carry this grouping further we are met by great diffi- culties. We might, for instance, be inclined to say that the formation of the dative ^ plural in -hM, -bkis, -bhyas {-bhyams), Latin hosti-hus, Greek evvrj hordeum far milium faba ervum crem . buru bobu "Kivov linum lin, leine linu ... Xipros tortus gort {=seed) gi'adu { = wall) liiXi] mola melim melja TrbXros puis dMn&s dana KXl^avos ( = oven) libum ( = cake) anjana ... unguentum : ( = oil for anointing) imb {for ing) madhu madhu {= strong drink) mid medu {^Jioney or wine) The Indo-European People 49 Lithuanian. German. 1 Original Meaning. Old English. Mod. Bnglish. pekii aiz faihu iv feoh ore fee copper herd of cattle stiiir steor steer bull, or draught- ox cow awis ozys szu hunds liund hound sheep goat dog aszwh. s(i ehu sil, sugu sow sow horse house daur dor door door korn corn corn corn corn-iield akrs Eeoer acre field arti akeozios egida erian {inf.) ear to plough harrow sickle malii(5s Ig [Norse) gersta baris arawiz here bar-ley sickle barley barley(!) spelt(?) millet (borrowed) bean pea kermuszis rams onion Unas lein lin lin-en flax gardas gards {=house) geard yard courtyard, or garden{6o»-- rowed from French) malti dima malan to gi'ind, mill (borrowed from Latin) pulse (borrowed), porridge bread . hlaifs hlaf loaf loaf, baking t ■■■ anoo butter, oil { midiis metu medu mead mead \ ( = mead) j medus ' ( = honey) 1 The fonn given is not modern literary High German, but either Gothic or Old High German. V. History of English Sanskrit. Iranian. Greek. Latin. Celtic. Slavonic. sthdvi [lards), stamen ... ... ( = iveaver) v Tcrfioi pannus ( = piece of doth) ... ponjava n-iXos pileus (= felt hat) plusti tashta testa ratha ratha { = waggon) ... rota roth aksha fifuv axis echel OSl nau n^vi yaCs navis nau aritra iper/juis remus ram ... ci ci H-vo-imi jy^ jya Pi6s {=bow) ... ishu ishu Ids ajan asan &KI>IV asi ahi a-op" ensis saxmn {= stone) ffKVTOS scutum sciath= stitu ( = leather) touta {Um- tuath brianand Oscan) pur iriXis raj-an rex ri, -rix dyaiis pita Zeis irariip (At-a.) Ju-piter d^v4 deus sarama "Epfi^s >.. ... (sarAyTi= wind) The form given is not modern literary High German, but either Gothic or Old High German. The Indo-European People 51 Litlmaiiian. . ^ Original Meaning. German.l Old English. Mod. English. staklis (= weaver's seat) fana warp (=the upright threads) woof (cross- threads) filz felt felt felt ratas rad jar wheel aszis ahsa naue [Bavarian rieme eaxl ( = shoulder- joint, shoulder) axle axle boat oar compensation for injury bowstring ... s ski] ihs dus2 seax scild Sax(-on) shield arrow a weapon for throwing— stone or javelin dagger stone-knife shield ... f)iiida f)4od tribe reiks rice {=kingdom) (bishop)-rio camp of refuge war-chief Tin, Zio Tiw Tues(-day) the sky diewas tivar (Norse) sturm^ (/oj-srum?) storm storm a god wind, as the messenger of the gods 2 The connection of some of the words in this row cannot be absolutely relied on. CHAPTER VI THE PRIMITIVK INDO-EUKOPEAN LANGUAGE Character of the Indo-European language — Can we trace it back to roots, and can we explain the origin of these ? ^ We have now seen that the ancestors of the nations of Europe (with a few exceptions, such as the Hungarians and the Turks) and of those of South-West Asia once spoke one language, though no doubt with some smaller distinctions such as those of the English dialects at present, yet so that each individual could make himself understood by any other in the whole nation, or set of kindred tribes. As to the general character- istics of this language there can be no doubt. It was 'inflexional,' — that is, it marked the relation of words to each other, and so expressed its meaning clearly, by their terminations, as in Greek or Latin, not by their order and stress ^ or accent, as is mainly the case in Modern English. Its substantives had seven cases at least — Nominative, Accusative, Genitive, Dative, Ablative, Locative (Greek, oikoi = at home ; Latin, Cartha- gini = at Carthage), .and Instrumental (Greek, a/^a, €vvrji). The Vocative is, of course, not properly a case. It has no termination or case-ending, but is the stem of the word used as an interjection. The verb must have been very much like a Greek verb in its tenses and moods, except that it did not 1 Sctrader, Sprachvergleiehung und Urgeschichte. Sweet, Sistory of Eng- lish Sounds. Brachet, Historical French Orammar, translated hy Kitchin. ^ Stress may have played a more prominent part at a still earlier period. The Primitive Indo-European Language s 3 possess any exclusively Passive tenses,^ but a Middle-and- Passive, or Eeiiexive voice only. And now, can we trace back this language to a still earlier stage % We have seen (p. 10, etc.) how new words are and have been formed in English, by putting together two separate words, which are then accented as a single word. The next step is for one or both of these formerly distinct parts, usually the less important one which loses its accent, to become more or less disguised. Examples of words thus formed have been given before, truth-ful, need-less, lord-ship ; and we saw that the latter part of each had a distinct existence (which we still find in full, loose, and shape) before the compound was made. Now, in every word that is declined or conjugated, by comparing its different forms we can distinguish between the root or stem, the central part of the word which gives the main part of its meaning, and the suffix or inflexion which modifies this. So in yoh-ed, junc-tus, feu/c-rds, yuh-ta, the first part of the word yoke-, junc- (for jung-), feu/c- (for fevy-), yuk- gives the general notion of 'yoking' or 'joining,' while -ed, -tus, -tos, -ta show that a person, animal, or thing spoken of undergoes the operation described. Besides this, in jundus and feu/cTos there are two further notions implied : (1) That the word refers to the ' subject ' or chief thing spoken of in the sentence, which does the action described by the verb (or suffers it, if the verb is in the Passive voice) ; (2) That the person or thing spoken of is of the masculine gender, as in the sentences — . fevKTos tTnTOI 4'A/cei TTjV aixa^av junctus equos trahit carrum feuKT^s iTrifOS iXavverai junctus equos agittir ' It is quite possible to express ideas with sufficient accuracy without a Passive Voice. The French, e.g., usually manage to use on or a reflexive in- stead — 'on les tue' = they are killed; 'tout ce qui se mange ' = everything that is eaten. The same is the case to a less degree in German. 54 History of English And by comparing the different cases and genders of ^euktos and jundos (the older form of jimctus) we can see that -to, -to is the masculine form of a suffix implying that a thing is acted on, and -s, -s the sign of the nominative case with the meaning given above. In a similar way we might dissect some part of a substantive or verb. Now what is the value of this breaking up of a word 1 Is it merely useful for teaching grammar, just as the word ' maritime,' for instance, might be broken up into three parts to teach the spelling (ma-ri-time), or were the parts f evK, Jung, on the one hand, to, to, on the other, as well as the s at the end, originally distinct words like truth-ful and need-less ? That is to say — Are we cutting up an apple which was originally one, or taking to pieces a puzzle, the parts of which were originally distinct ! There is no direct evidence on the subject. We have no remains of the Indo-European language, even at the stage when it had a complete system of inflexions attached to its stems, as in Greek and Latin and, to a less extent, German. We can only find out what this language was like by a com- parison of its descendants (see p. 32, etc.), and there is plainly a considerable chance of making mistakes in the process. And, of course, if we try to go back further still the subject becomes still more obscure. The further we go from the light the darker the room gets. Is there, then, any guide to be found in some other language, where we can, so to speak, see its formation still going on ; a language of later date, that is, stiU forming at a time when writing was more or less common, to prove to us that inflexions are sometimes actually made from distinct words 1 We have already seen (p. 12) that -ly, the termination of most English adverbs, in rarely, for instance, is originally the dative case of the substantive Zfc = a body. And the languages of modern Europe which have developed out of Latin supply further instances. 1 ' Bracliet, Historical French Grammar, translated by Kitohin. The Primitive Indo-European Language 5 5 (1) Where does the termination of French adverbs, -ment, come from, since there is nothing like it used in Latin to form an adverb, and why is it attached to the feminine form of the adjective? Why do we write nuUe^ment, bmne-mentl In classical Latin expressions are found like ' bona mente faciam,' ' devota mente tuentur.' Both of these, the latter especially, are very like an adverb; 'they observe with a devout mind' hardly differs in meaning from 'they observe devoutly.' Now the provincial Latin, which was to become French, was in want of a fresh termination for its adverbs, to mark them off from other words and make speech intelligible ; for the proper Latin terminations -e, -fer (as in rif-e, felici-ter), being of little weight and unaccented, were hardly pronounced by the provincials, just as we in English have lost the -e of adverbs like right, fast (see p. 10), ('he did it right,' 'we drive fast'), which marked them off from the adjectives. Expressions, then, like devota mente, bona mente being constantly heard and used, the two words got to be regarded as one word, and, the original meaning of the mente being little thought of, it seemed to be merely an inflexion or termination characteristic of adverbs, and thus, in imitation of these com- pounds, other words were formed in which the sense of m^nte was not appropriate. Thus in French, or corrupt popular Latin as spoken in France, of the eighth century A.D., solamente is found meaning ' only.' Accordingly in French we have not merely bonne-ment, ddvote-ment, but seule-ment, and a host of other adverbs where the -ment is really quite in- appropriate if we consider its original sense.^ However, as mens is feminine in Latin, it is the feminine form of the adjective to which -msnt is attached. Perhaps this -ment is not an in- flexion in the strict sense of the word, though it is hard to make a reasonable distinction between the two. The next example will be one of the formation of an inflexion in the strictest sense. ^ So in the English word scientifically 'with a scientific body' gives no sense. S6 History of English (2) Any one who is at all acquainted with Latin, and realises that French is a modern form of it, will probably notice in reading French that the future, wimerai, for instance, cannot possibly be derived from the Latin future amabo, or f/nirai from finiam. Now even in classical Latin we sometimes find a way of expressing the future different from the form found in grammars — that is to say, instead of a tense formed by inflexion, a phrase made up of the infinitive and habeo. Ire habeo, venire habeo, ' I have to go,' ' I have to come,' give the same general sense as 'I shall go,' and 'I shall come.' In the popular Latin, from which French is derived — the Latin which the Gauls picked up from Eoman soldiers, colonists, and shopkeepers — this roundabout way of expressing the future was more common than the other. So the Gauls learnt to say amare habeo, ire habeo, and, as the words were worn down, aimer-ai, ir-ai} In the dialect of Southern France, or Provencal, the two parts of the word are still distinct, so that one can say ' dir vos ai,' just as well as ' vos dir- ai.' And yet no one who speaks French, unless he happens to have learnt the derivation of this form, thinks of -ai as being a part of avoir. Aimer-ai, to the ordinary Frenchman, shows that the verb is in future time and nothing else. So in this case we can trace the formation throughout its history, and prove that the termination -ai, from being originally a distinct word, has, by being constantly attached to an infinitive, come to be regarded as a mere part of the verb, modifying its meaning so as to give the notion of future time — that is, it has become an inflexion. Now, are there reasonable grounds for believing that the inflexions of the Indo-European language were formed in the same way % Take the termination, -mi, or -m, of the first person ^ The derivation is confirmed by the forms in the other Romance The Primitive Indo-European Language 57 singular of certain verbs called 'verbs .in /it,' such as d-\i.'\. in Greek, m-m in Latin, es-mi in Lithuanian, a-m in English. This is almost certainly the same as /xe, me, the stem (or root) of all cases of the pronoun of the first person except the nominative. Thus itrT9j-/tt is precisely the same as / stanS,, only in the Greek word the pronoun comes last. So the -rt in £(r-Tt, es4, German i&-t, is most probably originally identical with TO, '(is-)uk du dein dir dich fiskar fiska fiskum, fiskom fiska Old Norse. Jier >ik 1st. ind. 3rd. I FIND 2 Present Indicative Low German. Old English. Old Frisian. Gothic. Old High German. Old Norse. Singular ic finde finde finjia findu film J)ii findest findest finjjis findis finnr h^ finde]? findeji flnjpi]? findit finnr 1 p_ j,=th. An accent {e.g. J>u) in Old English marks a long vowel. ^ Helfenstein, Comparative Qrwrmnm- of the Teutonic Languages, 1870. Helfeustein gives an instrumental case to Old English, fisct The form seems to be douhtful, and at all events only differs from the dative in the length of the vowel. 68 History of English Low German. Old English. Old Frisian. Gothic. Old High German . Old Norse. DUAL IsJ. fin]76a fin]7ats PLDKAL. ls«. 3rd. w6 findaj) iindaj) g6 finda^ finda]? hi finda]? findaj> finjiam finjiiji finjjand findames findat findant Annum flnni]) finna Now, as to the condition of the Teutonic branch, while its members were still in contact with each other,^ we can learn something by noticing what words are common to the different languages of the branch, just as we found out something about the condition of the undivided Indo-European race by the same method. What the language teaches us agrees in the main with what we learn about our ancestors from Caesar and Tacitus, at the time when the Romans first came in contact with them. But, though in some cases inventions and the names for them were no doubt learnt by one tribe from another, carried across the sea to or from Scandinavia, or derived from other Indo-European peoples, such as the Lithuanians and Slavs, on the whole the picture of their civilisation or of the want of it, given us by their language, will apply to a much earlier period than that of these authors — to a time when the divisions of the branch, Low Germans, and High Germans, and Scandinavians, and Goths still had practically the same language. Our ancestors had then made considerable progress since they parted from the other members of the Indo-European family. They had become acquainted with a variety of metals, and had learnt to work them, which meant, of course, ' We cannot say, ' while they were intelligible to each other.' It appears that down to a period long after the Christian era, a member of any Teutonic race could have made himself at least partially understood by a member of any other. The near Relations of English 69 a vast improvement in their weapons and implements. They were now in contact with the sea, and had words not only for sea-animals and sea-birds, but for sails and masts. We can see in some cases how they (probably) formed names for these new discoveries. A sail (Old English s«g'«Z) is 'that which bears or endures the wind,' from a root SEGH, Greek i^m, meaning ' to endure.' So too mast originally means ' a branch of a tree,' ' specialised ' (like meat, see p.~61, etc.) to mean the branch cut and shaped to support the sail.^ They also made or borrowed names for the new land-animals that they came across — fox, deer, and reindeer. They had a word in common for ' to ride,' as well as two new names for the horse, a word for letters, and a verb for ' to write.' Here again we can trace the way in which they got a name for the new art. Write is ' specialised ' from the meaning ' scratch ' (German reissen = tear), since the first Teutonic writing was carved on tablets of beech (book, Old English bde, means originally 'beech'). Their letters, the Runes, were derived from the Latin, or more probably from the Greek alphabet, modified so as to be more easily carved on wood, though it is doubtful through what means the knowledge of the letters came to them. They had learnt to grow oats and rye, as well as the crops with which the whole Indo-European family were acquainted, to make beer, and to wear breeches. They had also advanced in govern- ment. There are at least two new words meaning ' people ' or ' tribe,' a fresh word for ' king,' and again a separate name for the ' duke,' or elective general for those tribes which were not governed by kings. These points are illustrated by the list of words to be found at the end of the chapter. Of their condition about the beginning of the Christian era, Caesar gives us some account, and more detailed informa- tion is to be found in Tacitus's Germany. ' Neither of the above derivations is quite certain. See Skeat, My- mological Dictionary. 70 History of English We will now give a slight sketch of the first appearance of the Teutonic tribes in history, and see what territory they occupied before our forefathers crossed the sea, and (nearly at the same time) other Teutonic peoples swarmed over other parts of the Roman Empire and conquered them. The earliest information ^ which we get from history about the mass of Teutonic tribes is from Pytheas, of the Greek colony of Marseilles, who, about 325 B.a, made a voyage of discovery along the northern coast of Europe. As he passed the mouth of the Rhine, he found that the nationality of the tribes changed. He had passed from Celts to Germans. Early in the second century B.C. the Bastarnae, a German tribe who had migrated into Dacia (now Roumania), helped Perseus, King of Macedon, in his war with the Romans, and shortly before 100 B.C. the Cimbri and Teutones, of whom the latter at all events were Germans, brought the Romans into a state of extreme alarm by their attempted migration into Italy, which ended in their own destruction. But it is only in Caesar's time, about 50 B.C., that we get a connected view of the Germans. Their boundaries were, roughly, the Rhine on the west, the Vistula on the east, the Baltic on the north, and on the south the Hercynian Forest, stretching from where the Main joins the Rhine to the Carpathians. That is to say, except on the south, where the. great forest and Celtic tribes held territories now filled by Germans, they occupied much the same extent of country as modern Germany. And this territory they continued to occupy, until, breaking through the frontiers of the Roman Empire, where they had been kept at bay for more than four centuries, they swarmed over France, and Spain, and Italy, and northern Africa, while another part of them, our ancestors on the shores of the North Sea and the Baltic, began the conquest of Britain. And now, what sort of speech was the yet undivided language of the whole Teutonic race ? Of course we have no ' See Schrader, Sprachvergleichumi wnd Urgeschichte, p. 445, etc. The near Relations of English 71 specimen of it left. We may get some vague notion of it by comparing the words in the various Teutonic languages which are to be found at the end of the chapter. It must have been something, roughly speaking, midway between the undivided Indo-European language and Old English, commonly called Anglo-Saxon. And so we shall probably get an idea of it when we come to speak of the oldest form of English which we have, noticing those points in it which are relics of an earlier stage of the language. But there is one language which is nearer to Teutonic than Old English is, namely Gothic. The Goths who spoke it were once a great and widely -extended people, who at various times conquered Dacia (Roumania), and Moesia (Bulgaria), and southern Russia, and Italy, and southern Gaul, and Spain ; yet there is very little of their language now remaining, except part of a translation of the Bible, made for the Goths of Moesia by Wulfila (the 'little wolf) or Ulphilas, according to the Greek form of the name, in the fourth century A.D.^ This, except some few fragments, is the oldest specimen of any Teutonic language extant. And besides, Gothic seems to have been a conservative language (p. 35), so that for both reasons it gives us much information about what the undivided Teutonic language was like. For instance, Gothic keeps the stems and the suffixes and inflexions of words in a far more distinct shape than Old English does, so that they can be easily marked off from each other. It shows some of its cases almost in what must have been their original form in the Indo-European language ; for instance, the accusa- tive plural wulfans,^ that is, the accusative singular with -s added to it, which is much less worn down than the Latin lupos ( = luponrs) or Greek \vkovs { = Xvkov-s). It retains ' Gothic was spoken in the Crimea down to the sixteenth century a.d. ' In Gothic substantives the accusative singular is often the same as the nominative, and it does not end in -an. But the original termination appears in the accusative singular of the adjective (' strong ' form), hlindana, e.g., and in Old High German the accusative of the substantive got (god) is gotan. 72 History of English the s of the nominative singular, which is so common in Greek and Latin. It has a form for the passive voice, not a phrase, as in the other Teutonic languages (Old English Ic eom, or weorTpe gelufod = I am loved ; German Ich bin or werde ik hait-ada >« hait-aza is hait-ada weis 1 jus > hait-anda eis 1 = ' I, thou, he, we, you, they are called.' It has just a trace of these forms used in a middle sense (which must have heen their original use, see p. 52), and finally it keeps a dual, not only in the personal pronouns (as Old English does), but also in the terminations of the verb.^ Gothic, then, is the oldest form of a Teutonic language with which we are acquainted. But Old English has some forms older than the corresponding forms in Gothic. Thus Gothic has only one ' verb in /^ii,' — that is, a verb in which the first person singular keeps the old personal ending in mi or m — ik im (Old English ic eom). But in Old English we find besides this ic beam, ' I be,' as some people say in the country, ic gesiom, ' I see,' ic ged&m, ' I do.' Plainly, therefore, English cannot be derived from Gothic. We cannot derive earlier forms from later ones. And if it is said, ' Oh, but English is derived from an earlier stage of Gothic in which these forms were still found ! ' this is the same as saying that English is derived from the original Teutonic language, just as Gothic is. And this happens to be the fact. Old English and Gothic are brothers, but Gothic is the elder brother. ^ But not in the passive. The near Relations of English 7 3 S: ;^ o o fl ?> li^l|§|l :1llll'§.|i :| J^ l|||i Iff ►5 £, Ch &D n ,d fl £ 3 ■g (i> d^ a t£3 . bO'cu r^^ . ArQ ^ .... II II J^4^ M ±2 'S? f^ 74 History of English St. Mark hi. 9-12 in Gothic (before 381 a.d.)i 9 Jah kwath thaim siponjam seinaim ei skip habaith wesi And he-spake to-the dis-ciples his thata-ship had be at imma in thizos manageins, ei ni thraih-eina newr him on-account of-the multitude, that not they -might-throng (dat.) 10 ina. Managans auk ga-hailida, swa-swe drusun ana him (ace.) Many also he-healed so that they-pressed on ina ei imma at-tai-tok-eina, jah swa managai swe him (aoc. ) that him (dat.) they-might-touch, and so many as- 1 1 habai-dedunwundufnjos jah ahmans unhrainjans,thaih than had plagues and spirits unclean, they when ina ga-sehwun, drusun du imma jah hropi-dedun to him and cried 12 kwithandans, thatei thu is sunus guths. Jah iilu saying that thou art Son of-Ood. And much and-bait ins ei ina ni ga-swi-kunthi-ded-eina. he-rebuked them that him not they-should-make-knoum. (It will be useful to look back at this example of Gothic after reading the sketch of Old English.) ' Skeat, Gospel of St. Mark in Gothic. The near Relations of English 7 5 The Same in Anglo-Saxon (West Saxon Dialect, ABOUT 1000 A.D.1) 9. And lie cwseS to his cnihtum Jjset hi him on scipe And he spake to his dis-ciples that they on-him (dat.) in a-ship )?enodon. for J^sere menigu Tpmi hi hine ne of-))rungon ; should wait, on-account-of the multitude that they him{a,cc.) fiot might-throng ; 10. SoJ)lice manega he ge-hselde ; Swa Jiaet hi set-hrinon Indeed many he healed, so that they touched his. and swa fela swa untrumnessa him (gen.), and so Tnany as infirmities 11. And unclaene gastas hsefdon ; Pa hi hine gesawon. And unclean spirits had, when they him saw, hi to-foran him a-strehton. and J>us cweSende clypedon. they before him bowed-dovm, and thus saying cried, Ipu. eart godes sunu. thou art God's Son. 12. And he him swySe forbead ]j8et hi hine ne And he them strongly forbade that they him not ge-swutelodon. shoiM-wjalK-known. ' Skeat, The Gospels in Anglo-Saxon, Northumbrian, and Old Mercian Versions. CHAPTER VIII THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE PLANTED IN BRITAIN How the English language came to Britain and was established there. ' It is clear from what has been said above that the place where English was first spoken was not what we now call England. Our forefathers, when they came over with Hengest and Horsa and their other leaders in 449 A.D. and later years, brought their language with them. And if we see from what part of Germany they came, we shall at the same time find the place where the English language was first developed. Now, if we look at a map of Germany as it was in the later times of the Roman Empire, we shall find a tribe called ' Angli.' ^ They are placed on the neck of the Danish peninsula, in the part now called Schleswig. And north of them are the 'Juti,' on the part of Denmark still called Jutland.^ South and south-west of the Angles, near the mouth of the Elbe, we find the ' Saxones ' or Saxons, and, mostly west of these, the Frisians. All these were kindred tribes, speaking Low German dialects, and no doubt an Angle would understand a Saxon, Jute,* or Frisian, about as easily ^ See especially Freeman's Norman Conquest, vol. i. * There is a district on the east coast of Schleswig, then called Angel, now Angeln, which marks their original home. Of course our ancestors did not use Latin terminations, but called themselves Angle, Iotas, Seaxe, and Frysan. ' The Danes may have occupied Denmark from the North after our ancestors left it, or there may have been some there before side by side with the Jutes. * See Appendix C, the Kentish Dialect. The English Language planted in Britain 77 as we understand a Somersetshire peasant, or a man from the wilder parts of Lancashire. Their descendants, who have remained on the Continent and in the islands off the west coast of Schleswig, still speak a language nearly allied to English. These Angles, Saxons, Jutes, and Frisians had long known the coasts of Britain well. Bodies of Saxons, and no doubt also of the other tribes, had been in the habit of making plundering expeditions to Britain as early as the third century after Christ, and under the Romans there had been a ' Count ^ of the Saxon Shore,' that is, an officer whose duty it was to protect the east and south-east coasts of Britain from the pirates — our ancestors. And when the Roman garrison was withdrawn, about 410 A.D., these plundering expeditions would become safer, and therefore more frequent. But it was just like the Danish invasion in later times. Some of the pirates very soon made up their minds to settle. Such land as could be cultivated without much trouble was perhaps overcrowded in Sohleswig-Holstein and along the coast of North Germany, and by merely driving back the Britons they would find fields ready for cultivation in this island. First the Jutes settled in Kent, and later on in the Isle of Wight and on the shores of Southampton Water. The Saxons gradually , con- quered those parts of England which still bear their name — Sussex (the South Saxons), Essex (the East Saxons), Middlesex (the Middle Saxons), as well as all the country bounded on the east by Kent (or more probably by Surrey), and on the west by ' West Wales ' or Cornwall, on the north by the Thames, and on the south by the sea, which was called Wessex (West Saxons) down to the Norman Conquest.^ The rest of Britain ' ' Comes,' or ' count,' was under the later Roman Empire a title given to officers of high rank. It means, of course, ifonorary ' companion, or comrade, of the Emperor.' ^ They conquered also Gloucestershire, Worcestershire, and Herefordshire, and some of the country east of these towards Middlesex and Hertfordshire. Though these districts were afterwards lost to Mercia, they retained their Saxon dialect. 78 History of English as far north as the Forth, and as far west as the frontiers of Strathclyde and Wales, was conquered and occupied by the Angles. It is quite uncertain in which part of the country we are to place the Frisian settlements, and consequently we must now and henceforward leave them out of our calcula- tions. All these tribes, as we have seen, spoke one language, though in different dialects. And since the Angles occupied the greater part of the country, and also perhaps because it " was the Anglian dialect, in its Northumbrian form, which first became a cultivated and literary language on our con- version to Christianity, the speech of all was called by one name, 'English.' The way in which the conquest of Britain was carried out influenced our language in one point especially. The Britons, from whom the Welsh are descended, made a very stubborn resistance. The conquest of the bulk of the country took 150 years, roughly speaking. The Britons did not attempt to make terms with the invaders, who most probably would not have made or kept terms with them. They did not, for instance, give up a part of their lands to save the rest, or let the English have the ownership of the land, while they tilled it and paid rent in labour or with a share of the crop, but wheji they could not hold a part of the country — the coast, for instance — they withdrew farther to the west or north, and were ready to make just as stubborn a fight behind their next line of defence — a river, or forest, or marsh. Now, if they had remained among the conquerors, English would probably have included many more Celtic and Latin words in its early stage. We might even have lost our own language altogether, as did our relations the Franks, the German invaders of Gaul. There the inhabitants, who were Celts like the Britons, but who had dropped their own language, except a very few words, and adopted Latin, submitted readily to the Franks. And as the invaders were in the minority, they gradually adopted the debased Latin which they heard spoken everywhere around The English Language planted in Britain 79 them ; and so, though French contains a large number of German words, such as guerre (Old High German werra), garder (Old High German warten), danser (Old High German dansdn), and many others, yet the majority of the words in it and all its grammar are from Latin. Just in the same way the descendants of the Normans in England at last completely adopted English, as we shall see, though they brought a great many French words into the language. But as for the English who invaded Britain, at least before they became Christians, they and the Britons were like oil and vinegar, they did not easily mix. And so our ancestors did not adopt Welsh or Latin as their language, but went on speaking English as they or their fathers had done in Schleswig- Holstein and North Germany. Before the conquest of Britain by the English, it appears that Welsh was spoken in the country by the large majority of the Britons, Latin by the educated classes in the towns. But our forefathers borrowed very few words from either of these languages at this time. Still, they took some of the Britons as slaves, and from these they learnt the names of the rivers in Britain, for it is natural when you see a river to ask its name, expecting it to have one already. And so nearly all the rivers of England have Celtic names. The name Ouse, applied to several rivers in England, the same word as Usk in Wales, Usk in Scotland, and Exe in Devonshire, is derived from a Celtic word meaning ' water,' ^ and Avon is also a Celtic word of the same meaning. There was a Tamesis when the Romans conquered Britain, and there is a Thames now. As regards the towns, the smaller places mostly lost their name together with their existence. But the invaders kept something like the Celtic names for the Eoman garrison-towns, usually with the addition of ceaster (casirum) to describe them. So Verda (Icenorum) became Wintanceaster {Winchester), ^ Usque-bawgh (Irish) means ' water of life,' like ' eau-de-vie,' and wMskey is a shorter form of the word. 8o History of English Glevum, GUawceaster (Gloucester), and lAndum colonia, Lindcylene {Lincoln). Ceaster was one of the few Latin words which came into our language at this time. A Roman town with stone walls was like a great natural object, and could hardly change its proper name any more than a river. And the whole class of such towns required a special name, since the invaders had never seen anything like them before. Some few Latin words (such as mile and pound) had already made their way into the German languages through Roman traders, or German soldiers who had served in the Roman legions. These our ancestors of course brought with them, and they added a few others, such as ceaster or caster, already mentioned, and wic (vicus), as in 'Northw^c,' ''Norwich.' They also borrowed a very few Celtic words, such as cart, down, and slough. There will be more to say on this part of the subject later on.^ ^ The small amount of Celtic in the earliest English supports the account given above of the slight intermixture of Celtic blood in the Anglo-Saxons (which is probable on other grounds), but by itself it does not absolutely prove it (see Appendix A, Eace and Language). The number of Latin wordS borrowed from such of the Britons as were sufficiently Romanised to speak Latin may have been somewhat greater than is suggested above. But it cannot have been very large. We had certainly adopted some few Latin words on the Continent, and many must have been borrowed at and after oiir conversion. If we subtract these from the Latin words in Anglo-Saxon it will not leave a large number which can have been borrowed from the Britons (see chap. xii.). CHAPTEE IX ENGLISH IN ITS EARLY FORM Old English or Anglo-Saxon— The Verb— 'Strong' Perfects (1),(2)— 'Weak ' Perfects — Subjunctive — Declensions of Substantives — Genders — Plurals formed by change of vowel — 'Strong' and 'weak' declension of Adjectives — The definite Article : its origin — Pronouns — Use of the cases — Anglo-Saxon an inflexional language, and the parent of Modern English. ^ We must next see what the language which our ancestors brought with them was like, and at the same time try to get some idea of the changes which had taken place while one variety of the Indo-European tongue developed into Teutonic, and Teutonic into the various dialects of which English was one. It has been already said that the Greek verb gives us a very fair general notion of what a verb was like in the Indo- European language. In a Greek verb we see that almost all the modifications of the meaning of the stem, those of person, tense, mood, and voice, are expressed by inflexions, which have become so closely joined to the stem as to form one word with it, though originally, as we saw reason to believe, these were separate words. That is to say, the perfected Indo-European language was purely inflexional. But when we get our first view of the Teutonic languages, we see that a change has set in. The tide has begun to ebb. Instead of retaining the old inflexions for the pluperfect, the future, and ' Skeat, Principles of English Etymology, First Series. Sweet, A nglo-Saxon Reader. Koch, Historische Orammatik der BngUschen Sprache. Kington Oliphant, Old and Middle English. Thompson's Greek Syntax. King and Cookson, Sounds and Inflexions in Greek and Latin, G 82 History of English so on, modifying the stem or root so that the whole idea is expressed in one word, as in e-Se-Se-ro (he had been bound), we find it expressed by two or more separate words, as in English at the present day,— the notion is conveyed by a phrase and not by a single word. This is called the ' analytic ' tendency in a language (from avaXvia, ' to break up into parts '). We have met with it before when we saw that the Latin . . 1 . J , f amare habeo?- 1 . , . , provincials preferred to say { ■ ■ t rather than some simplified form of amdbo. It is the same tendency which makes the Modern German say in ordinary conversation, ' Ich hahe ihn gestern gesehen,' and the Frenchman, ' Je Vai vu hier,' instead of using 'Ich sah,' and ' Je vis,' past tenses formed by inflexion. This change from inflexions to phrases is due partly to inaccurate use of the terminations, making one inflexion, for instance, do duty for all persons of the plural, as in the Old English verb. This often makes it needful to use a pronoun with it, for the sake of clearness, and then again the termination becomes unnecessary. It is also partly due to what we may call the natural decay of the old inflexions, which, as we saw (pp. 12, 56, 57), begin to wear down as soon as they have become one word with the stem, as in English dn-lice, anli^e,^ only. Thus in time they often become too indistinct to be at once intelligible, and as the object of language is to convey our thoughts to others, some other means of doing this had to be discovered.^ Now, our meaning can be equally well expressed by joining together two or more words to express the idea, and by putting words in a par- ticular order according to what they have to do in the sentence. ^ It is curious that wliat seems the opposite tendency, namely, to form new terminations out of separate words, was still more or less active. It is only necessary to refer to the later history of amare haieo, to seule-ment, and rare-ly, all formed in times when the general tendency both of French and English was to use groups of words or ' phrases,' rather than inflexions. We shall see another instance in the English verb presently (p. 92). " 3) Sinthemiddleof a word usually = a soft GH, like German CH, as in ich. ' The ' analytic tendency ' may also be due partly to a habit of mind. In this case we know nothing of the causes which produced it. English in its Early Form 83 A comparison of Latin with Modern English will at once show the difference between an ' inflexional ' and an ' analytic ' language. Thus, in Latin we put 'oblitus t%i.' In English we break up the tui into two words, and say 'forgetful of you.' Again, in Latin, we can say either 'Homo occidit lupum' or 'Lupum occidit homo.' The terminations dis tinguish the nominative from the accusative, and both sentences mean the same. In English there is a very serious difference between ' The man killed the wolf,' and ' The wolf killed the man.' The inflexions of the cases having been lost, we must take care to put the subject or nominative first (as is customary in the language) if we wish to be understood. Modern English is a language in which the tendency to substitute groups of words for inflexions has been almost completely carried out. But we must not expect to find that Old English (or Anglo-Saxon) has carried out this tendency with any approach to completeness. A sister-language, namely German, has even been surprised, so to speak, in the midst of the change, by an age of education, and above all by printing ; and so its forms, at least those which appear in books and in polite conversation, have been for the most part fixed at a par- ticular stage in this process of change from inflexion to phrases. This was not the case with English until it had parted with the vast majority of its inflexions, as will be seen hereafter. But, when the earliest- works in our language were composed, it was still to a large extent an inflexional language. Though it had parted with many of its inflexions, English, or rather the Teutonic language from which it sprang, had made some new ones peculiar to itself, and had also seized upon certain varia- tions in words, which did not originally serve this purpose, as means of expressing differences of tense and number. We will now look at the oldest form of English which we have, and see how it bears out these statements. In order that the writing may give a correct idea of the language, we must bear in mind 84 History of English (1) That the vowels sounded as they do in the 'new' or correct pronunciation of Latin, or nearly as in Modern German. 1 (2) That the sound of diphthongs can be recovered most nearly by pronouncing the two vowels rapidly one after the other. (3) That no letters. are silent (like K in knight). (4) That a variety of spelling nearly always points to a variety in pronunciation. We shall say something more on some of these points later on ; at present they must be taken for granted. If we look at the present tense of any verb in Old English (West Saxon dialect), we shall find the personal endings of the singular in a tolerably complete form — Present Indicative ic binde Singular ]7u^ bindest {West Saxon) he biiidej)^ (or by contraction, bint) While in the plural there is only one ending for all the persons — Present Indicative Plwral \ri ] [West Saxon) gi Vbinda)? U f The subjunctive is still constantly used, but its personal endings are much weakened — Present Subjunctive ic 'j (West Saccon)l Jjii > binde :i. w^ g^ J> binden, or bindon hij ^ An accent, thus A, afe, denotes a long letter, i=a. (A as in father.) ' P, ]>, and©, t$ = th. ' Originally -bindis -bindi)). English in its Early Form 85 The Imperative is — Imperative 2nd Pers. Sing, bind {West Saxon) 2nd Pers. Plur. binda]? But the personal endings can be discarded as unnecessary, where the pronoun immediately follows. So we find toite gi, ' you know ' (present indicative), ne sUa gi, ' do not kill ' (imperative plural). "We must not leave out the forms in the other dialects, for a part of our modern verb (' he speakwj) cannot be accounted for from the West Saxon forms. In the Northumbrian ^ verb we find a variety of forms — Present Indicative ic spreco, or sprecu (Northumbrian) Jjii spreces, or sprecis hi spreces, sprecas, spreceji, sprecaji ( sprecas, spreces, sprecaj), ° C sprecejj In the 3rd person singular we sometimes find two forms com- bined in the same sentence — h^ ettes and drinca]? he eats and drinketh (St. Mark ii. 16). And the Northern plural will also account for some construc- tions in Shakespeare, which cannot be otherwise explained, as in Macbeth — Whiles I threat, he lives ; Words to the heat of deeds too cold breath gives.^ On the other hand, Northumbrian retains some very ancient forms not found in West Saxon. Thus it has some ' verbs in ^ Durham Gospels. Skeat, The Gospels in Anglo-Saxon, Northumbrian, and Old Mercian Versions. , ' ^ II. i. 60, 61. 86 History of English fj.1 ' besides West Saxon ic eom (Northumbrian ic am, Modern English I am), such as ic ges4om, ' I see,' ic geddm or doam, 'I do.' Mercian or Midland too had the 2nd person singular ending in -s, as ]>ii sis, ' thou seest.' So in Lancashire they still say, ' thou names,' ' thou thinks.' And we find one example in this dialect of the plural in the present indicative ending in -n — doan,^ 'they do,' a form which we shall be meeting with constantly in Midland English after the Norman Conquest. The Southern or West Saxon plural, -a]>, is still preserved' in the proverb (made at Winchester), 'Manners makyth man.' We must now say something about the past tense, which Teutonic languages show in forms which are in great measure peculiar to them. In the primitive Indo-European language a very large number of perfects, if not all of them, must have been formed by ' Eeduplication,' — that is, by saying the root or base of the word twice over. This repetition is often met with in language. It is familiar to our earliest years in the form puff-puff. But many other words have been made in English in the same way, such as chit-chat and riff-raff. Now this repetition of a root (which in some languages is used to form a plural) was in the undivided Indo-European language em- ployed to form a perfect tense. But, as in the case of other compound words, as soon as the two parts were inseparably joined together, one of them began to wear down. So in Greek, while the perfects of all verbs that begin with a single con- sonant are formed by reduplication, we do not find the root (or base of the word) repeated in full, but usually only a part of it, while the vowel is altered, as in re-Tvir-a, \e-Xv-Ka. The same is the case with the reduplicated perfects in Latin, such 1 Swa hsfetJene doan, St. Matthew vi. 7. Rushworth Gospels, quoted by Kington Oliphant, Old and Middle English, p. 121. The plural in the past tense, and in the subjunctive, both present and past, ends in -n in all three dialects. English in its Early Form 87 as cirdd-i and ce-cld-i, and the old form te-tul-i. Now, in Gothic many verbs have their perfects formed by reduplication — hai- hait (I called), from haitan ; sai-slep (I slept), from slepan ; and, with a change of vowel (very much like Xuiru), Xekonra ; jo^yioi/ui, eppiiiya), tai-tok (I touched), from tekan [see specimen of Gothic, p. 74, (at-) tai-toh (-eiwa)]. In English one obviously reduplicated perfect has lived down to our own day, which, as we shall presently see, has more work to do than any other perfect tense in the language — ic dy-de (from present ic dd), ' I did.' But in the oldest form of English which has come down to us there are other verbs which still bear the marks of the reduplication. As in Gothic the diphthong peculiar to the reduplication is AI (sai-slep), and, as in Greek, its vowel is E (rl-TiK^a), so in the very oldest English, older than any specimens of it which have survived, the reduplication seems to have been regularly formed with the diphthong EO.^ Thus we actually find Idcan (to spring) making its perfect IMc, rdkdan (to advise) with a perfect rio-rd, and orirdrddcm (to fear) perfect on^drSo-rd. If we suppose that in English of an earlier date these tenses were respectively leo-lac, reo-rced, on-dreo-drced, their form is at once explained, and the similar forms in Gothic make this explanation tolerably certain. A like formation in Greek (if such existed) would be Xi-Xira for Xf-\onra. Ste-ti, the reduplicated perfect of sto, shows the same preservation of the reduplication at the expense of the central part of the word. But these forms Uo-lc, rSo-rd, on- drio-rd are only ' survivals,' and soon all distinct traces of the reduplication are lost in the forms Uc, rid, on-drid. Still, as we have seen that the diphthong of the reduplication was EO, we may conclude that nearly all the verbs which in Old English (or Anglo-Saxon) make their perfects in EO were originally formed by reduplication. Among these verbs are — ' Perhaps developed from I, as in -j 'v f [-did. 88 History of English Present. Old English Modem English. ( West Sntrm). criwan crow Past, or Old English ( West Satrmi). creow Perfect.^ Modem E crew feallan faU ftoll fell growan healdan grow hold grdow Mold grew held.- The second class of perfects, of which we may take sing — saTig, hind—hov/nd as examples, consists of those which are formed by a change ('gradation') of the vowel of the stem, but which show no trace of reduplication. Of this ' vowel-gradation ' we find distinct traces in other languages. Thus the verb teg-o in Latin has E, but the sub- stantive tog-a (' a garment for covering ') has 0. Prec-or is ' I pray,' but ' the person who prays ' or ' suitor ' is proc-us. In Greek — besides such examples as y^v-os, ydv-os; e^eK-ov, tok-os ; irX.eK-(j>, irXoK-T], — we find this change in the formation of the perfect, as Xeiini), XeXoara ; prqyvvixi, €pp(oya. It is supposed that this change of the vowel was accidental, that it arose from the difference of accent or tone with which the word was originally pronounced. Now, if these verbs once had the reduplication to mark the perfect (as is probable), it has simply fallen off, leaving merely the change of vowel to show the difference of tense, and this is quite sufficient for the pur- pose. It is like the use of tuli for the older te-tuK, or as if in Greek the perfect of AcHro) were Xoiira. This then is the probable explanation of these verbs, and it is all that appears necessary to explain them in Modern English. But in the old form of the language this alteration ('gradation') of the vowel went further in many of these verbs, as we may see in our former example, the verb bind. Its perfect ran thus in the form of the language used before the Norman Conquest — ' These perfects have and had in English the meaning of a simple past tense, like the Greek Aorist, with whose form they have nothing in common. 2 Several of this class have now ' weak ' perfects, such as r&iaan, rlow, now rowed; il&wan,fliow, now flowed. English in its Early Form 89 io band >u bunde \k band yfi\ gi ■ bundon. MJ Whereas in Modern English the tense has the same vowel throughout- - I bound thou boundest hi bound we bound you bound they bound. This looks very much as if we had got to using the vowel of the plural throughout, just as we use the vowel of the singular for the whole tense, 'I began,' etc. But from the history of these verbs it appears that, while a few past tenses come from the A being turned into (as in rdd, rode, see p. 210, etc.), ^cmn, swung, bwrst, and bound, found,^ etc., as well as the ' incorrect ' forms, ' I swum,' ' I sung,' and so on, come from the past participle, as if one change of vowel were enough in the verb. This is also the best explanation of ' I broke ' (Old English ic brcec, wi hrmcon).^ We shall have to say something more about this very confusing part of English grammar. To return to our English ' strong ' verb as it stood before the Conquest, we see that in ic hand the vowel is varied in the 2nd person singular and in the plural. Now, if we look back to pp. 23, 24, we shall see that in ic wdt (which is also originally a perfect tense like its brother otSa) there is a similar difference of vowel between the singular ic wdt and ^ If not, hound, found, etc., come from the A being first turned to 0. — tHoTTis, Historical Outlines of English Accidence, p. 161. ^ See Morris, Historical Outlines of English Accidence, p. 160, etc. Skeat, Principles of English Etymology, Second Series, pp. 459, 460. Koch, Historische Qramrnaiik der Englischen Sprache. 9° History of English the plural wi witon, a variation which also appears in Greek and Sanskrit. And as that was attributed to a difference of accent in the original language, since in the singular the stem and not the short termination took the accent, while in the plural it fell on the longer termination and not on the stem, so the difference between ic hand and w4 hindon is probably to be accounted for in the same way. Only under ' difference of accent ' must be included not merely the greater or less force with which a syllable is pronounced (as in ' they say,' as opposed to ' they say,' ' manly,' as opposed to ' g'gmtleman '), but also any such difference of tone as when we raise our voice in asking a question, or drop it at the end of the sentence when we make a statement. Both ' accent ' and ' tone ' have apparently a tendency to alter a vowel. But the whole subject is rather obscure. These two classes of verbs — those which form their perfect originally by reduplication, and those which appear to form it merely by change of vowel — are usually called the ' strong ' verbs. In their past participles the vowel is sometimes the same as in the present, sometimes as in the plural of the preterite, sometimes a different vowel from either of these, as — Present Perfect Perfect Past Infinitive. Singular, Plural. Participle. Ti d 1 ' t d / fs^'ll^.n {fall) UoW f^oUon feallen P ( bldwan (blow) bl4ow bldowon bUwen (1 '{ swimman {swim) swamm swummon swnmmen (2) i brecan (break) I teran (tear) ( sprecan {speak) broec tier spraec brsecon tseron sprsecon brocen toren sprecen (3) ( gifan {give) \ etan {eat) geaf set g^afon »ton gifen eten (4) ( scacan {shake) \ wacan (wake) sc6c w6c sc6con w6con scacen wacen English in its Early Form 91 (5) (6) Tres&tit Infinitive. I ridan (ride) < sclnan (shine) { wrltan (imte) ( cMofan (cleave) \ c^osan (choose) lingular. rdd scan writ cl^af c6as Perfect Plural. ridon scinon writon clufon curon Past Participle. rid en scinen writen clofen coren.i Whatever the vowel may be. the past participle of a ' strong ' verb always ended in ({««) though the termination has often dropped in Modern English. We s&y fallen, given, grown, but ' he was hound to do it,' though by an ' archaism,' an old-fashioned form of speaking, we can speak of 'his bounden duty.' Sometimes too we now use the perfect for the past participle, as when we say, 'I have stood there,' whereas the old past participle was standen. This -en was used to form adjectives as well, such as open, heathen (origin- ally ' a dweller on the heath,' or in the wilds). So much, then, for the ' strong ' verbs, those, that is, which form the perfect with a change of vowel, in whatever way the change arose. But we all know that such verbs are the exception. They were certainly more numerous in the older English, or Anglo-Saxon,^ for we have made many of them 'regular,' such as weep, perfect wept (Anglo-Saxon w^op, a reduplicated verb), lake, perfect laked (Anglo-Saxon lie, by 'gradation' of the vowel), just as children say 'he failed,' or ^fallded,' 'he growed' for 'he fell,' 'he grew,' imitating the common or 'regular' formation of the perfect. Now this -ed or -t (in Old English -ode, -ede, -de, -te) has nothing to do with the -ed or -t of the past participle (Old English -od, -ed, -t), as in 'he has baked,' or 'a lost cause.' It is a mere coinci- dence, such as often occurs in language, that their form ' For an explanation of the changes of the vowels see Skeat, Principles of Miglish Etymology, Second Series, p. 463, etc. ^ Earely the resemblance or attraction of a 'strong' verb has made a ' weak ' perfect ' strong." So even Chaucer (died 1400) says — ' Of fustian he wered a giponn ' (or short coat). We now say 'he wore,' on the analogy of bear, tear. So we sometimes hear I arrove, on the analogy of strive, strove. 9 2 History of English should have become the same. Show-ed, in 'I have showed,' yok-ed, in ' an ox yohed to the plough,' is the same formation as in the Greek verbal adjective (Aiktos, feuK-rds), in the Latin past participle (scrip-tus, junc-tus), as the -ta in San- skrit yuk-ta (see pp. 53, 54). But the -ed in 'I showed' has a totally different history, and is a means of express- ing past time which the ancestors of the Goths, Norsemen, English, and Germans developed for themselves later on, but while the Teutonic people still spoke one language, just as the provincials of the Roman Empire, the ancestors of the French, made their new future aimer-ai out of ' amare habeo.' We might have guessed at the origin of this -ed or -t from English or German,^ but a comparison of Gothic converts this guess into a certainty. Look at the plural of the past tense of tdljan (to will) in Gothic ; this is ml-dedun. So habai- dedun from haban (to have), hropi-dedwn, from hropjan (to cry out) appear in the sample of Gothic on p. 74. Now, there is no separate form answering to the verb 'to do' in Gothic, but since it appears in English and other Low German dialects, and in literary High German ^ (the German of books), it is not difficult to believe that Gothic once possessed it. The Old English reduplicated perfect of this verb makes in the plural dy-don. We can see then that 'weis wil-dedun' (Old English ' w6 wol-don ') is ' we did will,' only the ' did ' is put at the end instead of the beginning. And this dyde, dydon, having been frequently attached to verbs, its origin was forgotten, and it underwent the common fate of terminations in being worn down and altered (as lice got changed to -ly), just as a coin wears down with use. In English one of the commonest changes of this -ode, -ede, -de (Modern English -ed, or -d, as it is pronounced) is for the D to be altered to T by the influence of the preceding consonant. So the ' hard ' or ' breathed ' letter P has made it into a T in the past tenses, ' As in ich weinte, ich liebte, ich hatte. ^ Thun, past tense that. English in its Early Form 93 ' he Cfr&pt^ 'he w&pV; and in whipped, dropped, blessed, and other perfects it is pronounced as T, though not usually so written.^ In led, fed, the double D has made the preceding vowel short (Old English ic lokd-de, ic fid-de) and the -de has then dropped off ; for the final E was lost, like other E's at the end of words which were the relics of terminations, and there is no differ- ence of pronunciation between ' fed ' and ' fedd,' to preserve the second D. The shortness of the vowel was quite sufficient to mark the past tense in speaking. This shortening of the vowel is like the footprint of an extinct animal of which no other trace is left. Sometimes, however, as in hit, sit, where the present tense already had a short vowel, there was no mark of distinction left at all, and the present must be distinguished from the past by the rest of the sentence. Sought, thought, vyrought,^ are also ' weak ' - perfects. ' I made ' is an abbreviation of malced, which, of course, is for make-did. A ' weak perfect indicative was thus conjugated — Weak Perfect Indicative ic sohte (' I sought ') {West Saxon) ]>A subtest hi s6hte ■ s6htoTi. hi ) And both ' strong ' and ' weak ' perfects are alike in the subjunctive mood — Perfect Subjunctive ic ^ ic ) {West Saxon) )>u > bunde J>ii ^ sohte h^ ) U) , ( bunden, or , I s6hteii, or hi j bundon | , | sohton. ^ It is well to make these changes a matter of experiment with our own mouths. It is very difficult to pronounce creepd, or crepd, just as it is to pronounce whipped as it is written, unless we make it two syllables. Even then a T comes easier. ' We also have the ' regular ' form worked. 94 History of English In speaking of ' strong ' and ' weak ' past tenses we have also spoken of the past participles corresponding to them. It is only necessary to add that both kinds of past participle can alike be declined as adjectives, and that both usually take ge- before them, unless they already have some other prefix (much as in German of the present day), such as he- in leriafian (' bereave '), to- in to-hrecan (to-break or ' break to pieces,' as in 'and all to brake his scull,' Judges ix. 53). This ge- appears in the form of y- not unfrequently in Spenser, as yfed, yborn^ rarely in Shakespeare, as yclad (Second Part of Henry VI., I. i. 33), and in Milton's line — In heaven y-clept ^ Euphrosyne. And having been retained longest in the dialect of the South and West (West Saxon), it still remains in the speech of Dorsetshire, which is a modern representative of the West Saxon dialect, as in the lines of William Barnes — Vorgi'e me, Jenny, do ! an rise Thy hang^n head an' teary eyes An' speak, vor I've oAooh in lies An' I've a-done thee wrong. But this prefix was also used with other parts of verbs, and with nouns, adjectives, and adverbs, sometimes merely to strengthen their meaning, and so we have further traces of it in handi- work (hand-ge-weorc), aware {ge-wcer), everywhere {okfre-ge-hwokr), enough (gendg, gendh, German genug), and in Macaulay's lines — 7 viis, in all the Senate There was no heart so bold, where I wis is written and treated as a verb. But it is really nothing but gewis, 'certain,' worn down to ywis, ivAs, like Milton's yclept above. Besides these forms. Old English had a present participle in ' But Spenser wrote in an ' archaic ' or old-fashioned style, and we must not suppose that his language is the ordinary English of his day. * In West Saxon ge-cleopod= c&Wai. English in its Early Form 95 -mde, berende (bearing) for instance. This still survives in the s\ihsta.ntiYes friend and fiend (which used to mean merely ' enemy, ' like German feind) ; for these were, to begin with, participles, tvom.fr4on, 'to free, honour, love,' and/^ow, 'to hate ' (see p. 148). The Old English verb also has a present infinitive in -an,^ which it declines in the dative to form a kind of gerund. Thus, nominative cwelpan, 'to say,' dative cwelpanne or cwe)f>enne. For instance, ' Ure drihten is to cwe]>enne ' = ' Our Lord is to say ' (or, ' will say '), ' Ic d6 tow to witanne ' = ' I do you to wit,' that is, 'I make you to know.' We have now gone through the different inflexions of the verb. We may notice that Old English had no future tense ; none, that is, formed by inflexion, as in Latin and Greek ; and as the other Teutonic languages, including Gothic, do not possess one either, it seems probable that it had perished before the dialects of Teutonic separated into languages. Its place is supplied in three ways. First, by using the present, a somewhat clumsy device, though we still say, ' I am going away to-morrow,' or ' I am sending the carriage on Thursday.' This is a very common plan, but one example will be sufficient — G6 sittafS ofer twelf setl . d6mende twelf msegSa israhel.^ Ye shcUl-sit on twelve thrones, judging [the) twelve tribes of Israel, The second and third ways are by using ' will ' and ' shall ' with the infinitive. This is of course the plan which we now employ. But in English before the Conquest mllan and sculan (present ic sceat) have hardly become mere auxiliaries attached to a verb. -"There is often a notion ol 'must' or 'ought' connected' with shall, of wishing or resolve attached to luill. This is of course sometimes the case in our own talk, only we now have to make the mil and shall very emphatic ' Which has survived in the verh chast-en, where -en is merely the infini- tive termination, which it is not in 'emboldew,' for instance. See Skeat, Mymological Dictionary, ^ St. Matthew xix. 28. Skeat, West Saxon Gospels. 96 History of English to show that they are anything but the mark of future time, as in ' he will go out,' ' you shall do it.' The other tenses of the verb, pluperfect, 'perfect with have,' imperfect, as well as the tenses of the passive voice, are formed much as in Modern English, with the auxiliaries ' to have' and 'to be,' and also with a third verb weor\an, 'to become ' (German werden) which only survives in Modern English in the poetical expression ' woe worth the day,' ^ — that is, 'evil be, or happen, to the unlucky day.' This verb, like its German brother, generally implies that an action is going on, as ' ic wearlp gebunden,' ' I i i \ tied, ' ic wees gebun- den,' 'I had fetters on.' But this distinction is not very scrupulously observed, nor is that of the past tenses from each other so exactly kept as in Modern English. There was just a trace of a passive voice, formed by inflexion, in one verb, ic hdtte, ' I am called,' or ' I was called ' (later hight) ;^ its plural was hdtton. In Gothic this appears in a fuller form as — ik haitada J>u haitaza is haitada weis j jus > haitanda. eis ) And a similar form is found in many verbs in that language. The still undivided Teutonic language must have had a passive voice in all verbs. Now, some of these compound forms ex- plain themselves, such as 'I was bound,' 'I became bound.' But why should ' I have,' which originally means merely ' I possess,' give the notion of past time 1 We are so accustomed ^ Scott, Lady of the Lake, I. ix. Ezekiel xxx. 2. " As in Shakespeare — This grisly beast, which Lion hight by name. Midsummer- Night's Dream, V. i. 140, quoted by Skeat. Or in Spenser, Faery Queene, I. ix. 14 — And at her parting said. She Qneene of Faeries hight. English in its Early Form 97 to using ' I have seen it,' in much the same sense as ' I saw it,' that we do not think of the exact or original meaning of the words so long as we find other people understand them. And yet ' I possess it seen,' which should mean the same thing, does not do so at all. The account of the phrase or expres- sion seems to be somewhat as follows. With many verbs, such as 'receive,' 'buy,' 'take,' the verb 'to have' plainly gives the meaning of a past tense. ' I ham it bought ' (or, ' I possess it bought ') is much the same as the conventional past tense, ' I have, bought it.' And from such expressions as this the use of ' have ' must have been extended to others where it was really inappropriate (like the mente, in seulement, see p. 55), to such expressions as ' I have given it,' where ' I pos- sess it given ' would have a very different sense. But, as has been said above, when a phrase has once become fixed with a particular sense, we do not think of the meaning of its separate parts. ' I have it taken ' is used as a past tense, and therefore ' I have it given ' is formed in imitation of it to express past time as well. In the older Anglo-Saxon there is this trace of the origin of the phrase, that the past participle is in the accusative case agreeing with the accusative governed by have, as — H6 heefS mon geworht-ne.^ ffe hath man wrought (aoo.) What shows that this is a tolerably natural line of thought is that we also find the beginnings of it in Latin, carried to completion in French. Thus ' Dumnorigem . . . omnia Haeduorum vectigalia . . . redempta habere ' mi y be translated either ' that Dumnorix owned all the taxes of the ^dui bought up,' or ' that Dumnorix had bought up all the taxes of the ^dui.' ^ And there are other examples ^ Csedmon, quoted by Koch. ' Caesar, Gallic War, i. xviii. § 2 ; quoted by Brachet, Historical French Oramma/r, translated by KitcWn. H 98 History of English in Latin where 'habeo' is evidently tending to become an auxiliary.! In French, in such a sentence as 'J'ai vu les hommes,' ai Qmleo) is nothing more than a sign of past time. Before parting with the verb we ought to say a few words about the use of the subjunctive in Anglo-Saxon. In'form it is greatly worn down and obscured, if we compare it with the Gothic verb (thraih-aiwa, ga-swi-kunthi-ded-e««a on p. 74), but in nearly all persons of the present, and in some of the past tense of the subjunctive, it is still distinct from the indicative, which is all that is required for practical purposes. Accord- ingly we find it used to a very considerable extent, in ways that remind us of the uses of the subjunctive in Latin, and of the subjunctive and optative in Greek. Thus it is not only used — (1) As a substitute for the imperative mood, as in Si ^ Jiin nama gehalgod, in the Lord's Prayer, like ' Sanctificetur nomen tuum,' but also, (2) In reporting what somebody else said (like the optative in Greek, especially in Xenophon) — slgjier &■§ ^ sixtig elna lang. each is (he said) sixty ells long. ^ e.g. milites, quos in classem soriptos habebat. — Livy, xxii. 57, § 5. ^ Present subjunctive of hlon, ' to be, ' 3rd sing. It will be best to give the commonest forms of the verb ' to be ' for reference^ Special Northern Forms. West Saxon. Present ic am ic eom, beom, b& Indicative ))u eart, bist he is, hip I aron, earon - vj ,. ■ j • j j [also Mercian,) f, |^^°>' ''^^' ^■1^^°'' hi [vir erum is the Norse form). Present Suly'unciive ic 1 M j-b^o, si (or sy) he J ge [-be hi J beon, sin (or sfn) English in its Early Form 99 (3) In asking a question indirectly — Saga me, hwset fisccynna sy on wsetere. TeK me, what of-fish-hinds (there) is m {the) water. (4) To express a wish or purpose — (Hi) woldon Jiset h6r J>;^ mdra wfsd6m on londe They would that here the, more wisdom, in ifh^ land wdere, Tpy w^ mi geTp&oda, cii})on. f roere ^ ( the\ , , \ should bej\asr' '^^ languages knew. (5) With an indefinite relative, or relative expressing a class — Syle ]jdm J>e ]j6 Mdde. Give to-the-one who thee asks. (6) In conditional and concessive clauses ^ — Gyf hwi sld J)6. If any strike thee. These are merely samples of the uses of the subjunctive in Anglo-Saxon. In Modern English they are greatly con- tracted ; we have lost the habit of using the subjunctive chiefly because the distinction in form between the two West Saxon. Perfect Indicative ic waes Jiii wa&re ge j-wsferon hi J Perfect Subjunctive ic ■wa&re >il WEfere he WEfere w^l g^ !-waferen, wEeron hi J Imperative sing, plur. Infinitive, wesan, beon. Present Participle, wesende. 1 Such clauses also have the indicative wes, beo wesa>, beo> , as in Latin and Greek. loo History of English moods has been for the most part lost. Therefore, in such sentences, we mostly use the indicative, or else insert an auxiliary verb, such as 'may,' 'should' (see (4) above). But our version of the Bible keeps it in tolerably frequent use, as in, ' Be it known unto you all' ^ (1) ; ' Whether he he a sinner or no, I know not ' ^ (3) ; ' See thou tell no man ' ^ (4), not indicative tellest ; ' If it be, give me thy hand ' * (6). This last is the only use of the subjunctive which is still alive in ordinary speech, as when we say, ' If I were to do so.' It is true that even here people often put the indicative, ' If I was to go,' but this is hardly correct English at the present time. German of course still makes a considerable use of the subjunctive, as, for instance — Er sagte mir, es sei nicht nothig (2). Se said to-tm, it is not Next, we pass to the substantives. If we take any sub- stantive in Modern English, there is not much difficulty in declining it. The declension of the word day, for instance, would be as follows — Singular. Plurcd. Nom. Ace. day Nom. Ace. days Gen. day's Oen. days' So we should decline soul, eye, and, in fact, all nouns with but few exceptions. The apostrophe (') in the genitive plural suggests that if that case did not end in -s already, the plural, like the singular^ would take an -s for the genitive,, as it does in ' men's labour.' The other cases, which in the older form of the language were formed as in Greek or Latin, or in German, by means of inflexions, the dative, for instance, are made up by phrases, by using to, from, and such words with the nominative or accusative of the noun, or are implied by ' Be representing the subjunctive form, ic Mo, etc., Acts iv. 10. 2 St. John ix. 25. ^ gt_ ji^tt. viii. 4. * 2 Kings x. 15. English in its Early Form \ o i position in the sentence, as in ' Tell fhe man I said so ' ; where tlie man is in the dative case. And even the genitive is limited in its use. It is hardly used except as the possessive case. We could not now say, 'my brother's love,' meaning 'love for my brother,' ^ except in poetry, which is always fond of imitating old forms and uses of language. But in English, before the Conquest, the analytical process, by which we put little words in the place of inflexions, had not gone nearly so far as this. Let us see what the declension of these same words is like in Old English. T)mg (day, Masculine) Singular. Plural. Norn. Ace. dseg Nom. Ace. dag-as Gen. dsBg-es Bat. dseg-e Gen. dag-a Dat. dag-um Sawol (soul, Feminine) Singular. Plural. Nom. sdwol Nom. Ace. sawl-a Ace. sdwl-e Gen. sdwl-a Gen. sdwl-e Dat. sAwl-um Dat. siwl-e In the declension of sdwol a number of different endings have been worn down to a similar form, just as a- at the beginning of different words in English — aboard, aware, ago, ado — represents both on and ge-, and the prefix d-, and at. !1&AGB 2 (eye, Neuter) Singular. Plural. Nom. Ace. ^ag-e Nom. Ace. ^ag-an Gen. ^ag-an Gen. 6ag-eiia Dat. ^ag-an Dat. &g-um Of the nominative plural of such words as dage, we have some surviving relics in Modern English, oxen (ox-an) ; hosen ^ Shakespeare, Richard TIL, I. iv. 229, 230. " A masculine or feminine word would have an accusative in -an. The declension is not specially of neuter words. From a comparison with Gothic, more of the word should he inclnded in the stem, less in the case-ending. But the arrangement in the text gives practically a better notion of the declension of such words. 102 History of English (Jios-an) in the Bible,^ and eyne in Shakespeare and Milton,^ een in Lowland Scotch or Modern Northumbrian. Of the dative plural we have traces in whilom, Old English hvM-um, " at whiles ' or ' at times,' so ' in certain times ' (past). Seldom is a dative case of an old adjective seld, which also appears in German selt-en, selt-sam. From the examples given above we see that almost all English words now follow dceg in the declension of such cases as they have preserved. But even in Anglo-Saxon there had been a great loss of cases out of the seven which existed in the Indo-European language. The ablative and locative are gone; the instrumental is lost in the nouns,* though we shall find it still kept in the adjectives and the definite article ; and the functions of these three cases are discharged by the dative. Besides this, the accusative is often the same as the nomina- tive. The nominative singular has lost its termination -s, which is mostly retained in Gothic (for instance, hunds, Anglo- Saxon hund, Modern English hound), and which forms such an obvious link between Gothic, Greek, and Latin. The nominative has in Old English become the mere stem, or less, like the vocative in Greek or Latin, and so again the dis- tinction between nominative and vocative has been obliterated. It must not be supposed that we have exhausted the declensions in Anglo-Saxon with our three examples. The substantives of any language may be classed in a varying number of declensions, just as in Greek, while the older grammars (such as Wordsworth's) * gave five declensions, the recent ones give only three. But for practical purposes Anglo-Saxon nouns cannot be divided among less than nine or ten declensions, and even these numbers leave plenty of room for irregularities.^ 1 Daniel iii. 21. 2 Midsummer -Night's Dream, V. i. 178. Milton, Ode on the Nativity, line 203. ' See p. 67. * In the earlier editions. " There are fifteen examples of the declension of nouns given in full in Sweet's Anglo-Saxon Reader. English in its Early Form 103 The declensions follow the gender of the noun to a con- siderable extent. And this brings us to another characteristic of Old English, which we have lost. In the older form of the language we cannot by any means conclude that males will be masculine, females feminine, and things without life neuter. There an ox was masculine, but a sheep neuter ; one word for a woman, vrlf, was neuter -^ while others, ides, as well as fdemne (borrowed from Latin femina), are feminine. Child ^ {did), maiden^ (rndden), are neuter. Old age (ildu or eldu. Modern English eld) and a street are feminine, a brook masculine, though a burn is feminine. The genders seem as unreasonable as those in Latin, Greek, French, and German. One other mode of forming the plural of some English substantives is worth a few words of explanation. We know that the plural of man is men, of goose, geese, of foot, feet, and that mouse makes mice in the plural, although we do not say hice for hmises ; and in Old English there were other words forming their plural in a similar way, which have since been made 'regular,' such as bdc, plural bdc, now books. But this seems to be contrary to all laws of the Indo-European languages. For it has been said before that the root (or the stem) gives the main notion or meaning of the word, while the terminations express modifications of this, such as, that there are more things than one (the plural), or that the thing, whatever it may be, is the possessor of something else (the genitive), as in 'houses,' 'man's life.' And we saw that there is good reason to suppose that these terminations were originally separate words. But here the same modification of meaning seems to be expressed by a change in the vowel of the stem itself.^ The way in which it is to be accounted for ^ So in German, Weib, Kind, Modchen. " In Hebrew and the languages related to it (the Semitic languages], a change of vowel is a common way of modifying the meaning of the root. Thus, in Arabic, malikun is a king, nmWcun, kings. But this has nothing to do with the present question, for the only possible connection of English with this family of languages (except for a few words borrowed) would be through the primitive Indo-European language. And no such connection has as yet 1 04 History of English is as follows. A sound which is just coming may affect a sound before it, since we have the whole word or sentence in our minds. A boy, for instance, in saying the line of Ovid— Haec implet lento calathos e viinine textos, is inclined to say ' implent ' from the attraction of the ' lento ' just coming. Thus, too, in carelessly saying, ' Though I allow it,' one is inclined to say, ' Thtm, I allow it.' It seems still more natural that a vowel just coming in the same word should affect the vowel before it by a sort of anticipation, through our getting our mouths into position for the second vowel before we have finished the first. Yet it is difficult to find instances of this in Modern English; our vowels are most of them too indistinct to influence each other much, and our unalterable spelling is there to hinder the word from changing permanently at all events.^ But the pronunciation ' parsiminy ' for pwrsimony, and ' chiffinch ' for chaffinch, is probably due to this looking forward to the next vowel. Having now shown that it is possible for a sound just coming to affect a sound before it, we may state the principle on which these plurals can be explained. We must bear in mind how English vowels were pronounced, namely, like ' new pronunciation ' Latin. The changes ^ of the vowels then, which are shown in men, feet, geese, teeth, and mice, as the plurals of man, foot, goose, tooth, and mouse, are accounted for by the presence of an I in the termination, which has since dropped off, partly, no doubt, because, after the change of vowel took place, this was quite enough by itself to distinguish the plural from the singular.^ been shown to be probable. Besides, this method of forming the plural cannot even have been part of the one Teutonic language, since Gothic does not show it. ' Except in the direction of the indistinct vowel, as in ' garden,' as the last syllable is pronounced in conversation. ^ See Skeat, Principles of English Etymology, First Series, chap. xi. Hel- fenstein, Comparative Qrammar of the Teutonic Languages. ' As the reduplication was (probably) dropped in the strong verbs (see p. 88). English in its Early Form 105 (1) First, then mann became menn in the plural through the influence of an I following in the termination. In order to make things clear, let us first take two other instances of an I producing the same result on a preceding A. Now these changes did not take place before the Teutonic dialects separ- ated into languages, and Gothic does not show them. Thus, we can compare Gothic fani (mud) with Old English fe.rm, and Gothic marei (sea) with Old English mere (lake). It seems clear that the change of vowel is due to the attraction of the I which was once at the end of the words. It is true that we can find no form mannis or manni for the plural of mann. But, as it happens, the dative singular of mann in Old English is menn as well. And the dative of Tnann in Old Norse, a language closely related to English, is manni. If this was at one time the case in our own language, the dative menn is accounted for, and we can hardly doubt that the plural menn is to be explained by there having once been a form manni. It is not very difficult to understand the change. E is certainly half-way between A and I, according to the former pronunciation of the vowels, as any one can tell by trying the experiment with his own mouth. This plural men is by no means the only example of this change in English. The word English itself is another instance. The tribe which settled in Britain were called Angli by the Romans, just as the country in Schleswig from which they came is still called Angeln, and they called themselves Angle^ and Angelcyn. The change of vowel from Angle to the ad- jective Englisc, English, is explained by the I in the suffix {-ise, 4sh) which marks the word as an adjective. In the same way Francisc (p. 78) has become Frencisc,^ and this has been ' crushed ' into French. ^ Also Engle, JBngla-land, which must be due either to the attraction of English, or to a plural ending with an I in it. ^ This change is exactly the same as that oiMann to mUnn-isch (pronounced menn-isch) in German. We have more recently formed an adjective Frankish again, and jt has remained unaltered, since the principle of ' mutation ' has long been dead for all practical purposes. io6 History of English (2) Next let us take the forms fed, geese, teeth, with the plural of look in Old English, namely Uc, though this has long ago been made into the ' regular ' form hooTts. Here long passes into long E through the attraction of an I following. In this case the evidence is still more distinct. Old Saxon, a language of course very near akin to English as being the form of Saxon or Southern English which was developed at home on the Continent, actually has f6ti as the nominative plural of /di, and its form of the word hook is declined in the same way. But it is not quite so easy to say for certain the precise way in which I changed long O into long E. E is in a way intermediate between O and I. So too is German modified (6), which again has passed into E in some German dialects, and the two are near enough together to be allowed as a rhyme in that language.^ In one or other of these ways, either directly or through an intermediate step, must have passed into E, f6ti into fit. And in the same way are ex- plained g6s, gis ; td^, ti'S.^ There are plenty more examples of this change in English. For instance, a large class of verbs are formed from substantives or adjectives by adding -jan in Gothic, -ian in Old English. Then through the influence of the I the. vowel is often modified, after which the I has dropped or been absorbed. Thus we can explain feed {fddam) from, food (fdda), and deem (ddmcm) from doom {ddm).^ (3) Lastly, as to the plural of mouse (mils), namely mice (mys). We have one word in Old English which has kept the termination with I — lywrh, nominative plural (and dative singu- lar) byrig — so that here there is no mistake about the cause of ■* e.g. Und wiissten sie mein Wehe, Die goldenen Stemelein, Sie kamen aus ihrer Soke, Und sprachen Trost mir ein. — Heine. ^ Short on the other hand hecomes Y. Thus vixen is torfomn, with the r pronounced soft in the manner of Southern English, and gold-ian has become gyldan, and gild, (see next page). This tendency to change the vowel was certainly still alive while we were adopting Latin words into Anglo- Sazon. Thus coqwina became codn, q/cene, afterwards kitchen ; and molina, molm, myUn, myln, and mill. English in its. Early Form 107 the U being changed. And U closely followed by I gives exactly the sound of a German u (French, or Devonshire U), and this was the sound of an Old English Y. This Y again became confused with I towards the time of the Norman Conquest. In the same way u in popular German is con- stantly sounded as I, and is allowed to rhyme with it.^ This ' mutation ' or modification of the U is also found in the class of verbs above mentioned, with an original sulfix ■jan or -vm. Full and Jill are obviously connected. To fill is in Gothic full-jan. In English the I has modified the vowel before it and then has dropped or been absorbed, so that the verb is fyllan (for full-ian). But if mice is the plural of mouse, why do we not talk of ' town and country-^«ce ' ? The reason is that house {Ms) was in Old English a substantive which, like many other neuters, had no inflexion for the nominative and accusative plural. So we now say ' three sheep,' or ' deer,^ and in the Poacher's song he says — ' I served my master truly for more than seven year.' Horse too was used as a plural so late as 1512.^ Houses, like horses, was a plural formed at a tolerably recent, date by ' analogy,' in imitation of the ' regular ' plural.* ^ e.g. Das ist's ja was den Menschen zwret Und dazii ward ihm der Verstand Dass er im iunern Herzen spuret Was er yollbracht niit seiner Hand. — Schiller. and Dann reitet mein Kaiser wolil iiber mein Grab, Viel Schwerter klirren und blitzen, Dann steig' ich gewaflEhet hervor aus dem Grab' Den Eaiser, den Kaiser zu schiitzen ! ' — Heme. * See Badminton Library, Munting, p. 160. But horses is to be found much earlier, about 1200 a.d. ' In German we find tliis mutation of the vowel in Mann, mdnnisch, already mentioned, gut, giUig, and many other words, some of which do not show its origin clearly. But we are not now concerned with the laws of the German language. io8 History of English We now come to the adjective. It will be best to give an example both of the ' strong ' and ' weak ' declension of adjectives. The ' weak ' form was used with the article and demonstrative and possessive pronouns much as in German. Strong Declension Blind ( = blind) MasaMne. Feminine. Neuter. Singular Nom. Ace. Gen. Dat. Instrmnmtal blind blind-ne blind-es blind-um blind-e blind-u, blind blind-e blind-re blind-ie {as Dative) Plmal blind bUnd blind-es bUnd-um blind-e Nom. Ace. bHnd-e bKnd-e, blind-a blindu, blind-e Gen. Dat. blind-ra blind-um Weak Declension (with the Dejmite Article) ^ Singular Nom. ' SB blind-a s^o blind-e Jiset blind-e Ace. Jjone blind-an Tpi, blind-an Jjset blind-e Gen. J>ses blind-an Jjsere blind-an Jises blind-an Dat. J)dm, ]jEem blind-an JiEere blind-an J>dm, Jpsem blind-an Instrumental ]>y blind-an (as Dative) ]jy blind-an Plural Nom. Ace. ]>& bUnd-an Gen. Jiira, Jjsfera blind-ena Dat. Ipim, J)Sfem blind-um It is hardly necessary to call attention to the resemblance of the cases to those of the German article, and of the German ' From a, comparison with Gothic it appears that the end of the stem should come later. See note on substantives above, p. 101. English in its Early Form 109 adjective, especially in its ' weak ' form. But as the Old Eng- lish vowels are less corrupted, Grerman, for instance, having a colourless E throughout the adjective, the Old English de- clension is plainly not 'derived from German.' If we were to look at the Gothic Grammar^ we should see that there the terminations are preserved in a much fuller form. Anglo- Saxon is on the whole further removed from the original Teutonic language than Gothic is. However, Old English still keeps an instrumental case in the ' strong ' form of the adjective where Gothic has lost it. Therefore, again, we see that English is not ' derived from Gothic,' but both from a common parent — the Teutonic language. Of the ' weak ' declension of the adjective we have just a trace left in the expression ' in the olden time.' ^ There is, of course, no verb ' to old ' of which it could be a participle,^ nor is there any trace of oU&n, as an adjective distinct from old. Olden must therefore be for ealdan or aldan, the dative of the 'weak' form of the adjective eald or aid with the article, with which, in fact, it is nearly always connected in the Modem English phrase. This is one of the very few traces of the declension of adjectives to be found in Modern English. Once (dnes), unawares, and other words like them, are adverbs formed from the genitive singular of the ' strong ' form, mostly after the Norman Conquest. One word containing the genitive plural survives in Shakespeare,^ alder-Uefest, that is Ualra Uofesta ) ^j^^^.^ ^j^^ ^ j^ inserted for ease of pronun- ^ of-all dearest J ciation, as in thunder from Jjmwot. The declension of the article has left more considerable traces. In our table of the article the instrumental case is \i'j. This is kept in such sentences as, ' the more you ask me the more I won't come,' where the is plainly not the nomina- tive of the definite article, but is equivalent to 'quo magis, ' Morris, ^ecimens of Mmrly English, Part I. p. 306. ^ EaZd-ian (to grow old) makes eald-od in the past participle. 2 Second Part of Henry VI., I. i. 28. no History of English eo minus ' in Latin, the ablative of ' the measure of difference,' a sort of instrumental case.^ EwA'i (whol masculine and feminine), hwmt ? (neuter), is declined much like the article, and Aw2^ ? is its instrumental case, meaning ' through, or on account of what?' This appears both in the ordinary inter- rogative why 1 and in the line — For why the Lord our God is good. Here why is the instrumental case of the relative, governed by the preposition for. And this for why, meaning ' because,' may still be heard in country districts.^ The dative feminine singular of the article ]>c^re hyrig. Byrig is the dative singular of hwh (borough),^ and the phrase must originally have been a descrip- tion of some Edward, or John, or Richard, who lived by a town or borough, to distinguish him from others of the same name, like ' Jack o' lane-tops ' in Lancashire, though it after- wards hardened into a surname for his descendants, and so was retained when they no longer lived near the town. So too the name AUenhorcmgh is from at ten borough, and repre- sents mt ]>dm bv/rh, or bwruh, though this shows a confusion of grammar and genders.* Again, in the curious expression, for the nonce, we find the dative of the article. It is really, for ]>dm dnes (for the once), for then ones; dnes, ones, once being treated as a substantive. But the N has become attached to the wrong word, as when we say a newt for an ' Hi woldon 8aet hii S;^ mdra wisd6m on londe wa&re iSf wi m& They would that here the more wisdom in {the) land were the we more getSeoda eutSon. ^^ Alfred, in Sweet's Anglo-Saxon Reader. ) languages knew. » ° > » i 2 But hv>6, [who) is only interrogative, not a relative in the oldest English. 3 See p. 106. ^ Skeat, Principles of English Etynwlogy, First Series, pp. 193, 194. English in its Early Form 1 1 1 eft (Old English efeta)} Just in the same way the tother, or tother day, comes from ]>cet d]>er, ]>cBt being the neuter of the definite article.^ Now, we must bear in mind that there is no very distinct line to be drawn as to their meaning, and none as to their origin, between a definite article and a demonstrative pronoun, which is often also a personal pronoun of the third person. The history of the definite article, in Greek, in the languages derived from Latin, and in the Teutonic languages, is that some demonstrative pronoun became specially used to mean simply 'the.' So in Homer, o, ij, to, is much oftener a personal or demonstrative pronoun than the article. In later Greek, too, in such a sentence as — Ivapias . . . A-dyvaiovs eirryyayero ' oi Se . . . 9j\.6ov^ Inarus invited the Athenians ; and they cairie. ol is certainly not the article. This use of ol 8e is particularly common in Xenophon. So too in the modem form of Latin called French, both il (personal pronoun) and le (definite article) are derived from ille. And in German, der, die, das are constantly used as demonstrative pronouns, as in — Das ist mein Buch. That is my hook. So too even in Modern English, we can give the article almost the force of a demonstrative pronoun by putting stress on it, as if we say — Those are not the books. But this is not the end of the confusion. For the relative pronoun, too, is not a very early creation, but originally a demonstrative (or sometimes an interrogative *) pronoun. In Homer, o, -q, to, is frequently a relative. Later Greek poetry ^ On the other hand, an adder for a nadder (Old English nceddre) shows the reverse process. ^ WyclifFe also has th^ toon — that (the) one. * Thuc. i. 104, quoted in Thompson's Greek Syntax. * As, for instance, our relative who, what. 1 12 History of English as well, with the fondness of all poetry for what is antique or old-fashioned, has such lines as — 8t5rAg fj,dcrTiyi, Trjv Aprjs <^iA€i. With the dovMe scourge ■which Ares loves. So too the regular Greek relative os is stUl a demonstrative pronoun (or pronoun of the third person) in the phrase Jj S' OS, ' said he! Again, in German, the article is commonly used for the relative, as in — Der Mann den ich gesehen habe. The man whom / seen have. And finally, in English at the present time, we can and do constantly say, 'I have told you all that I know.' So too in the lines — That I had, that I gave, Thai I gave, that I have ; the first that in each pair is equivalent to the relative what. The fact is, that 'pointing out' ('demonstrating') the same thing twice gives the same sense as ' referring back ' to it with a relative. To sum up, then, there is no original distinction between a demonstrative pronoun, a relative, and the definite article. Now, in Old English (West Saxon dialect) the article is — se aio Jjaet declined as above. But this was originally a demonstrative pr.onoun, or (which is much the same thing) a personal pronoun of the third person, just as that man is equivalent to he. And, according, to this old use, we sometimes find in Anglo-Saxon se^ used for hi {he). So too sio, scce, she^ has superseded the feminine of hi, which is hSo (hoo = she in the Lancashire dialect). That (^xt), properly the neuter of the definite article,* is now, as we all know, a demonstrative pronoun for all genders. Again, while the nominative of the ^ .^schylus, Agamxmnon, 642, quoted in Thompson's Greek Syntax. ^ Sin (his, her, its), the possessiye of this, is used in Old English poetry. It is obsolete in the prose. ' Like sie (she) in German. * See above, p. HI, as in iAe totlier. English in its Early Form 113 definite article was se in the South (West Saxon), in Northum- bria it was \e, which is the definite article in Modera English. But this \e had in the South come to be eamployed only for the relative, in which use it is undeclined. If cases were wanted, se was put before it in the proper case, and here ,again se is a demonstrative (or personal) pnonoun. Thus J>ow« \e means whom. We have seen that both relative and definite article are originally demonstrative pronouns. "^ In these ex- amples they are ' harking back ' to their original use. We must now say something about the personal pronouns proper, which are declined as follows — I Singula/r Thou Nom. ic H Ace. mec, meh, later mi Jjec, Jieh, later ]>i Gen. mln >ln Bat. m6 Bual ]>& Nom. wit git Ace. uncit, later unc incit, later inc Gen. uncer incer Bat. unc Plural inc Nom. •wi g6 Ace. lisic, later lis tewic, later dow Gen. liser, later lire 6ower Bat. lis Singular iovf He She It Nom. U h^o hit Ace. hine hi hit Gen. his hire his Bat. him hire Plmal (They) him Nom. Ace. hi, hig Gen. hira Bat. him (In the declension of M there are some other duplicate forms.) ^ iSe is also sometimes used by itself as a relative. As has been said above, some relatives are originally interrogatives. Bat the use of who as a relative in English is later than the Norman Conquest. I 1 14 History of English In each of the pronouns, I, thou, he, we have in the singular retained as many as three cases in our Modern English. But it is curious that in each of them the dative has ' crowded out ' the accusative, and discharges its functions with its own. Me, thee, him, were originally datives, as they still are in such sentences as ' Tell him,' ' Knock me on this door ' (Shakespeare), ' ilf«thinks ' (that is, ' It seems to me '). The genitive and dative cases of Mo are the same, and this form is now the accusative as well. < > , like a young cuckoo, has crowded out not only the accusative doivic, but also, in more recent times, the nominative, as when we say, ' You see,' where the Bible has the proper nominative, ' Ye see.' The nominative and the accusative (originally dative) were first confused and used for each other, as in 'I grant ye ' (Shake- speare), ' thankee ' (' thank-ye '). It is also to be noticed that the 1st personal pronoun requires two stems to form it in English (and the other Teutonic languages) as well as in Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin. Ic of course corresponds to eyw, ego, according to Grimm's Law (p. 29), G changing to K or hard C. My, thy, owr, yowr, are in Modern English only the possessive case. In Old English they discharged other functions of the genitive as well, as in < ^ , >■ .^ The ° ' I of-us each J dual lasted on more or less till about 1280.^ There is a curious survival of the accusative of he (hine) in Southern Provincial English, for instance, 'Let 'un bide.' In it for hit we see an early instance of the dropping of H's. Its for his is a far later formation.^ j{n (one) and sum (some, also used in the singular) occa- sionally stand for the indefinite article, an, a (the same word as one). But it is usually left out altogether. ' Forms like the genitives are also declined and used as possessive adjectives. ^ Kington Oliphant, Old and Middle English, p. 365. ' Its was jnst coming into use about 1600. English in its Early Form 1 1 5 So ends our sketch of Old English Grammar, and we may now shortly state the view which it gives us of the language. Though it had lost a good many inflexions it was still distinctly an inflexional language. And these inflexions were not mere ornamental endings, attached to words for the sake of 'euphony,' or from some other mysterious cause. The difiierences of gender, indeed, with the variety of termina- tions involved in them, are to us at present very unintelligible. However they originated, they must be preserved ' by ear ' — that is, without them the word or sentence does not sound right ; they are only in a secondary degree of importance as giving the key to the meaning of the sentence.^ But, in the main, the inflexions were a most essential part of the language, just as they were in Greek or Latin, a fact which will be clearly seen from a few examples. Ohtere ssfede his hldforde (1), ^Ifr^de cyninge (2), )?8et h6 Ohtere said to his lord, Alfred {the) king, that he ealra (3) Nor}>monna norjimest biide. of-all Northmen wrrthinost lived. Ac him (1) wees ealne weg (4) w6ste land on Jjset Bnt to-him was all {the) way waste land on the st^orbord. starboard. Ne mseg ndn man twdm hldfordum (1) }i6owian. Not may no man two lords serve. Pdah Ipe hs&Sstapa hundum (5) ge swenced, Although {a) -j ^^ V by-hounds pressed, , Heorot hornum (6) trum, holt-wudu s6ce. {A) hart -j .■' [-/ior«« strong, {the) wood seek. ^ Yet, as many words are very much alike, and as we seldom hear every word in a sentence distinctly, even for understanding what is said, the variation of termination according to the gender may he of some use. The genders of Old English have perished with the loss of the terminations which marked them. 1 1 6 History of English Synnum (5) fdg. With-^m stained. P/ sumere (7) f(5r ^lfr6d cyning lit. In-the suimner went Alfred (the) hing out. Pdm br6J>ruin restendum (7). The brothers resting, or, while the brothers rested. Swylcra (8) ys heofena rice. Of-such is of-heavens (the) kingdom. Ic hsebbe his (3). / have (some) of it. Here we have instances of our. old friends in Greek and Latin, the Dative of the Recipient, of Advantage or Disadvan- tage (1), the Dative of Manner (6), the Dative of the Instru- ment or Cause (5), the ' Dative of time when,' used sometimes like the ablative absolute (7), of the Partitive Genitive (3), of the ' Genitive of appropriateness' (8), as in 'cujusvis hominis est errare,' of the Accusative of Measure of Space (4), and of ' a Substantive agreeing in case with another Substantive to which it is in apposition ' (2). For some of these a phrase with a preposition may also be used,i as in — on Jjissum g6are. in this year. h6 erede mid horsan. M ploughed with horses. This is a foretaste of the way in which, in Modern English, we supply the place of the lost cases. But, on the whole, Anglo-Saxon is still plainly an inflexional language. It ought also to be clear by this time that Anglo-Saxon is not one of several elements, all more or less on the same level, of which English is made up, but that English is nothing but a ' The meaning of the case is made clearer by a preposition (which is said to ' govern ' it) being added. English in its Early Form 1 1 7 corrupt form of Anglo-Saxon (just as French is a corrupt form of Latin), although our language (chiefly in later times) has borrowed an enormous number of words from other languages, the greater part of them, directly or indirectly, from Latin.^ ' Examples of many of the grammatical forms and idioms mentioned above will be found in the extracts at the end of chapter xiL CHAPTEE X HISTORY OF ENGLISH BEFORE THE NORMAN CONQUEST Dialects of Old English and their history — Beginnings of English litera- ture — Early predominance of Northumbrian — Settlement of the Danes in England — Their influence on the speech of those districts where they settled — Alfred the Great's influence on English.' We have seen already that the English began to settle in Britain about 449 ad. We have seen that there were three main divisions of them which correspond more or less to the different English dialects. (1) There were, then, the Jutes, who conquered Kent and Surrey and the Isle of Wight with the part of Hampshire adjoining it;^ (2) the Saxons, who ^except those who came to Essex and Middlesex) landed in the South, and bit by bit got possession of nearly all Britain south of the Thames, and some land to the north of it, and spread up the valley of the Severn ; ' and (3) the Angles, who gradually conquered the rest of the country as far north as the Firth of Forth, and whose dialect branched off into Northumbrian and Mercian.* There is also no doubt that many Frisians came and settled in Britain, though we cannot ' Ske3,t,Principles of English Mymology, First Series. Esrle, Anglo-Saxon Literature. Sweet, History of English Sounds. Kington Oliphant, Old and Middle English, etc. ^ See Appendix C, the Kentish Dialect. ' Districts which they afterwards lost to Mercia, though they retained their Saxon dialect. * It is not surprising that the same dialect should part into two well-marked varieties in two separate kingdoms (see p. 16). But there may have been some difference of race between Mercians and Northumbrians. Before the Norman Conquest 1 1 9 ' tell for certain in what part of it they made their home, or how their dialect aflfected the language. But no doubt any one of the dialects spoken in England could be understood with tolerable ease by those who spoke another. As to the changes or progress in the language of these settlers, we know nothing till after their conversion to Christianity, a work which was commenced in 597 A.D. In fact, our first real acquaintance with our own language begins considerably later than this. Guesses may, no doubt, be made as to what it was like in the fifth and sixth centuries, from old forms, like the reduplication (p. 87), which survive, for instance, in the poetry of the later language. But without written documents we cannot say when such and such changes took place, though we may know that they did occur, either before or after the coming of the English to Britain. A few inscriptions in Runic letters upon rings and so on, such as the names Beogno]), Rmhmhul,^ will not enable us to reconstruct the grammar of the language in the fifth or sixth centuries, or whatever their date may be.^ It is with the commence- ment of literature which followed our conversion that our first real knowledge of the language begins. The first English writings appear to have been made in Kent. Perhaps, from its near neighbourhood to the Continent and other causes, Roman culture had not been so utterly ex- tinguished there as in other parts of the country. But the real start in education and literature was in Northumbria. Now, while the southern part of England was converted by missionaries from Rome, the North was converted by Irish missionaries from lona. These discarded the Runic letters, and, like so many missionaries in modern times, used their ^ Sweet, Oldest English Texts, p. 129. ^ Two poems, 'The Traveller's Tale,' and 'Deor's Lament,' seem to have been composed (not vyritten) before our ancestors crossed the sea. .But those who wrote down these poems naturally modernised the dialect, and these works show no more distinct traces than other Old English poetry of an earlier form of the grammar. I20 History of English own form of the Latin Alphabet for the language of the people whom they came to convert, writing down the English, just as it was pronounced, in the Latin letters which corre- sponded to the sounds, that is, in 'phonetic' spelling;^ — no one until about the last 400 years was anxious to use letters which should not represent the sound of the word as far as possible. So that the ' new ' or correct pronunciation of Latin will give us the true pronunciation of English before the Norman Conquest.^ Even C still had its hard sound, though it had been softened down in the popular dialects of Latin on the Continent, as it is in Modern French and Italian which sprang from these ; but lona was far enough removed from such influences. Gent, the name of the county, is enough by itself to show this. We cannot suppose that it was ever pronounced as in ' five per cmt^ or that the was pronounced one way in Qemi, and another in Canterbury (Gant- warorlmrh — that is, ' town of the Kent-men ').* That the way in which Old English was written is due to the missionaries from lona, and not to those from Rome, is shown by the form of • the letters, which are practically identical with those in the Old Irish Alphabet. But the Runic letters continued for some time to be used for inscriptions (not for books), and gradually two of these came into use in the ordinary English Alphabet, P, p for W, for which the Irish Alphabet has no 1 In other words, they wrote English as if it were Latin, that being the great literary language, and one with which they were well acquainted. It was just as if a German, who knew no English, were to write down in German letters the sounds of English words, for instance 'faunlis,' Mnglifd),' * The vowels are nearly the same as in German. ' But hard C (or K) can be pronounced either in the front or in the back of the mouth, as in king, cwrt, with a slight difference of sound, as any one can tell by noticing his own mouth in pronouncing them. Pronounced in the front of the mouth it naturally goes with the vowels E, I. This ' front ' C is the progenitor of CH in chin (Old English cin), churl (Old English ceorl). But it had not gone so far as this before the Norman Conquest. The case is much the same with 6. And in some words G seems even in Old English to have been pronounced so far forward in the mouth as to have had almost or quite the sound of Y in year, or German J, as in geoc, also ioc (yoke) ; geong, also iung (young). Before the Norman Conquest 1 2 1 symbol, and P, \ for TH, which were at first written respect- ively U or UU and TH. For this latter sound our ancestors also used a modified D — D, ?S. There is no difference in the pronunciation of these two letters J) and S. Both stand indifi'er- ently for the hard sound of TH in think, and for its soft sound in thine. M, m (long) was pronounced like the second A in aware ; M, se (short), as A in cat, apple ; so that >a^, there ; ^ cet, at, are words which have not changed their sound but only their spelling. F stood both for F and V, as in off, of (pro- nounced ov), which are two forms of the same word. The diphthongs EA, EO, were formed by pronouncing the two vowels, with their Latin (or Italian, or German) sound, rapidly one after the other. Y, as has been said already, was pro- nounced like UE, ii in German, or French U, or U in the Devonshire dialect. Z hardly ever occurs except in foreign names. And now, what use did they make of this Alphabet in Northumbria ? It was chiefly used for copying Latin works, and composing books in Latin, such as the numerous writings of the Venerable Bede (died 735). But there was a good deal of Northumbrian English written as well, mostly verse. Bede himself wrote some poems in English (one of which is pre- served), and, as is well known, he was turning the Gospel of St. John into English on his deathbed. This translation has, most unfortunately, been lost. Some parts of the poems of Gsedmon, on the Fall of the Angels, the Creation, and the Fall of Man, have come down to us ; only we have these in -the West Saxon dialect for reasons which will be stated later, on.^ But the first lines of the earliest poem which he wrote, by which, according to the story, Hild, Abbess of Whitby (called Streoneshalh before the Danes settled there), was convinced ' There- in thereon corresponds more exactly, since of course the R was pronounced. 2 But perhaps the poems of Caedmon, as we now have them in West Saxon English, are a later version of the poem actually written by him. 1 2 2 History of English that he had been inspired to write sacred poetry, will be found in the original Northumbrian on p. 146.^ The period between the middle of the seventh and the middle of the eighth centuries A.D. was a glorious time for Northum- bria. Literature and education, started by the Irish missionaries from lona, flourished under the protection of the kings of Northumbria. As King Alfred says,^ 'The kings who had the government of the people in those days honoured God and His messengers. . . . They prospered both in war and in vrisdom, and also the clergy were in earnest both about teaching and learning . . . and from foreign lands men sought wisdom and teaching here in the land;' as Alcuin, for instance, was sent for by Charlemagne to be his chaplain, and to encourage learning among the Germans.^ But even before the Danes came the literary glory of the kingdom had died away, partly owing to the incessant civil confusion. Though the Latin books were still in the monasteries, they had become useless, since the monks no longer understood Latin, and they had not been translated into English. Then came the Danish, or rather Norwegian invasion, which, as we shall see, has done more to form our present language than any event in English History (except perhaps the Norman Conquest) 'since first Angles and Saxons came up over the broad seas and sought Britain.' But for the time it seemed mere destruction. 'All was harried and burned.' The libraries perished with the monas- teries, especially those in Northumbria, where most of them were, and in Mercia. In 787 the first Danish, or rather Norwegian ships came to England. In 833 and the following years they troubled the end of Egbert's reign, the first king ' It was perhaps partly because nearly all the early literature was in this Anglian dialect that the language of the whole country was called English. " Preface to the Pastoral Care, Sweet's Anglo-Saxon Header. ' Alcuin went from York after the golden age of Northumbrian literature was past. But the Abbey of York had preserved the tradition of learning longer than the rest. Charlemagne was crowned Emperor 800 a.d. Before the Norman Conquest 123 to whom all the English kingdoms were really subject. In 855 they first stayed over the winter. In 866 and the fol- lowing years they turned their chief attention to the more northerly parts of England — to Northumbria,Mercia, and, above all, East Anglia. But in 871 they invaded Wessex, evidently with a view to conquering it, and ^thelred and Alfred had to fight hard to keep them out of Wessex proper, the country west of Reading. It was hopeless to think of saving the rest of England, their vassal-kingdoms or provinces. In 876 the Danes divided Northumbria among themselves, and began to cultivate it, and next year they treated Mercia in the same way. In 877 and 878 they again made a serious attempt to con- quer Wessex, and it seemed as if the English power was to be finally extinguished. How Alfred beat them, and obliged Guthrum to become a Christian, is to be found in any English History. But the rule of the English was sadly reduced. By the treaty between Alfred and Guthrum (which is still- extant) ^ Alfred's boundaries ran as follows : — Along the Lea to its source, then to Bedford, then along the Ouse to Watling Street, and along Watling Street to Chester. All England north and east of this was left to the Norsemen, and it is from the language of this latter part that the English which we now speak and write is mainly derived. The parts in which the Norsemen settled are marked out by the ending -hy ^ in names of places, which is commonest in Lincolnshire, but also occurs more or less frequently in Leicestershire, Northamptonshire, Nottinghamshire, Norfolk, and Yorkshire. DerJy is one of the most westerly examples. W^e see then which is the part of England where the Danes settled perma- nently, with many of the former inhabitants among them, ' See Barle, Anglo-Saxon Ltteratwre, p. 157. ^ It means a dwelling, or settlement, just as -ham (home) did in English. For instance, Whithy (from its white cliffs), Derby, Naseby ; and, on the other hand, West Sam, Ham, Cate/r-Jiam, Birming-ham ('the home of the sons of Birm '). Norse settlements are also marked by the endings -thwaite, -ness, -drop, -haugh, -garth (English gea/rd, yard). — Kington Oliphant, Old and Middle Pmglish, p. 98. 1 24 History of English and it is necessary to bear its boundaries carefully in mind.^ The centre of it, and perhaps its most Danish part, was the ' Five Boroughs,' which formed a League, something like the five cities of the Philistines. But the English line of kings, the kings of Wessex, did not tamely submit to have the rest of England, which had been under their dominion, finally torn from them. Alfred, indeed, was fully occupied during his lifetime in building a navy and defending Wessex in other waj's, in settling its laws, and pro- viding for the education of its inhabitants, about which we shall have something to say presently. But his daughter ^thel- flsed, the ' Lady of the Mercians ' who till her death governed English Mercia (west of Watling Street), enlarged its borders eastwards at the expense of the Norsemen ; and Edward, Alfred's son, who succeeded him, took up the same work, secur- ing the land as he won it by building fortresses, until, in 924, .not only Northumbria, the only part of England which was still independent of him, but also the people of Strath-Clyde and the Scotch chose him ' as their father and lord.' Still the Norsemen preferred their independence, and rebelled again and again under his successors, only to be subdued afresh. The ' Five Boroughs ' were often the centre of resistance — burga fife • Ligoraceaster • and Lindcylene ■ Leicester, Lincoln, and Snotingaham • swylce Stanford 6ac " Nottingham, so Stamford also, Deoraby ■ Dsene wseran ser • Derby; Danish were-they tefore, under NorSmannum • nyde gebegde ■ Northmen, ty need bowed.^ At last, under Edgar and his great minister Dunstan (959), they settled down in peace as a part of England, retaining ^ They do not seem t» have penetrated into Southern Lancashire to any extent, thoagh they settled on the coast of Northern Lancashire and Cum- berlaud. " Song in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, 942 A.D. i Before the Norman Conquest 1 2 j some rights of self-government, and their own laws. The Danish part of the country was called ' Denalagu, or Dane-law.' But these earlier settlers, though the English called them Danes, were really Norwegians. The' later Danish invasions, this time from Denmark itself, which began only five years after Edgar's death, and. ended in establishing Cnut's Danish dynasty for a time on the English throne, must have strength- ened the Scandinavian element in the population of the North and East, since the Danes who came over would naturally settle down mostly among people who were nearly of their own race and language. The difference between the Nor- wegians and the Danes in dialect must have been as slight in those times as it is at present, and so from the point of view of language we may call them collectively ' Danes ' as our forefathers did.^ And now let us try to imagine the condition of this half- Danish part of the country from the reign of Alfred till after the Norman Conquest. We have plenty of examples in the world of two nations intermingled on the same ground, living on friendly terms with each other, yet each keeping its own language. The Franks, for instance, who settled in Gaul, kept their own German language for centuries, while the provincials whom they had conquered spoke corrupt Latin. As a rule, where . two nations thus live together, each learns at any rate some- thing of the language of the other. So to this day most of the people in the greater part of Wales will speak English to an Englishman, though to their own countrymen they naturally talk Welsh, facts which may be observed in any third-class railway carriage in those districts. But, when the English and the Danes were thrown together in East Mercia and Northumbria, they were not like two nations speaking entirely different tongues. As the languages were then, an Englishman, ^ The nearest repvesentative whicli we have of the ' Danish ' or Scandi- navian brought into England is the Icelandic literature of the twelfth — fourteenth centuries. 126 History of English and especially an Angle, must have been more or less intelligible to a Dane, and a Dane to an Englishman. The languages were, as we have seen, originally identical, and Anglian and Dane had not been far separated in their earlier home, even if some of the Danes did not already live on the Danish peninsula itself at the time when the mass of the Angles Jeft it. Of course the two languages had been each going its own way since the Angles sailed to England, and so were now farther separated. But the difference which there already was between them in 500 A.D., added to the further varieties which developed in the three or four centuries which passed before the Danes settled in England, must have left each of the two languages more or less intelligible to those who spoke the other. ^ Let us now see what would be the result of this, when Angles and Danes were brought together, first on the inflexions, and secondly on the vocabulary, or stock of words, of the English language. First of all, there is no doubt that the Danes would not pick up English inflexions correctly, except the commonest ones, and such as were the same in their own language. For they were not used from childhood to them and them alone ; other Danes, whom they were accustomed to hear speak, would not use them, and they certainly did not study an English Grammar. All that they would aim at would be to make themselves understood, which is, after all, the chief object of language. Thus only some few of the commonest English inflexions would be used by the Danes in speaking English.^ But we must also remember that by far the larger ' ' Englishmen write Englisli with Latin letters such as represent the sound correctly. . . . Following their example, since ive are of one langitoffef al- thmigh the one may have changed greatly, or each of them, to some extent . . . I have framed an alphabet for us Icelanders.' Grammatical treatise prefixed to the Snorra Bdda, about 1150, quoted in Skeat, Prinevples of English Etymology, First Series, p. 455. 2 So an uneducated Englishman who had migrated to Germany would at first get hold of some common German plural termination, in -en, for instance, and decline all plurals in this way. Of course their Danish was also in- fluenced by contact with English, but this side of the question does not concern us. Before the Norman Conquest 1 2 7 number of the words which the Danes themselves used had sister- words in our language. They would thus readily learn to speak a kind of English, omitting or altering many inflexions and .introducing specially Danish words uncon- sciously.'^ And their example would easily infect the unedu- cated English who lived among them. For inflexions have, in all recent ages, led a somewhat precarious existence, as we have seen from the way in which the Eoman provincials put phrases in their place, such as aimer-ai for amare habeo, and as we may see from their being constantly dropped in ' vulgar ' German of the present day, as is evident from the comic newspapers in that language. Those who clip eine Pfeife into a' Ffeif, and who say, 'Nix 'komme?' for {Haben Sie) nichts lekommen ? are certainly in danger of losing the bulk of their inflexions, which are only saved by the example of 'educated people.' But these, though common enough in Germany now, were very rare among Englishmen of the ninth — twelfth centuries. So that the infection, the ' bad example ' of Danes speaking English with fewer and more 'regular' inflexions, must have spread rapidly to the Englishmen of those parts, at least to that far greater number of them who could not read the books which preserved the old inflexions, and who never came in contact with the court of Wessex, where the old inflected English was still spoken. It is not known when the Danish language became extinct in England. But at any rate before it died out it had produced a form of English with many of its inflexions rubbed off, and more ' regular ' in its use of those which remained ; altogether, more like the English which we speak at present. As was only natural, many specially Danish words were introduced into this East Mercian and Northumbrian peasants' English. Among these were Thurs-day (' Thor's day '), law, " As fhe German waiter says in The Newcomes, ' Her Excellency the Fran Grafinn von Kew is even now atsteigmg,' as if ' to absteig ' were an English verb. Or as an English lady, who had long lived in Switzerland, said of the stitches in a piece of work, 'And then you dimirme' {diminuer). 1 2 8 History of English plvagh} hoofh, shy, tuail, and a mass of others. Many of these have words in Anglo-Saxon more or less resembling them, for instance ])unresdceg, though the shape in which we have them in Modern English is certainly due to the Danes. Few Danish words found their way into English literature before the Norman Conquest, and the loss of inflexions in the popular speech had probably little effect even on those books which were written in Northumbria and Mercia before 1066, and certainly none whatever on West Saxon literature. And yet, as we shall see, it is to the East Midland popular or ' vulgar ' English, as altered by contact with the Danes, that our Modem English is mainly due.^ We must now say a few words about Alfred the Great's influence on English. We have seen that before his time Northumbria had been the great centre of literature in Eng- land, and that the language in which this was written was either Latin or the Anglian dialect of English spoken in North- umbria. The result of the Danish invasions had been, by ruining the monasteries, to destroy most of the learning which still remained in England. This, as Alfred saw, could not be brought back, at once at all events ; though he did his best to raise the intellectual standard of the clergy, by encourage- ment, and by bringing learned men from Wales and other foreign countries to be bishops. But, he thought, if his subjects could not learn Latin, they might at least read English. There were, however, few books in English for them to read. There were the works of Caedmon and other poets, but there seems to have been little English prose, except laws, charters, and deeds. And so, as he says, with the help of learned men, 'Plegmund,' my Archbishop, and Asser, my bishop (a Welshman), and Grimbald (from ' Perhaps a Slavonic word originally, borrowed by the Norsemen and some other Teutonic tribes. See Skeat, Principles of English Etymology, Second Series, pp. 399, 401. ' See Kington Oliphant, Old and Middle English. ' Preface to the Pastoral Care. Sweet's Anglo-Saxon Reader, pp. 6, 7. Before the Norman Conquest 129 Flanders), my mass - priest, and John (from Saxony), my mass-priest,' he turned into English those books which he considered most necessary for all men to know. These were Gregory the Great's Pastoral Care, the Comfort of Philosophy by Boethius, Bede's Church History of England, and Orosius's History, which contains also a geographical sketch of the world as known in the time of its author, about 420 a.d. This last work Alfred ' brought up to date ' by adding some discoveries in geography made in his own time, as related to him by Ohtere and Wulfstan, of whom the first had rounded the North Cape and sailed as far as Archangel, while the second had explored the Baltic (see p. 151). Thus there was some Theology, some Philosophy, English History, General History, and Geography, for those who could read their own language. The Bishop of Worcester also translated for Alfred another book by Pope Gregory, the king writing a preface to it. The record of his reign too in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle is remarkably full ; real history, not short jottings on the chief events of each year, or 'annals,' like the greater part of these Chronicles. What with poetry and prose, the literature in English at Alfred's death was far superior to that existing in any spoken or ' modern ' language of Europe. Now, in consequence of this impulse which Alfred gave to literature, Wessex became the literary centre of England. It was also England's political centre. For the line of English kings who subdued the Danes and made England more or less one kingdom were Wessex men, and their capital was Win- chester ; therefore West Saxon was the language spoken at Court. It is not surprising, then, that the Wessex dialect was 'standard English' from the latter part of Alfred's reign (about 890) to the Norman Conquest. Nearly all new books were written in it, and those which, like the poems of Csedmon, already existed in another dialect, were rewritten (one cannot talk of ' translation ') in the speech of Wessex. And this is the dialect which . is usually meant K i'SO History of English when we speak of 'Anglo-Saxon.' Thus the speech of which the Somersetshire, Wiltshire, Hampshire, and Dorset dialects (as in the poems of William Barnes) are the living represent- atives, was once the leading dialect of English, and, but for the Norman Conquest, would probably have remained so. But for that event we should now be speaking a language with the sounds of the Dorsetshire dialect, and probably with a more varied and inflexional grammar than at present, while the speech of Danish Mercia, from which our Modern English mostly springs, would still be an obscure local dialect, repulsive to educated ears, like peasants' German at the present day. CHAPTEE XI ENGLISH DIALECTS BEFORE THE NORMAN CONQUEST General sketchi of the dialects of English before the Conquest — Their peculiarities, and descendants at the present time. We may now take a general view of th« dialects of English, and their characteristics down to the Norman Conquest. "We must bear in mind that, as the writing was intended to represent the sounds of the spoken language as nearly as possible, and was not fixed by custom, differences of spelling nearly always imply differences of pronunciation. These dialects were — (1) West Saxon, spoken south of the Thames, except in Kent and Surrey, in some districts to the north of that river, and in the counties of Gloucester, Worcester, and Hereford. A sketch of the characteristics of this dialect has been given above in chapter ix., and it is the only dialect of Old English of which there are enough, specimens extant to give us a complete knowledge of it. It was the Court language, Winchester being the capital of England, and, ever since Alfred's time, the language of literature, colouring even those books which were written or copied by Mercians. It changed, of course, to some extent between Alfred's reign and the Norman Conquest, as all living lan- guages must. The changes which are to be seen in its 132 History of English spelling correspond to changes in pronunciation. But, on the whole, the alterations in Anglo-Saxon as written and as spoken by educated people were slight. The language was kept from changing much — (1) by the influence of the litera- ture, which afi'ected indirectly even those who could not read; (2) by the conservative habits of polite society in its speech (p. 9), as at the present day. The literature in this dialect, including the poems originally written in Northumbrian, was certainly superior, both in quantity, style, and general excellence, to that existing in any one living language at the time. Cultivated prose especially was hardly to be found in any other language spoken in Europe. It is this dialect which is usually meant when ' Anglo-Saxon ' is spoken of. Its modern representatives are the dialects of the south-western counties. (2) Kentish, spoken in Kent and Surrey. Whatever was the original language of those who settled in Kent,^ the dialect became more and more like West Saxon. (3) Mercian, reaching from the Humber southwards to a line drawn some distance north of the Thames. It was the dialect of South Lancashire, but not of Gloucestershire, Wor- cestershire, and Herefordshire (see p. 77). Mercia had no great literary period like Northumbria and Wessex, and its dialect was from Alfred's time so . much overshadowed by that of Wessex that probably few books were written in it. In any case, very few have survived. But we have a Psalter to which ' glosses ' (or equivalents written over the Latin words ^) were added in Mercian English about 800-850 a.d.,^ and also a Latin copy of the Gospels,* in which St. Matthew's Gospel has Mercian ' glosses ' belonging to the latter part of the tenth century. From these English words we can see that Modern English is nearer to this dialect than to West Saxon, as a few specimens will show — ^ See Appendix C, the Kentish Dialect. '^ Just as on p. 148. ^ Sweet, Oldest Mnglish Texts. * The Rushworth Manuscript. Dialects before the Conquest 1 3 3 Wessex. MereUm. Modern English. eald did old eall all all syndon arun are fealle> falle]? falleth fdoh fell fee geoc ioc yoke Woht liht Kght seolfor sylfur silver sldpon sleptun slept 1 There are signs of the grammar becoming simpler, but, on the whole, this specimen of the dialect is probably little affected by Danish influence.^ (4) Northumbrian,, spoken north of the Humber as far as the Firth of Forth. This was, as we have seen, the language of the earlier English literature; but in this character it was afterwards superseded by the West Saxon dialect. Consequently, there are but few specimens of it left. The most complete is in a manuscript of the Four Gospels in Latin,' where the equivalents in Northum- brian English are written over the Latin words. Now there is a certain difficulty in judging of this specimen of Northumbrian. The date of the 'glosses' is about 950, when the Danes had been settled in the country for seventy years. There are a considerable number of coincidences between this Northumbrian, and Norse, or Danish, which we do not find in West Saxon, besides that mentioned in the note to p. 98, wi arm, Northumbrian (and Mercian), Norse vir erum (we are). Now, are these due to the in- fluence of the Danes settled in England, or to the original resemblance between Danish and Anglian, which, as we saw, were very closely related? The question can hardly * Skeat, Principles of EngUsh Etymology, First Series, p. 44. ^ Perhaps the frequent dropping of ge- in the past participle (as in Danish), e.g. eweden for ge-cweden, may be due to this ; but its omission is not unicnown elsewhere. ^ The Lindisfame Manuscript, or 'Durham Book.' 134 History of English be answered with certainty, since we have not enough specimens of the earlier Northumbrian, before Danish in- fluence was possible, to compare with the Northumbrian of the tenth century, so as to see whether the latter does or does not bear a closer resemblance to Danish. But it is probable that most of the points of agreement are not due to any recent in- fluence of the Danes in England. Thus in Danish the infinitive ends in -a, and til is used for to. But til is used for to (as it still is in the Lowland Scotch, ' till hame ') in the verses of Caedmon, written down about 737 ; and in the lines on the Euthwell Cross, which are probably not later than 750,^ the infinitive ends in -a, not in -am,, as it does in West Saxon. Thus both these peculiarities correspond to Danish (or Norse), but appear before the Danes came to England. On the other hand, the simplification of the grammar is probably largely due to contact with the Danes. Let us now look at a few of the points where the Anglian of Northumbria is nearer to Modern English. The definite article is \e, and not se, as in West Saxon. Many words end in -es in the genitive singular and nominative plural which have other forms, especially -an, in West Saxon. Thus Northumbrian, nominative plural, tunges (tongues), West Saxon, tungan • Northumbrian, genitive singular, fadores (father's), West Saxon, feeder, undeclined. The infinitive usually ends in -a, or sometimes in -e, instead of in -an, as in West Saxon. The Northumbrian form is weaker and more ready to drop off altogether. Thus we have Northumbrian gejlea (to flee). West Saxon fldon. The 3rd person singular of the verbs in Northumbrian often ends in -s, as in our ordinary speech ; M spreces (he speaks). And, in general, the grammar is simpler and more ' regular,' as in Modern English. Further, Northumbrian was more like our present English in pronunciation, if we remember that the vowels had their ' Sweet, Oldest English Texts. Dialects before the Conquest 1 3 s Latin (or Italian, or German) values. Thus, we find Mr for Mr {here), scip for scdap (sheep), tahte for tdhte (taught), the first of each pair being more like our present pronunciation of these words. ^ Though our Modern English comes chiefly from the East Mercian dialect, this dialect must itself have been greatly affected by its neighbour Northumbrian. Or it is quite possible that the ordinary speech of some parts of Mercia at least agreed with Northumbrian in these points before the Norman Conquest, as it certainly did later on. We might add, as varieties of Northumbrian and Mercian — (5) The popular speech of Northumbria as affected by con- tact with the Danes, with many of its inflexions worn away, and the rest reduced to greater regularity. We have just seen that literary Northumbrian was more 'regular' than West Saxon, and, no doubt, popular Northumbrian was still poorer in inflexions. There are no specimens of it remaining ; in fact, there was probably little or nothing written in the dialect. We can only guess what it must have been like, from the writings in its later form some time after the Norman Conquest. Its present representatives are Lowland Scotch (since Northumbria originally reached to the Firth of Forth), and the dialects of Northumberland, Durham, West- moreland, and of Yorkshire, except the south of that county. (6) Popular or ' vulgar ' Mercian, altered by contact with the Danes, as in (5), but the core of the language was, of course, Mercian, and not Northumbrian. This dialect was the parent of East Midland, as we find it after the Conquest, and so, in the main, of Modern English. Both these last dialects must have admitted numbers of Danish words into their vocabulary. 1 Kington Oliphant, Old and Middle English, p. 107. CHAPTER XII THE VOCABULARY, OR STOCK OF WORDS IN ENGLISH BEFORE THE CONQUEST Native words — Latin words, brought in at different periods — Celtic words — Danisli (or Norwegian) words — The mass of the vocabulary pure English.! So far we have spoken mainly of the grammar of the language in general and of its separate dialects. We must now say a little of its stock of words, or vocabulary. For this purpose we need not keep the different dialects separate. So far as their educated or literary forms were concerned, the same words were for the most part common to them all, with slight differences of pronunciation and grammar.^ Of the words then which made up Old English by far the most im- portant part was — (1) The native words. An enormous proportion of the words in Old English were Teutonic, brought over from the Continent by the English settlers, or formed by compounding these together. English was at this early time able to form new words, with prepositions and otherwise, as easily as German does now ; that is, new compounds did not seem strange or uncouth ' See especially Skeat, Principles of Mnglish Etymology, First Series. ^ All that we know of the other dialects points to this, as well as other considerations, but we have no complete acquaintance with any dialect except "West Saxon. Vocabulary before the Conquest 1 3 7 when they were first heard. At the present day we usually borrow or make words from Latin or Greek to express new ideas for which new words are required (e.g. telegraph, omnibus): We have even dropped many of our old compound words, as, for instance, for-saruncon (' for-shrunk,' or shrank away), for- yrysm/udon (choked), big-spell (parable, see p. 154). (2) The Latin words. At the present time words borrowed directly or indirectly from Latin form a very considerable part of the whole stock of words in the language, and so it is necessary from the outset to be quite clear about this part of the subject in order to avoid confusion later on. First of all, we must carefully distinguish the borrowed words from those which we have possessed from the first in common with Latin.^ These last can of course only date from the infancy of the language, when Teutonic and Italic were mere dialects of the Indo-European language. One way then in which many of these can be identified is by their having shifted their sounds in Teutonic in accordance with 'Grimm's Law ' (see pp. 24-31). For we have seen that this shifting of sounds took place at some early period, and no longer worked at the time when our first English writings were made, or even when the Teutonic nations on the Continent first came in contact with the Latin language (a developed dialect of Italic). So that it could not affect words borrowed from Latin. If the coat smells of pastilles or sulphur it was in the room when they were burnt. So ic (I) or ego, two or duo, three or tres, father or pater, were words already in the language when Teutonic and Italic were dialects of one speech, but turtle (-dove) and candle must have been borrowed later from Latin, — that is, they must have come into English after the tendency in Teutonic to shift T and C had passed away. 1 A German is said to have proposed, in order to purify the language of all foreign words, to begin by turning out Vater and Mutter as being derived from Pater and Mater ! 138 History of English So too comu and liorn are originally the same word, but ceaster ^ or caster (Northern form, as in lad-caster) must have been borrowed from Latin, or it would appear as haster or some- thing of the kind. But, secondly, the words which have been borrowed from Latin have come into our language at several different periods, and have not even yet ceased to do so. In order, then, to see what words were borrowed from Latin before the Norman Conquest, we must exclude from these — (A) Those words which came through French, when, after the Conquest, it was commonly spoken in England, and also in later times — such words as voice and honour, many of which, in their spelling at least, stiU show plainly that they have not come to us straight from Latin, the Norman-French forms of the two mentioned being voice and honour, as at present. (B) Those words which, whether they came through French or not, were at a later period derived from the written Latin ; ' learned ' words, so to speak, which have hardly changed their form at all in passing from Latin into English, such as episcopal (episcopai-em), resurrection (resvarectiovrem), salvation {salvation- em). One of these has also a corresponding verb borrowed from the spoken French, a natural, and not a ' learned ' form — save, from saver (or sauver), also derived from salvare. But in some cases words derived through French have had their spelling altered later to bring them nearer to their Latin original. We see then (A) that words borrowed from Latin were certainly not in our language before the Conquest, if they show by their form that they have been a part of spoken French ; and (B) that they were probably brought in after that date if they are exactly like Latin in spelling. For words adopted from Latin into Anglo-Saxon usually look just as if they were derived by ear from one spoken language by another.^ ^ The change of the word to Chester took place after the Norman Conquest. Winchester is in Anglo-Saxon Wintan-ceaster. ^ Some of them have had a vowel changed by the influence of a following vowel (like the native words English, feet), which shows that they were intro- duced while this early tendency was still in force ; for instance, coguina, cycene, kitchen; cidina, eylin, hiln, see p. 106. Vocabulary before the Conguesi 139 Or, treating the matter historically, we may say that the enormous majority of the Latin words now in our language which do not appear in Anglo-Saxon writings were not a part of our language before the Norman Conquest,^ and of course all those which are found in Old English books were already in the language. But the words which our forefathers borrowed from Latin before the Conquest were borrowed at three separate periods — (o) "While they still lived on the Continent, some words were borrowed from Latin through intercourse with the Eoman frontier territory, from merchants, from Germans who had served in the Roman army, and so on. • (b) Some. Latin words were borrowed from the Britons, either from those of them who spoke Latin, as was common in the towns, or through Welsh, into which the Latin words had made their way. (c) A large number were introduced by the missionaries, both Eoman and Irish, who both knew Latin almost equally well and used it as the Church language.^ And others came in later on. Now, though it is certain that words came into English from Latin at all three periods, it is usually difiScult or im- possible to say with certainty at which of the periods any one of those Latin words was introduced which were certainly in the language before the Norman Conquest. Eor there are no English writings until after the conversion of England. So that it is of no use to take books of different dates, and see when the word first appears. A Latin word found in the earliest Anglo-Saxon writing may have been introduced at ^ We have not nearly all Anglo-Saxon literature remaining, so some other Latin words may have been used in those books which have been lost. But the amount of West Saxon writings preserved is quite enough to make the statement in the text correct. 2 For instance, St. Chad's Gospels, in Lichfield Cathedral Library, prob- ably brought to Lichfield (then the capital of Meroia) by St. Chad, or some other of the missionaries from Northumbria, are in Latin. 140 History of English any one of the three periods. Still, there are some considera- tions to guide us. (a) There is a certain probability that a Latin word was borrowed by our ancestors while they stiU lived on the Con- tinent, if it appears in the other Teutonic dialects (and, as is sometimes the case, also in the languages spoken on their borders), ..unless, bhat is, it is the name for something con- nected with the Church, in which case the same word would be introduced by the missionaries into the dififerent languages. Of course some words have been borrowed from Latin by the English in England, and by their relations who spok^ High German, for instance, independently.^ But the following are probably among the words borrowed before our ancestors 9ame to Britain : — Latin. West Saxon. Modem Ihiglish. German. caseus c&e, cyse cheese kase cuper, cuprum (sea cyprium) milia (passuum) copor TUl'l copper mile knpfer meile poena pondo strata vallum pin pund strret weall • {Mercian strdt) ^ {Mercian wall) pine {verh) pound street wall pein pfund strasse wall vinum win 2 wine wein (J) Ceaster,^ Northumbrian caster (TaAcaster), Modern English Chester, -Chester (as in Rochester), is a tolerably certain example of a word derived from Latin (castrum) through the Britons. 1 Thus a word may have been adopted into High German from the Romans on the frontier, and may not have spread farther among the German dialects. And again, we must remember that a large part of Germany was converted by English missionaries. This wonld account for some coincidences in the words (besides ecclesiastical terms) borrowed from Latin by English and German. ' ' These words, as well as vAc, show the old Latin pronunciation of V as W. ' In Old English not confined to names of places. Chester, for instance, appears in the Chronicle as ' a waste Chester ' (or Roman fortress) ' called Legaceaster.' So too wlc Is used not merely in compoimds but like any native word. Vocabulary before the Conquest 141 For it cannot have been learnt on the Continent, or it would appear in other Teutonic languages, and we cannot suppose that the names Chester, Leicester, Tadcaster, and so on, were first given to those places after the English were converted to Christianity. For similar reasons wic (vicus), meaning a dwelling or settlement, as in Norwich {North-wk), probably came into the language at the same time. (c) The Latin words introduced at and after our conversion are much more numerous, though few compared with the total number of words derived from Latin which we now use in English. Like the other Latin words introduced before the Conquest, these too, curiously enough, mostly bear the appearance of having been derived by ear from a spoken language imperfectly reproduced. They are mainly substan- tives. Many of them are names for things connected with the Church, and of these a large number have been first borrowed by Latin from Greek, as, for instance — Greek. Latin. West Saxon. Modern .English. abbat(-em) ^ abbod abbot eXerjiwcrvvrj eleemosyna eelmesse alms iTTtO-KOTTOS episcopus biscop bishop candela candel candle credo or^da creed missa maesse mass ij.ovacrrripiov monasterium mynster minster and many others. There were also introduced into the language, partly at this time, many words connected with improvements in tools, and with civilised life in general, such as — Greek. Latin. West Saxon. Modern English. ayKvpa ancora ancor, ancer anchor cupa cuppe cup Shtkos discus disc dish ^ Skeat, Principles of English Etymology, First Series, p. 432, etc. 2 Borrowed from Syriac oMia ( = father). 42 Htsto ry of hnghsk Greek. Latin. West Saxon. Modem English. molina myln (mylen) mm moneta mynet mint postis post post coquus c6c cook^ and many others. We also borrowed a good many names for birds, fishes, trees, and plants, such as — Greek. Latin. West Saxon. Modem English. T0(f)5s^2 pavo pdwe pea(-cock), po(-cock) {as a proper name and in Chaucer) turtur turtle turtle(-dove) musculus muscle, muxle mussel pina ( = mussel) pine(-wiiicla) ' penny winkle ' periwinkle (fhe shell-fish) T/OcoKnjs tmcta truht trout (gncmer, shwrp- toothed creature) buxus (box-tree) ' 1 buxum (a 60a;, made of box- 1 ^box 1 box wood) foemculum finugle, fenol fennel keipiov lilium lilie Uly filvda menta minte miai, {the jplant) pervinca pervince periwinkle {the flower) pinus piii(-tr^ow) pine(-tree) planta plante plant poSov rosa rose rose Also a number of miscellaneous nouns, a few verbs, and one adjective, as, for instance- - ^ Almost all of these may have been brought in at the first period (a) before the English came to Britain. ^ Borrowed by Greek from Persian, and by Persian from Tanul. — Skeat, Etymological Dictionary. Vocabulary before the Conquest 143 Greek. o-^oXt) Latin. West Saxon. femina fsemne lacus lacu English. ( = woman) lake mont(-em) munt mount puteus pyt scliola sc61u pit f school ( skoaX (of fi^h) offero offrian offer dispendo spendan stuppo (cram ?tp stoppian with tow, stuppa) spend stop crispvis (curled) crisp crisp These are only specimens of the words which we had borrowed from Latin before the Norman Conquest. And besides, some Latin words which we then used have been lost, and others have either been superseded by the form of the Latin word which came through French, or have been brought into agreement with it. Thus, from calio-em the Anglo-Saxon word colic was derived. It is now chalice, the French form of the same Latin word.^ So lion in Anglo- Saxon was leo, saint was somct; we have now adopted the form which came through French. Thus our language had borrowed a good number of words from Latin before the Norman Conquest. It must be repeated that in the case of most of them we cannot be certain at which of the three periods they were introduced. And it is curious to find some of them appear- ing at all, as we must have had native terms for many of the things described by them. But even now many people are fond of using a French word, for instance, where an English one would do just as well. The ' personnel ' of a ship ^ is not different from its officers and crew. The 'locale' of a ^ A mucli more complete list of words adopted from Latin into Anglo- Saxon is to be found in Skeat's Principles of English Etymology/, First Series, p. 432, etc., from which the above examples are mostly taken. * Kington Oliphant, Old and Middle English, p. 535. 144 History of English murder is nothing but the place where it occurred. A ' dot ' is precisely the same thing as a dowry. And among the extraordinary words formed recently on a basis of Latin, ' altruism ' can scarcely be distinguished from ' unselfishness,' though it sounds grander. (3) Celtic words. We have a good number of words derived from Celtic languages in the English of the present day, but very few of these date from the time before the Conquest. This shows how very slight was the intercourse of the English with the Britons whom they conquered. Besides the words borrowed much later from Gaelic and Irish, a large number of the Celtic words now existing in English no doubt first made their way into the speech of the country bordering on Wales and Cornwall. And this would, of course, begin before the Conquest. Words may live for centuries without finding their way into books, as is the case with many provincial terms at the present day. But at any rate the Celtic words which had become part of the ordinary speech of educated Englishmen before 1066, and which are therefore to be found in Anglo-Saxon books, are very few. The list given by Professor Skeat^ is bannock, brock (badger), cart, clout, conibe, cradle, crock, down (hill), dun, and slough. (4) Danish or Norwegian words. We have already seen that in the spoken language of Eastern Mercia and Northumbria these must have been numerous before the Conquest.^ But they only appear later in literature. Very few Danish words are to be found in Anglo-Saxon writings. Among these are lagu, law, which superseded an English word c^ ; pldh,^ plough, just beginning to appear by the side of sulh, which (like its fellow-countryman, ' Principles of English Etymology, First Series, p. 452. ^ As has been said above, a very large proportion of words were common to the two languages, see pp. 127, 128. ' Apparently used before the Conquest only in the sense of ' plough- land, ' see also p. 128, note. * Vocabulary before the Conqtiest 145 the brown rat of Norway) it has now turned oufc of the language ; widng, viking,^ and ceallmn, call. From what has been said above, it is plain that the foreign elements in the stock of words or vocabulary then formed together a very small proportion of the words in our language as compared with the native element. Our religious terms especially were, before the Conquest, mainly English,* though with. some exceptions, such as mass, bishop. Christ was almost always se hdlend (the healer, or Saviour) ; our ancestors did not use the word Resurrection but (h'yst (rising). Unity was dnnes (one-ness). Trinity, \rjnnes {three - ness). Thus our Anglo-Saxon forefathers had only to think of what the words obviously meant in order to understand what their religion was, and had not to learn the meaning of words derived from a foreign tongue. Again, what we now call the Cross (probably a Proven9al form of Latin cruc-em) was rM (literally, a gallows),' as in rood-screen, or rood-loft, so called from the great Crucifix that stood on it So too our ancestors did not speak of Communion but of h-Asel, which is an old heathen word meaning ' sacrifice,' altered or specialised to this mean- ing (see pp. 6 1-63). From this was formed Mslian (to give the Communion to), as Hamlet's father says that he was ' Cut ofif even in the blossoms of my sin, Unhousel'd,' * and also hiisel-dise (a paten), h'Asel-gang (going to, or attendance at the Communion), htsel-genga, h4sel-wer, and hUsel-team (all meaning 'a Communicant'), which also show the way in which compound words were formed in the language, ^ ' Son of the Creek,' from Danish itA^ (a creek), as in Lenmch, Wifik ; not from wie, a dwelling, as in Norwich (see p. 141). " That it is still possible to express the greatest and most ahstrnse facta of Christianity in pure English words, may be seen from the beginning of St. John's Gospel. Here, in the fiist ten verses, comprehended is the only word borrowed Irom any foreign language, unless we count the proper name John. ' A rood of land and a rod are the same word, from the original sense of * pole,' for measuring or otherwise. * Hamlet, I. v. 76, 77. L 146 History of English BEGINNING OF C^DMON'S POEM (From a Manuscript of Bede's History of about 737 A.D.) Northumbrian Nu scylun hergan hefaenricaes uard,"^ metudses maecti end his modgidanc, uerc ^ uuldurfadur ; ^ sue he uundra gihuaes, eci Dryctin, or astelidse. He aerist scop aelda ^ barnum heben til ^ hrofe, haleg scepen. Thai middungeard, moncynnses uard, eci Dryctin, sefter tiadse firum fold[u], frea allmectig. Primo cantavit Gaedmon istrid carmen. From Sweet's Oldest English Texts. * u, for the special Eune=w (p), th for ]>, as in the oldest English manuscripts (see pp. 120, 121). * The words correspond to those in the West Saxon version, except «erc= work (ii£rc uuldv/rfadwr =t\ie work of the glorious father), aelda = of men. 3 See p. 134. specimens of Old English \ 47 BEGINNING OF C^DMON'S POEM (From Alfred's Translation of Bede's History, Manuscript "~ of about 1000 A.D.) V-i? West Saxon Nii^ w6 sceolon herian heofonrfces Weard, Now we, must praise heaven' s-Mngdom' s Giiairdian, Metodes mihte ond his m6dgeSonc, (the) Lord's might and his mind-thoughts, wera Wuldorfaeder ; swd h6 wundra gehwsfes, of-men {the) glorious Father; as he of-wonders of-each 6ce Dryhten, ord onstealde. everlasting Lord, (iAe) beginning established. H6 serest gesc6op eorSan bearnum He first created for earth's children heofon t6 lir6fe, hdlig Scippend ; heaven for (a) roof, holy Creator ; Sd middangeard, moncynnes Weard, then earth, mankind's Guardian, 6ce Drybten, sefter t6ode the everlasting Lord, after. adorned firum foldan, Fr^a ^Imihtig. for-men (the) ground, {the) King Almighty. From Sweet's Anglo-Saxon Header. ' The accents, except in this extract, are left as in the manuscript. They did not usually put accents to those vowels which any one who could read the language would know at the first glance to he long, without thinking. Some manuscripts have no accents at all, or hardly any. Sometimes, too, they are put in incorrectly. 148 History of English CANTICUM ZACHAEIAE SACEEDOTIS Mercian, 800-850 Gebledsad dryhten god Israel forSon neasede J Benedictus Dominus Deus Tsrahel quia visitavit et dyde alesnisse folces his _/ arehte horn hselu /edt redemptionem plebis suae Et erexit comu salutis US in huse DauiSes cnehtes his swe spreocende noiis in d&mo David pueri sui Sicut loGutus wes Sorh mu?S haligra his witgena Sa from est per os sanctorum suorum prophetarum qui a weorulde sind J gefreade usic from fiondum'^ urum saecido sunt Et Wberamt nos ab inimicis nostris J of honda alra da^ usic fiodun^ to donne et de Tnanu mnnium qui nos oderunt Ad fitciendaTn mildheortnisse mid fedrum urum J gemunan cySnisse misericordiam cum patribus Twstris et TnoTwrare testaTnenti his haligre Sone swergendan aS Sone he swor to sui sancti Jusjwrandwm quod jwravit ad Abrahame feder urum sellende hine^ us ?Set butan Abraham patrem nostrum daturum se nobis Ut sine ege of hondum iionda^ ura gefreade we tSiwgen timore de manibus inimicorum nostrorum liberati serviamus him in halignisse and rehtwisnisse biforan him allum Uli In sanctitate et justitia coram ipso omn'Sms daegum urum. diebus nostris. From Sweet's Oldest English Texts. ' Fiond, or Jeond {' fiend ' = enemy) is evidently the participle of feon, or Jam (see above, p. 95). '' For So. ^ The gloss translates as much as possible word for word, and the result is not always ordinary Old English ; see also next page. specimens of Old English 1 49 SONG OF ZACHARIAS West Saxon, about 1000 a.d. (Luke i. 68-75) 68. Gebletsud si drihten israhela god . for]7am ]je he Blessed be the Lord Israel's God, for that he geneosode . J his folces alysednesse dyde ; visited and his people's deliverance made; 69. y he lis hs&le horn arserde . on dauides huse And he to-us of-saivation a horn reared-up, in David's house hys cnihtes ; his servant's ; 70. Swa he sprsec Jiurh hys halegra witegena mu3 . Jia he ' As he spake through his holy prophets' mouth, who of worldes frymSe sprsfecon . from world's beginning spake, 71. J he alysde us of urum feondum .J of ealra ^ )jara And he delivered us frmn our enemies and from of -all ^ those handa J?e lis hatedon. (the) hands thai us hated. 72. Mildheortnesse to wyrcsenne mid lirum fsederum .J Mercy to perform with our fathers, and gemunan his halegan cyjjnesse ; to-rememb&r his holy testaTuent ; 73. Hyne^ us to syllenne ]7one aS . Jie he drum to-us to give the oath which he to-ow feeder abrahame sw6r . father Abraham swore, 74. Paet we butan ege of ure feonda handa alysede him That we without fear of our enemies' hands delivered him Jjeowian . shovld-serve, 75. On halignesse beforan him . eaUum urum dagum. In holiness before him, in-all our days. From Skeat's Gospels in Anglo-Saxon, Northumbrian, and Old Mercian Versions. 1 Protably wrongly written for >e ; fe, Hatton MS. (a later version) and Northumbrian. ^ See p. 109. ' The se (daturum) in the Latin seems to have confused the translator. 1 5 o History of English BfiOWULF West Saxon, 800-900 a.d. (?) (The home of the monster Grendel and his mother) . . . Hie dygel lond They (an) unknown land warigeaS, wulf-hleo?Su, windige nsessas, hold, wolf-hills, windy nesses, frecne fen-gelad, ^ser fyrgen-stream (the) dangerous fen-tract, where (the) mountain-stream under nsessa genipu niSer gewiteS, under nesses' mists down cometh, flod under foldan ; nis Jjset feor heonon the flood under (the) ground; not-is that far hence, mil-gemearces, ))8et se mere standeS of-mile-distance, that the mere standeth ofer ))8em hongiaS hrinde bearwas, over which hang rustling trees, wudu wyrtum fsest, wseter oferhelmaSS. (a) wood with-roots fast, (the) water overhangeth. Paer mseg [man] nihta gehwsem niS-wundor s6on, There may one of-nighis on-any (a) horrid-vxmdenr see, fyr on flode ; no ]j8es frod leofatS fire on (the) flood ; not so wise liveth gumena bearna, Jjset Jjone grund wite ; (any) of-Tnen's children, that the bottom he-should-know ; Jieah Jie hseS-stapa bundum geswenced, though (the) heath-stepper by-hounds pressed, heorot bornum trum, holt-wudu sece [the) hart in-homs strong (the) holt-wood seek feorran geflymed, aer he feorb seleS, from-fa/r driven, first he (his) soul gives-up, aldor on ofre, aer be in wille, (his) life on (iAe) hank, ere he in wiU, hafelan [hydan]. Nis Jjset beoru stow : (his) head to hide. Not-is thai (a) pleasant place : }>onon ytS-geblond up astigeS whence (the) wave-swge up riseth won to wolcnum, )>onne wind styreS wan to (the) clouds, when wind stirreth lafS gewidru, oS J^set lyft drysmatJ, hateful tempests, till thai (the) air darkens, roderas reotaS. . . . (the) heavens weep.^ 1 Biowidf, Moritz Heyne. Paderborn, 1879 ; and Grein, Bibliothek der AngelsOchsischen Poesie, edited by Wiilcker. Cassel, 1883. specimens of Old English 1 5 1 ALFRED'S ADDITIONS TO OROSIUS (Composed end of Ninth Century, Manuscript of the Eleventh Century) West Saxon {OMere's account of his position and life in Nartoay) He wses swy}>e spedig man on Jjsem sehtum J>e heora {a) very wealthy in the possessions which their speda on beo]j, Jjset is, on wildrum. He haefde Jjagyt, wealth (pi. ) in consists, in deer. had stUl, Jja he Jione cyningc sohte, tamra deora unbebohtra syx w/ien the hing sought, of-tame deer untaught hund. Pa deor hi hata]? ' hranas ' ; Jiara wseron syx hundred. The they call ' reindeer ' ; of -those stselhranas ; J>a beo}> swyjie dyre mid Finnum, for Jjsem decoy-reindeer ; those are dear with {the) Fins that hy io]> ]>a, wildan hranas mid. He wses mid Jjsem they catch with [them). among fyrstum mannum on Jjsem lande : nsefde he J>eah ma men had-not he though more )70nne twentig hryjiera, and twentig sceapa, and twentig than of-cattle of-sheep swyna ; and J)set lytle Jiset he erede ^ he erede mid horsan. the little pkmghcd with horses. Ac hyra ir is msest on J>8em gafole }ie J^a Finnas him But their property most tribute which the to-them gyldajj. Pset gafol biji on deora fellum, and on fugela pay. is deers' skins, fowls' ^ Ba/red, as in the Bible, Isaiah xxx. 24, for instance. 1 5 2 History of English fejjerum, and hwales bane, and on J)aem sciprapum, Jie Jojte • ship-ropes, which beo}> of hwaeles hyde geworht, and of secies. jSlghwilc "^ wrought seaVs. Each gylt be hys gebyrdum. Se byrdesta sceall gyldan pays according-to rank. The most-noble must fiftyne mear]7es fell, and fif hranes, and an beran fell, and marten's shins reindeer's one bear's tyn ambra ^ fej>ra, and berenne kyrtel ^ o]>]>e yterenne, and ten aniibers of-feathers of-bear {a) Urtle or of-otter twegen sciprapas ; aegjjer sy syxtig elna * lang, o]>er * sy two each is (he said) ells the-one of hwaeles hyde geworht^ ojjer * of sioles. From Sweet, Extracts from Alfred! s Orosius. ' An am^er equalled 4 bushels. ' K is an uncommon letter in Anglo-Saxon manuscripts, and is only used ELS an alternative to C. ' A Scandinavian ell equalled 2 feet. * As in Latin alter . . . alter = the one . . . the other. specimens of Old English 1 5 3 ANGLO-SAXON CHEONICLE This particular chronicle (A) was probably compiled at Winchester, and the entries of this period were written down not very long after the events, therefore the date is about 945-975 a.d. West Saxon 944. Her Eadmund cyning ge eode eal Here king conquered all Nor]? hymbra land him to ge wealdan . and aflymde ut for-him to rule drove out twegen cyningas . Anlaf Syhtrices sunu . and Esegenald two son GutSferJjes sunu. 945. Her Eadmund cyning ofer hergode eal Cumbra over-harried land . and hit let to eal Malculme Scotta cyninge . it let to all to-Malcolm 6a ]>mt gerad Jjset he wsere his mid wyrhta condition should-be fellow-viorlcer |7er ge 6n se& ge 6n lande. ioth and From Earle, Two of the Saxon Chronicles Parallel. 154 History of English GOSPEL OF ST. MATTHEW (Chap. xiii. Verses 3-9) West Saxon, about 1000 a.d. 3. And he spraec to hym fela on big-spellum cwejjende; spakR them, many (things) in paraUes saying Sojjlice ut-eode se ssfedere hys saed to sawenne * Truly out went the sower his seed sow 4. And ))a \a, he seow. sume hig feoUon wi]? weg. and as sowed, same they fell by (the) way, and fuglas comun and siton \&; fowls came ate them; 5. So]?lice sume feoUon on stsenihte Jjser hyt nsefde mycle some fdl cm (a) stony (pface) where it not-had much eorjian. and hrsedlice upsprungon for-Jjam ]>e hig nsefdon earth. quickly up-sprang hecause that they mot-had Jjsere eorjian dypan ; of -the earth depth ; 6. Sojilice upsprungenre sunnan^ hig adruwudon and up-havfing-sprung sun thefy d/ried-up forscruncon. for Jiam Jie hig nsefdon -wyrtrum ; * shrank- away they not-had root; 7. SoJ>lice sume feollon on Jiornas. and J>a Jjornas weoxon some fell thorns the thorns waxed and for-J>rysmudon jja. choked them. 8. sume soJ>lice feollon on gode eorjian and sealdon* weastm. some fell good gave fruit, sum hund-fealdne. sum sixtig-fealdne. sum Jirittig-fealdne ; some hundred-fold sixty thirty 9. Se ^p^ haebbe ^ earan to gehyrenne ^ gehyre.^ He who has ears hear let-him-hear. From Skeat's Gospels in Anglo-Saxon, Northwnbricm, and Old Mercian Versions. ' GeTwaA=adserendum, etc., Tp. 95. ^ Dative ' absolute ' or ' of time when. ' ' Like 'St. John's wort.' * The same word as sold, now specialised in meaning, see pp. 61-63. * Subjunctive, see p. 99, (5). " Subjunctive, see p. 98, (1). specimens of Old English i S 5 GOSPEL OF ST. MATTHEW (Chap. xiii. Verses 3-9) Mercian, about 970 a.d. {Gloss to the Latin Version) 3. And he spree to heom feola in gelicnissum cwe]jende pa/rdbles henu ut eode se sawend to sawenne behold I sower 4. and J>a he seow sume gefeollun hi wsege and cuomun fuglas heofun and frsetun ca»»« of-heaven ate 5. ]pEet ^ ojiere Jponne gefeoUon on stanig lond Jiser ne that others then stony h§fde eor?5e miccle and hrsejje^ cuomun upp forjion ]>& hie had much quicMy because that naef don heanisse ^ eorSe highness of-earth 6. sunne Jia upp cuom hatedun and fortSon ]?e hie n§fdun then they-heated wy[r]tryme for-wisnadun they-vnthered away 7. sume J>onne gefetun * in Jjornas and wexon ]?a Jjornas fdl waxed and smoradun hise smothered them 8. Sume )ionne gefetun * on eorSe gode and saldun * wsestem sume hund-teontig sume sextig sume Jiritig hundred 9. se]je hsebbe eara gehernesse gehere. ears of-hearing. From Skeat's Gospels in Anglo-Saxon, Northumbrian, and Old Mercian Versions. ^ ^cet should be in the former verse. " Positive of rather ( = more qiiickly, sooner). The adjective occurs in Milton, I/yddMS, 1. 142 — 'Bring the rathe ( = early) primrose.' ^ Latin aUitudinem. * Should be ge/dlun ; it is a slip on the part of the scribe, the man who wrote it. ° Nearer to Modern English than sealdon, the West Saxon form. A often turned into 0, as we shall see. For notes (1) and (4) I am indebted to the kindness of Professor Earle and also of Professor Skeat. CHAPTEE XIII FOREIGN ASCENDENCY English dialects and English literature at the time of the Norman Conquest — How Norman French gained its ascendency — Character of Norman French — Its history in England, and how it went out of use — Position of Latin in England — Latin, French, and English literature after the Conquest.' It is very important to have an accurate notion of the character and position of English, in its various dialects, at the time of the Norman Conquest, so as to understand the changes which took place after, or in consequence of that event. Of these changes some were directly due to the coming of the Normans, and the rest were, as we shall see, for the most part indirectly affected by it. English, then, as written at the time of the Norman Con- quest, was an ' inflexional ' language, as may be seen from the specimens of it already given. The language was divided into five main dialects (see chap, xi.), excluding Kentish, which, for practical purposes, was becoming a mere variety of the Southern or West Saxon. This last was the ' standard ' dialect of English at the time, holding the same sort of position as the English which educated people now speak, and which we find in books — that is, it was the dialect used by the upper and educated classes in speaking, and the language of ' See especially Freeman's Norman Conquest ; and Skeat, Principles of English Etymology, Second Series. Foreign Ascendency 1 5 7 literature.^ And it was a highly cultivated language. Though it appears that not very much had been written in it since the beginning of the eleventh century, this is only an instance of what we commonly find in literature — namely, that its progress is not steady, like the flow of a river, but in waves, as the tide comes in. And, no doubt, but for the coming of William the Conqueror, Old English would have had other great periods of literature, each probably in some respects showing an advance upon the last. But, taking the mass of writings in Old English as they existed at the Norman Conquest, inherited from different periods, including the poems of Csedmon, the other religious poems, such as the one on the finding of the True Cross, the metrical sermons of .^Ifric, the B6owulf, whatever its age may be, the battle songs, such as the Song of Brunanburh, inserted in one of the Chronicles, and translated by Loid Tennyson, the Song of the Battle of Maldon, translated by Dr. Freeman in his Old English History, and the other lyric poems, and last but not least the Chronicles, which in some parts, such as the account of Alfred's reign, and even as late as the section where William the Conqueror's character is described, rise to the level of first-rate contem- porary history, our literature was superior to that existing at the time in any one language spoken in Europe. And we must remember that, though probably on the whole the best works have been preserved, yet a very large part of Old English literature must have perished, in the neglect which it suffered for centuries, and in the merciless destruction at the Eeformation of libraries in the monasteries, where most of the Old English books still surviving were preserved. Now in any history of English after the Norman Conquest there are three questions which have to be considered. ' The later Mercian writings are a good deal coloured ty it, just as modem writings in some English dialect almost always have a good deal of ' standard ' English in them, besides what the dialect owns. I S 8 History of English First, "What effect did the Norman Conquest have upon the position of English in England as the language of the upper classes and of books, and for what reasons, and by what steps did English regain the position which it then lost, but which it plainly holds at present ? Secondly, How did English change, whether through the Norman Conquest or from other causes, in the time during which it was in the shade, so to speak, overshadowed by French and Latin ? Thirdly, Why was the dialect of English which became the ' standard ' language in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries a different one from the dialect which held that position before William the Conqueror came to England ? It will be best to consider these questions separately, as far as possible. They may be more shortly stated thus — (1) What are the facts as to the position of English in England from 1066 or 1100 ^ to 1366 or thereabouts, a period of about 300 years ? (2) What changes took place in English, or in its different dialects, between those dates ? (3) How did one dialect finally win a position superior to the rest ? (1) In order to account for the predominance of French in England after the Norman Conquest, a theory grew up that William the Conqueror deliberately set himself to degrade, and, if possible, to root out the English language. Now there is nothing absurd or impossible in this idea in itself, for the Russians are at the present time engaged in a similar attempt to root out Polish in Poland, and German in the Baltic Provinces of Russia. But, as a matter of fact, William made no attempt of the kind. His wish was to represent himself not as the foreign conqueror but as the legitimate English king, the heir of Edward the Confessor, and of the English kings, ' my predecessors.' And any consistent attempt to 1 When the generation horn before the Conquest had mostly died out. Foreign Ascendency i S 9 destroy the language of the country, to substitute French for it, for instance, in writs, proclamations, and other official documents, would plainly have given the lie to this claim. And, as a matter of fact, many of his writs and grants, as, for instance, his confirmation of the privileges of London, are in English ; and it is said that he tried to learn English himself, though he found the language too hard for him, as has been the case with many foreigners since.^ But after the battle of Hastings the estates of those immediately con- cerned in what he called the ' rebellion ' against him (chiefly in Kent and the neighbouring parts) were confiscated and given to Normans and other foreigners who had come with him from France; and when the men of other districts of England rose, during the next few years, their lands were treated in the same way. These foreigners had to be re- warded for their support, and they were a garrison, though a rather mutinous one, to hold the conquered country. It was the great landowners, who held their lands directly from the king, who were to such a large extent either driven out of the country, or reduced to hold some part of their estates left to them as tenants of the new Norman owner. The lesser country-gentlemen, or farmers, were not nearly so much disturbed, and townspeople (in London, for instance), as well as the serfs or villeins, not at all. Besides this, William, with the consent and support of the Pope, in the course of a few years got rid of almost all the native English bishops and put foreigners in their place. And many Normans, especially merchants, migrated to England as a new field for enterprise, like the parents of Thomas a Becket. The theory, then, that William deliberately tried to destroy the English language, besides being in point of fact untrue, as we have seen, is not in the least required to explain the facts. The great landowners, the bishops and abbots, — that is to say, the aristocracy, — now spoke French ' His writs, etc., would of course be put into English by his clerks. i6o History of English naturally, as their native language, instead of English, and so did a certain number of merchants and others. For, though the Normans were of course 'Northmen,' Scandi- navians, and not Frenchmen by origin, as any one can see to this day from their build and colour in those parts of Normandy where the breed is purest (such as the neighbour- hood of Bayeux), yet Danish was nearly or quite extinct in Normandy, at any rate among the upper classes, in 1066. And, therefore, the Normans in England Spoke French as they did at home, and their children did also teach. 1 But before we go any further, we ought to see what kind of French it was which the Normans brought into England. To begin with, it did not bear a very close resemblance to the language which we are accustomed to call ' French,' the modern form of the Central or Parisian dialect which is now established as the language of educated people in France, and of French books. Very many of the French words which came into our language early, in the 300 years which followed the Norman Conquest, cannot possibly be derived from the French to which we are accustomed. Obviously we cannot derive espy or spy from ipier, feast from fUe, wage from gage, or assets from assez,^ with its Modern French pronunciation. As a matter of fact, the French which the Normans spoke in England was different from what we ordinarily mean by French, for two reasons, to which a third was afterwards added. {a) It was a much more old-fashioned or archaic form of French. We know that French is a corrupted form of Latin, ^ Eobert of Gloucester (modernised), see p. 261. ■■' i.e. 'enough to meet claims' (Earle, Philology of the English Tongue), Assets, properly a collective noun, looks like a plural ; consequently it has been treated as such, and a singular formed for it; thus we speak of 'a single ossei.' The uneducated treat chaise ('shays') somewhat in the same way, speiiking of 'a shay,' or sometimes giving it a plural verb, as in 'The chaise are at the door.' This is, of course, ' analogy ' again. Foreign Ascendency i6i and French as it was spoken in England is much nearer to Latin than modern literary French; the alteration had not gone so far, and it is often much easier to recognise the Latin original. Thus in francs horn the s shows the old termination of the masculine adjective ; habet is ad (not a), and habetis is aveiz ; ille homo is Vum (not Von) ; and in apelum it is easier to recognise the first person plural than in apelons ; erent is almost and fuissent exactly the same as in Latin. And the nearer resemblance to Latin was not only in the spelling. Very many letters, especially terminations, were then pro- nounced which are now silent as a rule. (6) But it was not even an older form of the same French dialect as that which is now the literary language of France. It was iVbrmaw-French. One characteristic of this form of the language was that it preserved a simple W in many words which in other Old French dialects had GU (pro- nounced GrW), which again has become a simple G in Modern French, sometimes in spelling, always in pronunciation. Thus, Norman -French had wages for Modern French gages, warene for Modern French garenne, and warant for garant. Still Norman-French had many words beginning with GU as well, such as, for instance, gu&rdon, and guise, in which the TJ was once pronounced as W. (c) Norman-French in England was to a great extent separated from its sister dialects on the Continent, especially after the loss of Normandy in 1204. It thus went a way of its own, and developed differently from other French dialects even of this earlier period. It is quite true that some words of Parisian French found their way into the Norman-French spoken in England, through intercourse with France and the study of French poems written on the Continent. Central French forms even took the place of words already in the language, as when rei became roi, and lei, loi ; hence reial and leial (or leal, as in ' the land o' the leal ') became respectively royal and loyal. But the enormous M 1 6 2 History of English proportion of those French words which are a part of our daily life, and which we Cannot do without, such words as Tmlnt, damage, distance, honour, chief, oblige, suffer, besides a mass of other words, come to us from Norman- French. And it was the presence of so many words in English taken from one French dialect which made it so easy to go on borrowing from Parisian French, as we have been doing ever since we ceased to borrow from Norman-French. The words did not sound or look strange in the language. We have already seen that, besides the differences between French in the ordinary sense and Norman-French which are obvious in the spelling, there must have been differ- ences in the pronunciation as well. For assets can only be derived from asseg if this Z was pronounced as TS, which was the case at the end of words for some time after the Conquest. But the differences of pronunciation went further than this. J (written I), CH, G, QU ^ were not pronounced as in juge, cheval, rouge, quinze, but as they now are in English, as in the words jolly, judge, juror; cha/nge, charge, check ; gentle, gist, wage ; quit, conquest} The vowels were of course different, like ' new pronunciation ' Latin or Italian, just as the English vowels were at the time.^ But our English pronunciation of the consonants will not be far wrong for Norman- or Anglo-French. It will be necessary to remember this when we come to the influence of the Norman Conquest on our spelling. But perhaps the greatest difference was that (almost always) all the letters were pronounced, such as the final -s, -e, -es, -ent, which are ' But QU was pronounced as a simple K in some words ; qui, for instance, is constantly written Id. ^ These Anglo-French words, having been fully adopted into JSnglish before the great changes took place in our way of pronouncing the English vowels, followed their fortunes, and have for the most part changed the sound of their vowels like them. It is in the French words introduced since about 1660 that we not unfrequently find the sound of French vowels (as well as consonants) retained more or less completely ; in such words as mirage, Scarte, pique, coupon, mauve, bureau, connoisseur, prestige, croquet. See Skeat, Principles of English Etymology, Second Series. Foreign Ascendency 163 usually silent in Modern French, as well as letters inside the word, like the P in corpse, Modern French corps {cor'). Examples of this Norman-French will he found farther on. The piece of poetry at the end of the chapter (p. 172), written in Normandy, but before the two forms of Norman-French on opposite sides of the Channel had diverged to any great extent, will show us what Anglo-French was like to start with ; this is followed by a bit of later Anglo-French prose ; and a few sentences on pp. 279, 280, are an example of Anglo-French in its last stage. Thus the language of the upper classes was now a dialect of French, and an entirely distinct language from English, not differing in some few points only, as Midland or North umbrian differed from West Saxon, or even as Danish or Norse differed from English. It would plainly be impossible for two such- distinct languages as French and English to make com- promises, by combining their grammar and so on, so as to form a ' mixed language ' in the strict sense of the words.*^ At first, no doubt, none of the Normans would understand English, none of the English French. But very soon many of the Normans would learn some English, while a great many of the English would try to pick up some French. For they soon got to live on tolerably friendly terms with each other, and many even of those who came with William married English wives. A landowner who knew no English, besides having his society narrowed, would be very much at the mercy of clerks, bailiffs, and other subordinates in dealing with his tenants and serfs, if he could not understand what they said. And as the large majority of the people spoke English, a Norman would soon get familiar with the sound of the language, so as to be able to understand it, even if l;e spoke it with diflSculty and incorrectly, or if he preferred not to ^ The influence even of Danish upon English seems to have been mainly in the way of destroying or simplifying. English grammar. Except in the pro- nouns, they, their, them, and tenth, both, it is very difficult to name points in which English grammar copied Danish (see p. 133, etc., and below). But the French plural in -s had, no doubt, some share in establishing this form as the ordinary English plural. 1 64 History of English speak it at all, as being a vulgar language. And the Normans engaged in trade would, of course, from the first have to pick up as much English as they possibly could, for the purposes of their business. On the other hand, the lower, and more especially the middle classes of Englishmen, would find it convenient to be able to communicate with their superiors, and would also think it fine or refined to be able to talk French, and to interlard their English talk with French words and expres- sions. As John of Trevisa says,^ even in 1387, when the predominance of French was becoming a thing of the past : ' Uplandish ^ men wiU liken themselves to gentlemen and contrive with great trouble to speak French, " for to be more y-told of." ' ^ That is, that their friends might say, ' So-and-so is quite the gentleman ; he can speak French.' Thus we can account for the large number of French words which have found their way into English, as wiU be seen later on. Now, as Professor Freeman says,* nothing is more unusual in histories than any statement of the language in which people spoke on a particular occasion, the historian thinking it quite enough to give their meaning. But there are enough statements or hints in histories to show that even the heads, of the aristocracy, who spoke French habitually, knew some English. Henry I. perhaps wrote a book in English. At any rate he had a wife of English descent, Edith (older form Ead-gyih, like Ead-ward and Bad-gar), also called Matilda, in order to suit the Norman taste in names ; and ' Godric,' ^ as the King was nicknamed on account of his supposed partiality for the native English, could certainly speak and understand English. So too the wife of a man of the French-speaking class, Hugh de Morville, father of one of the murderers of 1 Skeat's Principles of English Etymology, First Series, p. 31. ^ Conntrymen, uncultured men. The extract is modernised, except the last few words. ' Accounted of. ^ Norman Conquest, vol. v. p. 528 ; a work to which I am very largely indebted in this part of my subject. ^ That being a common English name at the time, though it has long been extinct, like most of the Anglo-Saxon Christian names. Foreign Ascendency 165 Thomas k Becket (who lived therefore about 1140), addresses him in English thus : Huge de Morevile, ware, ware, ware, lAthulf heth his swerd adrage} She would hardly have spoken to him in a language that he could not understand. Henry II. (1154-89) understood English, and Edward I. (1272-1307) could and sometimes did speak it. These facts, and many other hints that we get, show that the account given above of the relative position of English and French between 1066 and 1366 is correct. The strange thing is that French should have lasted as a spoken language in England so long after the Normans and English had become one nation, when a writer of about 1180 says that it was then impossible to tell who were Normans and who were Englishmen.^ But we must remember that until Normandy was lost in 1204, early in John's reign, many English landholders held estates in Normandy as well. When they went over there they would find French the universal language, and so keep their knowledge of it alive. But when foreigners were brought into England, such as the Poitevins under John, and Provengals under Henry III., their coming was always resented by the men, even of foreign ancestry, who were already settled in the country, and who were, at least after the loss of Normandy in John's reign, to all intents and purposes Englishmen. Yet the custom of speaking Norman- or Anglo-French went on even when the nation was still more closely united at the time of De Mont- fort's government and the Barons' War (1258-65), in the reign of Henry III, when the nobles who usually spoke French, the "■ Materials for the History of Thomas A Becket, edited by Canon Robertson, Rolls Series, 1875, p. 128. lie story is good evidence for Euglish having been spoken on the particular occasion, or perhaps rather for its being likely that a wife should use it to her husband, if the story is a slander ; but the form of the English is, no doubt, that of 1170, or later. There was no antiquarian accuracy on such matters in those days. So another person has ■written in the margin what seemed to him better English : Lyulph haveth his swerd ydrawen ; and in another manuscript it is Hiie of Mormlle, war, war, war, Lithidf haves his swerd idragen. ' Have« ' is the Northern form. ^ 'Dialogus de Scaccario,' Stubbs's Documents (see note on next page). 1 66 History of English lower classes in London and other towns who spoke English only, and the intermediate classes, many of whom must have known both French and English, were, for the most part, united to secure decent government.^ It is remarkable that the different classes of a single nation should for a long time have spoken two different languages. But, besides long habit, there was another cause which prevented French from going out of use in England. In fact, its supremacy was greatest in the last 150 years of its reign in England, from the time when, early in the thirteenth century, it took the place of Latin as the language of Govern- ment and of the Law Courts, as we shall see presently. It did not lose its position as a spoken language, for in the thirteenth century it became the fashion in most of the Courts of Europe to speak French,^ just as at this day the Eussians of the upper classes at St. Petersburg usually talk French, or as in Hungary down to the earlier part of this century Latin was the language used in Parliament, and to a large extent by the nobles in conversation as well. Still, from the beginning of the thirteenth century, when the English landowners no longer had possessions in Normandy, when it was no longer possible, with- out studying genealogies, to say whether a man were mainly of English or of Norman descent,^ when the whole nation could and did combine to resist despotism and the intrusion of foreigners, who] were almost always Frenchmen, it is quite plain that the habit of speaking French among the upper classes was a mere fashion, irrational and inconvenient. Even the poor ^ Poems or political verses on the Barons' War still remain both in French, Latin, and English. And there is one proclamation by Henry III., of 1258, in English. ^ This iniiuence was all in favour of ' standard ' French as distinct from the Norman dialect. Yet the ' standard ' Frendi merely coloured Anglo- French to some small extent and did not drive it out. Anglo-French was one kind of French after all. ' ' But now, from the English and Normans living together and marrying wives from among each other, the nations are so mixed, that at the present day (1177) it can scarcely be distinguished (I speak of freemen) who is an Englishman and who a Norman by descent. ' The villeins are excepted, who would all be English. — 'Dialogus de Scaccario,' Stubbs's DocumefnU. Foreign Ascendency 167 schoolboys suffered from it, being obliged to construe Latin into French, as being the more reiined language, though some of them must have known very little of it. And this Anglo- French was a local and more or less artificial language, no longer like any dialect of French spoken on the Continent. Thus at Marlborough (where there was an important royal castle, in which Parliaments were sometimes held, as in Henry I.'s reign,) there was a spring, now no longer used, which was supposed to make people who drank it speak bad French.^ And so too, at the very end of the ascendency of French, Chaucer says of his Prioress — And Frensh she spak ful faire and fetisly,^ After the scole of Stratford atte Bowe, For Frensh of Paris was to hir unknowe. Thus the habit of speaking French in England began naturally among the upper classes, since every man talks his mother-tongue, and children copy their parents. But to have two languages for one nation was certainly inconvenient, and in the latter half of the fourteenth century it had become little more than a mere fashion. On account of its great incon- venience and, one may say, its absurdity, it required but a small push to overthrow it. And this seems to have been given by the French wars of Edward III. (1337-74) which would bring home to numbers of Englishmen by actual experi- ence the fact that French was, after all, a foreign language,* the language of their enemies whom they had so often beaten, and therefore an unnatural language for Englishmen to talk. If Anglo-French was French it was unnatural for Englishmen to talk it ; as differing from ' standard ' French it was a mere insular jargon. ^ Freeman, Norman Conquest, vol. v. p. 891. Nous giveons, in a docu- ment of 1268, is an extreme example of Anglo-Fiench. — Koch, Historische Gramtnatik der Englischen Sprache. ' =neatly, cleverly. — Prologue to Canterbury Tales, U. 124-126 (after 1386 A.D.), edited ty Morris and Skeat ; and see Appendix D. ' Norman Conquest, vol. v. p. 535. 1 68 History of English And when a blow had been given to the inconvenient fashion among the upper classes of talking and writing French, its downfall was tolerably rapid. Thus between 1350 and 1385 the custom in the schools of construing Latin into French died out. In 1362 the King's speech at the opening of Par- liament was, by request of the Commons, made in English. In 1363, also on the request of the Commons, it was ordered that the business of the Law Courts should be conducted in English, since French was little understood. Still, French did n«t die out all at once. It was not entirely disused in Parliament for another century, and even now the words in which the King's or Queen's assent is given to a Bill, Le. Eoi (or, la Beine) le mut, are a relic of the time when all Parliamentary business and all the business of Government was conducted in French. So too the Oh yes of a town-crier (oyez I hear !) carries us back to the time when French was used in the humblest official acts. And the Law and Law Courts are full of French words, of which plead (plaider), mortmain, justice, and the terms ending in -ee, payee, mortgagee, and so on (where the ending represents French -i of the past participle), are familiar instances.^ The victory over English at and after the Conquest was not won by French only, Latin had a share in it. Now Latin was throughout the Middle Ages the learned, and, one might almost say, the universal language of Europe. Besides the books written in Latin, in England as well as abroad, about which something will be said presently, it had once been, even in England, the language used for grants of land and legal documents in general. And though these had got to be more and more written in English, still some were in Latin, either wholly or in part, down to the end of the Anglo-Saxon monarchy. And on the Continent Latin was the regular language of legal and Government documents. WiUiam the ' But it nrast te remembered that the ose of French as the official lan- guage of Government and of the Law did not become at all complete for 150 years after the Conquest. Foreign Ascendency i6g Conqueror had followed the ordinary custom in Normandy, and when he came to England he affd his secretaries still retained it. It was the ordinary practice abroad ; it was by , no means unknown in England ; and it was no insult to his new subjects, as the use of French would have been. Some- times, indeed, in his character of native English king, as the heir of Edward the Confessor, he issued writs in English, as ' his predecessors ' would have done. But the Latin continued to gain ground, and after Henry I.'s time very few of these documents are in English. Then in the year of Magna Charta (1215) they begin to be in French. This seems curious at first, but no doubt Professor Freeman's ^ explanation is the correct one. Until the Norman Conquest was practically forgotten it would have been a ' badge of conquest,' and therefore offensive to the mass of the nation, to use Norman - French, the speech of the con- querors, as the language of Government. But now that the Conquest was ' ancient history,' and all the inhabitants of the country were for practical purposes one English nation, one part of whom spoke a kind of French as a mere fashion, there was no harm in using that language, which was after all the usual speech of those who had most to do with the business of Government, while only the small class of learned men knew Latin. ^ How English in its turn drove out French has been already described. So far nothing has been said of the literature of the country after the Norman Conquest. Now books plainly imply people to read them or hear them read, and so the languages in which they are written must, one would think, be those which are spoken in the country. Why then were so many books written in Latin during the Middle Ages 1 One reason is that, as the Church Service and the Bible were ^ Norman Conquest, vol. v. pp. 529, 530. ^ The clergy were not a very small class taken together ; but a large number of tlie inferior clergy knew very little Latin. 170 History of English in Latin, whicli was regarded as a sacred language, the clergy and monks were almost obliged to know something of it; and, in fact, it almost held the position of a vernacular or spoken language among the more learned members of the clerical and learned population of Europe. And it was not only a sacred language but a cultivated language, with models in the Latin classics which could be more or less copied, and which invited imitation. We must remember, too, that in the early part of the Middle Ages French, and Provengal, and Italian, and the other Romance lan- guages (see pp. 33, 55, 56), were mere vulgar dialects of Latin, and it was natural that books should be written rather in the cultivated than in the vulgar or popular dialects of the language. So that, while these dialects were developing intp distinct languages, Latin had the chance of fixing itself as the learned language of Europe. In Germany, Scandinavia, and England, on the other hand, Latin was from the first a foreign language, and owed its position to its use by the Church, to reverence for classical culture, and to the example of the rest of Europe. But England had, as we have seen, to a large extent stood apart from the rest of Europe by using its own tongue for writing books. It is true that the books produced in North- umbria, such as the works of the Venerable Bade, were mostly written in Latin. Even later, after English prose had through Alfred's example come thoroughly into use as a cultivated language, some books, especially histories, written in England were in Latin, such as the life of Alfred, attributed to Asser, and the work of ' Patricius Consul Fabius Quaestor Ethelwer- dus,' who in English was plain '^Selweard ealdormann.' Still, on the whole, English literature was remarkable for being chiefly written in English. But, as has been said, William the Conqueror replaced the English bishops and abbots, as soon as he had the chance, by foreigners. These men, the natural heads of the learned class in England, Foreign Ascendency 171 were not likely to encourage the barbarous insular custom of writing histories, for instance, in English.^ Besides, the Norman Conquest increased the general intercourse of England with the Continent enormously, and brought England under Continental influence. And so we find that, though there was a great deal of English history written in England in the twelfth century,^ its language (except in the Peterborough Chronicle) was Latin. And it is somewhat remarkable that the satires of the twelfth century on the Pope and the Clergy should also have been written in Latin. But the upper classes of society did not, for the most part, understand Latin. For them there were the Romances, the Tales of Charlemagne, and, a little later, of Arthur and his Knights. Some of these were written in Normandy, some in other parts of France, some in England. But these last were in a French dialect as well as the others, though some of them were afterwards translated into English ; they would naturally be written in the language of those who took most interest in the deeds of knights like themselves. • Besides this, there was during this period a literature in English : sermons, poems of various kinds, translations of French Romances, and one regular Chronicle, just like the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles before the Conquest, written at Peterborough, and carried down to the end of Stephen's reign, for those who spoke, and read, or listened to English by preference, or who understood no other language. The English between the Conquest and about 1450 is best called 'Middle English.' ^ Professor Earle (Two of the, Saxon Chronicles, introduction, p. xxiii. ) thinks that Lanfrano caused one of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles to be trans- ferred from Winchester to Canterbury, and to be brought up to date (1070) there. But still this is not quite the same thing as encouraging the writing of fresh histories in English. And Lanfranc was a man of special enlighten- ment. ' By Florence of Worcester, Simeon of Durham, William of Malmesbnry, Henry of Huntingdon. 1 7 2 History of English Beginning of the 'Eoman de Rou' By Wace, a native of Jersey, and Canon of Bayeux in Normandy, who lived from about 1090 to 1180. Pur 1 remembrer des ancesurs Les f eiz e les diz ^ e les murs, Les felunies des feluns E les barnages des baruns, Deit I'um les livres e les gestes E les estoires lire a festes. Si escripture ne fust feite E puis par clers litte e retraite Mult fussent choses ubli6es Ki de viez tens sunt trespass^es. The French Chronicle of London ' Written about 1350. xiij.* Henry Darcy, meir, William Pountfreit et Hughe Marberer, vicountes. En cele an nostre joevene roy se apparila ove graunt poer des Engleis et de Gales, si passa la mar k Orewelle en Essex, ' Meyer, Hecueil d'Anciens Textes Bos-Latins Provenfaux et Franfais, 2^ Partie, Aneien Franfais. Paris, 1877. ' In order to remember the acts and words and customs of our ancestors, the low crimes of the felons and the high deeds of the barons, one ought to read at feasts the books and the knightly tales and the histories. If writing had not been made, and then read and told by clerks, many things would have been forgotten which have passed away a long time ago.' ' Pronounced ' ieits, ' ' dits. ' All vowels and consonants are to be sounded (see above). ' Edited from a MS. in the Cottonian Library, by G. J. Aungier, Camden Society, 1844. * 'Thirteenth (year of Edward III.) Henry Darcy, mayor, William Pountfreit and Hugh Marberer, sheriffs. ' In that year our young King prepared himself with a great power of Englishmen and of Wales, so he crossed the sea at Orwell in Essex, and came Foreign Ascendency 1 7 3 et ariva sus en Flaundres, et ses gentz passerent avant en le ysle de Cagent, et tuerent touz qe leinz porroyent estre trovez, et si avoyent illoqes graunt avoir, et puisse ardoient BUS tot le dit isle. Et adonke nostre joevene roy prist son host, si s'en ala en Braban, et demorra pur long temps k Andwerp, et tint illoqes son parlement, et 1^ furent jurez k luy tous ceux de Flaundres, de Braban, de Henaud, et de Alemaygne k nostre joevene roy, de vivere et morir ovesqe luy en sa querele vers le roy de Fraunce. Auxint nostre joevene roy graunta d'estre lour lige seignour, de vivere et morir ovesqe eux et lur defendre et meintenir vers totes gentz de mounde pur touz jours. lip to land in Flanders, and his people crossed before into the isle of Cagent (Cadsand), and killed all that therein could be found, and so had there great possessions (spoil), and then burnt up all the said isle. And then our young King took his host, so he went thence into Brabant, and stayed for a long time at Antwerp, and held there his parliament, and there were sworn to him all those of Flanders, of Brabant, of Hainault, and of Germany, to our young King, to live and die with him in his quarrel against the King of France. And so our young King consented to be their liege lord, to live and die with them and defend and maintain them against all people in the world for ever. ' CHAPTER XIV EFFECTS OF THE NORMAN CONQUEST UPON ENGLISH' Loss of Old English poetical style — Dialects put on an equality.— Simplifica- tion and shortening of inflexions — English spelt as French — French idioms — French words in English — Their first appearance — How they were introduced — Duplicate words — French words with English terminations — 'Hybrid ' words — Influx of French words about 1280 — French words of Government, War, Architecture, Medicine, Sport, Religion — Words related in French and English — Pronunciation — French and English accent.^ We have now seen that French was the ordinary speech of the upper classes in England for 300 years from the Norman Conquest; that during this time it divided the field of literature in England with Latin and English ; and that for the second half of the period (about 1215-1362) French was, exclusively, the language of Government and Law. Being thus in contact with English, it could not fail to leave its mark upon itj which it did in four ways. (1) The ascendency of French practically destroyed the cultivated or ' standard ' West Saxon English, and especially the old-fashioned form of it used in poetry. It degraded the cultivated West Saxon dialect, putting all other dialects on a level with it, and helping on the tendency to pare down and obscure its terminations. (2) It altered English spelling, so as to make it agree with Norman-French models. (3) It introduced French idioms into English. ^ Freeman, Norman Conquest. Kington Oliphant, Old and Middle English. Earle, Philology of the English Tongue. Sweet, History of English Sounds. Braohet, Historical French Qrammar, translated by Kitchin. Skeat, Principles of English Etymology, First and Second Series. Effects of Norman Conquest upon English 175 (4) A very large number of French words were brought into English, andjbesides them, a good many words direct from Latin. Of these changes (1) began at once, as soon, that is, as the generation* born before the Conquest had died out; the change in spelling also began at the same time, and was completed by about 1400 ; both (3) and (4) begin soon after the Conquest, but the inroad of French words took place to a much greater extent towards the end of the period during which French was ,in the ascendant. (1) We must remember that, down to the Conquest culti- vated West-Saxon English had been the literary language, besides being the speech of the Court of Winchester ; and the English were still ' in touch ' with their literature. English prose and poetry were not merely for the monks and clergy. The earls and thanes and other Englishmen, even if they could not read, would like to hear and learn the B6owulf, the Song of Brunanburh and of Maldon, and other battle-songs, such as were sung around the camp-fires in the night before the battle of Hastings ; and the more devout among them would take pleasure in such poems as those ascribed to Caed- mon, and that on the finding of the True Cross. And poetry of the old form was still a living art, besides the new style which was growing up. There is in one of the Anglo-Saxon Ohronicles a short poem on the death of Edward the Con- fessor and the accession of Harold, evidently contemporary — that is, written in the earlier half of 1066 A. d. Here are the last six lines of it — And se f roda swa J>eah • befseste Jjset rice ■ th& old man yet entrusted the kingdom, heah tSungenum menn • Harolde sylfum • to-an-UluslHous ma»(dat.) Harold (him-)sdf sejielum eorle • se in ealle tfd ■ a noble earl who all time hyrde holdlice • haerran sinum ■ served loyally lord his 176 History of English wordum and dssdum • wihte ne agsfelde. in-words in-deeds a whit not was-careless Ipses ]>e >earf waes • Jjses Jieod kyninges. aiout-what {tlie) need was of-the people's-Jeing. In this poem we find the characteristics of the Old English poetical style, not only a different order of the words from that used in prose, but the use of purely poetical words, such as hcerra, sin. It is interesting as the last effort of ' classical ' Anglo-Saxon poetry. For after the Conquest English lost its educated patrons. The bishops and abbots were replaced by foreigners. The earls and thanes, the courtiers of the Court of Winchester, the cultured laymen, were mostly dead or in exile, or at least they had lost their commanding position. With them the cultivated English had lost its patrons and its ascendency; the patronage of the new upper class was given to French poetry. And as Anglo-Saxon poetry was to such a remark- able extent in an old-fashioned style artificially preserved, far removed from the ordinary talk of Englishmen, it could hardly survive the loss of its educated patrons. Thus we find that Henry of Huntingdon, who wrote about 1150 A.D., within a century of the Norman Conquest, though he is fond of the old songs in the Chronicles and translates them in his Latin history, makes many mistakes in rendering them, just as any one might do now who knew only Anglo-Saxon prose. In fact, the tradition of Old English poetry died at the Conquest.^ Henceforward, too, all dialects were on a level. West Saxon was no longer the Court language. Winchester was no longer the one capital of England. ' At Easter,' we are told, 'William wore his crown at Winchester, at Pentecost at Westminster, and at midwinter (Christmas) at Gloucester.' ^ And even if Winchester had still been the capital, this would have made little difference, for the language spoken at Court ' But its metre survived in some shape till 1500 and later. ' Peterborough Chronicle, 1086. Barle's Anglo-Saxon Chronicles. Effects of Norman Conquest upon English 177 was no longer any dialect of English, but Norman-French. All dialects therefore being equal, if any one wished to write an English book, he wrote it in that dialect of English which he himself spoke — in the West Saxon or Southern dialect, if he lived in the South; but in Northumbrian, or East or West Midland English, if his home was elsewhere. And with the loss of its rank as a ' standard ' speech. West Saxon seems to have taken a step downwards, not only in its position as superior to other dialects, but in the character of the language itself. In the same way, if we could imagine French substi- tuted for German in Germany as the chief language of books and of educated speech, there can be no doubt that the talk of those who still spoke German would become much nearer to the speech of the lower classes, and would no longer mark its inflexions so fully and clearly. And this would gradually extend to the written language, as it did in England. If English was a vulgar language, though practically useful, it did not much matter how it was spoken. And writers were bound to follow the spoken language, however slowly and reluctantly. Still, the effect on Southern English was, for the most part, to pare down the terminations which marked gender, case, and so on, but not to annihilate them. It is wonderful how long they survived in some shape or other ; and this shows that they were a most natural and necessary pa/t of Southern English (or West Saxon) before the Conquest. We must look elsewhere for the main causes which finally did away with them, first in the East Midlands and in Northumbria, where they died out, all but a very few, much earlier'than in the South and West. It will make what has been said clearer, if we take two specimens — one of an English sermon, written not very long before the Conquest, and the second of the same sermon, re-written so as to be easily understood in the second half of the twelfth century. 1 7 8 History of English THE DAY OF PENTECOST A Homily written in the beginning of the Eleventh Century. 1 Fram tSam halgan easterlican dsege sind getealde fiftig daga From the holy Easter- day are counted fifty days to Jiysum daege, and Jjes daeg is gehd,ten Pentecostes, Jiset is, to this day and this day called that is, se fifteogoSa daeg Jiaere easterlican tide. Pes daeg wees on the fiftieth day of-ihe Master- season. This day was in Saere ealdan £ gesett and gehalgod. God bebead Moyse on the old law appointed hallowed. ordered in 5 Egypta-lande Jiset h6 and eall Israhela folc sceoldon the-Bgyptians' -land all Israel's people should offrian set selcum hiwisce Gode an lamb anes geares and offer from each household to-God a of -one year mearcian mid }iam blode rode-tacn on heora gedyrum and TTWErfc with the ilood sign-of-the-Cross their door-posts of erslegum, Sa on ?Saere nihte f erde Godes engel, and acwealde lintels, then that went angel, killed on aelcum huse Sees Egyptiscan folces ]jset frumcennyde in each house of-the Egyptian people the first-horn 10 cild and Jiaet leofoste. And Israhela folc ferde on tSaere child and the dearest. went ylcan nihte of J>am leodscipe, and God hi Isedde ofer tSa saine from the country, them led over thi Readan safe mid drium fptum.^ Red Sea with dry feet. ' Thorpe, Mlfrvis Homilies, 1844. Effects of Norman Conquest upon English 179 The same adapted so as to be intelligible in the second half of the Twelfth Century. (All words substituted by ^Ifric's adapter, and these only, are translated.) 1 [F]ram ]jan halie hester dei '■ boS italde . fifti da3a ' an to Jiisse deie and J>es dei is ihaten pentecostes Jiet is ]?e fiftuSa dei fram ]3an ester tid. Jies dei wes on from, the Jjere aide lase iset and ihalden. God het Moyses on law kept. ordered 5 egipte londe J^et he and al J>et israelisce folc ^ sculden the Israelitish people offrien of elchan hiwscipe gode an lomb of ane 3eres and from of merki mid Jpan blode hore duren . and hore ouersleaht. their koors, lintel ]>a. on ]>ere ilke nihte f iwende godes engel to and acwalde saTne went to on elche huse of J^am egiptissen folche Jjet frumkenede of the 10 childe and ]pet lefeste '. and ]jet israelisce folc ferde on Jiere the Israelitish , ilea nihte of Jiam londe. ' and god hom ledde ofer Jia land. them rede se ' mid dru3e fotan.* •■ 3 = ' (h)y ' or something of the kind. It comes from the softening^lPa G, see p. 183. ^ Inserted (not in MXiria), fet he fider iled hefde i >et heo. that he thither led had ; that they. ^ Inserted (not in ^Ifric), forSon muchele wawen "jiet hi ]jer iSoleden. for the great woes thai they there endured. * Morris, Old English Homilies, 1867. i8o History of English It is really hardly necessary to lay stress on the change which had taken place in the language. First of all, some of the words had become- obsolete — a process which is always going on in all language — and so the man who re-wrote the sermon found it advisable to change svnd into 60S, and de into the Danish la-i^e. Secondly, we see the process of softening C and Gr, which began before the Conquest, in chili for did, elchan for (Mcwm, and in halie for Mlgan, dei for dceg, iset for gesett (see p. 214, etc.), as well as the loss of the old diphthongs. Thirdly, there is the ' levelling ' of the vowel of the inflexions in offrien for offrian, sadden for sceoldon, to an E with no very distinct sound, as in German terminations at the present day. And sometimes there is a still greater loss, as we see in halie, Ipisse, aide, and other words, as compared with their older form. Merki^ and tid have lost their terminations altogether. Horn (older form heom) for hi shows us the dative of he ' crowding out ' the accusative (p. 114). On the other hand, there are plenty of inflexions left ; ]>a (accusative singular feminine) at the end of the piece, ]iere (dative singular feminine), ']>et . . . folc,' because /oic is neuter, ' mid ^an blode ' (dative singular neuter). So too most of the other terminations are ' levelled ' in their vowel and clipped, but few are gone altogether. We shall see the same state of things in Layamon, who wrote somewhat later (p. 245). No doubt many of these changes had begun, at least in popular English, before the Conquest.^ >^ The I is not a part of the termination hut a connecting vowel, as it is in meare-i-an, compared \iit\i find-an. It still survives in many words in the Somersetshire dialect. ^ The vowels of ' da3a, ' ' fiftuSa, ' ' elchan,' and ' fotan,' are prohahly due to the scribe copying those words without fully reducing them to his own language. This is also plain in ' of ane 5ere«. ' Mr. Sweet {History of English Sow^ff^ p. 155) says: 'Many twelfth century texts, such as the Hatton Manuscript of the Gospels, Morris's Old English Homilies, show a mixture of Old English and Middle English forms, which is the result of copying from Old English originals, and only partially modernising them. Such texts do not represent any actual language.' But this specimen hardly seems to stand on a level with the Gospels of about 1160, where whole verses have hardly been altered at all. The forms in general, with some exceptions, such as those referred to in the note, are supported by Layamon, e.g., who certainly had no English original to copy. Effects of Norman Conquest upon English i 8i (2) We have seen (p. 119, etc.) that English was originally written as if it had been Latin. It now gradually got to be written as if it had been Norman-French. We must remember that there was no fixed way of spelling words, though every one who copied a book was, of course, inclined to copy its spelling as well, and every one who was used to writing naturally tended to spell words as he had been used to see them. But there were no fixed rules as there are now, and the object of every one who wrote down a word was to write it as it sounded. When, therefore, a scribe was used to writing Norman-French books, and had the sound of Norman- French and the look of its words in his head, he naturally wrote English words more or less as a Norman would do who knew no English. We will take some of these changes in spelling, choosing those only which have survived in Modern English. It must always be remembered that English vowels were still pronounced like Latin ('new,' or correct pronunciation), Italian, or roughly like German, though some of the con- sonants were getting softened ; also, that in Norman-French J, CH, QU, and soft G were pronounced, not as in Modern French, but as in English at present. U was changed to OU (or OW) ; thus — hdjS became yious ])ii „ thou M „ out c&p „ (un-)couth M „ hou, and how U was used between vowels for F, which in Old English expressed the sound both of F and V. Thus we have cmi/re (c^fre in Anglo-Saxon) and Lauerd (Anglo-Saxon Eldford). U and V^ were employed both as vowels and consonants, and so we find such curious -looking words as vp {up), tmel ' V is often a vowel at the beginning of words. U is generally employed between two vowels. So it was even in the Authorised Version, in its original spelling, e.g. St. John vii. 53 : ' And ewery man went vnto his owne house. ' — Earle, -Philology of the English Tongue. 1 8 2 History of English {mel = evil). UU, VV, or W were written for the Old English Runic letter p, as in uuerse and uuerse on p. 228. But W was also used as a vowel with the sound of U, as in how, for the older M, as explained above. There is a good deal of confusion in these modes of spelling, but it was only necessary to make V exclusively a consonant and U exclu- sively a vowel to get something like our modern spelling in most of these words and in others like them. As C was in French pronounced soft (like S)^ before E and I, the Old English hard was^ turned into K before those vowels, since otherwise the spelling would, on French principles, have suggested that it should be pronounced soft. So we get king for cyning or cyng, and hene for cine. On the other hand, as the hard sound was just the same before other vowels (A, 0, U), K is sometimes used for C before them as well, as in selkouth. . And now that English C was no longer regarded as a hard letter before E, such French words as face, vice, on being introduced into English, could and did keep their French spelling. And such words have infected the spelling of native English words, such as mice, once, twice (for mys, dnes, twies). CW was changed to QU, thus — cwen became qv^en civic „ quic, or quick. H in the middle of a word was ' guttural ' in Old English, like German CH, as in liht, niht ; Lowland Scotch or Modern Northumbrian licht, nicht. The same fact is shown by the word next, which is the superlative of nigh, and was in Anglo- Saxon written nihst,^ and by buxom, originally Mhsom — that is to say, low -some, 'pliable,' 'obedient,' according to its earliest sense. Now the French H had not this guttural ' Or (at first) like TS. ^ So too aoik't Is Lancashire for sighed. Effects of Norman Conquest upon English 1 8 3 sound. So the words were re-spelt l%i,t}- ni^i, or light, night (implying the same sound), and the latter spelling has prevailed. TH is often written for the old Eunic letter p, and gradually drove it out altogether. We sometimes see them appearing together, as in Ipe, the, \u, thu, on pp. 228, 229. P left a relic till quite recent times in y* for the, since ]> got to be written precisely like y. The compound letter M, se, was dropped, not being used in French, and E or AI was written for it {ckfre, euere, ever ; wdgen, wmn, wain). Besides AI a number of fresh combina- tions of vowels appear, representing changes of pronunciation, or, at first, specially French sounds. But the examples given above will be suflBcient to mark the general character of the change in our spelling, and we must remember that these did not involve any change of pronunciation. It was merely that the scribe, being used to the look and sound of French, and regarding it as the more refined language, wrote down English sounds as if they had occurred in French words. If phonetic spelling were to come into use in English now, and we began to write it thus — on Lindan, wen dha sen w8z Ion, aol bladlea lei dh' antrodn snou,^ it would look as if a great change had taken place in English pronunciation at the end of the nineteenth century, whereas the change would be only in our way of marking the sounds in writing.^ Changes in pronunciation did take place as well, and were probably in part due to the position and influence of French, but these will be discussed in the next chapter. ' 3, originally a form of G, in the middle of a word = 6H, or German CH ; a sound wHch. may be represented in English by HY (Y as a consonant, of course). 2 Skeat, Principles of Briglish Etymology, First Series, p. 339. ' There is, of course, a question whether this spelling represents the average pronunciation. In the text it is assumed that it does. The change would also be greater, because we should be making up arrears. The spelling has been getting more and more unlike the sound since 1400. 1 84 History of English It is plain that, as the spelling of English was altered to accommodate it to French, French words, such as face, vice, pais, or pees (peace), could come into the language without alteration in their spelling, as we shall see that they did.^ (B) French idioms made their way into the language. This must necessarily have been the case. People who usually spoke French would naturally introduce French idioms into their English talk, just as schoolmasters not unfrequently see English idioms in (manuscript) Latin prose, and as an Englishman is inclined to write and say ' II a sorti ' for the correct French idiom 'II est sorti' Besides this, people who translated a book from French into English would copy some of its turns of expression, to some extent unconsciously. But these idioms are rather hard to detect with certainty. For different languages often have the same phrase or turn of expression, not because the one has borrowed it from the other, but because men's minds are more or less the same in different countries. But the following are tolerably certain examples of the borrowing of French idioms.^ The use of of (preposition with the dative) for the genitive case, just as de is used in French. Thus in the Peterborough Chronicle for the year 1091 we get — waere se cyng yrfe numa of eallon Normandig ; (were should- '■ \ '■■bej the heir aU whUe in the next sentence the older English form is retained — yrfe numa eaUes Engla landes. So in the entry for the year 1085 we have Cnut cyng of Den mearcan, and Will'm Engla landes cyng. ' As has been said above, the sounds of the vowels were mostly much the same in the two languages. Where they were not, English had been adapted to French. Thus English U was written 00 because U to a French- man meant (in many words) Devonshire U, or German ti. ^ From Kington Oliphant's Old and Middle English. Effects of Norman Conquest upon English 1 8 s These are early examples ; later on, in the Ormulum, written before 1200 a.d. (see p. 231), we get gife off Godd, as well as Godess gife, burrh off gerrsalem, instead of the two nouns being in apposition, and a number of expressions like ' the hope oi,' ' need of,' ' loss of,' just as in Modern English, where Anglo-Saxon would have used the genitive.^ This change is, no doubt, partly due to the ' analytical ' tendency — the tendency to use phrases for inflexions, which was present in the language itself, that is, in the Englishmen who spoke it — but it must have been helped by the influence of French. The result is that in Modern English the old genitive is hardly used except to mark the possessor of a thing (for instance, ' my brother's dog '), while an expression like ' nay brother's love,' ^ meaning ' love for my brother,', strikes one as unusual. The old genitive is now not always used even to show the possessor ; we can say either ' the gardener's boots,' or, ' the boots of the gardener.' French had a share in causing this phrase to be used for the termination in English, and such was also the general tendency of its influence. Another French idiom is the use of ye (now you) for thou in addressing a superior, or in polite and formal speech, which comes to the same thing. ^ This distinction is tolerably well marked in Shakespeare, and thou is used familiarly, even so late as 1775, by Mrs. Malaprop in Sheridan's play of The Rivals.^ We are now so universally polite that than, is never heard except in country districts, and from the Quakers, who often show how unnatural the 2nd person singular now is by mangling the grammar, as in 'thee knows.' ^ For me, or for myself, meaning ' as far as concerns myself,' in such expressions as, ' You may go where you like for me,' ^ Kington Oliphant, Old and Middle English, p. 234. 2 Shakespeare, Richard III., I. iv. 229, 230. ' Precisely as in French to this day. * III. iii. ; also in Evelina. ^ But both ' mi.stakes ' are supported by various English dialects (see pp. 85, 86). 1 86 History of English or, ' Fm- myself, I shouldn't do it,' seems to be the French pour moi. ' The most high Prince ' (for the highest) is also probably from the same source, ' le plus haut,' ' le Eoi plus Chritien.' ' They knew not what to do ' (for ' what they should do ') is a French expression — ' ils ne savaient que fake.' So too the use of far to with the infinitive is Norman-French, por h ; and this idiom is found not only in Chaucer but in the Prayer- Book Version of the Psalms (1539 A.D.), 'Thou shalt make room enough under me for to go,' ^ and in the Authorised Version of the Bible, 'For to do whatsoever thy hand and thy counsel determined before to be done.'^ The phrase is now no longer correct English, but it is constantly to be heard from uneducated people, as, for instance, ' I didn't go for to do it.' All these are- now (or have been) regular English idioms. They are not to be found before the Conquest, but examples of them all may be found within the 150 years after it, and show how French was influencing English modes of expression. (4) And the same is the case with French words, only to a far greater extent, though it was towards the end of the period when French was in the ascendant in England that these came in not as 'single spies but in battalions.' However, the advance-guard made its appearance early. Tresor, canceler, canted, prisun, ivstise, rente, privilegie, miracle, all occur in the entry for the one year 1137 in a Chronicle which represents East Midland English very nearly as it was spoken at the time. Now, with some of these words it is possible to find some justification for their coming into English. In the case of canceler, which describes a new ofi&ce, introduced from abroad, it was natural to use a foreign word. lustise, as describing the firm and rather brutal execution of the law among proud and restless nobles, and between two nations still distinct, the justice which Henry I. did and which 1 Psalm xviii. 36. ^ jj^^jg iy_ 28„ Effects of Norman Conquest upon English 1 8 7 Stephen did not do, might fitly have a new word to express what was more or less a new idea. The pivilegies which the Abbot of Peterborough gained for his monastery from the Pope were something not quite new, but at least more commonly granted after the Conquest than before. Carited has something like its special ecclesiastical sense of ' charity,' as representing the caritas of the Latin Bible. ^ Bente too, which was commonly paid to a French-speaking landlord, might naturally be called by the word that he would give to it. But for 'treasure,' 'prison,' and 'miracle,' we certainly had words of our own — hard (now spelt hoard), cweartern, and wundor, meaning precisely the same as the French words. For these then, and for pais (peace), Anglo-Saxon frilp, in the entry for 1135 it is more difficult to account. But we saw before (pp. 141, 143) that certain Latin words had made their way into English, such as Trmnt, cuppe, fckmne, without any apparent necessity. The fact is that, when the speakers of French and the speakers of English were so much mixed as they were, and when so many of the one class knew some- thing at least of the language of the other, French words crept into English — (a) Because the man who usually spoke French brought in French words into his English almost unconsciously.^ (6) Because the speaker of English used them, ' for to be more y-told of.' (c) Because those who wrote books, or translated them from French, though they would mostly use only words in common use, as they do at present, would also sometimes ' But carited is from a form caHteit. In many cases words have really been adopted owing to their occurring in the Latin Bible or Vulgate, but have received a Norman-French form to bring them into line with the numerous Norman- French words in our language. See Skeat, Principles of English Etymology, Second Series, p. 253, etc. " So in The NewcOTnes, vol. i. chap, xxxviii. , the German waiter says : ' Her Excellency the Frau Grahnn von Kew is even now absteiging ; ' absteigen being a German word. 1 88 History of English give currency to a word, or get it accepted through their use of it, just as Sir "Walter Scott brought in following, and Coleridge reliable. Thus we can account for the many cases in English where we have two words with the same meaning, one derived from French, and one pure English, such as — French. English. flower blossom commence begin safe sound pray beg language speech perform do cure heal tempest storm people folk continue go on and a host of others. But in the case of many of the pairs the meaning of the two words was either to begin with slightly different, or one or other word has been ' specialised ' since. There are some lines of Chaucer which illustrate this well — A knyght ther was, and that a worthy man, That fro the tyme }>at he first bigan To ryden out, he loued chiualrye Trouthe and honour, fredom and curteisye. Here, as Professor Earle points out, the French word honov/r had, in the context, the same sense as truth, and cowrtesy as freedom.^ But it was only in one of its meanings, in a par- ticular context, that truth was identical with honour, and freedom with courtesy. And the difference between them has grown so that the last two at least could not be used as synonyms at all. Now it is a distinct gain to a language to have words with different shades of meaning. Thus the French ^ Philology of the English Tongue, p. 83. Mr. Earle remarks that ' I plight thee my troth ' (another form of truth), in the Marriage Service, is the same as saying, ' I pledge thee my honov/r.' Effects of Norman Conquest upon English 189 word pay has taken part of the work of Anglo-Saxon gildan, and left it to mean only yield. Easy discharges part of the former duties of Uht (light), and the language is all the clearer for the additional word. And it is no loss to have two words meaning the same thing. But it is, perhaps, a loss, so far as our sentiment is concerned, that we should have finally parted with so many native English words — a loss which was certain often to occur when two words, one from each language, were contending for the mastery. We should be puzzled now to replace such words as voice, please, pe-ace, praise by native Teutonic words. How- ever, there is no need to distress ourselves about the exchange. It may have been foolish of our ancestors to adopt foreign words without any necessity, but these Norman-French words are now thoroughly naturalised ; they have been in the lan- guage for more than 500 years, even the very youngest of them. Thus they occupy a different position from words like Irusque, prestige, machine, corps, bouquet, which carry the marks of their foreign origin in their pronunciation, though they are now unquestionably part of the English language. Such words as tidive, nomrde-plume, contretemps, and many others, of course hold a still more doubtful position ; they have hardly emerged from the stage where they must be written (apolo- getically) in italics. But we must make up our minds to the fact that, as Normans came to form a part of the English nation, so Norman-French words are a most essential part of the English language. These words, of course, when they were introduced into English, followed the rules of English grammar, just as we say, ' he telegraphei^,' and ' omnibuses,' and were also compounded with English prefixes, suffixes, and words. So while the prefix ge- of the past participle still survived, though in a mutilated shape, we had such forms of the verb as 'we bie]?^ i-entred,' 'i-armed,' and so on. So too we find defend-en (present infinitive) ; amend-e]> (2nd person 1 90 History of English plural imperative, see p. 85) ; acori-edun (3rd person plural past tense) ; gu,ffr-€y ; sacr-id, and acori-zA (past participles) ; and very many other such forms are to be found. The sub- stantives for their plural naturally took -s, just as most of them did in their native land, since this was also a common plural termination in English ; thus we have ledes, iuglurs, figures, quite early.^ The recruits thus gained for the plural in -s must have helped to make it the ordinary English plural, as it already was in the Northern dialect (see p. 134), with which other words, which originally had a different termination, were made to agree by imitation or ' analogy.' "^ So 1)00 we have compound words, ' hybrid ' words, as they are called, like the Chimsera, with a body from the one lan- guage and a tail from the other ; piteows-ly, sudden-lj, deceit-iul, un-pardoned, are familiar examples of this.- But we also used the imported French suffixes, such as -^ment, -ahle, -ous, -ess, -ance, to form English words. For the suffixes were to be found in many French words used in English ; it was easy to distinguish the suffix from the rest of the word, and yet no one thought whether either part was English or foreign, so that by imitation of the words already in the language these suffixes were fastened on to English words where needed. So we get not only pave-ment, but inl&l-ment, abomin-able and lov-aWe, peril-ous and slumbr-OMS, covmt-ess and godd-ess, repent-ance and hindr-a«ce.^ And just as, after the Danes had begun to settle in England, fresh swarms kept coming over to join them, so it has been with French words, and with words passing to us from ^ Adjectives borrowed from French (and occasionally others) also have a plural in -s, as in places delitailes, causes resonables. This is about the only piece of pure French grammar to lie found in English. ^ But the Southern dialect also 'levels ' old plurals (in -u, e.g.) under -en. Hence we find sehipen (ships). We have taken children (Anglo-Saxon dldru, Lancashire childer) as one of the Southern contributions to 'standard' English ; housen is still to be heard in Wiltshire ; kine (like children) is a double plural, the Northern ki/e (Anglo-Saxon c^) being already a plural. ' In the above paragraph the part borrowed from French is in italics. Effects of Norman Conquest upon English 1 9 1 Latin through French. The fresh words which people tried to introduce found other words looking and sounding like them already in the language, and consequently we have never ceased to borrow words from French ever since the Norman Conquest. '^ The easy reception of words like mobilise is due to our having received such words as baptise in the period when Norman-French and English were spoken side by side in England. It has already been said that it is towards the end of the period during which French was spoken in England that most French words were adopted into our language. They began to come in ' in battalions ' towards the end of the thirteenth century. The reason of this was as follows.^ We have seen that early in the thirteenth century the speaking and writing of French received a new impulse, from its being the Court language all over Europe. French was now regarded in England not in the least as ' a badge of conquest,' but as the more refined language.^ In consequence of this fashion, though throughout the time between the Norman Conquest and Magna Charta (1215 A.D.) many books had been written in the various English dialects, yet between 1220 and 1280 hardly any English was written ; although, of course, it con- tinued to be spoken, and there were now in all probability hardly any Englishmen who could not speak it if they chose. Now we know, if we think for a moment, that the words used in ordinary conversation are a small part of any language. At the present day the words used in ordinary English talk are from 3000 to 5000 in number, while Milton uses about 8000, and Shakespeare 15,000.* When English ^ But now, when a word is fully naturalised, we usually go by tlie spelling, and sound it like English. In the twelfth to fifteenth centuries, as we have seen, the two languages were sounded pretty much alike. " See Kington Oliphant, Old and Middle English. ' That this view was not confined to England is shown in Braohet, His- torical French Grammar, p. 21. See also Freeman's Norman Conquest, vol. V. pp. 529, 530. * Whitney, Language and its Study, edited by Morris, pp. 18, 23. 192 History of English books began to be written once more, about 1280 A.D., those English words which did not occur in ordinary talk were obsolete. Few people were alive whose memories reached back to the time when English was commonly written and read. But the gap had to be supplied somehow. The taste for making or using compound words, especially those formed with prepositions, which exists in German at the present day, had died out, particularly iij the East Midland dialect ; we may say that the power had been lost by disuse, just as people's brains lose their vigour if they are not used.''^ But there was a language still existing side by side with English, which had never ceased to be a literary language. Many words borrowed from it were already thoroughly naturalised. Many more must have been occasionally introduced into English talk. And it was not unnatural, therefore, that more should be brought in from the spoken and written French to fill the gaps,^ especially as there was then no such gulf between English and French pronunciation as there is now. As to the parts of our language in which French words occur, there are hardly any subjects which can be talked or written about without using some French words. Even in those classes of terms which are usually most permanent (see pp. 19, 20), we have unde, aunt, nephew, niece, cousin, as names of relations, and, among numerals, other has been turned out of the language in favour of second, except only in the phrase ' every other day.' But there are certain classes of terms in which French words actually predominate. ^ This is really a metaphor ; any one conld make any number of com- pound English Words now, but others would not adopt them, so that it would be useless. Compound words are strange to us, and ' do not sound right. ' So the verbs outspeak, outstep, instrike, in Browning's Hervl Kiel, draw our attention at once. To-break (Judges ix. 53) is a .solitary survivor of the words formed with this prefix which once existed, and the formation is so unfamiliar that very few understand the word, which means ' break in pieces,' or ' smash. * ' Orm, about 1200 A.D., has only four or five French words in the whole of his very long poem. Robert of Gloucester, about 1300 a.d., has 100 in his first 500 verses. Robert Mannyng, about 1340 a.d., has 170 in the same number of lines. See Koch, Historische Qram-maiik der Engliadwn Sprache. Effects of Norman Conquest upon English 193 (1) In titles, as is natural. Here King and Quwn are native English, but sovereign, royal, royalty are French; so too are prince And. princess. Knight and lady are pure English ; earl is English, though with its meaning altered by the Danish use of its sister-word jarl. But countess is French, and so are duke, marquis, viscount, baron, with their feminine forms, except marchioness ; ^ so too is esquire. Gentleman is half French, half English; mayor is French ; sheriff and alderman English ; clerk and bailiff are French, while beadle is English. So too with the terms of government. Parliament and Privy Council are French. Lords is an English word, but its synonym peers is FrencL So is also Commons. And in a most important part of the business of government, the administration of justice, we find (as we should expect from the law courts having used French so long) only a few words, such as witness, which are native English. Law is Danish, but assizes, circuit, cowrt, justicej judge, jury, defendant, prisoner, counsel, verdict, sentence, are all French. And sometimes terms of law have so entirely kept their French shape that they can be recognised at a glance, as in peine forte et dure, and trespass damage feasant (faisant). '(2) The terms of war are mostly French. This is true of words brought in in more modern times, as well as of words of earlier introduction. In the older class fortress, fort, tower, moat, battlement, portcullis, warrior, lance, are French, while the arms which ordinary soldiers would use have mostly English names, such as bow, arrow, spea/r, sword, shield. Wall was borrowed from Latin at a very early period (see p. 140), gate is a purely native word. But the improvements in the art of war, which were largely concerned with the fortification of castles, brought their own names with them from abroad. In the same way in later times we have gone on borrowing military terms. For we have not been great inventors in this ' Taken straight from Latin marchionissa. 194 History of English field, though we have shown some capacity for using the inventions. So general, colonel, mptain, sergeant, corporal, army, corps, regiment, battalion, camp, cannon, musket, ca/rbine, bayonet, grenade, bomb, have all come to us from French, though some of these words were borrowed by the French themselves from the Spaniards ^ or from the Italians,^ both of which nations were at certain periods great in the art of war. (.3) Architecture is full of French words. Edward the Confessor got foreign workmen to build the original Westminster Abbey, and later on Gothic architecture came to us from France. With the foreign style and work- men came foreign terms. Wall, as we have seen, and also tile are words borrowed from Latin at an early period ; stone is pure English, and window Danish ; but arch, porch, pillar, brick, morta/r, chisel, plumb, plummet, trowel, mason, are all French. (4) The Doctor's art is full of words borrowed from French. Many of the clergy studied it, who would be obliged to know some French (as also would the laymen who were doctors) for the purposes of their profession. And if the doctors knew both languages, French was the more ' refined ' lan- guage to use, and the names of diseases especially sound brutal in the ' vulgar ' tongue. The description of the Doctor in the Prologue to the Canterbury Tales is full of words which are French in form, such as phisik, swrgerye, pacient, practisov/r, humour, drogges (drugs), letuaries (electuaries), diete, pestilence, cordial.^ (5) It is usually said that there are many French words in English connected with 'the chase.' And so no doubt there ought to be, considering the fondness of the Normans for that amusement and the pains taken by the upper classes, their descendants or successors who spoke French, to keep it to themselves. But though such words were once very numerous, * e.g. grenade. ^ e.g. colonel. ' Derived from Latin, as are the great mass of French words ; but some of them {phisik, swrgerye, e.g.) come ultimately from Greek. Effects of Norman Conquest upon English 195 the character of sport has altered so much within the last three centuries that very many of them have become obsolete (like the expression ' the chase ' referred to above) ; and the new sporting terms are mostly English. The changes in sport and in its terms are due mainly to the substitution of shooting for hawking, and to a change in the whole character of hunting. Many of the words for the different kinds of hawks — falcon, peregrine, tercel, merlin — are French, and their jesses, lures, and mews also have French names. From the same language come the names for many of the birds at which they were flown, such as heron, partridge, pheasant. It is correct to speak of a covey {cowvie. Old French covee, or brood) of partridges, and a hexy of quails. Though, on the other hand, some of the technical terms of hawking, such as pitch,^ stoop, are not French, the number of French words connected with the sport was (and is) very large. With the old-fashioned form of stag-hunting are con- nected such words as quarry (from curde, originally part of a slain animal given to the hounds),^ mart, the notes on the bugle sounded when the deer was killed, and many others. Kennel is also Norman-French.^ Many words connected with horses are also French, such as amble, trot, gallop, and stable, though horses were of course not exclusively used for hunting. But the proportion of French words to English in the technical terms of shooting is not greater than it is in the English language in general, and the terms used in fox-hunting, such as hound, hunt, meet, find, run, death, 'ware wheat,' are almost exclusively English. The reason is that shooting, and hunting in its modern form, are of much later invention than the time when speakers of French monopolised sport. As if to remind ^ e.g. These growing feathers pluok'd from Csesar's wing Will make him fly an ordinary pitch. Julius Ccesar, I. i. 77, 78. It seems to be from this technical term that expressions lilce ' to reach such a, pitch ' are derived. ^ Skeat, Etymological Dictionary. 196 History of English us of the old state of things, the word 'battw has come into English within the last fifty years, though it has a rival in the half-English word cover{t)-shooting. As was said above, chase is nearly obsolete as a sporting term. We speak of a steeple-cJiase and a paper-chase, but no longer of a, fox-chase as our ancestors did. (6) Our greatest loss at the time when English was borrow- ing so largely from French was in dropping our native religious terms, and adopting foreign words instead of them, whether these were French or borrowed direct from Latin. As long as a word is merely a name to mark a simple thing, it does not much matter whether a division of the country, for instance, is called shire (English), or county (French), whether its governor is called earl or coimt. But when we come to words for ideas difficult to grasp, it is a distinct gain that the word should of itself say what it means, without our having to learn its sense as in a foreign language. It is fortunate that we borrowed the verb save from French, as well as its derivative Sammr. Otherwise the latter word could not carry its meaning with it, as HcMend, the Healer, necessarily did. So Redeemer to any one ignorant of Latin conveys no distinct meaning unless be has been specially taught it, whereas Agairirbuyer'^ has its meaning written on its face. The same is the advantage of godspellere over evangelist, of fullian ^ (to wash, or clean) over baptize, of '\ir'§nnes * (threeness) over Trinity. Even in 1340 (see p. 263) it was possible to have the . Apostles' Creed in English without any foreign words except general, in general-liche, and one or two which had been part of the language for centuries, y-pyned (Latin poena) and cherche (KvpiaKov). But it was not very unnatural that the better educated among the clergy, who wrote the religious books, should bring in French and Latin words. ' Kington Oliphant, Old and Middle English, p. 526. " Formed from Latin fullo, a fuller or cleaner of cloth. ' There is a took written in the Southern Dialect, in 1340, oiWtA. Ayeribiti (Again-bite) of Inwyt. We should now have to say ' Remorse of Conscience.' Effects of Norman Conquest upon English i<^7 They -were obliged to know French, if only to hear the confessions of a large part of their flock. They were not above the idea that there was a certain refinement in using French words, and solemnity in using Latin ones. The use of the Latin Bible drew their language in the same direction, and some words, such as scr'ihe for writere, were borrowed directly from it. And those who first took to using foreign religious terms set the fashion to the rest. Moreover, such ideas as repentance, propitiation, regeneration, could plainly not be expressed in English except by compound words, and these were going out of use soon after 1200, especially in the East Midlands, whence, for the most part, our modern ' standard ' English comes. Fashion was against them ; for some reason or another they ' did not sound well.' If, then, compound English words were not to be tolerated, it was necessary to borrow the words ready-made from French or Latin. These had the advantage of sounding learned and solemn ; the disadvantage that they were, in themselves, unin- telligible. Thus, though Msel, or, as it was now spelt in the French manner, housel, being a simple word, lived on for a long time, both as substantive and verb, and is used so late as by Shakespeare, its compounds Msel-bearn, Msel-disc, Msel-gang, were disused in favour of foreign words, and of phrases, and thus we now use instead of them communicant, paten, going to the Communion. Such are some of the classes of words in which the inroad of French has been largest. But it extends more or less to the whole of the language, except the definite and indefinite articles (the, a, an), the ])ronouns, and the auxiliary verbs {be, have, may, shall, and so on). In our ordinary talk we could hardly get on without such words zs pay, money, wages, habit, beauty, part. Agriculture is tolerably free. It has already been noticed by Trench ^ that the words for the live animals 1 Study of Words, twelfth edition, pp. 98-100. Quoted in Earle, Philology of the English Tongue. 1 98 History of English (which are eventually eaten) are pure English, but that, when they are served up at table, ox becomes heef; sheep, mutton; pig, porh ; and calf, veal. This can 'hardly be altogether due to the fact that the English serf or villein fed them, and the French-speaking landowner ate them. Many persons who spoke English habitually must have been in a position to eat meat. It is rather that the way of speaking at table followed the custom of the upper classes. It did not matter what the animal was called in the field or the farmyard. At table it would have been 'vulgar' to call the meat by its English name. As to the ultimate source of these French words, most of them are from Latin, since the bulk of the French language is derived from ' Low ' or popular Latin. Some, such as many of the medical terms used in the description of Chaucer's Doctor, came to Latin from Greek. But French contains also many Teutonic words, which the Franks brought into the language, just as the Normans brought French words into English. And some of these found sister-words already in English, so that it is impossible in some cases to say whether the French term would seem to those who adopted it into English to be a new word, or merely a different pronunciation or form of a word which they already had.i In some cases we still have both forms, as — English. French. rich riches (richesse) hard hardy (other-)wise guise ward guard mark, march marqu-(is) Sometimes a word came back through French which was a still more distant relation of a corresponding English word. Thus the French nevm is derived from Latin nepos, and, 1 So we saw (p. 143) that Old English colic gave way to the French form chalice, as regol did to reiile, or Hide (rule). These are ultimately from Latin calic{-em) and regv,l{-am), respectively. Effects of Norman Conquest upon English 199 according to Grimm's Law, nepos is the same word as Anglo- Saxon nefa. The French form of this word finally prevailed.^ Now the only sound way to find out the derivation of a word is to trace its history carefully, or to consult the books of those who have done so. Still, we shall in most cases be right if, when we find the same identical word both in English and French, we consider that English is the borrower, for French has borrowed comparatively very few words from English, mostly in modern times.^ But both may have bor- rowed the word independently from Latin. In many cases, however, it is quite clear that English has taken the word from French, and not directly from Latin, by the form of the word. Thus voice is plainly derived from Anglo-French voice and not from vox ; honour from Anglo - French honowr, as the U shows, and not from Latin hoTwr. So too estate cannot be taken straight from Latin statum,^ but comes from Norman-French estat, the E having been put on at the beginning to make the word easier to say, ST being to a Frenchman or Norma,n a hard combination of letters to pronounce at once. In the same way esquire comes ultimately from scutarium ( = shield-bearer), but directly from Old French escuyer. So too hour, honest still retain a trace of their French origin by their H being dropped, as in French, and herh, hospi- tal, humble, and humow were, till almost our own time, pro- nounced in the same way.* But the history of many words ' We must always remember that the resemblance of an English to a French word is in some cases due merely to the fact that Latin and Teutonic are related. Thus 07ie is not derived from French un, Latin unus, since (besides other reasons) its earlier form is An (Lowland Scotch ane). Both are derived from a word in the Indo-European language (see p. 137). ^ Connected with politics, e.g. budget, Mil ; industrial improvements, e.g. cbrainage, wagon, rail ; sporting-terms, e.g. turf, jockey, boxe, dogve. — Brachet, Historical French Grammar, translated by Kitohin, p. 39. In a recent French work on Training and Training Stables the boys employed are spoken of as les lads. ' French substantives are nearly always taken from the Latin accusative, not from the nominative. * The words in which the H was dropped early are words derived from Latin, in which language the H was weak to begin with. 200 History of English has been made more difficult to trace by changes in spelling, and especially by the anxiety of people in the sixteenth cen- tury to mark the ultimate source of the word by the spelling ; as, for instance, to show that dmht is derived from dubito. If the word were spelt doute (as it used to be) and as it is . pronounced, without the B, it would be clear that the word is taken from French (as it is), and it would not be hard to trace it further to Latin. So fault ^ was faute ; debt, dette, both in French and English,^ and our English words are not derived directly from fallo and deUtum. In trying to mark the ultimate source of the words these improvers of our spell- ing have obscured their history. The form in which French words were adopted into Eng- lish shows that we were right in saying that English vowels were still pronounced in general like those in Italian or Latin (' new ' pronunciation). If hound (English) and found-owr (Anglo- French fou7td-our) were spelt in the same way, it was because they were pronounced alike, with OU as in uncouth. If face was adopted into English without change, it was because A suggested to an Englishman the sound which it now has in are, father. For those who wrote then had no objection to changing the spelling of a word to express its sound, and French words were taken into English from a living language spoken in the country.* We have already seen that English spelling had been adapted to French models, and this again proves what English pronunciation was like, i^i would not have been spelt owt, for the benefit of persons used to French, if it was to give them a totally wrong idea of the sound. The rhymes prove the same thing ; in the extract from Chaucer ' Here the spelling has at last Influenced the sound as well. But in Pope, e.g. Essay on Criticism, 11. 169, 170, faults rhymes to ihoughts. ^ Our re-spelling was mainly copied from a, reform (?) of French spelling in the sixteenth century, which did not last. ' Of course there is the alternative that French vowels were then pro- nounced as English vowels are now. Among other reasons why this is im- possible there is tlie fact that the sister-languages derived from Latin (Italian, Spanish, and so on) agree in the main with French in the pronunciation of their vowels. — Skeat, Principles of English Etymology, Second Series, p. 133, etc Effects of Norman Conquest upon English 201 (p. 270, 11. 5, 6) the English word ahcnte rhymes to the French word ioute. So too (11. 11, 12) the English lyte rhymes to the French visyte. The standard of spelling was French, and therefore these words were pronounced as ' viseete ' and ' leete ' would be pronounced in English now. Thus the Lancashire pronunciation leet (light), tied (night), deevr^ (dying), as well as the Somersetshire rlmie (' reen' ), and the sound in Ovse and uncouth are relics of the old sound of English vowels. A word or two must finally be said about the accent of French words in English ;^ the principles on which our native words have been accented have hardly varied from the earliest times. Now in French of the present day, as it is usually pronounced by Frenchmen, it is exceedingly hard to detect an accent on any one syllable more than on another. But this was certainly not the case in the earliest French, while that language was forming itself out of popular Latin, for the Latin accent always preserved the syllable on which it fell, however the others might be clipped, as in 'mobilis,' 'meuhle'; ' cal'dus,' chaud ; ' nsmgare,' ' na^er.' And the rule given for the accent in Modern French is that all words are accented on the last syllable, except when this syllable is mute E, when it goes back one place, and thus it agrees, in words naturally formed,^ with the Latin accent out of which it sprang. Only, as has been said, the accent is now so slight that it can scarcely be heard. But since it was strong enough to give its character to the language while it was forming, and retained its full power till the eleventh century, and since it is still the accent of French words so far as they possess one, it is only reasonable to suppose that in the eleventh century, when Norman -French was brought into English, it was much more distinctly heard than it is at present.^ 1 Braohet, Historical French Orarnimar, translated ty Kitchin. The accented syllable will be for tie rest of this chapter in italics. ^ Words like ' moKle,' ' ^ortique ' (Latin 'portions '), were introduced much later from Latin by learned men, who paid no regard to the Latin accent. ' Germans in pronouncing French often give the correct accent (according to the above rule) very distinctly, e.g. ' Avez-vous quelque chose k dfclarer ? ' 202 History of English Accordingly French words in English, for a considerable time after the date of their introduction into our language, mostly kept the French accent, as we can easily see when they occur in poetry. So in Chaucer's Prologue to the Canterbury Tales, written shortly before 1400 A.D., we find, for instance — And tatlied every veyne in swich Wcour, Of which veriM engendred is the flour.^ But now, as we know, these words are pronounced 'virtue,' ' Ziquor.' ^ Why has the accent changed ? The rule of English as regards the accent is roughly to throw it back as far as possible,^ or farther, according to the notions of a German trying to learn^^the language. Such words as ' comfortable/ ' applicable,' are strong instances of the tendency. These are not, of course, native words, but they are thoroughly naturalised with the English accent. On the other hand, in The Nut-brown Maid (about 1500), we still find the French accent in ' comfortable ' and ' variable.' Here may ye see that wymen be in loue meke, kinde, and stable, Late neuer man repreue them than, or calle them variable ; But rather prey god that we may to them be comforteble.* The fact is, that French words introduced into English were at first pronounced with the French accent, which, as 'La grande natiora.' They do this, no doubt, partly from conscientiously exaggerating the rule which they have been taught, partly because accents in German are very distinctly pronounced. But their pronunciation will prob- ably give us a correct idea of the way in which French accents were formerly sounded. ^ Lines 3, 4, as edited by Morris and Skeat. ^ ' LiqaeMr,' adopted into English from Modem French, still has the French accent. ' In compound words, especially verbs or participles, the accent often falls on the main part of the word, and not on the adverb prefixed, as in ' everteS- ing,' ' forej'oing,' 'oxAdo.' In substantives, on the other hand, it often falls on the prefix, e.g. 'etiergreen,' '/oremast,' 'oM^come.' This distinction is as old as Anglo-Saxon, and was in early times more regularly applied. But if the first part is a substantive, this usually takes the accent, as in ' awe-inspiring,' '«oap-boiler.' There are, of course, rules about the accent in detail, but practically the rough rule given in the text carries us a long way. * Skeat's Specimens of English Literature, 1394 a.d. — 1579 A.D., p. 107. U is to be read as V ; see above, p. 181. Effects of Norman Conquest upon English 203 we saw, comes as nearly as possible at the end of the word. But the English accent made its way even into Anglo- French. And still more when words had been adopted into English, since no one thinks of the derivation of a word when he is using it, there was a constant tendency to pronounce them like ordinary English words, with the accent thrown back. Some people with correct ears liked to hear the word pronounced as they had been used to hear it, with the French accent ; others tended naturally to copy the ordinary sound of English words, to give the word the English accent by 'analogy.' Of these conflicting tendencies the last mostly prevailed, either soon or in the course of centiu-ies. But numerous words still keep the French accent, such as ' divine,' 'payg«,' 'Tepli/,' 'Siccord,' 'oblige,' though these have been naturalised for more than five centuries.^ Even in Chaucer a very large number of French words have already acquired the English accent, such as '^ocesse,' 'mortal,' ' gentil,' ' sesonn,' and yet we cannot read far into the Canterbury Tales without coming across such lines as — So priketh hem nature in hir corajres — Than longen folk to goon on pilgrimages ; ^ or — Me thinketh it acordaunt to lesoun, To telle 30W al the condicio«™.^ And there is no mistake about the lesson to be learnt from Chaucer's lines, for his metre is very accurate and musical, if only it is correctly read, which means for the most part pronouncing such final E's as are the relics of ^ Of course the verbs could not keep the French accent exactly, where it fell on the termination, as in the infinitive. For French verbs when taken into English were conjugated as English verbs. Thus, ' ncorder ' became ' acorden ' ; the English termination could not take the accent, which, however, at first remained as near as possible to the end of the word. "Words of later introduction keep the French accent more than the earlier ones, such words, e.g., as 'diagoon,' 'cadet,' 't&tigue,' 'harangue.' ' ffir= their, ' corag'e'= heart, now 'couiiLge,' with the later French spelling and English accent, and an altered sense. — Prologw, 11. 11, 12. 3 Prologue, 11. 37, 38. 204 History of English Old English terminations. Sometimes the same word is accented both ways in different passages, since, no doubt, usage varied. The two tendencies were still fighting it out, and the accent of the word was not yet fixed (just as some people now say 'ocfopus,' and some 'octopus'), so that neither the English nor the French way of accenting it would sound strange. Thus we have seen 'veriw' accented on the last syllable, but we also have the line — Sowninge in moral rertu was his speche.^ Thus too we get in one place — And elles certein were thai to blame. It is ful fair to been y-clept ma&me.^ And in another — And she was cleped madame Eglentyne.^ So too there is ' Jastaille ' and ' bataifle,' ' fempest ' and 'temp«si,' '^itous' and 'pitoMs' (now piteous), and other examples of the accent varying. Thus too we find in Spenser, in Shakespeare occasionally, and in Milton many words retaining their old French accent, which have wholly lost it now. In fact, this explains the metre of many lines in these poets where it seems strange to us, of such lines as — And aU sixe brethren, borne of one parent.* Throwne out by angry Jove in his vengrearace.^ Is it upon recorti, or else reported Successively from age to age he built it ? ^ By policy and long process of time.'^ Beyond all past example and iaiwre? 1 Prologm, 1. 307. « lUd., IV. vi. 14. = lUd., 11. 375, 376. 8 Shakespeare, Richard III., i. 72, 73. ^ Ihid., 1. 121. !■ Milton, Paradise Lost, II, 297. " Spenser, Faery Queene, III. i. 44. ^ jf^d., X. 840. Effects of Norman Conquest upon English 205 And even in Scott, in an imitation of an old ballad — There are twenty of Eoslin's barons bold, Lie buried within that proud chapelle. In many of these later instances the poets are, no doubt, consciously introducing an old-fashioned pronunciation, as is the way of poets, and not using the pronunciation of their own time. But we have words, just like some of those quoted above, which still keep their French accent. Such words as ' advice,' ' degree,' ' excess,' ' accord,' as well as ' secure,' and ' snaLture,' borrowed from Latin, keep the Latin accent, which, as we saw, th« French language retained."^ It is often impossible to say why, among similar words, some have changed their accent and some have not. It is curious that in many cases this variety of accent distinguishes substantives from verbs which are exactly like them apart from the accent. Thus discount is a substantive, but a banker discounts a bill. So we record an event (keeping the French accent which, as we have seen, the substantive also has in Shakespeare), but the result is a record of what happened. Missionaries convert the heathen and make cow- verts of them. A burglar is conwcted, and becomes a cowvict.^ This may, perhaps, be partly explained by a rule which we find in Old English, by which many compound substantives were accented on the prefix, while the corresponding verbs have the accent on the main part of the word.^ So we still say, 'to out<^o,' and 'the outcome.' But a reason which has doubtless had more to do with causing the distinc- tion in French or Latin words is this : even in the period before our inflexions were almost annihilated, those of the ^ So too 'aspect,' '&bgect,' in Shakespeare keep the Latin accent ('aspecius,' ^ Some of these words come to us straight from Latin. But this makes no practical difference, since the French accent is, as we have seen, the Latin one. The rules for the two are not the same, but practically produce the same result. ' Sweet, History of Unglish Sounds, p. 105, and Sohipper, Unglisclie Metrik. See above, p. 202, note. 2o6 History of English verb were on the whole heavier than those of the substantive. And since about 1500 the diiference has been still greater in favour of the terminations of the verb, -ing, and in some cases -ed, being fully pronounced, while the substantive had usually no inflexion beyond a mere -s, which, of course, did not make an extra syllable. Now it is plain that if the verb, at first '£on4)er<-en,' then 'conngri,' started with the accent on the second syllable (as it would do ^), the forms ' conz^er^ed,' ' con»eri-ing,' would tend to keep it near the end of the verb in those forpis, and, of course, no one would divorce parts of the same verb by accenting them in different ways ; analogy would forbid this. On the other hand, ' convert ' (the sub- stantive) easily followed the accentuation of pure English two-syllabled words, such as ' jrjrdle ' and ' slider.' ^ Besides, the distinction is so useful practically that it must have found ready acceptance, though some words, such as 'accoM«<,' 'r&pair,' ^velease' (both verb and substantive), have never been brought under the rule.^ From what has been said above, it is quite plain that the English accent is a very strong and masterful thing. And it has not only prevailed over the foreign accent, as we have seen, in many French words, but it has also afiected the pro- nunciation of a mass of words, both English and French, in various ways. Sometimes this change is marked in the spell- ing, sometimes not, according as the alteration took place before or after our spelling became fixed. In this influence on the form of words it is like the Latin accent, which has to a very large extent determined the form of words in French. For instance, a word in passing from Low Latin to French * not only (as a rule) lost its last syllable (which was unaccented), as in ' cZav(em),' ' clef; '/act(um),' ' fait,' but also, ' See p. 203, note, p. 205, note. * Skeat, Principles of English Etymology, Second Series, p. 60. ' It is, of course, possible for the substantive to infect the verb if it is older, or in more common nse. ^ The accent in Low Latin was generally the same as in classical Latin, but not quite always. Effects of Norman Conquest upon English 207 if a word was accented on the last syllable but two in Latin, the vowel after this always disappeared, as in '/iMinilem,' '7m?nle' or 'wmble'; ' cwbitum,' ' cowde.' And other unaccented syllables fall out according to other rules. The work of the English accent ^ has been very similar, only that while the accent in French has long since spent its force, and is now almost inaudible, the English accent has kept its full vigour from the earliest times down to the present day. The English accented syllable seems to be always trying to take up the whole life of the word. The syllables, both before and after it, tend to become obscured and even to disappear, though, as has been said before, if this has happened since our spelling has become more or less fixed, the word as written does not show it ; we must think of its pronunciation. Thus, to begin with, some words have lost their first syllable when this has been unaccented. ' Episcop(us) ' has become ' Siscop ' and ' Jishop,' and ' epjstol(a) ' and ' a^ostol(us) ' are to be found in Anglo-Saxon as 'pstol ' and '^ostol ' respect- ively, though from the French and Latin forms the two last have now been restored to their correct Latin shape. Thus too ' ger^fa ' has become reeve, and ' ened-rake ' (duck-king) is now drake. In the same way many Norman -French words have lost their first and unaccented syllable. In a number of cases the fuller form has been preserved as well, so that we can easily see what has happened. Thus there is mmd and ' ameTid,' spy and ' es^y,' ' sample ' and ' ensample.' Where the accent falls on the first syllable (according to the usual English rule), it has often led to the loss of a following syllable or syllables. Thus ' mdnaJS ' was sometimes written mMS, even before the Conquest, and ' mwnec ' is now monh. In much the same way, among the French words which had taken the English accent, 'cAapelein' became 'chaplain'; ' chimenee,' 'chimnej'; and 'peribis,' 'parlous.' ' It would, perhaps, be more correct to say, ' the main accent. ' There is a secondary accent in long words, as e.g. on the first syllable of 'unpatriotic ' ; biit, except in poetry, it may be left out of the account. 20 8 History of English So we now clip 'medicine,' 'venison,' into 'wierf'cine,' '«;6M'son,' though the spelling may not be altered. And the same thing has happened in such proper names as Gloucester (' Glo'ster '). So too in 'coxswain,' ' ftoafewain,' 'cMpboard' ('cox'n,' 'bo's'n,' ' cubbud '), the last syllable has been weakened as much as it could be without being lost altogether. And, in general, the vowels following the accented syllable have very often been thus weakened, as in ' (^gcade,' ' magistrate.' In ' comfortable,' for instance, the accented syllable is the only one that is quite distinctly heard as written. The word is generally not much more than ' comf't'b'l.' And if we think of it, this powerful English accent must have had a great influence in sapping the inflexions. If it can have made the following syllables indistinct in 'comfortable' and 'clipboard,' it must have helped to make the -a, and -u, and -an of Anglo-Saxon sink to the indistinct -« and -em, as in '»Mima,' 'wamg'; ' scipu,' ' sape ' ; ' osan,' ' oxen.' If it could wipe out whole syllables, changing 'moWwarp' into male, it must have helped to throw off the terminations altogether, as with 'mama,' 'mame,' 'mam(e).' So the Latin accent did in French as we have seen. And at the present day in German, a language in which the accent is strong, it is sometimes very hard to hear whether the -e is pronounced or not, as in ' Ich ncAme,' 'der Knaki^'; and thus this -e is constantly clipped in German verse. Again, in the same way as the English accent has reduced ' mwnec ' to one syllable, rmynk, so it has helped to make ' wordgs ' into vmris, ' comes ' into com{e)s, and 'powrgd ' into pour'd. There were other causes at work, as we have seen and shall see, which made these changes happen when they did. But the English accent must have been throughout their most useful ally.^ 1 See p. 180, etc. "" For the accent in English, see Skeat, Principles of English Etymology, First and Second Series ; and Koch, Sistorische Grammatik. For gener^ information upon the influence of French on English, see Skeat, Principles of English Etymology, Second Series, and Earle, Philology of the English Tongue. CHAPTEE XV CHANGES IN THE SOUNDS OF ENGLISH Changes in English sounds — Not directly traceable to French influence — Changes of long A— of C— of SC— of G— 3 and p lost.' There were other changes going on in the English language, most of which at any rate were only remotely due to the influence of those who spoke French. We have already seen (p. 177, etc.) that the Norman Conquest put on the hands of the clock, so to speak, by clearing away the obstacles to changes in the inflexions — that is to say, by doing away with a 'standard' dialect of English, and an English-speaking upper class who were careful how they talked, just as educated people are careful now. For the same reason the changes which took place in the sounds of English came on faster, at all events, than if there had been no Norman Conquest. It is probable too that some of these changes may have been helped on by .imitation of the sounds of French words, which, of course, were constantly to be heard. But, on the whole, it seems that they would mostly have occurred sooner or later in any case. Now these changes in sounds are not an easy subject to deal with. First of all, we must be quite sure what the letters mean. For instance, -ment implies very difierent sounds in English and Modern French respectively ; and, as ' Sweet, History of English Sounds. Skeat, Principles of English Ety- mology, First Series, and Man of Lames Tale. P 2IO History of English we have already seen, the EnglishPvowel^ before the Norman Conquest, and for centuries after it, did not represent the same sounds as they do now. Secondly, there are questions about some of the sounds which have not yet been settled with certainty. And thirdly, vowels are so liable to be affected by the consonants which come just before and just after them (especially E), that the rules about their changes leave a considerable number of exceptions. So that instead of attempting to describe all the changes which took place in English sounds between 1066 and 1400, only four sets wUl be taken as a sample — namely, the changes of long A (Old English or Anglo-Saxon A'), C, SO, and G. Fortunately, spelling was still ' phonetic '; those who wrote tried to repre- sent the sounds by their spelling, so that the letters nearly always changed with the sounds. There has been a greater shifting of English sounds since 1400 than between 1066 and 1400, and yet the changes are not obvious, since the spelling has remained to such a large extent unaltered. And first, as to the fact that the sounds really did change. Look at the extract from the Gospels in Anglo-Saxon on p. 154. There we find sower written sdwere, and sooth, good appearing as s6]> (in s6]>-Uce), and gdd. Shrunk was then {for)scruncon, and fowls, fuglas. These are specimens of the changes about which something will now be said. (1) Old English A or A was written or 00 in Middle English, with the sound of OA in hroad, roar. Try the experiment of saying A (as in are), then OA, as in Iroad, and then 0. It will be found that OA comes half-way between the other two.^ "We sometimes, in the country, hear ' road, ' oats,' pronounced almost as two syllables, and they then come very near the sound of OA in hroad, which proves the same thing. Even in Old English we find written for ^ Or we may put it in this way. If one says A, and then, while moving one's mouth and tongue into the right position for saying 0, checks them half-way, the result is OA, as in broad. Changes in the Sounds of English 211 A, as in 'on londe' (p. 99), monig. In both cases we have kept or returned to the A, and write land, many, though we do not now give the words the old pronunciation of A. We will now try to follow the gradual changes of this long A, and see the traces which they have left in the language, like the gravel which a river leaves behind it when it changes its course, or like fossil animals preserved from past ages. First of all, the sound OA in Iroad is not so very far removed from the sound of A, as in father, are. It is even now found written as A in wath,^ where the E before it has tended to preserve the sound. So too in naught (Old English ndht) the G-H has protected the Middle English sound, seeing it safely settled in the language before it died itself^ In Middle English the sound of broad, coming from an Old English long A, is (except sometimes in the thirteenth century) spelt with or 00. So that, for instance, Anglo- Saxon hrdd, rdd, fd (now hroad, road, foe), were written Irood, rode, foo, and pronounced hroad, rand, fan. Cloth still repre-- sSnts this sound by 0. Neither its spelling nor its sound has changed since 1300 A.D.^ Thus OA was rarely written in Middle English, though the sound was very common. But some of these words moved on further and got the sound of 0, much as it is pronounced in Modern English. When the combination of letters OA was revived in the sixteenth century to express the sound in broad, those words which retained this sound were so spelt, for instance, broad, roar, hoar (where the R is probably the cause of the Middle English sound being preserved), and so were other words such as road, oath, which were then 1 The adjective is spelt with an 0, hut has (usually) the same sound. Both adjective and substantive are derived from the Old English adjective wrdy. " Thus these words have changed their sound once, but have had no further change. We find this same change in Low German or Platt-Deutsch, the English that stayed at home on the Continent. There Ja ( = yes),is pronounced pretty nearly as ' yaw, ' and the iu oZ ( = old, High German alt) has a very similar sound. ' That is, if it is pronounced nearly like clorth ; some people pronounce it otherwise, in deference to the spelling. 2 1 2 History of English pronounced in the same way, but have since altered their pronunciation, though not their spelling. Those words which had got to a simple O sound (much as we pronounce that vowel) were still spelt with 0, such as foe, roe, to clothe. Finally, since the sixteenth century, most of those words which had lagged behind and were still pronounced like hroad, took the sound of a Modern English long 0, such as road, and oath?- Thus English of the present day keeps samples of all these spellings with their sound unchanged. The sound OA is still represented by A in the word wrafh, which carries us back to Anglo-Saxon wr45. The Middle English spelling, O, appears in cloth. The sixteenth-century spelling in hrocd, roar, hoar. While road, toad, oath, and other words have come to be pronounced as if they were spelt with a simple long 0, though their spelling shows what their former pronunciation was. If, however, Old English long A ^ was, through these stages, turned into a long 0, it would seem that there could be no long A's in Modern English. But English long A's^ chiefly come — (a) From French words, such as face, dame. (J) From various diphthongs ; for instance, hale is from Danish heill,^ and not from Anglo-Saxon hdl, which has become {w)hole ; day is from doeg, gray from grckg.^ (c) From the lengthening of what was short A in Anglo- Saxon before a single consonant which was followed by a ^ But is now (since about 1800) pronounced with a suspicion of a W after it, i.e. with the lips rounded. ^ Short A's are constantly preserved as A, though with some change of pronunciation, e.g. can, Anglo-Saxon can ; larnb, Anglo-Saxon lamb, etc. ^ The sound of A, as in /ace, dates from the seventeenth century. This is the ordinary English pronunciation of long A, and it is really equivalent to the Old English long E. * Icelandic, probably representing the old Norse form introduced into England, which is what is meant hy ' Danish ' throughout the book. The diphthongs of Old English aUo became merged in simple vowels, see p. 180, * G becoming Y and coalescing with the A as a vowel, see below, p. 220. Changes in the Sounds of English 2.11 vowel, such as name (Anglo-Saxon n&ma), shame (Anglo-Saxon scdmu). This change took place in the thirteenth century. But in the Northumbrian dialect the change of A to OA and O did not often take place. So in Lowland Scotch, a modern form of Northumbrian, who is still wha (Anglo- Saxon hwd), as in Scots wha hae wi' Wallace bled. Often this A has the modern sound of long A in English (as in lame, Latin E). Thae ( = those), ane ( = one), name ( = none), laith ( = loth), represent the Old English words ]j«i. An, ndn. Id]). The spelling stdnas (for stdnas) and some similar in- stances in the Northumbrian Gospels seem to show that this process had already begun in the tenth century.^ It is plain from what has been said above that in the Middle English period the letter represented two sounds — OA from Old English long A, and O from Anglo-Saxon long 0. That they were two sounds is shown by their different fate. Most of the original O's, though still spelt with or 00, have moved on their sound to U (as in rue) ; for instance, sooth from Anglo-Saxon sd]>, good from gdd, do from dd, doom from ddm. On the other hand, E has sometimes preserved something like the old sound of the vowel, as in door, floor, though the E itself is usually no longer pronounced. These changes are certainly not due in any direct way to the Norman Conquest. We now come to the most obvious and important changes in the consonants. Before we look further into these changes it is necessary to remind ourselves that Middle English consisted of more dialects than one, and that the changes which took place in one dialect did not necessarily occur in another, just as we /-saw that A was kept in Northumbrian, while it was altered in [ the more Southern dialects. In the same way the softening ' Kington Oliphant, Old and Middle English, p. 107. 2 14 ^ History of English of C took place most in the South. So what is the Church "m England is the Kirlt, ^ in Scotland, Lowland Scotch heing Modern Northumbrian. The East Midland dialect (from which ' standard ' English mostly comes) is midway between North and South, in dialect as in position, and it is of this dialect that we are now going to speak. (2) The C of Old English before E and I^ became CH (as in chicTi) in Middle English. In order to understand this change we must remember that C i^ard, or K) can be pronounced either in the back or in the front of the mouth. If any one says first cart and then Idng, the sound is in both cases that of hard C (or K), but the first is made in the back, the second nearer the front of the mouth. For A (as in cart) is pronounced in the back of the mouth, E (Latin or Grerman E, or as in hreal^ and I (as in jdque) further forward. And consequently the tongue naturally tries to make the C in the place where it has to be in order to form the vowel, without travelling to different parts of the room, so to speak, and thus we get the slightly different sounds of C in cart and K in king.^ So far there is no great difference in the sounds. But when the C (or K) is once made in the front of the mouth, it is liable to get further altered. We all know the slip in pro- nunciation where people say ' ki/md ' and ' skyy,' and if we listen attentively we shall find some trace of this not at all uncommon, even with people who would ' scorn the imputation.' It comes from sliding the tongue forward too soon in pre- paration for the I or Y. In much the same way, if we do not take the trouble to bring the tongue up to the palate, when we are trying to say a or K forward in the mouth, .we shall get German CH (as in ich). So ic or ik* is the original form ' There is a Danish form kirhja which probably influenced the sound, see below, p. 216. ' Also M, e.g. casster, Chester. ' The principle is much the same as in the ' mutation ' of vowels, see p. 104, etc. * A sister-word to ego, see p. 29. Changes in the Sounds of English 2 1 5 of the pronoun ' I ' in the Teutonic languages, as is shown by the Old English and Gothic form, but in Southern Middle English and in German this became ich. The softening of the G gives many signs of its presence even in Old English writing,^ and probably in the popular speech at least, if not in all speaking, the softening of this letter was carried out to a considerable extent before the Conquest, first and most extensively in the South, less in the East Midlands, least in Northumbria. But it is from the East Midland dialect that our Modern English mostly comes, and so we will confine ourselves chiefly to the change which took place in this dialect. Through this German CH then (as in icJi) comes the later Middle English CH (as in check). It is a very small change, involving only a slight raising of the tongue, and is a more distinctly audible sound. And it is quite possible that the sound of CH in Norman- or Anglo-French, which was con- stantly heard, and which, as we saw, was the same as in Modern English, may have helped to fix what had once been C in English to this particular sound, the sound which CH had (and has) in such words as change and charge. Thus, then, if we take the 'front' vowels E, I,^ in Old English (whether by themselves, or as the first part of a diphthong), we shall expect C to become CH before them, and we shall not be disappointed. A good instance is the word Tdixhen from cycene. Y is not properly the same letter as I (though they became much confused), but a 'modified' U (German u, French and Devonshire U). So the C remains hard before it (ki-) but becomes soft before the E {-tchen). What shall we say then about church 1 Here the Y in cyrice had passed into I (just as we find cirice, circe, in Old English), and it was this form that prevailed. But the fact that what is now I was Y in Anglo-Saxon has often preserved ' e.g. there are the double forms cald and ceald, secan and secean, \encan and T^encean, in Old English {ce-, as in ' kyiaA,' see ahove). ^ Also M. 2 1 6 History of English "the hard sound, as in Mn (Anglo-Saxon cyn), hith (Anglo- Saxon cyS). So we have calf, can, cool, cow, king, from Anglo-Saxon calf, can, cdl, cii, cyng ; but chapman, chwrl (for- merly spelt cherV), cheese, child, from cSapman, ceorl, dse, did. Many of the words which still have K (hard C) before E and I come from Danish, a language in which the K was not 'pronounced right in the front of the mouth, whatever vowel followed it. For instance, ked, keg, kid, kill, kilt} Sometimes a ' front ' vowel seems to affect a C coming after it as weU. But the change in nouns (and sometimes in verbs) is probably helped by the inflexion ^ coming after, for this often in Old English, and always in Middle English, had E for its vowel. Sometimes too the nominative of a sub- stantive ended in E. So we get Jxec, thatch ; lie (a dead body), lich- or lychr, as in lych-ga.te ; flicce, flitch ; hirce, birch. Ich (the southern word for ' I '), which has no inflected form in the least like it (for instance, its genitive was mvn), is supposed to be a form pronounced with less emphasis than ic, and there- fore not so clearly.* The Norman-French words beginning with CH of course came in ready-made and without alteration. Whether the Norman-French sound influenced the develop- ment of the sound of the English C much or little, at all events the spelling of it as CH is due to Norman or Anglo-French. (3) The SO of Old EngUsh usually became SCH or SH in Middle English. Here the G was naturally pronounced in the front of the mouth, in the same place as the S, which cannot be pronounced anywhere else, so that the vowel coming after or before it does not matter. The C seems to have become first a sort of Y. If the tendency was to pronounce the C imperfectly, like a G-erman CH (as in the case of C alone before E or I), this CH, coming immediately after S, is practically a Y. For German OH ' For their spelling with K see ahove, p. 182. ' See Skeat, Principles of English Etymology, First Series, p. 354, etc. ' By the rule, C does not change before another consonant, e.g. erib, Old English crib ; cringe, Old English eringan. Changes in the Sounds of English 217 is very much like ' a hissed Y,' ^ and as the S supplies the hissing, there is scarcely any difference between S + CH and S + Y. This SY then passed to SH (as we sound it) just as the S in mn or mgar has done. An English U is not like a Latin or German U but YU. And now s{y)'u,re has slipped on into s(h)ure.^ So SO seems to have passed through SCH, or SY, to SH in most English words. Thus we have disc, dish ; fise, fish ; asee, ash ; cesc, ash (-tree) ; scamu, shame ; scip, ship, and so on. But there are a good number of words in English still beginning with SO (or SK, as many of them are written). Some of these (e.g. science) are from Latin directly or through French. But most of them come from Danish. The Danes did not pronounce their C's very far forward in the mouth, so that there was less chance of their getting softened.^ Among these Danish words are skill, skull, skin, sky. Some words too, whether Danish or English originally, seem to owe their preservation of SO (or SK) to the tendency that there was in the North, and to some extent in the East Midlands, to keep the C hard, just as we saw in Kirk. This keeping the hard may be due to the practice and example of the Danes. On the other hand, in the South, and to some extent in the East Midlands, the SO was softened to SH. Thus there are often two forms of the same word^one with the SO (or SK), and the other with SH ; and it seems likely that the first came from the North, the second from the South. The East Midlands, where the language that we now speak was mostly formed, was a sort of meeting-place for words and forms of words from the other two dialects. Thus in Old English we have sceran (to cut), scearu, scor. These are now 1 Skeat, Man of Lawes Tale, introduction, p. xiv. The only difference is that Y is 'voiced,' (German) CH 'breathed.' See p. 4. * Sweet, History of English Sounds, pp. 192, 267. ^ Sweet, History of English Sounds, p. 194. But now SK is pronounced SH in Norse in some cases at least. Sky (shoes), for instance, sounds like English shee. This change has taken place since the Danes settled in England. The change is exactly similar in the two languages. 2i8 History of English to shmr, share (a part cut off), score (a cut, in a stick for instance, like Robinson Crusoe's calendar). Again, there is the expression ' to pay your shot ' (a contribution ' shot in '), and ' scot-iiee,' meaning, to begin with, ' free from payment.' This is an example like the last ; shoot is a native English word. But, on the other hand, from the Danish word shyrta, both skirt and shirt come. And the Danish word skrcekja has more forms still. First, there is the pure Northern form shrike, with neither C - sound softened, and shriek and screech are each of them a kind of compromise.^ Thus Danish words are modified by English pronunciation, and also English words by Danish. Many of the words beginning with SO (or SK) which are English, have Danish words exactly corresponding to them, e.g. skor, skot. While Danish was still spoken in England, or while its pronunciation had left traces in certain parts of the country, this must have done much to fix the ' hard ' forms. To sum up, then, SC usually changed to SH. But there are a good number of exceptions, some being Latin or French words, a larger number distinctly Danish words. As to the native English words, we know that the North had a tendency to keep C's hard, as the Danes did too. If there was a Danish sister-word, of course with a hard C (or K), this, considering the mixture of the two races in the East and North, would in many cases keep the C of the English word hard. On the other hand, the English of the South were inclined to soften SC (or SK) wherever the word came from. The working of these various conflicting tendencies has produced the variety of English forms.^ (4) G at the beginning of a word before E and I changed 1 For the words see Skeat's Mymological Dictionary. ^ Ask, from dscian, seems to haye a history of its own, and to have been kept hard hy the analogy of Oesian (' axe '), used by King Alfred and Chaucer, thongh it is now 'vulgar' to say, 'I axed Mm to do it.' Axe {aks) and ash are plainly alternative forms, like Urdes and briddes (CSiaueer), ym (Old English and Somersetshire), and run. But to say ash and axe would be to divorce the pair altogether. Changes in the Sounds of English 219 to (g, 3, or) Y ; in the middle, or at the end of a word, to Y or GH or W. The changes of G had at least begun in Old English, as we saw hmg {young) and ioc (yohe) before the Conquest, and hig (for M, they) certainly does not rhyme to pig} The change was much the same as is heard in some German dialects ; for instance, ' sa/en ' ^ for ' sajfen,' ' guten mor/en ' for 'guten mort^en,' just as the people of Berlin are said to speak of 'Eineyute ^/ebratene ^anze.' A G changes to some- thing like the sound of German OH, or what is much the same thing, to Y if we begin to pronounce the letter in the front of tbe mouth and do not bring the tongue far enough upwards to touch the palate, and a G is sometimes pronounced just like Y by people speaking carelessly in Modern English. As in the case of G, we may say that the change of G at the beginning of a word only took place in English ^ before vowels pronounced in the front of the mouth — that is, before E and I. Thus we have gi^ar, year ; geolu, yellow, geolca, yolk ; gieldan, yield ; ge, ye ; git, yet, and so on. On the other hand, G remains before A, 0, U, Y,* and long Mt, as in gdst, ghost ; gold, gold ; gds, goose ; gyldan, gild ; gut, gut ; gdes, geese. But to this rule there are many exceptions. Some of these come from Danish, whose G was not pro- nounced right in the front of the mouth any more than its C or K was ; for instance, girfh, gills (of fish). Give may be explained by its having a past tense gave. It would have been too absurd to say ' yiv'e, (/af, yiven.' ^ Gift would follow the sound of its verb. The same may have been the case with 'beg'in, bep'an, be^un,' the G of the present being ^ It would te pronounced more as in German Konig, trawrig. 2 German J = English Y, see p. 217, note. ' Tliat is to say, in one form of the language, East Midland, which event- ually became the ' standard ' dialect. * =ii as before, see p. 107. ^ On the other hand, Chaucer has past tense yaf (or ^af ) as well as yive and yiven. These are Southern forms. See Sweet, History of English Sounds, p. 196, etc. 220 History of English preserved by the ' analogy ' of the other parts of the verb. But in many words the G's at the beginning cannot be so explained. Now in the South, soon after the Conquest, all initial G's seem to have been Y's, or on the way to becoming so. Possibly, therefore, it was again the influence .of the Danes, with their hard pronunciation of G, that helped to keep the G hard, even in English words, in the North and in the East Midlands. And at any rate it is probable that the hard G's in gd, giddy, gear, and so on, are cases where the Northern and East Midland form of the word prevailed, while the Y's came from the South. Ge-, the prefix of the past participle in Old English, as in ge-depod (called), ge-boren (borne and born), was not only weakened to ye- (like the ' vulgar ' German '^enug ' for ' genng,' '/gbraten' for ' gehr&tea'), but took a slight step further, and became a simple Y or I, or, as it is sometimes written, E. Hence come 'y-clept,' 'i-wiss' (ge-wis), and '«-nough' (^e-n6h). In the middle or at the end of a word G often became Y as in ' dseg,' ' day ' ; or GH,^ as in ' wegan,' ' weigh ' ; or soft G (pronounced like our J), as in ' cringran,' ' cring'e ' ; or W, as in ' dragian,' ^ ' draw,' ' f ugrol,' ' fowl.' After changing to Y or W this weak and changeable consonant usually lost its independent existence altogether by combining with the preceding vowel, as in day, slain (slegen). In NG and CG the NY, GY, developed into the sound of NJ, J, or, as we write them, -nge, -dge. For instance, sengan, singe ; brycg, bridge; secg, sedge. Sometimes CG has acted as if it had been simple G and coalesced with a vowel, as in licgan, lie. Northumbrian, in the shape of .Lowland Scotch, still preserves some of these G's intact, as in lig for lie, brigg for bridge, as in the Brigg of Turk^ and Bothwell Brigg.* ' Nearly the same sound, see pp. 217, 219. ^ Draw, dray, from dragan, drcege, illustrate two of the changes of G ; drag is from the sister-word in Danish. * Scott, Lady of the Lake, I. vi. * Scott, Old Mortality. The keeping of the G and C hard may be also Changes in the Sounds of English 221 Then, of course, there are the Norman-French G's, sounded hard before A, O, U, soft (like J) before E, I, as in gallon, gorge, gules; and, on the other hand, general, gentle, gin (a trap), ginger — all these being French words adopted into English. GU was later on pronounced simply as hard G in English ; hence from the words guerdon, guise, this mode of spelling has been transferred to some English words, merely to mark the G as hard, for instance in guest, guilt, tongue (Ahglo-Saxon tunge). Thus the soft Norman-French G, as in gentle, had a sound identical with the Middle English GG in brigge, segge (bridge, sedge). It may have had something to do with making the English sound take the shape that it did. Now it is plain that the letter G had to stand for a great many sounds. Fortunately, the form of the French G differed somewhat from the English way of writing it. This English G (g, 5) was used in Middle English to express the sounds which had developed out of the English G — that is to say, Y at the beginning of a word, as in ^elu, yellow ; 3gr, year ; and Y or GH at the middle or end, as in da^, day ; sla^e, slay ; ni^t, night. French G, on the other hand, much the same in form as our present g, was used to express French sounds, either in French or English words, the hard G in gallon, good, the soft G in change, singe, g, 3 went out of use in the fifteenth century, Y and GH being used for it, as is shown above. But the Scotch still used it, writing it as Z, which it resembled in form before ; as, for instance, ' the zier of God, 1568 Zeirs,' ^ as the date to a proclamation, and it is still found in this form in capercailzie — that is, caper- cailye or capercailye.^ A trace of it also remains in some due to the early loss in Northumbrian of most of the cases of the nouns, which, ending in E, tended to soften the G before them {see p. 216). This will be spoken of later on. See Skeat, Principles of English Etymology, First Series, p. 365. ' Earle, Philology of the English Tongue, p. 131. 2 Skeat7 Principles of English Etymology, First Series, pp. 317, 446. 22 2 History of English Scotch surnames. In 1890 a Scotch gentleman's death was recorded in one newspaper under the name of Dabell, while in another it was spelt Dalyell. g, 3 is the link between the two. The Z is due to the form of the letter ; the Y to its pro- nunciation. The final disuse of 3 and \ was due to the fact that the types for printing, made abroad, did not contain these English letters. Consequently they did not appear in books and died.'^ Another reason for the disuse of Ji was that it had already got to be written almost or exactly like y. And for this reason if and 2/* -were often printed for ihe and that, even down to the present century, because y in shape re- sembled the lost \ in its latest form, just as z (as written in manuscript) resembled the lost 3 and was used for it.^ ^ Article 'Bnglish Language,' in Encyclopcedia Britannica, Ninth Edition. ^ Skeat, Principles of English Etymology, First Series, p. 318. CHAPTER XVI DIALECTS OF ENGLISH AJTER THE .CONQUEST, ESPECIALLY THE EAST MIDLAND The four main dialects of English — Where spoken — All have contributed to Modern English — But especially East Midland — First appearance of that dialect — The Peterborough Chronicle — Inflexions dying out — Orm — His grammar — Danish influence on English — Contrast of the Southern dialect — Northumbrian the parent of Lowland Scotch.'' We have now seen something of the efifect of the Norman Conquest on English, and of the changes which took place in the sounds of the language chiefly after that event. We will now look at that dialect of English from which our present ' standard ' English is chiefly derived, and trace it down from its first appearance as a local dialect till it became the language of all educated Englishmen. The time between the Norman Conquest and the end of the fourteenth century was the period when English dialects were in their glory. Their position was then quite different from what it is at the present day, when dialects are spoken in different parts of England but are seldom written. About 1100, or soon after, the generation died out which had known West Saxon as the literary language of England without a rival, as that dialect was down to the Norman Conquest. After that, one dialect was as good as another ; all were alike ' Morris, Specimens of Early JSnglish, Part I. Earle, Two of the Saxon Chronicles. Kington Oliphant, Old and Middle English. Sweet, Middle English Primer, etc. 2 24 History of English ■ vulgar,' overshadowed by French, the language of the upper classes, whether of clergy or laity. But English was still the language of the bulk of the laity, and most of the monks and clergy, though not at first their bishops and abbots, were English, and spoke English as a rule, so that there were plenty of people to read or listen to English books, and also to write them.- But each man wrote the dialect of his own district, the English which he himself talked. The number of these dialects must have been almost infinite. Just as at the present time pec^le say that in Lancashire, for instance, a distinct difference of dialect can be some- times detected in two adjoining villages, and as there is more than one variety of the Somersetshire dialect, so it must have been in the time after the Norman Conquest, only that, as the means of communication and intercourse were so much less, these differences must then have been far greater. Still, for practical purposes these dialects fall into four main divisions.^ (1) The Southern dialect, south of the Thames, and reaching over it to the north,^ and in the counties of Wor- cester, Gloucester, and Hereford (p. 131, etc.). This dialect is the direct successor of West Saxon. Kentish may now be considered as one variety of it. (2) East Midland, north of this, and bounded (roughly speaking) by the Humber on the north, on the north-west by the eastern boundaries of Lancashire and Cheshire, and then by a line drawn south-east to Bedford, and then nearly east to Colchester. East Anglian is a strongly-marked variety of it. (3) West Midland to the north-west of (2), including Southern Lancashire, the whole of Shropshire, Cheshire, and Staffordshire, with part of Derbyshire. ^ Kington Oliphant, Old and Middle JEngliah, p. 140, etc. Skeat, Principles of English Etymology, First Series, p. 39. ' The East Midland had encroached upon the Southern dialect tefore Chaucer's time, see Map, p. 256. Dialects of English after the Conquest 225 (4) Northumbrian, reaching roughly from the Humber to beyond Edinburgh, and spreading, or destined to spread, over the South-West Lowlands, and along the east coast to the very north of Scotland. The difference between East and West Midland is chiefly due to the settlement of Danes in the eastern but not (to any considerable extent) in the western part of Mercia (p. 123, etc.) Both in the East Midlands and in Northumbria it was the popular speech, coloured by Danish both in grammar and vocabulary, which gave these dialects the form in which we now find them written (p. 125, etc., p. 135). Of course the people who lived near the boundaries of one of these dialects spoke a mixed speech. In this way all of the dialects influenced each other where they touched, and this influence often spread further. Thus all have more or less affected our ' standard ' English. For instance, smc/j (Anglo- Saxon svyylc = swa-lik, Gothic swa-leihs, ' so like ') is a dis- tinctly southern form, U being employed for Y in the South.-*^ So too the present participle in -ing, in ' I was ■writing,' for instance (for the Anglo-Saxon writ-ende, later -wvit-inde), first appears in Layamon, a Worcestershire poet. Southern, so far as his dialect is concerned.^ To Northumbria we owe the termination of the 3rd person singular of verbs in -es and -s, instead of -eth (p. 85), and perhaps much of our peculiar pronunciation of vowels, the Modern English A (as in lane), and of E (as in creep), just as before the Conquest scip war written scip ('sceep,' as we should now write it), and stdnas, sMnas (Lowland Scotch stanes) in Northumbrian (p. 213). But the dialect to which Modern English owes ^ At first probably because tie French U = German 1i, often implied the same sound as Y ; see pp. 107, 184, note. ^ Mr. Sweet [Sistory of English Soimds, p. 155) says West Midland. At all events he lived near the junction of the two dialects. ' It must be constantly borne in mind that the English vowels had their Latin, Italian, or German pronunciation then. Therefore, if a man wrote scip, stdbnas, he meant the sounds which we should now write, 'sceep,' ' stainas.' These words are in Modern ' standard ' English sheep and stones. Q 226 History of English incomparably more than to any other is the East Midland. Even now, the dialect of these counties, and especially of South Lincolnshire, Northamptonshire, and Cambridgeshire, is far less marked — that is, it resembles 'standard' English far more closely — than that of the South, or West, or North. ^ In fact. Modern 'standard' English is practically Modern East Midland, with such peculiarities of the other dialects as succeeded in establishing themselves in that dialect. It would be impossible to derive English in its present form directly from the Southern dialect (West Saxon) or from Northumbrian. But if we take the earliest writings in the East Midland dialect, not only do they bear a considerable resemblance to our Modern English, but we can trace this infant ' standard ' English down through writings in that dialect, till East Mid- land becomes established as the literary dialect of all England. Now we have seen already that the Midland dialect was nearer to Modern English than the Southern or West Saxon dialect, and East Midland is of course one variety of Mercian or Midland English. But the East Midland of the twelfth' and thirteenth centuries had altered a good deal from the lan- guage that is found even in the Rushworth Gospels ^ (pp. 132, 155), and had got much nearer to the English with which we are familiar. This change, as has been already said, and as wiU be clear shortly, was mainly due to contact with the Danes. It is interesting to see the first appearance in writing of what was to become ' standard ' English. Something like it had of course been spoken long before. In 1116 A.D.^ a great fire took place at the Abbey of ^ See Transactions of the Philological Society, 1875-76, paper on English Dialects, ty Prince Louis Lncien Bonaparte ; and Kington Oliphant, Old and Middle English, p. 449. ^ We must tear in mind that any Mercian writings after Alfred's time, and hefore the Conquest, are almost sure to he coloured more or less hy the literary West Saxon, just as writings in a dialect, e.g. Barnes's poems, now are by Modern ' standard ' English. ' See Earle, Two of the Saxon Chronicles Parallel, p. xliii. etc. Kington Oliphant, Old and Middle English, p. 142, etc., p. 163, etc. Dialects of English after the Conquest 227 Peterborough, and probably all, or the greater part of its books were lost. It appears to have been this which caused the Feterborough Chronicle to be written. No doubt the monks had had one or more Chronicles in their library before ; and though it was now the prevailing custom to write history in Latin, yet, as other monastic libraries had English Chronicles, and as Peterborough had possessed them before, it was only natural that they should wish to be on a level with other monasteries in this respect. Besides, the early glories of the abbey might be incidentally brought out in the work. So a monk was set to compile a Chronicle, which, after a short account of the nations who inhabit the island, begins with the landing of Julius Caesar in Britain. There were then many Old English Chronicles to draw from, far more than have survived ; and in some parts it can be seen what Chronicle is the source of the Peterborough history, and in others what the part of England was in which the writer of the original Chronicle was specially interested— that is to say, where it was written. The greater part of the Peterborough Chronicle is not in Peterborough English. The monk who compiled it copied the language of his authorities, though he modified the spelling to some extent. In the later part we find later English, which the compiler probably found in the late Chronicles w^iich he copied, and sometimes a sentence occurs which is double less original, being something quite different from the language of the rest, and, no doubt, much nearer to the English which the monk himself spoke. Besides this, there are inserted at intervals long accounts of the early glories of Peterborough, and of the distinctions conferred on it by English kings.i These are evidently intended to be in an old-fashioned style, as if the records had been actually pre- served at Peterborough. There are plenty of inflexions in these documents, but they are not always the right ones, just as some people now think that Middle English can be ' Written by another hand, Earle, see above. 228 History of English reproduced by merely putting a final E at tlie end of nearly every word, or as manuscript Latin Prose, in spite of the best intentions, is not always free from mistakes in grammar. Thus we even find seo hyning for ' the king ' in an entry which is supposed to date from 656. This is as correct as -fj /Sao-t- Aeijs would be in Greek, or die Konig in German. However, at any rate this shows that the old inflexions were now for the most part dead at Peterborough, since even the average m.onk could not write the old literary English, and doubtless no one else was likely to detect his mistakes. With 1121 the first writer stops, and the monk who took up his work carried it on as an original Chronicle in something like his own spoken language, though with some imitation of the language of the earlier prose. From the entry of the year 1132 a third hand appears in the manuscript, and here the language is extremely near what the monk himself spoke and heard spoken at Peterborough. This latest part was probably written about the year 1160. We will now let it speak for itself. PETERBOROUGH CHRONICLE OF THE YEAR 1137 (WRITTEN ABOUT 1160) J ne can ne i ne mai tellen alle Jie wander ne alle Jje / not nor not wonders pines ?S hi diden wrecce men on Jiis land . J 8 lastede tortures that they (to) wretched and that Jia xix wintre wile Stephne was king J aeure it was uuerse the xix winters while ever worse J uuerse. Hi Iseiden gseildes o[n] the tunes seure umwile laid contributions towns ever at {all) times J clepeden it tenserie.^ ^p& ]>e uurecce men ne hadden called rent. When wretched ' Protably for censerie, see note in Mciris. Dialects of English after the Conquest 229 nan more to gyuen. Jia rseueden hi J brendon alle the none then robbed bv/rned tunes. 8 wel ]3U myhtes faren all a dseis fare sculdest thou journey journey thu neure finden man in . tune sittende . ne land tiled. Pa was corn dsere J fle[s]c J caese J butere . for nan ne Then cheese wses o ]?e land. Wrecce men sturuen of hungser . sume . on starved ieden on selmes }>e waren sum wile rice men . sume went on alms {begging) who were rich fiugen ut of lande.'^ fled out In this extract we ought to notice first of all the French influence on the spelling 'seMre,' 'gywen,' where U is em- ployed for the Old English F (pronounced as V between vowels, etfre, gifan), and UU in ' wwrecce,' ' iMterse,' for the Old English W (P). In another part of this last section of the Chronicle we find 'gwartern/ which in Old English would have begun with GW. The French mode of spelling is gaining ground, though it is not yet thoroughly established (see p. 181, etc.) The C's, as in 'caese,' are left, though it is not likely that they were all of them still pronounced as K. Secondly, though there are several- inflexions which we have now dropped, such as the -en of the plural ' did«w,' ' Iseidgw,' and so on, and the -en of the infinitive, as in ' tellem,' ' gyu««,' both of which bits of grammar were to last for some centuries longer, yet the inflexions are very limited indeed com- pared with those in ' classical ' Old English. ' Wrecce,' ' sume,' are the plural of adjectives — any case, for ' wrecc« ' stands for the dative. ' Land« ' at the end of the extract is, no doubt, a dative, but as we find ' of ]je land ' earlier in this part of the ' Earle, Anglo-Saxon Chronicles. Morris, Specimens of Early English, Parti. 2 30 History of English Chronicle, we cannot suppose that this -e, of the dative was a veiy essential part of the language.^ The same is the case with the definite article. In the South, as we shall see, its cases were used occasionally in something like their old shape for two centuries more, though the one form J>« is also used for most of them. Here, though we have 'J>a xix wintre,' two lines lower down we get ' \e uurecce men.' Now we have said before that English was an ' inflexional ' language before the Norman Conquest. This is a question ,of degree, of more or less inflexions. English is certainly not an inflexional language now, and yet no one would think it correct to say, ' he come ' for 'he comes,' or 'three boy.' The question is, does the correct understanding of the language depend upon our taking notice of the inflexions, or not ? In ' classical ' Old English, the older Chronicles, for instance, and stiU more in the poetry, it does. We should frequently be liable to go wrong if we did not recognise the force of a termination. But in this East Midland English of 1160 the inflexions are not nearly of the same importance. Much of the spelling is unfamiliar to us, and a few of the words. The first difficulty is easily got over, and if we learn the meaning of the few strange words, we can easily make it out by the light of nature without troubling ourselves about the few inflexions left. These, then, are no longer essential ; this East Midland English is not an inflexional language. And any one can judge for himself how much nearer it is altogether to Modern English than the specimen given before on p. 1 79, or than the examples of Southern English to be found on pp. 261-263. There are some Northern forms which had filtered in ; J^ ( = I, Southern %di), and til in another part of the Chronicle. There are also Danish words, /ra^ for /ram, the proper English ^ Just as it is put in or left out in German datives of the present day. ' J at this period is merely I with an ornamental tail. ' Kington Oliphant, Old and Middle, English, p. 167. Dialects of English after the Conquest 2 3 1 form ; also hafhe, (both) for Old English legen, bd, the first of which also appears in this section of the Chronicle in the form beien. The Danish word quickly spread over the whole of England. Take, which is also a Danish word, is frequently- used in various senses. The past participles, such as tiled, have no ge- prefixed, a bit of inflexion which lasted very long in the South in a weakened form as i- or y-. This loss is probably due to the example of the Danes, who had no ge- to their past participles.^ And in general it looks already as if it were the contact with the Danes (which comes out clearly, as in the examples given above) that caused the English inflexions to be clipped. But this will be more evident from our next example. Somewhere about the year 1200, or perhaps earlier, a certain Orm or Ormin wrote a series of homilies or sermons in verse, containing a sort of history of Christianity, beginning with the religion of the Jews, which was the type of it. His metre is probably modelled on some Latin poem,^ one of those written by accent, and not by quantity like ' classical ' Latin verse. As has been said already, there are hardly any French words in it — four or five in 32,000 lines.^ The book was named Ormulum, as the author himself tells us, because Orm made it.* There is nothing but the dialect to tell us where it was written, and so the authorities are not agreed upon this point. Dr. Morris says that it was probably written near Lincoln ; Mr. Kington Oliphant ^ is inclined to place it in the neighbourhood of Derby ; but it is quite enough for our pur- pose to know that it is in the East Midland dialect. This ' See p. 133, note. ^ Morris, Specimens of Early English, Part I., p. 39. ' We saw (p. 186) that there were more French words than this in the entry for one year in the Peterborough Chronicle. Orm seems to have had a dislike to them, and to have, avoided them. * piss hoc iss nemmuedd Orrmulum Forrfi fatt Orrm itt wrohhte. wrought. " Morris, Specimens of Eaa-ly English, Part I., p. 39. Kington Oliphant, Old and Middle English, p. 212. 232 History of English poem is most valuable for many reasons. First of all, the manuscript is believed to be in the actual handwriting of the author of the poem; it has not been copied out by a scribe who was sure to write the words more or less as they were pronounced in his own day, and in his own part of the country. Secondly, 1)he author himself was a very careful and accurate man. He means to express the pronunciation of the English of his day as exactly as possible, and adjures all who copy his poem to copy its spelling as well. So that we can lay stress on it as a specimen of what a man of accurate habits of mind thought that the English of his day was and ought to be. Let us look at a sample of it. To understand the metre we must pronounce every letter (except the second of doubled consonants), unless an E at the end of a word comes just before a word beginning with a vowel, in which case it is cut off, as in Chaucer, and in Latin verses. OEM East Midland (About 1200) 1. & nu ice wile shsewenn 3UW And now I will shew you Summ del wijij" Godess hellpe Some part with God's help 3. Off J^att Judisskenn foUkess lac Of that Jewish people's saori/ice Patt Drihhtin wass full cweme. That to-the-Lord was pleasant, 5. & mikell hellpe to ]>e folic, much To iseredd & to laewedd, learned lay (unlearned), Dialects of English after the Conquest 233 7. Biforenn ]?att te Laferrd Crist Before, the Lord, Wass borenn her to manne. here as 9. Ace nu ne ge33ne]j]p itt hemm noliiit But now gaineth (helps) them nought To winnenn eche blisse, eternal 11. Pohh )?att te33 standenn da33 & nihht Though they To Jieowwtenn Godd & lakenn ; seme sacrifice 13. For all itt iss onn38eness Grodd, Pohh ]?att te33 swa ne wenenn, so (do-) not ween, 15. Forr]5i Jjatt te33 ne kepenji nohht Because take-thought Noff Crist, nofif Cristess moderr. NeUher-of nor-of mother. 1 7. & tohh-swa^Jielili nu wile ice juw nevertheless Off ]7e33re lakess awwnenn, thei/r sacrifices malee clear 19. Hu mikell god te33 taenenn uss How good (be-)token to-us Off ure sawle nede ; owr soul's 21. Forr all ]jatt lac wass sett Jjurrh Godd sacrifice through Forr Jiatt itt shollde taenenn, should 23. Hu Cristess J>eoww birr]? lakenn Crist servant it-becoines to-sacrifice to Christ 3 34 History of English Gastlike i gode Jjsewess, SpirituaUy in good ways-of -living, 25. Wijiji all J>att tatt bitacnedd wass that Purrh alle Jiejjre lakess.^ Now one result of Orm's extreme desire for accuracy is, to make this poem at first sight seem less like our. Modern English than it reaUy is. We must, of course, remember that the vowels were still pronounced pretty nearly as in ' new pronunciation ' Latin, or in . Italian, or in German. The change from this was not to begin in the Midlands and in the South for more than two centuries. So that, to listen to, this English would have been less like our Modern English than it looks. But, for its appearance in writing, what seems most strange to us is the constant doubling of con- sonants, 'ice,' ' shseweww,' 'heZZpe.'^ Now there is no doubt that, to begin with, a doubled consonant meant a doubled consonant — that is to say, that the letter was pronounced twice, as in ' uwwecessary,' 'pe?i-(k)mfe.' These doubled con- sonants had a tendency to make the vowel before them short, as in fidan, fSdde {feed, fed). Then, as a double consonant often came after a short vowel, this rule was made general, and a double consonant in the Ormulum is only a device of Orm's to show that the vowel com- ing before is short. It is his favourite way of marking quantities. And we have kept this sign in many words. ' Fenny,' as opposed to ' pewal,' ' raiding,' as opposed to ' racing,' are instances. But we make no attempt to use it consist- ently, any more than the other rules of Modern English spelling, and very seldom double consonants at the end of words, as Orm does. We see much the same process ^ The Ormulum, edited by Dr. E. M. White, re-edited by Rev. Robert Holt, 1878 ; also in Spedrmns of Marly English, Part I., Morris, 1884 ; and in Sweet's First Middle English Primer, 1884. ^ As a matter of fact, when we remember what it means, it often gives us something like our modern pronunciation (if we allow for the change of vowel sounds), e.g. with, help, here (see lines 2, 5, and 8). Dialects of English after the Conquest 235 in the history of the final E's. In two -syllabled words like wrnie, the A, for instance, was originally short.^ By the beginning of the fourteenth century it came to be pro- nounced long. Therefore a long vowel now often came before a short E ; and when, not very long after, this E ceased to be sounded at all, the writing of it looked like a mere trick of spelling, a sign of quantity; and a silent E was adopted generally (not quite consistently, of course, in English spell- ing),^ to show that the vowel before it was long. Another thing in the Ormuhm that looks strange is the change of P (TH) to T when it comes after a D or T ; f or instance, ^33 for ]je33 in lines 11 and 14 of the extract. This occurs too in the Feierborough Chronicle and elsewhere. It was, no doubt, easier to pronounce, though we find no diffi- culty in saying ' that they,' or, ' and they.' We see an instance of the change of A to (p. 210, etc.) in nohht (Old English ndht = ndwiht, ' no whit '). C ( = K) is softened to CH (p. 214, etc.) in eche (line 10), of which the Old English form is dee \ SO to SH (p. 216, etc.) in shcewenn, Old English sciavnan, and shollde, Old English sceolde ; and G- to 3 (p. 218, etc.) in ^1x33, Old English dceg, and in onn^mness from ongSan, though this G still remains hard in Modern English, against and {a)gain-say. On the other hand, Orm keeps many G's hard which we have softened ; for instance, asskess (ashes), hisscopp (bishop) ; and A's which we have changed to 0, such as tacnenn (line 19), corresponding to (be-)token. These two peculiarities he shares with Northumbrian English (of which Lowland Scotch is the best modern example). He seems to have lived not far from the southern borders of that dialect. ^ Anglo-Saxon niima. The second A, like the other vowels at the end of words, was weakened to an indistinct B. ^ e.g. live, ISve are exceptions. V is not now allowed to end a word. The lengthening of the vowel also had a good deal to do with causing the final -e of inflexions to be dropped. It hardly sounded in the predominance of the long syllable. See article ' English 'La,ngua.ge,':.BncyclopcEdia Britannica, Ninth Edition. But see also Skeat, Principles of English Etymology, First Series, p. 309, etc. The accent also must have been sapping the terminations steadily. 236 History of English As to his spelling, though he will not have French words, we see that he cannot avoid French spelling (p. 181, etc.). This comes out clearly in his use of K in Judisshenn, mihdl (Anglo-Saxon luddiscan, micet), and of as equivalent to S ^ in milcenn (Anglo-Saxon miltsian) in another part of his work. On the other hand, the process is not complete. We have rm in line 1, ure in line 20, for twu, ow, as they were spelt later on. These points are worth noticing ; but after all, the main thing is Orm's grammar, in which we shall find him advanced at least half-way on the road from Old to Modern English. It has been said before that Anglo-Saxon had a very elaborate stock of grammatical forms, more marked and dis- tinct than German grammar, for instance. But the grammar of the Ormulum is not very difficult to master. Let us take the points in which it differs from Modem English, first stat- ing that we may expect the vowel of all the terminations to be E, whatever it may have been in Old English, and that all the letters are pronounced except in the case of doubled con- sonants. E mute was not yet invented, and -es, for instance, and -ed were distinct syllables, just as they still are in ' fish-«s,' ' rent-ed' It will be convenient to begin with the adjective. Now, we have already seen (p. 108) that there was a special 'weak' form of the adjective in Old English, used after the article, demonstrative pronouns (this, that), and possessives {his, and so on), as in German.^ Of this we have an instance in Jiidisskenn, line 3 (Old English ludAiscan). But so old-fashioned a form is rare ; the strong form of the adjective generally has to be content with -e, for instance — "W^Yp all ]jatt Judewisshe lac. Jewish sa^rijice. Then there is an -e for the plural of the adjective, and we have done with its inflexions. As to substantives, Orm has some ' irregularities,' as they ' Or to TS. And the spelling CH is probably copied from French, see p. 216. ^ Also in the vocative case. Dialects of English after the Conquest 237 appear to us, correct or less corrupted forms as they would have appeared to an educated Englishman of the time before the Conquest.! [/^.g ^q^jjI^ nede, in line 20, is an instance of these, for sdwol (soul) was a feminine substantive, and its genitive was sdwle. But we also find till 3ure sawless hellpe. to In fact, this ' regular ' declension (like that of day in Modern English) was rapidly swallowing up the others. Words otherwise declined are rare in the Ormulum, though com- moner than in Modern English. There is also sometimes an -e for the dative in Orm's declension ; for instance, to manne in line 8. But as lac in line 3, Drihhtin in line 4, and folic in line 5, have an equally good right to it, this dative inflexion cannot be considered a very essential part of the grammar.^ We saw this variation before in the Peterborough Chronicle. As the uniformity and simplicity of declension gained ground the old distinctions of gender were bound to perish. We no longer have it marked by the terminations, in substantive and adjective, and it is on the way to becoming purely rational, just as now man and hoy are masculine, both in fact and in grammar, woman and girl feminine, and chair neuter. We have seen that in English before the Norman Conquest certain words for woman and child ^ were neuter. But our ancestors did not think any less of them on that account ; * ^ From the point of view of Anglo-Saxon grammar Orm's menness, our •men's, is an absolutely stupendous form. The change of vowel in the plural belongs to the nominative and accusative only, and to add the inflexion of the genitive singular on to this is like making the genitive plural of homo, hominesis, or of regnmn, regnos. ^ The -e of the dative in German substantives is in just the same position at the present day. ^ Childer, the Lancashire plural of 'child,' represents cild-ru, a distinctly neuter form of the plural. ' Childer ' is also to be found in the 1549 Prayer- Book in the words ' childers children. ' ' Children ' is a plural twice over. * Though the gender may have originated in some such feeling. But we cannot enter sufliciently into the feelings of our very remote savage ancestors to explain the genders which are attached to words in Old English. 238 History of English this gender was a matter of grammar only, of terminations in the substantive and its adjective, and, with the loss of special inflexions to mark it, it passed away as a matter of course. In the verb, the singular of the present indicative is (except for the -e in the 1st person) declined much as in the Bible and Prayer-Book — we can hardly say ' as in Modern English,' though these forms are still used in poetry. ice, i telle ]ju tellesst lie tellej^ji The plural of both tenses and moods ends in -enn, or, as any one but Orm would have written it, -en. We have already seen this inflexion in the Eush worth Gospels (lioaw, see p. 86), and it is to be found more or less till Henry VII.'s time. But where does this form come from ? It is not the tormina' tion of the present indicative in West Saxon, the * classical ' Old English. There, as we have seen, the termination is -aj>, and it was still -eji in the South when the Ormulmm was written, and for a long time afterwards (see p. 261, 'lowe men hold«]j'). But in the subjunctive present and past, and in the past indicative, it was -en or -on, in the earliest West Saxon that we have. And this seems to be the explanation of its getting into the present tense as well ; that it was due to imitation or ' analogy,' ^ just as we have learnt to say eyes instead of eyne, though the plural of the word was originally iagan. It is just the sort of levelling, or 'grammar made easy,' which the bad example of the Danes would be likely to encourage. Why should the present indicative be conjugated differently from its subjunctive, and from the past tense 1 They were not likely to trouble themselves with such niceties. The ge- before past participles is dropped by Orm, just as it was by the Peterborough chronicler ; so in line 8 we have borerni, which in Anglo-Saxon would be ge-horen. Danish did not have this prefix for its past participles. ^ Article 'English Language,' Bncyclopcedia Britannica, Ninth Edition. Dialects of English after the Conquest 239 We may notice that Orm makes verbs which were ' strong,' or ' irregular,' ' weak ' ; for instance, sleppte (Anglo - Saxon sUp), weppte (Anglo-Saxon wiop), and hwfedd (heaved) as the past participle, as well as hofenn (Anglo-Saxon hafen)?- This is a process which had begun much earlier, was con- tinued, and is still going on at the present day. ' It winded about,' and ' he beseeched him,' are among the ' weak ' perfects now trying to gain admission into literary English. Popular or ' vulgar ' English makes ' weak ' perfects freely ; ' he catched it' (or, ' cotched it'), and 'I seed him,' are two of the common ones. The definite article was in Anglo-Saxon fully declined. We cannot say that this was still the case even in the southern dialect of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, since ]>e is often found standing for a good many cases of diff'erent genders and numbers ; stiU, many of the old forms of the cases were alive, and crop up long after the date of the Ormulum in a shape which is wonderfully suggestive of Anglo-Saxon. Thus, in 1 340, we find ' ]>ane Jiridde day,' like Anglo-Saxon 'J ^ ',- J>riddan dseg.' But in the Ormulum we have nothing but Ipe, plural Ipa and J>«,^ for all genders and cases, much as in Modern English. The neuter of ]pe, namely 'patt (Anglo-Saxon ]>cet), had been adopted as a demonstrative and relative pronoun, undeclined, for all genders, just as we use it now. As was said before (p. Ill, etc.), to use the article as a demonstrative or as a relative was not a very violent change, but to use one gender of a pronoun for one part of speech, and another gender for another, does certainly seem a curious contrivance, and shows how the old grammatical system was breaking up. pi mforrpi (line 15) is the old instrumental case, preserved in ^ We still use a ' strong ' past tense for this verb occasionally, as in ' He hove him a rope. ' For the verbs quoted above see Kington Oliphant, Old and Middle English, p. 229, to whom I am in general much indebted in this part of my subject. ^ e.g. Jia goddspelless ; te posstless ; te being used for Je after a D or T. gospels the apostles 240 History of English one or two expressions only, as /or why (because), which is still to be heard in the country, and occurs in the ' Old Hundredth.' As to the personal pronouns, it is worth while to give Orm's declension of them, which can be compared with the ' classical ' Anglo-Saxon forms (p. 1 1 3). The parts of them which are now obsolete are in italics. I OWM/ttl'U'/ Thou Nom. ice, i >u Oen. mini Jiin Bat me >e Ace. me We two Bual >e You two Nom. tvitt y,tt Gen. unnlcerr ^unnken- Bat. unnc ^unnc Ace. unne We Plural yinnc You Nom. we 36 Gen. ure^ 3ure^ Bat. uss 3UW Ace. uss Singular 3UW He She It Nom. he ^ho itt Gen. hiss hire hiss Bat. himm hire hi/m/m Ace. Mmm hire itt Plural Nom. ],e33 3 Gen. )>e33re, heore, here Bat. J>e33m, hem/m Ace. >e33m. hemm. 4 ■^ The genitive of these pronouns Is usually the possessive case (or posses- sive adjective) only, as in Modern English. ^ was later written OU in French spelling, at first without any change of pronunciation, see p. 181. ' See pp. 220, 221, 3 has become a vowel, and e53=ei. * Koch, Hisiorische Grammatik. Sweet, Middle, English Primer. Dialects of English after the Conqttest 241 Many of these are to be found in the extract. Thus the personal pronouns (except the dual, now lost) are in Orm's dialect mostly the same as at present, if we allow for the great change that has taken place in the pronunciation of English vowels, and remember that Orm's doubled consonants are merely a sign that the vowel before them is short. As we shall see, they are nearer to our present personal pronouns than the forms used in the South at the time. The dative has in all of them ' crowded out ' the accusative. The H has been dropped in {h)it. This is probably the less emphatic form,!^ and therefore less carefully pronounced, just as we frequently hear educated people say, ' I told 'im so.' The genitive is rapidly becoming a ' possessive ' ^ only, as it is in Modern English. His, as the genitive or ' possessive ' of it, is the form used even in the ' Authorised Version ' of the Bible ; for instance, ' The fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind ; ' 3 ' _A^jid it (the rock) shall give forth his water.' * On the other hand, we have dropped Orm's favourite form ice. gho (from heo) is now only to be heard in the Lancashire hoo ( = she). We use instead the form first found in the Peterborough Chronicle, scm (from sfy, feminine of the definite article in West Saxon) — ' god wimman scce ^ wses.' The dual lived on for nearly another century. It is last found in the poem of Havelok the Dane, about 1280.^ Heore, or here, and hemm come directly from the Old English forms, and are still found in Chaucer, as here, hir, and hem. The last must be the origin of 'em, in a sentence like ' Give it 'em.' But J^ejj, ]j«33re, J'«33m {they, their, them), though they seem familiar enough to us now, cannot well be traced to Old English. The ^ Sweet, History of English Sounds, p. 189. ^ Orm declines these genitives as possessive adjectives, e.g. hise ; * And wessh himm hise clafess. ' washed elothes. ^ Genesia i. 11. * Numbers xx. 8. ^ This writer never uses SH or SCH, but puts C's in general accordance with the old way of spelling English, and it is pretty certain that sae was pronounced like she at present, except of course its vowel, which was more like A in lan&. ^ Kington Oliphant, Old and Middle English, p. 355. E 242 History of English plural of the definite article (}>«, \dera, \«33m, for instance, when it had hemm already % Let us then look at the corresponding pronoun^ in Danish, and compare it with the forms in the Ormulum. Danish.'^ Ormulum. Nom. J>eir 5)633 Gen. Jieira ]'e33re Dat. Jieim l'e33m It is plain that the English plural they, their, them, is derived from Danish, though, as the Old English article {sometimes used also as a demonstrative and personal pronoun ^) was so much like it, it was all the more easily adopted by the East Midland Englishmen. It must have seemed as if it were merely altering the pronunciation of an English word, and using it in a slightly different way from what was customary, though they also had some examples of this use in their own language. And yet this is a very striking example of the influence of Danish on the East Midland dialect, and through that on ' stand- ard ' English. For, as we saw on p. 19, a personal pronoun is a sort of word to which a language holds most strongly, and for English to have received a pronoun from Danish shows some- thing that comes very near to a mixture of the two languages. And this instance does not stand alone. Both (Danish MtSir) had already begun to drive out the Old English forms begen, bd, bii, and this is another word which would not readily be ^ It is also a demonstrative = ' that,' and is, of course, own-brother to yd, ^ Icelandic. As has been said before, this old-fashioned language closely represents the language spoken by the Norsemen and Danes who settled in England, who were called indifferently ' Danes ' by our ancestors. The word ' Dane ' is used in this wide sense here, and ' Danish ' usually means Icelandic, since that language best represents Norse and Danish in their old form. * See p. 154, where (6ton fd is exactly ' ate them.' Dialects of English after the Conquest 243 adopted from a foreign language. Danish has invaded the numerals as well. 'Tenth' is in Old English ted^a, the modern form of which is tithe. In Danish it is tiimdi. Our modern form tenth is a compromise between Old English and Danish. To pass to less striking instances, fra is the Danish form of the English fram, now from; Orm uses it as an ordinary preposition ('fra ]>e chaff,' 'from the chaff'), and we still keep it in the phrase 'to and fro.'''- And of ordinary- Danish words — substantives, adjectives, and verbs (the same classes of words in which we have borrowed so largely from French) — Orm's English is full. To take some of these which are still in constant use, he has anger, clip, die, ill, kid, raise, scare, thrive,^ all superseding quite different Old English words. We have already seen (p. 216, etc.) that many words which keep the hard C and G are derived from Danish. Fresh Danish words kept making their way into East Midland and Northumbrian English, and spreading into the other dialects. Besides the instances given, Orm has many Danish words, forms of words, and idioms which have not survived. Orm's very name is Danish, and his English has a very strong dash of Danish indeed. But, taking even ordinary ' standard ' English, we have seen that Danish has made its way to some extent even into the very grammar of our language, thus affecting it more deeply than French has done. And if Danish came so closely into contact with English as this, it is surely probable that the great loss and simplifying of inflexions which we find in the Ormulum as compared with Old English is due to the imperfect attempts of the Danes to speak the language, which the English themselves, imitated, especially as this view has already been shown to be reasonable (see p. 125, etc.). In the matter of inflexions, then, Orm has advanced a long way towards Modern English. The language which he writes 1 A changing to in the South, and to a large extent also in East Mid- land (as in hddir, both). Lowland Scotch keeps fra in its original form. ^ Kington Oliphant, Old and Middle Jinrjlish, p. 239. 244 History of English is at all events not more inflected than Chaucer's 200 years later ; but then Chaucer's dialect, though it is a kind of East Midland, has much more in common with Southern English, which was a far more conservative dialect. Thus with Orm we have got considerably nearer to Modern English. What makes his language look so strange is — (1) His peculiar trick of spelling, which is, after all, nothing but marks of quantity, just as if he had written fc, shcewgn, df. (2) The very large number of Old English words in his poem for which we have now substituted Norman -French words, as the ' glosses ' to our examples show. The old theory of the development of Modern English was that its inflexions were worn down by contact with French after the Norman Conquest. We have already seen that the Conquest did afi'ect them, by giving the popular careless speech an open field, because it destroyed the position of English as a cultivated and literary language. But if it had been the main cause of the loss of our inflexions, these would have been worn down as much in Worcestershire as at Peter- borough, Lincoln, or Derby. Let us look at a specimen of the Southern dialect from a poem written about 1205, certainly not earlier than the Ormulum, by Layamon, a priest living at Areley, in Worcestershire. It is a translation, very free indeed, of a poem by Wace in Norman-French. This part describes the coming of Hengest and Horsa to Kent. LAYAMON Southern Dialect About 1205 A.D. 1. Sone swa heo hine imetten '. ^ Soon as they hivi (ace.) met fseire heo hine igrsetten. fairly greeted. 1 Beo=M (they), i.e. Hengest and Horsa. A full stop marks the end of the couplet (or line) ! the end of the line (or half -line), not necessarily a pause in the sense. Dialects of English after the Conquest 245 3. & seiden }>at heo him wolden ' him (dat. ) haereri i Jjisse londe. obey in land. 5. jif he heom wolde '■ if them mid rihten at-halden. mth right keep. 7. Pa andswerede Vortiger '. TJien answered Vortigern of elchen vuele he was war. each evil ware. 9. An alle mine iliue ' In life Jie ich iluued habbe. which I lived have. 11. bi dseie no bi nihtes '■ nor ne seeh ich nauere ser swulche cnihtes.^ not saw I never ere such We can see at once that this dialect is more inflected than the Ormulwn. First, there is the prefix ge-, corrupted to i-, which Orm nearly always drops, both in past participles and in the other words which once had it.^ Secondly, there is. hine, the old accusative of he, though Layamon also uses him for the accusative. Then the termination of ' elchm' (line 8) represents -um of Anglo-Saxon. ])e (in line 10) is the old relative (see p. 1 1 3), where Orm would use ])aU as we now do,^ as for instance in the line — ' He that will not when lie may — ' ^ From Morris, Specimens of Early English, Part I., p. 66. ^ e.g. cweme, line 4, whicli in Old English was ge-cweme. " We also, of course, now use who and which, originally interrogative pronouns, as relatives. ' Which, whose, whom, occur as relatives as early as the end of the twelfth century, but who not until the fourteenth century, and was not in common use before the sixteenth century.' — Morris, Historical Outlines of English Accidence, p. 130. Which appears in the Prayer-Book of 1549, in Collects where we have who, e.g. ' God, which art author of 246 History of English Layamon's grammar is not very regular or consistent. He has forms closely resembling those in Old English for the different cases and genders and numbers of the definite article, or sometimes simply \e for most of them. So too in other •words he has ' correct ' and also weakened forms for the same case, and the weakened form is a final -«, which later on stood for most inflexions in English. But there are large relics of Old English grammar in his ' language. Sometimes lines occur which are not very different from what they would be in Anglo-Saxon. For instance — Angh-Saaoii. to secenne under lyfte < , , > and godne hldford. Layamon. to Bechen vnder lufte lond and godne lauerd. Modern English, to seek under heaven land and a good lord. Anglo-Saixon. lie ha;fde Eenne wisne < > . [ monn J Layamon. he hsefden senne wisne mon. Modern English he had a wise man. Anglo-Saxon. fsegrest ealra Jjinga. Layamon. fairest aire Jjinge. Modern English, fairest of-all things. Angh-Saa^on. { °^ | Englena { ^^ } . Layamon. in .Slnglene londe. Modern English. in the land of-(the-) English. We see that Layamon uses E as the vowel of his termina- tions ; but his grammar is evidently nothing but degraded Anglo-Saxon.^ Orm's is Anglo-Saxon greatly altered by contact with another language. peace,' ' whiche haste safelye brought us to the begimoing of this day,' in the order for Morning Prayer. And even in the Authorised Version of the Bible (1611) who (nominative) is rare as a relative, which or that being usually found instead, as in the Lord's Prayer. . ' It is, however, often impossible to say of an author, and especially of a poet, how far he copies old-fashioned forms to be found in old books, but which were no longer in actual use. We must make some allowance for this, but it will not seriously aSFeot the main argument. Some of Layamon's most archaic forms are to be found much later in the South. Dialects of English after the Conquest 247 Layamon is, from his dialect being Southern, fonder of CH for C, and of for A than Orm is (see p. 213, etc.). We now come to another great English dialect which must be contrasted with the East Midland — namely, Northumbrian. This, like East Midland, is coloured by Danish, but the basis of it is the older Northumbrian English, and it is a dialect with very distinct characteristics. The relations of these two dialects might be expressed as follows — Old Mercian English + Danish influence = East Midland. Old Northumbrian English + Danish influence = the later Northum- brian. The specimen given below is from a translation of the Psalms, made in the latter half of the thirteenth century, though the copy of it which we possess is not earlier than the reign of Edward II. (1 307-1 327).i It is, of course, made from the Latin version of the Bible, called the Vulgate. PSALM CVII. (CVI. IN THE LATIN VERSION) 2 Northumbrian (about 1280) 1. Schriues^ to Lauerd, for gode he is ; For in werld * es merci bis. 2. Saie Jiai with gode wille and thoght, Whilk 5 Jjat of Lauerd ere boght ; Wham he boght of hand of faa,'' Era rikes '^ samened ^ he \^? 3. Era sun-spring to setel-gang,!" Era north, fra ]3e see swa ^^ lang. 4. Pai dweled in an-nes ^^ in drihede ^^ wai ; Of cite of woning-stede i* noght fand J>ai. 1 SpeciTnens of Early Mnglish, Morris and Skeat, Part II., p. 23. 2 Anglo-Saxon and Early English Psalter, published by the Surtees Society, 1843-47. * Confess to, praise (co«/!ieor). * Latin, m «obc»Jm»i= for ever. " Which. ^ Foe. I From kingdoms ; Latin regionibus, perhaps confused with regnis. 8 Gathered. ^ Them. " From sun-rising to setting. II gg 12 Wilderness. " Dry. " Habitation. 248 History of English 5. Hungrancl ^ and thristand als-swa,^ Pe saule of J^am ^ waned in Jia.^ 6. And J>ai cried to God when droued * })ai ware, And of ]7ar ^ nedinges ^ lie out-nam "^ Jjam Jiare.^ 7. And lie led ]jam in right wai, In cite of woning-stede ]jat ga suld \&\? Now the first thing that strikes one about this specimen of English is that it is hardly more inflected than our Modern English. There is, indeed, schriues in verse 1, the Northum- brian plural of the imperative, which in the Southern dialect would be schriuefh ; and if we looked in other parts of these Psalms we should find an indicative plural corresponding to this, as in the line Vpsteghes hilles and feldes doungas.'^'' Up-mount -go, Hwngrand keeps nearer to the old form of the present par- ticiple -ende than ' hungerimp',' which we now have, and which is the form used by Chaucer, though this is after all only putting one inflexion instead of another. But in Southern or in East Midland English of the thirteenth or fourteenth century the past tenses dweled, found (verse 4), mid (verse 7), would have the plural marked by a termination, either -en or a sounded -e}^ The-g in «•« (verse 2) had no doubt once been pronounced ; probably it is meant to be pronounced here, as appears from the metre ; but, if so, it is a solitarj"^ survivor, an ' archaism ' or old-fashioned form, or else copied from the other dialects for the purposes of the metre. In other places it is simply er. In fact, we may say that by the beginning of the fourteenth century the verb in Northumbrian was almost as little inflected as in our Modern English. The other final ^ Hungeri»g'. " Also. ^ Them. ' Troubled. ^ Their. ^ Necessities. '' Took out. * There. ^ Other vpords will he easily identified if we remember that ' standard ' English often has an for Old English and Northumbrian A, or from the Bible. ■"' Specimens of Early English, Part II,, p. 32. '^ Nearly always, even in the fourteenth century. Dialects of English after the Conquest 249 -e's too were not pronounced at this time.i Gode in the first verse is a clear example of this, for even in Old English, before the Norman Conquest, the nominative singular masculine of the adjective had no termination. Why, then, were these final -e's written if they were not intended to be pronounced % The fact is that the scribe, or person who copied out books, did not copy out one English dialect, or even one language only. This would have been specialising with a vengeance, and such a one-sided scribe would have been comparatively useless.^ "We have already seen that scribes used to French spelling naturally employed it in English books, and that they did this to such an extent that it gradually coloured all our Eng- lish spelling.^ So too it was to some extent with the different English dialects. A scribe who spoke Southern, or East or West Midland English, or who was used to copying books in those dialects, when he came to write out a piece of Northumbrian English, though he might try to copy it accurately, would naturally write some of the words as they sounded to him or as he had seen them written. We must remember that there was then no fixed standard of spelling, such as we have now.* But, besides this reproducing of the sounds in the scribe's head, he would also try (unconsciously) to make the page look as he was accustomed to see it. Now English writing, except in Northumbrian, abounded in final -e's, and thus he wrote them carelessly in saule and other words, in order to make the writing look as he was accustomed to see it.^ It is 1 This of course does not apply to cite, which is a French word. ' It would have been almost like the Butcher in the ' Hunting of the Snark ' who could only kill beavers. * No doubt there was also the idea that French spelling ought to be the standard. * The metre and the rhyme sometimes make it possible to see what the word really was. Thus, in these Psalms, Tyrade (broad, plural) rhymes to myhelhede. Now myhelhede, by its history, cannot have had its final -e pro- nounced. Therefore the -e in hrade was also merely ornamental. ^ Nouns in the dative properly had an -e in Southern and Midland English at this time, but this was not always sounded. Consequently a careless scribe would often ^vrite a word with an -e without thinking whether it were in the dative or not. This is another element of confusion in many manu- 2 so History of English partly this trick of writing final -e's for the sake of appear- ances which caused them to be retained in Modern English where they are no longer sounded, though they have now got to act as marks of quantity. Well then, if Northumbrian is in 1300 A.D. already so much like Modern English in having dropped most of its terminations, why should we not say that Modern English sprang from it ? In the first place, because it is not historically correct. ' Standard ' English, what is now the one literary dialect for the whole of England, made its first appearance farther south, in the district of which London was a part, and in that city, as we shall see presently. Secondly, there are some points in this Northern English which have nothing in our Modern English answering to them. The most striking of these are (1) the keeping of A instead of its being changed to 0, as it is in Midland English of the same period, as well as in Modern English ; ^ for instance, in the words wham (whom), faa {foe), fro, {fro or from), lang (long), ga {go) ; and (2) the use of S for SH, as in sal, suld.^ And if we look carefully at these points we shall see what Northumbrian really developed into. Its most distinguished child is Lowland Scotch,^ that dialect of English which was the standard or literary dialect of the Scotch Court and of Scotland till after the union of the crowns at the accession of James I., and which is the ordinary speech of the Scotch Lowlands at the present day. Thus the poems of Burns are in Modern Northumbrian, and we can find many instances of it in Scott's novels, as, for instance, in The Fortimes of Nigel,* scripts even where a Southern or Midland scribe was writing his own dialect. 1 But the has changed its sound somewhat in tolerably recent times (p. 212, note). ^ For the hard C's retained in Northumbrian see chap. xv. 2 Sweet's History of English Sounds, p. 201. * He breaks his word and oath haith. Banishment /j-oe our Court, my lord, said the king. My back is sair. There go twa words to that bargain. Dialects of English after the Conquest 2 5 i where James I. speaks Modern Northumbrian, in the mouth of the Baron of Bradwardine in Waverley, from Mause and Cuddie Headrigg and others in Old Mortality,'^ and also in some of Mr. Stevenson's novels. Though the dialects of Northern Yorkshire, Durham, Westmoreland, and Northumberland are also founded on Northumbrian, Lowland Scotch is the best example of its modern form, since this has been preserved as a literary dialect, we may say, down to the present day. We have seen (p. 134, etc.) that the decay of Northumbrian inflexions began even before the Norman Conquest. And now the question arises. Why did it lose its inflexions earlier than East Midland English, which was about equally liable to be influenced by the Danes? Now very many of the variations in language cannot have causes assigned to them; we can only say what they are, and give other instances of like changes. But there are some facts in the history of the North which seem to account for this change, in part at any rate. We have seen that, after inflexions began to be less accurately used, after their time of ascendency was past, when the ' tendency of the age ' was against them, it was education which tended to preserve them, and the careful utterance of educated, or at least of cultivated people ; not the careless speech of the vulgar who are not particular as to how they speak so long as they are understood. We have also seen that Northumbria was, to begin with, the most educated, literary, and cultivated part of England. How much Northumbrian writings did to give a model of style for the works of Alfred, for instance, we shall never know, since almost all this Northern literature has perished, at least in its original form. But literature does not start into life full-grown, like Athena. A rustic's letter is about the height of style to which its prose could reach. ' I'se te silent or thou sail come to harm. Ye suld ken. Like wha but him. 252 History of English The West Saxon literature must have been largely formed on Northumbrian models.^ But this peaceful and enlightened period soon passed. Northumbria had fallen into great confusion even before the Danes came. And when the Danish invasion took place, though this was shared by the East Midlands, the disorder lasted far longer in Northumbria. Even just before the Norman Conquest we can see how uncivilised Northumbria was. Siward, its earl, who conquered Macbeth, though he was a fine fellow in his way, was a regular barbarian. Tostig, Harold's brother, Earl of Northumbria, seems to have thought that he could govern the savage Northumbrians only by taking a leaf out of their book and murdering some of their chief men by treachery. The Northumbrians very incon- sistently resented this, and invaded the centre of England treating it like an enemy's country, until Edward the Con- fessor agreed to banish Tostig, and to appoint as their earl the man whom they wished to have.^ Then came the invasion from Norway by Harold Hardrada, the rebellion of the North- umbrians against William the Conqueror, and the ravaging of the country between the Humber and the Tees by him, from which, as is seen in Domesday Book, the country had hardly even begun to recover fifteen years later. Nor was it left at peace even then. It was near the Scotch border ; and such troubles as the laying waste of the country by the Scotch before the Battle of the Standard in Stephen's reign (11 38 A.D.) were not likely to restore its prosperity. And the country which had been ceded to Scotland, and in which North- umbrian was also spoken, was almost as much troubled as Northern England. It had shared the miseries of the Danish invasions. It was invaded by Siward, and again and again by the Norman kings. It is plain that in the midst of this disorder and misery learning and education could have no chance. And so, while 1 Earle, Philology of the English Tongue, p. 29, and see chap. a.. ^ See Freeman, Old English History, Dialects of English after the Conquest 253 the decay of the elaborate literary language was delayed in the East Midlands (down to the Norman Conquest) by the influence of the Anglo-Saxon literature, by the near neighbourhood of Wessex, where nothing but the inflected West Saxon or Southern English was spoken, and by the careful speech of educated Mer- cians, in Northumbria this decay went on unchecked. It was natural, therefore, that Northumbrian should be ahead of East Midland in its loss of inflexions. The three main dialects after the Norman Conquest are in this respect like three regiments marching in Echelon, one in flank of another and to its rear, but not stepping over quite the same ground. First comes Northumbrian, then East Midland, the Southern dialect last. Each has its own peculiarities ; all are on the way to getting rid of the mass of their inflexions ; but one is more advanced on the road than another. And yet Northumbrian (as repre- sented by Lowland Scotch), which changed most rapidly once, now looks a most old-fashioned dialect. For in some of its innovations ' standard ' English has caught it up ; in its loss of inflexions, and in its pronunciation of A (see p. 225). On the other hand, Northumbrian has kept the Old English A, in writing at least, in many words where we have altered it to O, and some of its words, such as wha, twa, and also oot, hoo (out, how), sound just as they did at Alfred the Great's Court.i This dialect then is like a man who, having been a Eadical in his youth, has seen the world move on and realise his pet ideas, and in his old age becomes conservative, as having no more changes to wish for. Lowland Scotch also differs largely from ' standard ' English in the words which it uses. The nations were for centuries under separate governments, and consequently the dialects, besides their original difierences, developed independently. The points in which the Lowland Scotch vocabulary differs from ' standard ' English fall mainly under three heads. ' In die (pronounced 'dee' rhyming to 'free' in the poem — 'Scots wha hae wi' Wallace bled ') as well as iu chield or chiel and other words I keeps its old pronunciation. Necht (night) exactly represents neM, a parallel form to niht in Old English. 254 History of English (1) 'Modern Northumbrian' owns a good many Norse words which we do not use, such as levin (lightning), /ra (from), gair (make, oblige), toA (fox). As we have seen, the Norse element was very strong in the Northumbrian dialect.^ (2) ' Modern Northumbrian ' retains a great many Old Eng- lish words which, in ' standard ' English, have been ' crowded out,' either by other English words or by French words. Among these are^ and Scotch. Old JEnglish. English. dree drfogan suffer eme dam uncle ferlie fserKc terrible (sudden) halse hals neck speir spyrian inquire wud wod mad (3) On the other hand, owing to the friendship between the Scotch and French, which lasted from the War of Independence down to the time of Mary Queen of Scots, a good many French words have been introduced into Lowland Scotch, besides those from Norman-French brought in by the Normans (as, for instance, the Bruces and Balliols), who had almost as much influence in the Lowlands of Scotland as they had in England. Among these later French words are — 'Owland Scotch. ashet dishabill Modem French. assiette deshabille English. plate deshabille, treated douce fash, fashous doux, douce facher, f&cheux as a foreign word. pleasant vex, vexatious jigot gigot leg of mutton And now we may leave Northumbrian to develop into Lowland Scotch, and turn once more to the sources of our ' standard ' English. 1 One of the strongest instances of this is the use of at for to with the infinitive, as in Icelandic. So in the Northumbrian Psalter, quoted above, we find Pat leres mi hend at fight nou (Ps. xviii. 34). teachest hands to So we can speak of ' making a great ado ' {' at do ' = to-do). CHAPTER XVII ENGLISH DIAMICTS IN THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY East Midland English in the first half of the fourteenth century — The ancestor of 'standard' English — Robert of Brunne — The Southern dialect of Gloucestershire, and of Kent — The West Midland dialect.^ We saw in the last chapter that the first specimens which we possess of the East Midland dialect — that is, of ' standard ' English, in its infancy — were written *at Peterborough. Orm, whose language contains so many prophecies of what Modern English was to be, very probably lived in or near Lincolnshire (p. 231). And even now the same dialect runs down from north to south, from Lincolnshire, to the neighbourhood of London,^ and is nearer than any other popular dialect to our ' standard ' English, the English of books and of educated people. Consequently, if we take a specimen of this dialect of English in the first half of the fourteenth century, we shall be on the right line for tracing the origin of our ' standard ' English. The poem, a part of which will be quoted, was written by Eobert Manning of Brunne, or Bourn, in Lincolnshire, who was a monk or Canon of Sempringham. It was compiled from various authors — Bede, Peter of Lang- toft, and from" Wace (who wrote the Roman de Rou) — in 1338 A.D. * Morris and Skeat, Specimens of Early English, Part II. Skeat, Principles of English Etymology, First Series. Kington Oliphant, Old and Middle English ; The New English. Furnivall, Chronicle of Robert Manning, ^ London itself, like most large English cities, now has a special dialect of its own. APPROXIMATE MAP. OF ENGLISH dlALECTS IN THE I4T." CENTURY BOi/Amp/fs 0/- OMiscrs..mmmmii />ANS£S Of /J/ILS English Dialects in Fourteenth Century 257 Incipit Pkologus de Historia Britannie transumpta per eobertum in materna lingua 1. Lordynges,! [tha]t be now tere, if 3e wille listene and lere ^ 3. All [}>]e story of Inglande als^ Robert Mannyng wryten it fand/ 5. & on Inglysch. has it schewed, not for Jie lerid bot for Jje lewed,^ 7. flfor J)o ® ]7at in \\& land[e] * wone '' ]pat ]je Latyn no ^ Frankys ^ cone/" 9. ffor to haf solace and gamen ^^ In felawschip when \'&\ sitt samen.'^^ 11. And it is wisdom for to wytten^^ Jie state of Jie land, and haf it wryten, 13. what manere of folk first it wan,^* & of what kynde ^^ it first began ; 1 5. And gude it is for many thynges for to here Jie dedis of kynges, 1 7. whilk 1® were foles, and whilk were wyse, & whilk of )>am couthe i'' most quantyse,i* 19. and whilk did wrong, and whilk ryght & whilk maynten[e]d pes & fyght.^^ The part quoted above is taken from a Manuscript which shows traces of having been written by a scribe who spoke a more Northern dialect than that of Lincolnshire.^" It is ^ Sirs. ^ Learn. 'As. " Found. * Unlearned. « Them, those. '^ Dwell. ^ Nor. » French. i" Know. " Amusement [gammon and gaine both come from the word). " Together. i' Know. " Won. i' jj^ce. ^^ Which. " Knew ( = could). ^* Cunning, from Old French cointise. ^ From Furnivall's Edition in the Rolls Series. * It appears that the Northern copyist cut out an E (sign of the dative) as an inflexion which was not familiar to him. The line will not scan without it. ™ e.g. Tpam (line 18) is distinctly a Northern form. S 258 History of English chosen because it is an original part of the poem, and also because the difference in language is not very great. The other Manuscript, which is supposed to represent Eobert's own dialect with tolerable exactness,^ has lost this introduction, but a bit which comes later on will now be given. It is almost or altogether free from incorrect or unpronounced -e's, but -e is elided before a vowel and sometimes before an H. II 1. Bretons of Walys herde wel how Pat ]5e Englische Jie monkes slow ; ^ 3. Pey gadered Jjem to consail ^ How to venge Jjat tyrpayl.* 5. pre noble men were in J)at cite, Po Jire made a gret semble ; ^ 7. Po Jire weren alle kynges, & of Jie Bretons lordynges : 9. Bledryk, of Cornewaille was sire, & lord ouer al Deueneschire, 11. Als \t water of Ex rennes ® ffro )ie bed, — J^er ^ men hit kennes,^ — 1 3. Vnto Jie se Jier hit gos yn ; Longe heldeniiit Jie Bretons kyn, 15. Euere til _Adelston* cam ; He didfr Jiat kynde i" mykel scha-m.^^ In the Peterborough Chronicle and in Orm's poem we saw a language which had started on the way to becoming Modern English. In Robert of Brunne the change is near completion so far as the inflexions are concerned, and the proportion of French words used by him is nearly the same as in the least ^ Furnivall, Introduction. The extract is from the same edition. ^ Slew, that is, the Monks of Bangor, in 607 A.D. ' Counsel. * Slaughter, infamous deed. ° Assembly. » Runs. ' Wliere. ^ Kennes is not the Northern plural, as on p. 8^. The indefinite man (like man in German), or men, or me, constantly takes a.sipgular verb. ^ A.thelstan, or .ffithelstan. ^^ Eaoe. " Disgrace, shame. English Dialects in Fourteenth Century 259 stilted English -writings of modern times. In fact, he is more modern than Chaucer and Wycliffe half a century later,but then they wrote in a more Southern, and therefore more conservative form of the East Midland dialect, as we shall see. The influence of the almost uninflected Northumbrian dialect, which bordered on Lincolnshire, must have been strong in that county. Let us now see quite shortly what are the points to be noticed in Robert Manning's English. First, as to the spelling, both \ and th are used in the first example. We have seen how and why the latter finally drove out its rival. U is virritten for V between vowels, as it was for another three centuries, and V for TJ at the beginning of words. To pass to the grammar, Jjem (as well as hemi) is already used for the dative and accusative plural of lie, as it was in The Ormulum, and as it is now, though in Chaucer and Wycliffe we shall find only hem and her, like the Old English forms, for them and their. It took 150 years after Robert Manning's time to establish our modern forms, derived from Danish, in the predominant dialect of English. p«y is equally a Danish form, but this is also used by Chaucer and Wycliffe. Hit, the neuter of he, still keeps the H, which is found much later than this, even in Tyndale's New Testament (1526). In alle, (ii. 7) the -e marks the plural of the adjective ; in ' monkes ' (ii. 2) the termination is an extra syllable, not a mere S added, as at present. Dedis (i. 16) shows this still more clearly. Then, as to the inflexions of the verb. The infinitive has two forms — 'wytt«m' (i. 11) and 'venge' (ii. 4), just as we shall find them in Chaucer. And we get all three forms of the plural — 'wer«»,'i 'helde»' (ii. 7, ii. 14); 'herde' (ii. 1); and-'gadered,' without any termination to mark the number. Gos,-rennes (instead of goeth, renneth) are the Northern form of ^ These are, of course, past tenses. But the termination of the present is just the same in the Midland dialect, e.g. in another work of Robert's, 26o History of English the 3rd person singular, which had, as we see, begun to make its way southwards, though it did not become the correct form in 'standard' English for some time after the more Southern East Midland became established in that position. Eobert Manning's language is, as we shall see presently, nearer to Modern English than Chaucer's is. It is rery important to keep well in mind that it is the East Midland only that we have been speaking of. North- umbrian we have already seen developing into Lowland Scotch. Southern English is very distinct from both of these and seems to us much more old-fashioned. West Midland, on the other hand, is, as might be expected, nearer to the East Midland dialect. To prove this we will take three specimens of them, two Southern and one West Midland. But, firsli of all, it will help to give us a clear idea of the difference between them if we look at the present indicative of the verb in the three main dialects. Southern. ich sende J)ou sendest he sendej) Hast Midland. ich, i, sende J)ou sendest he sendej), sendes ^ Northern. ic, i, sende, send Jjou sendes he sendes we sendej) je sendej) hi sendej) we senden 36 senden fei senden we send, sendes 36 send, sendes f ai send, sendes These forms would enable us roughly to identify the dialect of the extracts. But the West Midland (and to a less extent the East Midland) has both Northern and Southern grammatical forms. To begin with, we will take an extract from the Metrical Chronicle of Eobert of Gloucester,^ written in 1298, a part which is interesting for its meaning, as well as for its language. Gloucester, as we have seen, belonged to the South in dialect. Men olepi/» fe boke ' Handlyug Synne. ' — Kington Oliphant, Old and Middle call English, p. 473. -^ Origiually a Nortliern form. '' Edited by Aldis Wright. Rolls Series. English Dialects in Fourteenth Century 261 ROBERT OF GLOUCESTER Southern 1298 1. Pus com lo engelond • in to normandies liond. came hand & ]>e normans ne cou]pe speke ]>o • bote hor owe speche, not could then but their own 3. & speke french as hii dude atom • and hor children dude spoke they did at home also teche. So }>at heie men of Jjis lend ■ Jiat of hor blod come- high came 5. HoldeJ) alle Jiulke speche • Jiat hii of horn nome. the same took Vor bote a man conne frenss • me tel]? of him lute. know one reckons little 7. Ac lowe men holde]? to engliss ■ & to hor owe speche 3ute. But ■ yet Ich wene ]?er ne be]? in al Jie world • contreyes none' thinh are 9. pat ne holde]? to hor owe speche • bote engelond one' only Ac wel me wot uor to conne " boj^e wel it is' one knows for 11. Vor Jie more ]jat a mon can ■ Jie more wurjje he is. knows Every letter here has its force ; there are no silent -e's, though -e is cut off, as usual, before a vowel. The dots in the middle of the line show the division of the verse ; it might equally well be written in two halves. Bearing these two facts in mind, we shall be able to scan it, though the metre is rough. There will be four accents in the first half-line, three in the second. It is like Sam Weller's song in Piekmck — 262 History of English j Bold Turpin once on Hounslow Heath. ) His bold mare Bess bestrode-a ; ( Wben there he see the Bishop's coach \ A-coming along the road-a. In the language the chief things to notice are — (1) He keeps to the Old English forms of the 3rd personal pronoun, instead of the Danish forms they, their, them, thus — Nominative plural Mi Q.. 3) Anglo-Saxon M Genitive plural h)r (1. 2) Anglo-Saxon heora (2) The plural of the present indicative of verbs ends in -«J>, as in holde]) (1. 5), help (1. 8), which is the proper Southern termination, inherited directly from the West Saxon -alp, as in healda]), heo]>. (3) We have already seen that the final -e's are real parts of the language. For instance, in cou]>e (1. 2), come (1. 4), nome (1. 5), -e marks the plural of past tenses, in Anglo-Saxon cii]>on, cdmon, ndmon. In ^eke (1. 2) it marks the infinitive, Anglo-Saxon spckcan. Conne (1. 6) is 3rd person singular present subjunctive. None (1. 8) is the plural of the adjective. (4) Besides this Robert of Gloucester keeps the prefix ge- of the past participle in a mutilated form — J>is bataile was ido (ge-d6n, done, fought), and he was aslawe (ge-slagen, slain). We will next take another specimen of the Southern dialect, later in date, but still more old-fashioned, archaic, or conservative in language, though, as it is a translation of the Apostles' Creed, it will not be so hard to make out. It is by Dan Michel of Northgate in Kent,^ a monk of St. Augustine's, Canterbury, and was written about 1340.^ ^ ? Northgate in Canterbury. I can find no other Northgate in Kent. Dan is for domimis, a title of monks, and of priests who were not Masters of Arts. 2 From Specimens of Early English, Morris and Skeat, Part II., p. 106. English Dialects in Fourteenth Century 263 THE APOSTLES' CREED Kentish (Southern) 1340 Ich leue ine god / uader almi3ti. makere of heuene / and of erl'e. And ine iesu cnst / his zone on-lepi 1 / oure Ihord. Jiet y-kend is / of )>e holy gost. y-bore of Marie Mayde. y-pyned onder pouns pilate. y-nayled a rode.^ dyad, and be-bered. yede doun to helle. Jiane Jiridde day a-ros uram \q dyade. Steas to heuenes. zit a]3e ri3t haK of god \& uader al-mi3ti. Jjannes to comene he is / to deme Jje quike / and J>e dyade. Ich y-leue ine ]pe holy gost. holy cherche general- liche.^ Memnesse of haljen. Lesnesse of zemnes. of ulesse arizinge. and lyf eurelestinde. zuo by hyt.* This extract is, as has been said already, still more old- fashioned than the last, but we need only notice the more striking points in the language. There is the prefix y- (the corruption of ge-) to a swarm of past participles. In ' J>ame Jiridde day ' the article has the same form for the accusative singular masculine as it sometimes has in Anglo-Saxon. ' To comene ' is the Anglo-Saxon io cumenne, the gerund or dative of the infinitive, like to sdwenne in the Parable of the Sower on p. 154 The Z for S in zone, zuo is the Southern pronunciation (as in 'Zummerzet'), and so is U or V for F, as in uader, uram (from). This last we have already had in Eobert of Glouces- ter, in uxyr, Vor (11. 10, 11) ; and the other grammatical forms are much the same as in his poem, -e being an essential part of the grammar. Kent has even now a dialect distinct from that of the shires to the north of London, but it has been too much in touch with London for centuries to have kept • Only. ^ On cross (rood). ' Universal, catholic. * So be it (amen). The rest can easily be made out from the Prayer-Book. 264 History of English anything like its position of the fourteenth century as the most conservative in language of all English counties. As a specimen of the West Midland dialect we will take part of the ' Instructions for Parish Priests,' composed at the end of the fourteenth or beginning of the fifteenth century,^ by Myrc, Canon of Lilleshall in Shropshire. West Midland About 1400 (?) 1. God seyth hym self, as wry ten we fynde. That whenne J^e blynde ledeth }>e blynde, 3. In to ]7e dyche Jiey fallen boo,^ For )»ey ne sen whare by to go. 5. So faren prestes now by dawe ; ^ They beth blynde in goddes lawe, 7. That whenne }>ey scholde ]pe pepul rede * In to synne Jjey do hem lede. 9. Thus Jiey haue do now fulle 3ore,^ And alle ys for defawte of lore,* 1 1 . Wherefore Jiou preste curatoure "^ gef ^ J)0u plese thy sauyoure, 13. gef thow be not grete clerk,^ Loke thow moste on thys werk ; 15. For here thow myste fynde and rede^" That Jje behoueth to conne ^^ nede.^^ Now this seems tolerably easy at first sight, and a good deal like Modern English. But it is not its direct ancestor, ' Kington Oliphant, The New English, vol. i. p. 104. The took has been edited by Peacock for the Early English Text Society, and the extract is taken from that edition. The MS. is of about 1450, the language older ; Professor Skeat says about 1420. ^ Both ; Anglo-Saxon b&. ^ Nowadays. ^ Advise. ^ Done now full long ago. * Want of teaching. ^ With a cure of souls. ' If. ° Very learned. '» Read. " Know. " Of necessity. English Dialects in Fourteenth Century 265 for modern ' standard ' English did not as a matter of fact arise out of the West Midland but from the East Midland dialect. There is, indeed, a considerable resemblance between the two. Here, in 1. 8, we have \ey (nominative), but liem ^ (dative and accusative), just as Chaucer uses them, though later the Danish form (their, them) prevailed in the oblique cases as well, the form which we have seen in Orm and in Eobert of Brunne. Again we have sen (1. 4), and faren (1. 5), the Midland form of the plural, though in line 6 there is beth, which is the Southern plural. Just in the same way we have both the Southern and the Northern 3rd person singular in a line of another poem by Eobert of Brunne — Pe holy man tellej> vs and sejs Pat J>e lofe made euen peys,^ weight, which is just like Shakespeare's line — It blesseft him that gives and him that takes. ^ So far the West Midland dialect bears a considerable resemblance to the East Midland. And we shall find some instances of the Southern plural in ' standard ' English, even in Shakespeare. But West Midland is a mixture of Northern and Southern forms * to a still greater extent. For instance, in the part about the priest's hearing confessions — Fyrst Jjow moste Jjys mynne,* What he ys Ipat doth J>e syime, Whejjer hyt be heo or he, gonge or olde, bonde or fre. and Scho may that wepen euer more. ^ But Myrc also uses them. ' Specimens of Early English, Morris and Skeat, Part II. , p. 53. I have preferred to take the longer extracts from the other poem, as the ' Handlyng Synne ' seems to have been a good deal altered by a Southern scribe. But this point might be illustrated from the MS. (quoted' above), which is believed to represent his own dialect best. ^ Merchant of Venice, IV. i. 187. * See Kington Oliphant, The New English, vol. i. p. 104. ^ Remember. 266 History of English Here we have the Northern scho for ' she,' as well as the old Southern form heo. This heo, the proper feminine of he, is still used in the dialects of Cheshire and Lancashire (branches of the West Midland) in the form hoo or 'oo. So too we get in Myrc the Southern form chylderen, and the Northern chyldere ('childer'). And besides this West Midland has some forms peculiar to it, such as vche, for ' each,' which do not appear in ' standard ' English. On the whole, then, we may conclude that, though West Midland is the dialect most nearly resembling East Midland, yet it is not identical with it, and that, judging both from history and from the character of the dialects, it is East and not West Midland that is the parent of 'standard' English.^ ^ The -e's, as written in the extract, cannot be pressed. The poem was written dovm about 1450, when -e had become merely ornamental. But the ■e in rede (1. 15), and conne (1. 16), for instance, appears to be sounded as a sign of the infinitive, and in nede as a sign of the dative. In grete (1. 13), on the other hand, it must be a mere ornament. The versions of Piers Plowman, though it is a most interesting work, appear to be too mixed in dialect (as we possess them) to be usefully quoted for our present purpose. This is partly owing to those who copied them out. CHAPTER XVIII THE BEGINNINGS OP 'STANDARD' ENGLISH No fixed ' standard ' English in Chaucer's time — Chaucer's dialect — His grammar — Wycliffe and Purvey — Contemporary letter -writing — Southern English still written.^ We have now seen how great a variety of dialects there was in England in the fourteenth century. We have seen that ' standard ' English cannot be derived from Northumbrian, and it is clear that the East Midland dialect of Eobert of Brunne is nearer to Modern English than any of the others. Now, at the middle of the fourteenth century we are approach- ing the time when one dialect was to become the standard dialect of English. This was certain to happen after French lost its ascendency. So far we might say that the standard language in England had been French. But we have already seen (p. 167, etc.) that soon after the middle of the fourteenth century French began to go out of use, and it was to be expected that, as has happened in other countries, some one dialect of English should, sooner or later, establish itself in a position superior to the rest. It is sometimes said that this ' standard ' English begins with Chaucer. In a sense, perhaps, this is true. Chaucer was ' the father of English poetry,' since all later poets owe 1 Morri!, Chaucer's Prologue and Knightes Tale. The same re-edited by Skeat. Kington Oliphant, Old and Middle English, The New English. The New Testament, Wycliffe and Purvey, edited hy Porshall and Madden, re- edited hy Skeat. Badie, The English Bible. Article, ' The English Bible,' Encyclopcedia Britannica, Ninth Edition. 268 History of English something to him. This is partly because later English poetry- is to a very considerable extent modelled on Spenser, and Spenser's debt to Chaucer is very large indeed. Then too- Chaucer is the oldest English poet who is at all commonly read at the present day for the sake of his poetry (just as people read Tennyson), and not merely to learn what our language was like at a particular time. But then, as we can see by this time^ Chaucer owes his language (as well as his metre, in the main) to the writers of Middle English who preceded him. There is no break in the chain. A standard dialect of English could not suddenly spring into life ready made, nor could any one dialect at once gain supremacy over the others. In Chaucer's lifetime (about 1340-1400) English gained the victory over French, as we have seen before. But English writing might still be in any one of many dialects. Chaucer died in 1400, leaving his Canterbury Tales still unfinished. Now, in 1387, John of Trevisa, Vicar of Berkeley, in Glouces- tershire, translated Higden's Polychronicon into Southern Eng- glish.^ The Legend of St. Edith was written in the Wiltshire (Southern) dialect about 1420.^ And there are other examples of the same kind. These show clearly, what is probable to begin with, that there was as yet no one form of English in which authors were bound to write. One dialect of English was coming to the front, but it had not yet estab- lished its position. So in Germany, Luther's translation of the Bible, which eventually settled the question as to which of the German dialects should be the dialect of litera- ture and of polite conversation, was published in 1534. And yet well on in the seventeenth century Low German was still used for all purposes in Hamburg and Liibeck, as may be seen from the texts written up in the Liibeck churches. ' Standard ' English took less time to establish itself than this ; but, when ^ Kington Oliphant, Tlie New English, vol. i. pp. 150, 151. Specimens of Early English, Morris and Skeat, Part II., p. 235. ^ Kington Oliphant, The New English, vol. i. p. 224. The Beginnings of ' Standard' English 269 Chaucer began to write, there was as yet no one dialect in that position at all. Chaucer, then, must have written some one dialect of English, and not ' standard ' English, since there was as yet no such thing. What dialect, then, did he write in ? Chaucer was an out-and-out Londoner. He was born in London. _He spent nearly the whole of his life in London, except when he was serving in the French Wars, or on embassies to Italy and other parts.^ Under these circum- stances he must have spoken and written the dialect of London. The next question, then, is, What was this London dialect ? Now, London must have spoken a Southern or Saxon dialect to begin with.^ London is in Middlesex, the country of the Middle Saxons. And even within a century or so of Chaucer's birth, Londoners spoke a dialect which would certainly be called Southern.^ But they were near the borders of the East Midland dialect, and that variety of English was extending its domain. It was, for one thing, a sort of accept- able compromise, without the strong characteristics, which we should now call 'provincialisms,' of the Northern and the Southern dialects. Besides, London was on the north bank of the Thames, open to invasion, so to speak, by the East Midland speech, cut off to some extent, in spite of London Bridge, from the support of the Southern dialect of Surrey and Kent.* And so in the latter half of the fourteenth century the dialect spoken in London was in the main East Midland, though with a strong dash of the South about it still remaining. This appears in Chaucer, for instance, by his using only the true English forms here, or hir,^ and hem^ ' See Morris, Chaucer's Prologue and Knightes Tale, Introduction. ^ Encyclopoedia Britannica, Ninth Edition, Article ' English Language.' ^ See specimen of it in Kington Oliphant's Old and Middle English, pp. 300, 301. ^ Skeat, Principles of English Etymology, First Series, p. 29. ^ e.g. And eek hvr wyves wolde it wel assente. — Canterbury Tales, Pro- logue, 1. 374. Edited hy Morris and Skeat, from which edition the subse- quent quotations are made. ' But sore weep she if oon of hem were deed. — Prologue, 1. 148. 270 History of English •where Orm niostly used tlieir and them, as we now do. Yet Chaucer uses they for the nominative, not M, like Eobert of Gloucester. He is also fond of the prefix y- (from ge-) to past participles (for instance, y-shrive = shriven '), which, as we have seen, was usually dropped farther north. There are still a good many traces of the Southern dialect left in ' standard ' English. Vixen, for instance, is a distinctly Southern form, correspond- ing to the masculine vox, just as we saw uor in Robert of Gloucester, and uram in Dan Michel of Northgate. So too is vat, corresponding to the Northern (wine-)/a<, ■vj'hich is the form used in the English Bible.^ But the more Northern form of the East Midland, the dialect of Orm and of Eobert of Brunne, did not cease its influence, and thus many of these Southern characteristics of Chaucer's language have disap- peared in ' standard ' English. It is not necessary to give more than a slight sketch of Chaucer's language. It may be studied in those parts of his works which have been edited by Dr. Morris and Professor Skeat. On the whole it is not unlike the extract given above from Eobert of Brunne, only more Southern, as has been said. This will be made clearer by taking a short specimen of it. It is part of Chaucer's description of the 'Parson.' ^ (The words derived from French are here printed in italics.) 1. Benigne he was, and wonder * diligent, And in aduersitee f ul pacient ; 3. And swich ^ he was j-preued ^ of te sythes.'' Ful looth were him to cursen ^ for his tythes, 5. But rather wolde he yeuen,^ out of doute, Vn-to his poure parisshens aboute ^ Prologue, 1. 226. ^ e.g. Isaiah Ixiii. 2. ^ Canterbury Tales, Prologue, 1. 483, etc. In this extract I have altered the U's and V's into conformity with the MSS. (as given in FumivaU's Six- Text Edition) and with the practice of Chaucer's time. The smaller quota- tions are left just as in Morris and Skeat's Edition of the Prologue, etc. * Wonderfully. ^ Such. " Proved. ' Often-times. ^ i.e. excommunicate. ® Give. The Beginnings of ' Standard ' English 2 7 1 7. Of his offring,^ and eek of his suhstaunce. He coude in litel thing han suffisaunce} 9. Wyd was his parisshe, and houses fer a-souder, But he ne lafte ^ nat, for reyn ne * thonder, 11. In siknes nor in meschief^ to visyte The ferreste in his parisshe, moche and lyte,^ 13. Vp-on his feet, and in his hand a staf This nolle ensample to his sheep he yaf, 15. That first he wroghte, and afterward he taughte ; O^t of the gospel he tho ^ wordes caughte. This English is not very difficult to make out. But in lines 3, 6, 10, 16, it seems as if the metre were faulty, and so it would be if we read it like Modern English. But, as a matter of fact, ofte, pome, lafte, wordes are each of them two- syllabled, though a final -e is cut off before a vowel or H,^ as wer(e), wold{e), in lines i and 5. Having taken notice of the fact that final -«'s are a part of Chaucer's grammar, we shall now be able to look further into it. (1) Cwsen, y&uen, han (11. 4, 5, 8) are infinitives. For the -en we sometimes have a simple -«, as visyte (1. 11), or in the line — To make him live by his propre good.^ (2) The plural of the verb is marked by -en (or -n), -e, or (very rarely) not at all, as in the lines — His eyen twinkled in his heed aright. As doon the sterres in the frosty night, i" And specially, from every shires ends Of Engelond, to Caunterbury they wende}^ ' e.g. Easter-oflFerings. The verb is found in Anglo-Saxon, derived from Latin. — Skeat. " Have {infln.) sufficient. * Ceased. * Nor. * Misfortune. * Great and little. ' The, plural (Anglo-Saxon ])(J, p. 108). " Only before certain weak H's. The -e is sometimes saved by the 'csesura,' or pause in the line. ' Prologue, 1. 581. 1° Ibid., 11. 267, 268. We may imagine the -e of tvnnkled cut off before the in. But the -e is then usually written, — Of hem that yaf him wher-with to scoleye (1. 302) is a similar instance. study '1 lUd., 11. 15, 16. 272 History of English (3) The singular of the subjunctive is -e throughout (not -e, -est, -eth) — That if gold rust'e, what shal yien do ? i (4) The plural and the genitive singular of nouns is an extra syllable if they are one-syllabled words in the nomina- tive,^ as, for instance, word'es in 1. 1 6 of the extract, and, as an example of the genitive — But-if a. mannes soule were in his purs.^ (5) Final -e marks the plural of the adjective, as in lyt'e (1. 12) ; moche has the e cut off. (6) It marks also the 'definite' form of the adjective, that declension of it which we find in German as well, when it is joined to the definite article, or to a demonstrative or possessive pronoun (pp. 108, 236). This is nearly its last appearance in English literature.* These are the points of most common occurrence in which Chaucer's grammar differs from Modern English, but they do not, of course, at all exhaust the list. For instance, -e marks the dative of a substantive, as in the lines — But sore weep she if con of hem were deed, wept Or if men smoot it with a yerde smerte,* rod smartly where the -e in yerde is certainly pronounced ; it also marks the adverb in smerte. Chaucer also sometimes uses the imperative plural in -eth (Anglo-Saxon -ajp), as in the line — And seyde'; ' Lordinges, herknciA if yow leste.'^ Jiearken [ye) list 1 Prologue, 1. 500. 2 Not quite always ; e.g. armes is a single syllable in Knightes Tale, 1. 2033. — Schipper, Englische Metrik. 3 Prologue, 1. 656. * e.g. Anon he yaf the seke man his bote. — Prologue, 1. 424. sick remedy And eek hir yong'i suster Emelye. — Knightes Tale, 1. 13. = Prologue, II. 148, 149. « Prologue, 1. 828. The Beginnings of ' Standard ' English 273 Then there are more or less isolated relics of the older grammar, such as aXler, alder ^ (from ealra, aha), the genitive plural of 'all.' On the whole, Chaucer's grammar is very much the same as that used by Eobert of Brunne, but rather more Southern and conservative. It is distinctly more elaborate than in Modern English, but, as we see from the terminations being sometimes dropped (as in twinkled, for instance), having already a tendency towards dissolution. We must not fail to notice the G softened to g or Y, as in yeven, yaf (11. 5, 14). The tendency to this was strongest in the South, but there is a good deal of it also in the East Midland dialect. It was the influence of the North and of Norfolk and Suffolk which reversed the process, when the Y seemed almost fixed in ' standard ' English. But there is another book which was perhaps of greater importance even than Chaucer's poems in establishing East Midland English as the ' standard ' language of the country. Chaucer was a great poet, and his works were widely read, and other poetry was largely modelled on him, but a transla- tion of the Bible was likely to have a still wider influence in raising the dialect in which it was written, and establishing its position.^ Now, as we know, Wycliffe and his friends translated the whole Bible from the Latin Vulgate into English, the Gospels at least being the work of Wycliffe himself. This was towards the end of the fourteenth century, just about the time that The Canterbury Tales were written. Parts of the Bible had been translated before, as in the Northumbrian Psalter quoted above, not to speak of the Anglo-Saxon Gospels, or they had been paraphrased. But the earliest translation of the Bible as a whole is due to Wycliffe. However, a very few years later, the whole was revised by John Purvey. This later version, though it still contains some turns of expression which are close renderings ^ Prologue, 11. 586, 710, and see p. 109. ^ See Koob, Historische Orammatik der Englischen Sprache, vol. i. p. 19. T 2 74 History of English of the Latin,^ but are certainly not English, is far smoother than Wycliffe's own version, more like what ordinary East Midland English was then, and certainly more like what ' standard ' English was to be, especially the English of the Bible. The Authorised Version of 1611, which is still in use, owes a great deal to John Purvey's version of Wycliffe's translation, at any rate in its language. That is, the language of our Bible would have been different from what it is if Wycliffe and Purvey had never made their transla- tions. This is true of the language in general, but especially of particular words and expressions used in our Bible. For instance, a great many of our Latin religious terms (coming for the most part from the Vulgate) ^ — such words as testa- ment, tribulation, peisecution, revelation, reconcile, edify, confmmd ^ — are due to the influence of these versions. Whoever first brought the words into English, their appearing in our present translation of the Bible is mainly due to the influence of Wycliffe and Purvey's translation. As a sample of Purvey's language we will look first of all at the Parable of the Sower (which may be compared with the Old English translations on pp. 154, 155), and then speak of certain points in his language which are not covered by the longer example. ' e.g. Vulgate. Dixit aiitem princeps sacerdotum, si hseo ita se habent ? Purvey. And the prynce of prestis seide to Steuene, Whethir these tUngis han hem so ? — Acts vil. 1. Vulgate. Visum est et milii . . . tibi scribere. Purvey. It is seen also to me ... to ■write to thee. — St. Luke i. 3. Or, in the example below — Vulgate. Qui habet aures audiendi. Purvey. He that hath eris of heryng. " Some of them came into the English language through French ; more were adapted to a French form. But the great majority come ultimately from the Vulgate, and their appearance in Wycliffe is very largely due to the fact that he translated from that Latin Version. ' On the other hand, there are some traces of the older plan of forming pure English compounds instead of using foreign words (see pp. 145, 196, 197), e.g.— Purvey. He made vs saaf, bi waisohyng of ajen-bigetyng, and ajeu-newyng of the Hooli Goost. Authorised Version. He saved us, by the washing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Ghost. — Titus iii. 5. The Beginnings of ' Standard' English 275 ST. MATTHEW xiii. 3-9 Purvey's Version, 1388 ^ 3. And he spac to hem many thingis in parahlis, and seide, Lo ! he that sowith, 3ede out to sows his seed. 4. And while he sowith, summe seedi& felden bisidis the weie, and briddis of the eir camen, and eeten hem. 5. But othere &eed,is felden in to stony places, where thei hadden not myche erthe ; and anoon thei sprongen vp, for thei hadden not depnesse of erthe. 6. But whanne the sonne was risun, thei swaliden,^ and for thei hadden not roote, thei drieden vp. 7. And other seedis felden among thornes ; and thornes woxen vp, and strangeleden hem. 8. But othere seedis felden in to good lond, and 3auen fruyt; summe an hundrid foold, an othir sixti foold, an othir thritti foold. 9. He that hath eris of heryng, here he. Now it will at once be plain that this is something very- much like our Modern English, just as Chaucer's language is. Only two words {^ede, ' went,' and swaliden, ' withered ') are quite obsolete. But the words were' still a good deal more declined and conjugated than they are at present, and the grammar is nearly the same as in Chaucer. First, there can be no doubt that the plural and genitive termination adds a syllable to the word (as in Chaucer so far as one-syllabled words are concerned). This is obvious when we S.nd thingis, parabUs (v. 3), seedis, briddis (v. 4), and mannus sone (the Son of man). The letters I and U were certainly not written merely for ornament. ' Edition by ForSliall and Madden, re-edited by Skeat. In this edition the old letter )> is always altered to th. The italics mean (as in our Bible) that the word is implied, but not expressed in the original. 2 Withered. 276 History of English Secondly, the -e has much the same functions as in Chaucer. It marks the plural of an adjective, summe'seedis (v. 4), othere seedis (v. 5). It also marks the infinitive (to sowe, v. 3),^ and sometimes a dative.^ In erthe, sonne, the word was, to begin with, one of two syllables, as in Anglo-Saxon. On p. 154 they appear as eor]>an, sunnan, the nominatives being eorYe, sunne. The -e is not used to mark the ' definite ' adjective ^ (p. 272). But though the -e is still an important part of the grammar, it is occasionally put in where it has no business, and in verse 7 we see it omitted in other. This is the case too in other Manuscripts of the time, and is a sign of its approaching dissolution. Thirdly, the plural of the verb is usually marked by -en, but sometimes by -«, just as in Chaucer. There are plenty of examples in the extract of the fuller termination, such as felden, camen. Fourthly, the declension of hs in the plural is just as in Chaucer. Nom. thei Gen. her Dat. ] , . > hem Acais. j There is an instance of the accusative in verse 4, and of the genitive in the following verse : — Thanne he touchide her 13611, and seide, Aftir 301116 feith be it doon to 3011.^ The imperative plural (in -eth) is not used, nor the y-, as a prefix to the past participle. Purvey's grammar, then, is in the main the same as Chaucer's. In the points as to which 1 Properly, the gerund, to sdwenne, but this had long been confused with the infinitive in most dialects (see Appendix E). " See Skeat's Introduction to Forshall and Madden as above. In depnesse (v. 5) it is difficult to .say whether the -e is ornamental or not. It was (as long as genders survived) a feminine word, and most of its cases ended in -e. (The ungrammatical use of the various cases (especially dative for nominative) did much to bring in the ornamental -e at the end of words. ) s St. Matt. ix. 29. The Beginnings of ' Standard' English 277 they differ Purvey is nearer to Modern English. There are, of course, other isolated relics of the old grammar in this version of the Bible, just as there are in Chaucer, such as thoru, were, (Anglo-Saxon ]jii wch-e), the tothir (Anglo-Saxon ]>cet dlpere), a use of the neuter of the, which is still preserved in ' vulgar ' English. So too ' 30 vdten ' ^ is the plural, while ' jour fadir woof (knoweth)^ is the singular. In Tyndale and in our version ^ wot is both singular and plural. Such changes as this which were taking place in the ' strong ' verbs will be spoken of later on. Besides these points of grammar Purvey has many soft G's (or Y's) which are now pronounced hard, such as ^auen in the extract, ^oirnn (given), a^en (again). Something more will be said on this point presently. We may just notice that hrid (bird), no but (except), axe (ask), are found in Purvey's version, though they are now banished to ' provincial ' English. It will now perhaps be interesting to give one or two more specimens of the East Midland dialect, soon to become ' standard ' English. It will be hardly necessary to draw attention any more to the main points in the grammar ; any one can pick them out for himself. Finally, a specimen of the Southern dialect will be given which is interesting evidence as to the position of English dialects at the end of the four- teenth century, and which will also show that the East Midland was still only one of the dialects in which an English book might be written. 1 St. Matt. XX. 25. 2 St. Matt. vi. 8. ^ A^tg ^^^ ^q 278 History of English THE VOIAGE AND TEAVAILE OF SIE JOHN MANDEVILLE, Knight ^ East Midland About 1390 In Ethiope ben ^ many dyverse folk : and EtMope is clept^ Cusis. In that Contree ben folk, that ban but o* foot : and thei gon so fast, that it is marvayUe : and the foot is so large that it schadewethe ^ alle the body a3en the Sonne, whanne thei wole lye and reste hem. In Ethiope whan the Children ben 3onge and lytille, thei ben all selowe : and whan that thei waxen of Age, that 3alownesse turnethe to ben alle blak. In Ethiope is the Cytee of Saba ; and the Lond, of the whiche on * of the iii Kynges, that presented oure Lord in Bethleem, was Kyng offe. And be3onde theise Yles, there is another Yle, that is clept Pytan. The folk of that Contree ne tyle not, ne laboure not the Erthe : for thei eten no manere thing : and thei ben of gode colour, and of faire schap, aftre hire gretnesse : ^ but the smale ben as Dwerghes ; ' but not so litylle as ben the Pig- meyes. Theise men lyven be the smelle of wylde Apples: and whan thei gon ony fer weye,^ thei beren the Apples with hem. For 3if ® thei hadde lost the savour of the Apples, thei scholde dyen anon. Thei ne ben not fuUe resonable : but thei ben symple and bestyalle.^" ^ Halliwell's Edition, reprinted 1866. The U's and V's have no doubt been reduced to modem usage, as also in the letter following. The book is merely .i compilation, and is not really an account of any one man's travels. See Kington Oliphant, The New English, vol. i. p. 160, and Article 'Sir John Mandeville,' Encydopmdia Britanniea, Ninth Edition. 2 Are. ' Called ( ' y-clept ' in Milton). * One. ^ The E is ornamental ; as it also is in turnethe, oure, offe. In lye, reste, it represents the infinitive, in wote the plural, in the words derived from French too (e.g. ma/rvayUe) it might be pronounced. * In proportion to, considering their size. ' Dwarfs. ' Any distant journey. ' If. '" Like animals. The Beginnings of' Standard' English 279 It will be interesting to compare with this literary prose part of a letter written in 1403, one of the earliest specimens of letter-writing that is in English, and not in French or Latin. The earlier part even of this is all in French. It is from the Dean of Windsor (who was also Archdeacon of Hereford) to Henry IV., on the subject of a Welsh raid into Herefordshire. The Dean asks for reinforcements, and that the King will hasten his coming there. The part in" French may serve as a speci- men of what Anglo-French was like in its last days ; it is very evident that it is a long way removed from ' standard ' French. War fore for Goddesake, thinketh on 3our beste Frende God, and thanke Hym as He hath deserved to jowe ; and leveth nought that 3e ne come ^ for no man that may coun- saille 30we the contrarie ; for by the trouthe that I schal be to 30we ^ 3et, this day the Walshmen supposen and trusten that 36 shulle nought come there, and there fore for Goddes- love make them fals men. And that hit plese 30we of 3our hegh Lordeship for to have me excused of my corny nge to 30 we, for, yn god fey,^ I have nought ylafte with me over two men, that they beon sende * oute with Sherref and other gentils of oure Schire for to with stande the malice of the Eebelles this day. Tresexcellent, trespuissant, et tresredoute Seignour, autre- ment say a present nieez.^ Jeo ^ prie a la Benoit ^ Trinite que vous ottroie ^ bone vie ove tresentier sauntee ^ a treslonge durre,^" and sende 30we sone to ows in help and prosperitee ; for, in god fey, I hope to Al Mighty God that, 3ef ^^ 3e come 30ure owne persone, 33 schulle have the victorie of alle 30ure enemyes. ^ Fail not (so as not) to come, a double negative, as in Greek ; nought is only a fuller form of not. ^ As I shall show myself trustworthy to you. ' In good faith. * In that they are sent. ' I know nothing besides at present. ^ I {Je, ego). ' Blessed. ^ To give you. s With very complete health. i" For very-long lasting. " If. 2 8o History of English And for salvation of 30ure Schire and Marches al aboute, treste ^ 36 nought to no Leutenaunt. Escript a Hereford, en tresgraunte haste, a trois de la clocke apres noone, le tierce jour de Septembre. Vostre humble creatoure et continuelle oratour,^ ElCHAED KYNGESTONE, Deane de Wyndesore.^ This letter is in much the same dialect as Chaucer and Purvey, and shows that the language in which they wrote was much like the common speech and not any artificial literary dialect, for a letter is the nearest written representation of ordinary talk. But here there is very great confusion about the -e at the end of words. It must often have been dropped in speaking; if it had been an absolutely essential part of English grammar, Richard Kyngestone would have written it in the right places instinctively. No doubt there were per- sons who prided themselves on their correct pronunciation, and these would add their -e's correctly. But it must have been already in a precarious condition, on the way to becom- ing a mere ornament of writing, or the Dean could not have dropped it in fals (plural of the adjective), and inserted it in 'your beste frende,' 30W«, and other words, where it meant nothing. Them makes almost its first appearance in the Southern form of East Midland, which was so soon to take the position of ' classical ' or ' standard ' English. It is interest- ing to see in thinheth that the plural imperative (here a polite plural addressed to a superior) was still alive in ordinary speech ; there is also the y- in ylafle. Purvey in language seems to have been almost ahead of his age, and to have kept clear of old-fashioned forms. We will now conclude this sketch of English in Chaucer's time with a specimen of Southern English, in order to show 1 Trust. 2 Creature, who constantly prays for you. ' Rcyyal and Historical Letters during the Reign of Renry the Fourth, edited by Hingeston, Bolls Series, 1860. The Beginnings of' Standard' English 281 that a writer who did not happen to be a Midland man had still liberty to write in his own native dialect. The fact of the extract being in Southern English shows this, and it is also implied in the part to be quoted. It is from the transla- tion of Higden's Polychronicon (with additions), made in 1387 by John of Trevisa, Vicar of Berkeley, in Gloucestershire, which county, as we saw, spoke the Southern dialect. It certainly does not look at first sight as if he were Chaucer's contemporary. After saying that the practice of learning French had much decreased in England, he goes on to speak of English. Hyt ^ semeth a gret wondur houj ^ Englysch, }>at ys )>e burjj-tonge of Englysch men & here oune ^ longage and tonge, ys so dyuers of soun * in ]pis ylond ; and J>e longage of Nor- mandy ys comlyng ^ of a-nojjer lond, and ha]; on maner soun among al men Jiat spekej> ® hyt aryjt ^ in Engelond. Nojieles ^ Jier ys as meny dyuers maner Frensch yn ]pe rem * of Fraunce as ys dyuers manere Englysch in J^e rem of Engelond. Also, of J)e forseyde Saxon tonge Jiat ys deled a Jire,^** and ys abyde scarslych wij> feaw vplondysch men,ii and ys gret wondur ;i^ for men of )>& est wi]? men of ]je west, as hyt were vndur ]je same party ^^ of heuene, acordejj * more in ^ It, neutftr of he. ^ How. ^ Their own ; the nominative of here is hy, in Southern English. * Sound. ^ A stranger. " The Southern plural. ' Aright. ^ Nevertheless, TW-the-Uss, nd-the-les, i.e. not less on that account (see p. 109). ' Eealm, Old French {not Norman-French) reaume. ^^ ' Dealed on three,' i.e. divided into three. ^^ Is left sparingly with few country people. The statement is much too strong. — Skeat. We have a different view in Richard Ooer de Lion (fourteenth century) — In Frenssche bookys this rym is wrought, Lewede menne knowe it nought, Lewede menne cunne French nou ; Among an hondryd unnethis on. Schipper, Englische Metrik. /ew««Z = unlearned ; c«»m«=know; Mjiweto's o« = scarcely one. 1' And the state of things atout it is very strange. ^' Part, line from east to west, parallel of longitude. 282 History of English sounyng of speche Jian men of Jie nor]? wi]? men of Jie sou]? j J>er-fore hyt ys ]7at Mercij,i J)at bu]?^ men of myddel Enge- lond, as hyt were parteners of ^ J>e endes, vnderstonde]? * betre ]?e syde longages,^ Norjieron & Soujieron, ]jan Norjjeron & Soujieron vndurstondejj * ey]?er ojier.^ Al ]je longage of J>e Norjihumbres, & specialych at gork, ys so scbarp, slyttyng & frotyng,^ & vnschape,^ )>at we Soujieron men may Jpat longage vnnethe ^ vndurstonde.^" ' Meroii, Mercians, the J lieing merely an I with an ornamental tag, after- wards specialised for the consonant, while I was confined to the vowel. ^ Are, Southern form. ^ Partners with. * The Southern plural. ^ Side languages. ' Bach other. ' Grating. ^ Unshapen, rough. ' Uneasily, with difficulty. ^'' Infinitive after the auxiliary, may, i.e. ' are ahle.' There is no instance of the prefix y- in the extract. Most of the past participles have a prefix already in the verb, e.g. for-seyde, a-hyde, and these never had the ge- or y-; but it is dropped in deled. However, it is in general common in Trevisa, e.g. y-hnowe (known), y-tau^t (taught), y-rolcked (rocked), and also with words derived from French, as y-turnd (p. 189). — Specimens of Early English, Morris and Skeat, Part II., p. 242. See also Skeat, Principles of English Etymology, First Series, p. 32 ; to both of whom I am largely indebted in the above notes. CHAPTEE XIX EARLY 'STANDARD' ENGLISH The changes of the fifteenth century — East Midland becomes ' standard ' English — Causes of this — Changes in the language itself — Confusion and loss of final -e's — Other terminations dropped or compressed — their, them, displace her, hem — give or yeve — that — those — y-{clept) — Caxton's English.^ Chaucer died in 1 400, so that we now come to the fifteenth century — a most important period in our language, since it was during this time that (1) The East Midland dialect became established as the literary dialect of England, and the speech of educated Englishmen. (2) English, so far as its written appearance is concerned, settled practically into its present form, though the sornid of the vowels was to a large extent different from what it is at present, and several consonant-sounds, such as K in '^nave,' GH in ' night,' were still sounded, though they are now silent. We will take these two points separately. (1) Already before Chaucer's time the East Midland dialect was encroaching upon the others. In the early part of the thirteenth century Oxford was beyond the border of the East Midland, and the London dialect was still Southern. But Wycliffe in 1380 wrote something like the speech of Oxford, and ^ Kington Oliphant, The New English. Skeat, Principles of English Etymology, First Series. Encydopcedia Britannica, Ninth Edition, Article ' The English Language.' 284 History of English yet his dialect would be classed as East Midland. Purvey, as we have seen, revised this into what is completely East Midland, to which WyclifFe's language was near already.^ Chaucer, too, who died in 1400, wrote London English, but this London dialect was now also a form of East Midland. On the other hand, the extract from Trevisa shows that this East Midland dialect was not yet fully established as ' standard ' English. StUl, by the end of the fourteenth century it was well on the way to becoming the language of books and of educated speakers as it is at present. The main causes of this were as follows — (a) First, it was intelligible to those who spoke the other dialects ; they could read books written in it with ease, and could understand those who spoke it. When we look at Northern English of the thirteenth century (pp. 247, 248) it seems in many ways so like our own language of th^ present day, that it is hard to realise how strange the speech of Yorkshire sounded to other Englishmen in Chaucer's time.^ Butwehave in several respects got nearer to the Northern dialect (for instance, in the pronunciation of A in lame; 'he goes,' for 'he go«iA '), and yet a Scotchman or even a Yorkshireman, speaking his own dialect, is not always easy to understand. East Midland English, on the other hand, being a sort of half-way house between Northern and Southern, could be understood, learnt, and copied with tolerable ease by those who spoke either of these ^ There is an element of the Northern dialect, Wycliffe's native Yorkshire speech, in his own translation. Hereford, who translated most of the Old Testament for WyclifFe, was a Southerner, and wrote accordingly. — Kington Oliphant, The New English, vol. i. p. 137, etc. Skeat, Introduction to Wycliffe and Purvey's New Testament. ^ Chaucer thus mimics the Northern clerks living at Oxford — A wilde fyr upon thair bodyes falle I Wha herkned ever swilk a ferly thing ? Ye, thei snl have the flour of ille endyng ! This lange night ther tydes me na rest. The Canterhury Tales, Aldine Edition, where thair, tydes, are ridiculed as part of the Northern dialect, as well as sul, wha, na, and lange, which are to he found at the present day in Lowland Scotch, and some of them in the Craven dialect of Yorkshire. Early 'Standard' English 285 dialects.-'- The West Midland was also a sort of compromise of the kind. But then it had not these further advantages. (6) London, Oxford, and Cambridge all spoke East Mid- land English, though not exactly the same variety of it. Now London as the largest town, and the place where the King and his Court mostly were, has had an immense influence on English. Winchester, which was the capital before the Nor- man Conquest, had a somewhat similar influence then, though it was not the largest place in the kingdom. As to those counties which lie near London, the influence of the capital has almost driven out their peculiar dialects by constant sapping. Kent, for example, where in Chaucer's time, and later, as we can well believe if we look at Dan Michel's language (p. 263), was spoken ' as brode and rude englissh as is in ony place of englond,'^ has now not a very strongly-marked dialect of its own. And though the infection of the London dialect was less in more distant counties, still it affected the upper classes through- out the country, just as at the present day the speech of an educated Londoner is the standard of ' standard ' English. Then the language of the University towns would plainly infect all their students more or less, who in the fifteenth century were more numerous in proportion to the population of the country, and were drawn from more varied classes. (c) Chaucer wrote in East Midland. And as his poetry was superior to anything written in English between the Conquest and a period long after his death,^ his influence on literature was naturally immense. Besides this, his } Trevisa states the converse of this, p. 282. ^ Caxton, quoted by Kington Oliphant, The New English, vol. i. p. 328. ' The Owl and the Nightingale (Morris, Specimens of Barly English, Part I., p. 171), written in Southern English about 1250, may perhaps rank -vrith Chaucer's poems. Piers Plmvman, by Langland, a contemporary of Chaucer, is perhaps almost equally strong, though in a different way from Chaucer's works. After him there is hardly anything to compare with him till we come to Spenser (1579), or perhaps to Thomas Saokville, Lord Buckhurst, who preceded Spenser by about fifteen years. What Chaucer's influence was is shown by the fact that even his grammar is imitated so late as by Spenser, in such forms as 'y-cladd,' 'she bad him telkm,' 'so forth they marohew,' all of which forms were quite obsolete in Spenser's time. 2 86 History of English contemporary Gower, though he was a Kentish man, wrote in East Midland English like Chaucer's, and his successors, Hoccleve and Lydgate, were East Midland men.'^ Their poetry and their influence were far inferior to Chaucer's, but at least they pulled in the same direction. By about 1450, if any one expected his poetry to be generally read, he would write East Midland English. (S) Wycliffe's translation of the New Testament ^ in the main, and Purvey's completely, were in East Midland English. This book would affect all classes. When we think of the enormous influence that the ' Authorised Version ' of the Bible has had throughout England, and even in Scotland, not only colouring the style of writers, but affecting speech as well, we can understand that Wycliffe and Purvey must have done much towards spreading and establishing the position of the dialect in which their translation was made. Of course Wycliffe's Bible was not nearly so widely spread as our present translation. Few people could read, there was as yet no printing,^ and the clergy were against it as a heretical version. And it was then as much as a man's life was worth to fall under suspicion of heresy. But, in spite of all this, the number of copies that there were in England is shown by the very large number of Manuscripts that have survived down to our own time. The position of the East Midland dialect was confirmed by the introduction of printing. The printers used that dialect, which was by this time established as the ' standard ' form of English ; and the printed books spread it more widely than Manuscripts could ever have done. ^ Sweet, History of English Sojinds, pp. 200, 201. ^ The translation of the Old Testament was mainly written by Hereford in his own Southern dialect. ' And a New Testament written out was worth as much as £40 in the money of our day. In 1519 Roger Parker, of Hitchenden, said to John Phip, that ' for huruing his books he was foul to blame, for they were worth a hundred marks.' To whom John answered ' that he had rather bum his books than that his books should bum him.' — Eadie's Mnglish Bible, vol. i. pp. 91, 93. Early 'Standard' English 287 (2) The second change, which took place in the fifteenth century, was the dropping of many terminations which still existed, so that English grammar was brought very nearly to its present condition — that is, having very few inflexions indeed.^ If we look at the English of Chaucer (p. 270, etc.), written at the end of the fourteenth century, we shall find final -e standing for many of the older inflexions — for instance, the plural of adjectives i^yt'i), the plural of the tenses of the verb (wende), and the infinitive (visyt'e). The two last are also marked by the fuller form in -en. Final -e is also sometimes used for the dative of a noun (yerd'e). Its use in the definite form of the adjective may be dis- missed, as we have seen that Purvey does not use it. This is not the whole list of the final -«'s, but these are enough to refer to for our present purpose. Now the first thing to notice is that in Chaucer's time final e's are found written which are not justified by the grammar, just as we saw them in Mandeville and the Dean of Windsor's letter. On the other hand, though a final -e in Chaucer which is a part of the grammar is nearly always sounded, there are cases in which this is not so.^ For instance, the -«, marking the plural of a verb, is sometimes silent, as — That from the tyme of king William wer{e) falle.^ Also, in the infinitive — Men. moot yev{e) silver to the povre freres.* 1 It must be remembered that these terminations were constantly being sapped by the influence of the accent (see p. 206, etc.) ^ This of course does not refer to its being cut off before another vowel, which is quite a diiferent thing. 2 Prologue, 1. 324. These are from the edition by Morris, re-edited by Skeat, where the Manuscript chiefly followed (the BUesmere MS. ) is iinusually correct. In the earlier edition, which follows another MS., the instances of an -e written but silent are more common. ■* Prologue, 1. 232. 288 History of English The -e of the dative was more frequently dropped than kept, and we have already seen plural verbs without any termination (tmnkled, yaf, p. 271). From these instances, as well as those in Mandeville and the letter (pp. 278-280), we conclude that in Chaucer's time — (a) Final -e was sometimes dropped, both in conversation and in writing, where it should, strictly speaking, have been pronounced. (J) Final -e was sometimes written ' for ornament,' where the grammar did not justify it. (a) It 'was ' uncertain,' and this was due to the constant opposition between those who try to speak correctly, and as they have heard their fathers speak, and those who do not care how they talk so long as they are understood, and consequently from laziness clip their words. In an age like Chaucer's, when there was as yet no 'standard' dialect of English to act as a pattern of speech and writing, when educated people were few, and when even the books did not always bring home to their readers the fact that E, if written, was to be sounded like other letters, it was quite certain that final -e would disappear, according to the process which had already begun. The position of final -e in German at the present day is much as it was in Chaucer's time. In the dative of nouns it is as often dropped as retained, in speaking at all events. And in general it is ' uncertain,' being not only constantly dropped by uneducated speakers, who say, for instance, a Pfeif for eine Pfeife, but it is also often left out in poetry, for instance — Ein(e) feste Burg ist unser Gott, or in Heine's song — Da weinten zusammen die Grenadier(e), a line which rhymes to mir. Why, then, has it not suffered the same fate as its English brother ? The reason is partly Early 'Standard' English 289 that educated Germans are far more particular about their talk, and talk more ' like books ' than Englishmen do now or did in Chaucer's time, but much more that the final -« in Ger- man was practically alive till a later date, when the language became more or less fixed by printing. But in England during the fourteenth century and the beginning of the fifteenth the Northern form of English was constantly setting .an example of dropping the final -«, and the laziness of mankind worked in the same direction. Now, as we have already seen, the East Midland dialect, which to some extent retained this -e (especi- ally in its more Southern form as spoken in London), was not the one ' standard ' dialect of England in Chaucer's time, though it was on the way to becoming so. And by the time that it had fully gained that position the final -« was dead. 'Already by 1420, in Chaucer's disciple Hoccleve, final -« was quite uncertain ; in Lydgate it was practically gone.' ^ So that by the time that the East Midland of London had established itself as the ' standard ' dialect of English, it had no final -e to make all educated Englishmen copy. If East Midland English had ousted Norman-French a century earlier, before the inflexions had been worn down so much, or if printing had been introduced by 1350 or 1400, English would probably have been a good deal more inflected than it is, through be- coming fixed at an earlier stage. (6) As to the -a's being put in for ornament in writing, this almost follows from their being ' uncertain ' and unneces- sary in conversation, so that the scribe constantly heard them dropped in talking. He was conscious that -e's were con- stantly written in Manuscripts (so that he ought to write them as well), and that they were sometimes pronounced. And yet the average scribe might not be very certain as to the right place for introducing them ; and at any rate would not have ' Encyclopaedia Britannica, Ninth Edition, article 'English Language.' This, of course, means that Hoccleve's style is more old-fashione4 than Lyd- gate's, since they were contemporaries. U 290 History of English clear enough ideas on the subject to prevent him from making mistakes through carelessness in the weary labour of writing out some long work.^ Of course when the final -e was dead, those who wrote out the books would follow the old fashion by writing -e's at the end of words occasionally, without a notion of what they had once meant. The fuller inflexions, -gp of the imperative plural Qierhnefh, p. 272), -en of the infinitive (to cursen, p. 270), and -ewof the plural verb (doon for doen, p. 271), perished too. We have already seen that Purvey does not use the first, and it died out before the end of the fifteenth century.^ So also did the -en of the infinitive, and th& -en of the verb in the plural was alive but little longer than the other two. We have seen that the N was not always left in Chaucer ; the termination might be either -en or -e ; for instance, in the lines — I dorste swere they weyeden ten pound That on a Sonday were upon hir heed. Hir hosen weren of fyn scarlet reed.' The same was the case with the infinitive-^ Wei coude lie singe and pleyen on a rote.* If, then, the infinitive and the plural- of the verb could be just as correctly marked with the final -e as with -en, and the final -e was dropped, they could be pronounced either with a ter- mination or with none at all. And if either was correct, the ^ We must remember that the scribe had no grammatical training in English ; he did not learn a Middle English grammar. All depended on his carefulness and correctness of ear. A great source of confusion in substan- tives was the dative. Here the -e had long been dropped at pleasure, so that the dative and nominative were confused. But if they were ' for practical purposes ' the same, then the nominative might have an -e as the dative had nad. For the reason why -e got to be a sign of the length of a vowel before it, see p. 235. ^ Caxton reproduces it in reprinting the Book of Gurtesye. The book was written in 1450, printed by Caxton about 1477. But in 1483 he will not have this form, or the y-, in piinting Chaucer's House of Fame. They were already obsolete forms. — Kington Oliphant, The Kew ISnglish, vol. i. pp. 332, 337. ' Prologue, 11. 454-456. 'They' are the Wyf of Bathe's kerchiefs. * Prologue, 1. 236. Rote^a. kind of guitar, or Mdle. Early 'Standard' English 291 general decision was sure to be in favour of the shorter form. But the -&ih of the plural lived longest of these inflexions. It is found as an alternative to our modern uninflected form throughout the fifteenth century. Caxton uses it at times, especially in his earlier works/ and hen (are) to the end. Ben Jonson (died 1637) says — ' The persons plural keep the termination of the iirst person singular. In former times, till about the reign of King Henry the Eighth, they were wont to be formed by adding en ; thus — ' love™, sayew, complainen. But now, whatsoever is the cause, it hath quite grown out of use.' 2 In general we may say that those grammatical forma which are found in Chaucer, and are now quite extinct in poetry as well as prose, died out in the fifteenth century. The clipping of the N was not confined to these plural forms. It extended to strong past participles as well, in which we now usually retain it. Thus Chaucer says of the Knight — At many a noble aryve haclde he he? And there are many similar instances in his poems, sometimes with the i- or y- prefixed, as y-falW^ for fallen. The longer form was mostly retained or restored through the influence of more Northern English, which kept the N, probably through the influence of Danish, in which it was sounded distinctly. Still there are many words in which the N has gone, and the E which it protected along with it; for instance, 'he has ^ Encyclopwdia Britannica, Ninth Edition, article ' English Language. ' 2 Ben Jonson, The English Grammar. 5 Prologue, 1. 60. Aryve = a,Thval, or disembarkation of troops. — Morris and Skeat. * Prologue, 1. 25. We saw that Robert of Gloucester clips his N's — i-do, a-slawe, and so on (p. 262). This seems to have been characteristic of Southern English. 292 History of English run, found,' and in the alternative forms, Ud, forgot, instead of bidden, fm-gotten.^ And now a word or two must be said of tlie cases where an E has been dropped inside a word, where the termination is retained, but now consists merely of a consonant, and does not add a syllable to the word, as, for instance, in 'fowls,' * man's,' ' he runs.' This is a process which had begun long before the Conquest, and is not quite completed now.^ In Anglo-Saxon there is both hire^ and hirS (hearetJi), both s^ceS and s^cS,^ and so on. So in Robert of Brunne (p. 258) we had ' rennes ' and ' gos.' And in Chaucer nouns of more than one syllable are usually inflected with a mere -s, as in Modern English, not with es. Even if the E is written in these words, we can tell by the metre that it was not pro- nounced, as, for instance, in the line — Qrehounies lie hadde, as swifte as fowel in flight.* And -ed is sometimes clipped in the same way in pronuncia- tion, as in the line — This worthy limitour was cleped Huberd.^ In the genitive and plural of nouns, in the 3rd person singular of the present tense, and in the termination -ed of the past participle we now always cut out the E in speaking, unless it would leave the word unpronounceable, as in /oa;'s, horses, ' he rises,' knighted, fovmded. Of course it would be a mistake to say that we ' insert an E ' under those circumstances, the fact being that it is the old E of the inflexion left there, because to take it away would make the word impossible to ^ Milton's line — New presbyter is but old priest writ large (Sonnets) — is another instance. But this form has not established itself. 2 Under the influence of laziness (pp. 4, 288), and of the English accent (p. 208). 3 We saw that the termination at a still earlier time was -i5, not -£®. This I affected the vowel of the stem in the contracted forms, e.g. stent from standiS. See p. 103, etc., and Sweet's Anglo-Saxon Primer, pp. lix. and Ix. * Prologue, 1. 190. » lUd., 1. 269. Early ' Standard' English 293, pronounce.! But this E inside the word did not go so soon or so easily as the -ej) of the imperative, -em, and -e in the infinitive and plural of the verb. Even now many people pronounce the -ei, as in loveA, when they read the Lessons in church, an old-fashioned pronunciation suited to the old- fashioned language of the Bible, and it not unfrequently has to be so pronounced in poetry, as, for instance — To his heart He pressed his son, he kissed him and wept.^ But poetry is more archaic, or old-fashioned, than prose, and even this -ei, which is one of the last survivors of the terminations formed by a syllable and not by a mere con- sonant, cannot be said to be a part of our living language at the present day. This, however, was not the case in the fifteenth century. These terminations, though they were sometimes clipped, were sometimes also pronounced in full. This is evident if we look at the extract from Caxton below, where we have ' by goddys grace ' (genitive), hoohys, yerys, scolis, and eggys (plural), as well as vsid and axyd. I and Y were not silent letters, and when Caxton writes the termina- tions with them we cannot doubt that he meant them to have the extra syllable, and often so pronounced them himself. (c) We may now speak shortly of some other changes which took place in the fifteenth century. One of these was the final victory of the Danish forms of the 3rd personal pronoun, they, their, them, over hi, her, hem. We saw (p. 240, etc.) that Orm (about 1200 A.D.) was the first writer to use these Northern and Danish forms. But in the South, in Orm's time and long after, the Old English cases kept their place. So in Eobert of Gloucester (1298) the French Speke french as hii dude atom. 1 In such forms as speaketh we do not try to clip the E. But this is an old-fashioned form, and not a part of living ' standard ' English. If we go out of our way to use it at all, it may as well be pronounced in the old-fashioned way. ^ Wordsworth, Michael. 294 History of English Robert of Brunne,i on the other hand (1338), uses both forms for the genitive and dative, but not M. In Chaucer too (died 1400) the Northern declension has gained ground; th&y is the only nominative, but he keeps to h&r and hem respectively for the genitive and for the dative and accusative. Hi, then, as the nominative, is dead, and so is heo for she, in ' standard ' English.^ During the fifteenth century either the Northern ihdr, them, or the Southern her, hem, can be used in 'standard' English. The following verse of a Christmas Carol about the Three Kings is a curious example of the mixture of the two sets of pronouns — As thei 3edyii^ with her oflferyng, Thei met Herowd, that mody * kyng ; He askyd hmt, of heir comyng, That tym, And thus' to them gun ^ say.^ Of course a Northern or Southern writer of what was becoming 'standard' English prefers his own form. But by the end of the century they, their, them were enthroned as ' standard ' English, and the Southern forms were banished.' The triumph of the Northern forms was partly due to Caxton, though he also uses her, hem sometimes. When he translated from French the Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye, he was living in the Netherlands (which then belonged to the Duke of Burgundy), and the Duchess of Burgundy, who was sister to Edward IV., was his patroness. When she looked over his translation, 'anon she found defaute* in mine English, which she commanded me to amend.' No doubt ^ Robert of Brunne writes a more Northern form of the East Midland dialect than Chaucer. ^ Piers Plowman has he for fhey, and so has a Carol in a MS. of the fifteenth century in the British Moiseum ; he (heo) is constantly used for ' she ' in a Wiltshire poem of about 1420, just as hoo, 'oo (also for heo) still is in Lanca- shire and Cheshire. ^ Went. ^ Haughty. ^ Began to, or did (say). * T. Wright, Songs wnd Carols, Percy Society, 1847. ' So far as 'standard' written English is concerned. In colloquial English he/m still survives in such expressions as 'give it 'em.' Rem, has now lost its H, like {fC)U. * Fault. Barly ' Standard' English 295 it was not Northern enough for a lady of the House of York. Under this influence Caxton turned the scale in favour of their, them} He also 'tightened up' certain G's which had come to be pronounced as Y (p. 273) everywhere, except in the North and more especially in Norfolk and Suffolk,^ so that again had been written and pronounced as ayein, give as yeve, and these softer forms seemed to have already fixed themselves in ' standard ' English. That, originally the neuter of the definite article (as in the tother, Ipcet 6]>er), was, as we saw (p. 239), used by Orm as a relative and demonstrative pronoun, just as it now is, and this use of it spread further. It had already, before Chaucer's time, superseded the old )>e as a relative pronoun. In the course of the fifteenth century it also finally drove out thilke as a demonstrative pronoun. Those also came into ' standard ' English from the North.^ The history of the word is curious. This, in Middle English, had two plurals, ]j«s and J>as. The \&s became '^os (as in fd, foe, see p. 210, etc.). \>d, the plural of the definite article, had in the same way become ]jo, and this was often used as a demonstrative in the same sense in which we use those. Those sounded like )>o, and consequently was used in the same sense without any recollection of its having originally meant the same as these.^ ^ Kington Oliphant, Tlie New English, vol. i. p. 328. Caxton was a Souttemer, from 'Kent in the weeld.' He would, at his date, naturally write ' standard ' English, though, of course, with a tendency to use Southern forms where they were still possible. ^ In the Paston Letters the hard G is generally found in these doubtful words, where the letter is by a native of one of these two counties. This Y was originally written 3, the Old English form of the letter G ; and it is found so written to the very end of the fifteenth centurj'. The 3 or Y in give and against (yeve and ayenst) died hard. We shall see them in Tyndale, and yeven is found for given in a letter of Queen Elizabeth. — Kington Oliphant, The New English, vol. i. p. 678. ^ Kington Oliphant, The New English, vol. i. p. 109, etc. It was thus one of the words which did not keep the old long A in Northumbrian. * Skeat, Etymological Dictionary. Stratmanu, Dictionary of the Old English Language. 296 History of English Y- (or %-), as a prefix to past participles, was also lost in the fifteenth century .1 We have seen that Orm, about 1200, uses it very rarely. His dialect, in its more modern form, is becoming victorious all along the line. We will now look at a specimen of Caxton's English, part of the preface to one of his last works, the Eiieydos, printed in 1490. CAXTON (1490)2 1 After dyuerse werkes made / translated and achieued / hauyng noo werke in hande. I sittyng in my studye where as laye many dyuerse paunflettis * and bookys. happened that to my hande cam a lytyl booke in frenshe. whiche late 5 was translated cute of latyn by some noble clerke of frauce * whiche booke is named Eneydos / made in latyn by that noble poete & grete clerke vyrgyle / whiche booke I sawe ouer and redde therin. How after the generall destruccyon of the grete Troye, Eneas departed berynge his olde fader 10 anchises vpon his sholdres / his lityl son yolus on his honde. his wyfe wyth moche other people folowynge / and how he shypped and departed wyth alle thystorye of his aduentures that he had er he cam to the achieuement of his conquest of ytalye as all a longe shall be shewed in this present boke. 15 In whiche booke I had grete playsyr. by cause of the fayr and honest termes & wordes in frenshe / Whyche I neuer sawe to fore lyke. ne ^ none so playsaunt ne so wel ordred. whiche booke as me semed sholde be moche requysyte to noble men to see as wel for the eloquence 20 as the historyes / How wel that many honderd yerys passed was the sayd booke of eneydos wyth other werkes ^ It occurs two or three times in Shakespeare, frequently in Spenser. But toth there and in Milton's ' y-olept ' it is a mere imitation of older English, such as all poets allow themselves more or less. 2 Caxton does not discriminate in the length of his stops as we do now. Hoth the dots and / are sometimes equivalent to a comma, sometimes to a longer stop. The end of a line also makes a stop unnecessary. ' Pamphlets. ■* The - over the u means an n after it, as in the MSS. ^ Nor. Early ' Standard' English 297 made and lerned dayly in scolis specyally in ytalye & other places / whiche historye the sayd vyrgyle made in metre / And wha I had aduysed me in this sayd boke. I delyvered ^ and concluded to translate it in to englysshe 25 And forth wyth toke a penne & ynke and wrote a leef or tweyne / whyche I ouersawe agayn to corecte it / And wha I sawe the fayr and straunge ternies therin / I doubted that it sholde not please some gentylmen whiche late blamed t me. sayeng }> ^ in my translacyons I had ouer curyous 30 termes whiche coude not be vnderstande ^ of comyn peple / and desired me to vse olde and homely termes in my translacyons. and fayn wolde I satysfye euery man / and so to doo toke an olde booke and redde therin / and certaynly the englysshe was so rude and brood that I coude 35 not wele vnderstande it. And also my lorde abbot of westmynster ded do * shewe to me late certayn euydences wryton in olde englysshe for to reduce it in to our englysshe now vsid / And certaynly it was wreton in suche wyse that it was more lyke to dutche than englysshe 40 I coude not reduce ne brynge it to be vnderstonden / And certaynly our langage now vsed varyeth ferre from that, whiche was vsed and spoken whan I was borne / For we englysshe men / ben borne vnder the domy- nacyon of the mone. whiche is neuer stedfaste / but 45 euer wauerynge / wexynge one season / and waneth & dycreaseth another season / And that comyn englysshe that is spoken in one shyre varyeth from a nother. In so moche that in my dayes happened that certayn marchautes were in a ship in tamyse for ' to haue sayled 50 ouer the see into zelande / and for lacke of wynde thei taryed atte forlond.® and wente to land for to refreshe them And one of theym named sheffelde a mercer cam in to an hows and axed for mete, and specyally he axyd after eggys 1 Settled. ^ That. The p is a good deal like a y, but not the same. 3 Understood. ■* Cause people to. ^ At the Foreland. 298 History of English 55 And the, goode wyf answerde. that she coude speke no frenshe. And the marchaut was angry, for he also coude speke no frenshe. but wolde haue hadde egges / and she vnderstode hym not / And thenne at laste a nether sayd that he wolde haue eyren ^ / then the good wyf sayd that she 60 vnderstod hym wel / Loo what sholde a man in thyse dayes now wryte. egges or eyren / certaynly it is harde to playse euery man / by cause of dyuersite & chatige of langage. For in these dayes euery man that is in ony reputacyon in his coutre. wyll vtter his comynycacyon and maters in 65 suche maners & termes / that fewe men shall vnderstonde theym / And som honest and grete clerkes haue ben wyth me and desired me to wryte the moste curyous termes that I coude fynde / And thus bytwene playn rude & curyous I stande abasshed. but in my ludgemente / the comyn termes 70 that be dayli vsed ben lyghter to be vnderstonde than the olde and aucyent englysshe / And for as moche as this present booke is not for a rude vplondyssh man ^ to laboure therin / ne rede it / but onely for a clerke &.a noble gentyl- man that feleth and vnderstondeth in faytes ^ of armes in 75 loue & in noble chyualrye / Therfor in a meane bytwene bothe I haue reduced & translated this sayd booke in to our englysshe not ouer rude ne curyous but in suche termes as shall be vnderstanden bygoddys grace accordynge to mycopye.* This extract in many respects speaks for itself. We can see from what Caxton says that although it was already settled that the ' standard ' dialect of England was to be the East Midland, yet that in many points the way which literary English was to follow was not yet fixed. In fact, Caxton ^ Eggs. ' The plural of mg in Anglo-Saxon was oegru. This, like many other words, was in the South made to conform to the declension whose plural was in -e». But the E was left, so that it is a sort of douhle plural, exactly like child-r-en (Anglo-Saxon cUdru). ^ Country-man. ' Feats. ' From a copy printed hy Caxton, in the British Museimi. Early ' Standard' English 299 himself contributed a great deal to settle many points in it, as, for instance, by his adopting their, them, instead of her, hem, and of a hard G in agayn, given, and some other words, instead of Y. But this last change, like so many changes in language, took a long time to establish itself completely. In looking at his language we see no differences in grammar from our present ordinary English except his use of the 3rd person singular in -eth, instead of the Northern form in -es or -s j_the isolated plural ' they hen' as well as 'they &«,' ^ and the ' strong ' past participle understanden or UTiderstonden, or with its iinal N dropped in the Southern manner, under- stande and understonde.^ We now use the past tense understood for the past participle as well. It might appear at first sight that the numerous cases of final -e also mark a difference of grammar. But, as a matter of fact, the -«'s are mere ornaments. We have seen that the final -e, pronounced, was gone before Caxton's time. And the same thing can be shown from Caxton himself. In Chaucer the final -e is added to an adjective when it is in the plural, to a verb when it is in the infinitive mood, or when the tense is in the plural number, and so on. But Caxton's E's at the end of words can be reduced to no principle. Booke (1. 34) has certainly no business with an E, nor has oute (1. 5), and in line 58 we find ' she imderstode,' and two lines afterwards ' she tmderstod.' This last instance by itself is almost enough to prove that the -e in Caxton is merely ornamental, though this use of it is due to a habit inherited from a time when it was a real part of English grammar. And there are many other examples of the unsettled character of our spelling, a variety which does not correspond to a difference in the pronunciation. For instance, loohe (1. 15) and hohe (1. 14) were certainly pronounced the same. So too we have them (1. 52) and theym (1. 53). Spelling, as we saw, had in earlier times aimed at expressing the sound of 1 L. 70. 2 LI. 78, 41, 31, 70. 300 History of English the -word, though the writer was more or less influenced by his recollection of the look of it in other books. In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries this latter tendency increased,^ and spelling became less ' phonetic,' though much was still left to the taste of the individual writer, who was not obliged even to be consistent with himself. Caxton, the first English printer, naturally spelt his words as if he had been writing them. But his art gradually stereotyped English spelling.^ The printers naturally tended to spell a word as they usually saw it spelt, and, if only for the sake of speed in putting the letters together, always in the same way. Thus, except in some few particulars, of which the most im- portant is the present curious arrangement by which the final -e is used to mark a long vowel in the syllable coming before it,^ and, as a rule, not otherwise,* our spelling is practically the same as in Elizabeth's time, and in very many words as it was in the time of Caxton or earlier. Since language cannot be made to stand still, the consequence is that the spelling does anything but express the present pronunciation in very many English words. In one word, indeed, Caxton's two ways of spelling it show us how difi"erently it was pronounced in his time. We find both pZeose (1. 29) and ^Zaj^se (1. 61). Now wy was certainly never pronounced as E now is, and hence we conclude that^Z«as« was in Caxton's time pronounced according to its present sound in Ireland. The Irish have kept the Old English pronunciation while we have changed. More will be said on this subject presently. Only it is well to remember that most of the English vowels and diphthongs were in Caxton's time pronounced very differently from their present ^ Skeat, Principles of English Etymology, First Series, p. 331, etc. * JUncydopcedia Britannica, Ninth Edition, article ' English Language.' Skeat, Principles of English Etymology, First Series, p. 321. ' Also the distinction between U and V, that U should be a vowel and V a consonant, and the use of the form of I which had a tail to it (see p. 282, MerHj) as a sign of the consonant J. * For an explanation of this see p. 235, etc. But E is also put after a V. For the reasons of this see Skeat, Principles of English Etymology, First Series, p. 317. Early 'Standard' English 301 sound. His use of U and V is not mere variety but founded on a principle, though quite a different one from that which guides writers and printers at the present day. Now V is the consonant, and U the vowel. Then each was both consonant and vowel, but V was generally used at the beginning of words, and U between two vowels, as in vsed (1. 42), hxue (1. 76). This had long been the practice, and in the ' Authorised Version ' of 1611 and later it was still continued. Caxton, at least in his later works, may be fairly considered the first writer of Modern English. With the sixteenth century we shall come to works which still more unmistak- ably belong to the modern period of our language. CHAPTER XX ADDITIONS TO THE ENGLISH VOCABULARY DOWN TO 1625 French words — Frencli words Latinised — Few Latin words — ' Doublets ' — Latin words in Shakespeare — Dutch words, how they were borrowed, and how they are to be recognised — Spanish and Portu- guese words — Italian words — Celtic words — Hebrew and Aramaic words — Words from Arabic — American and Indian words — How words pass from one language to another — Why English is not swamped with foreign words. ^ Before we pass to the principal changes which took place in English during the sixteenth century, it will be as well to say something of some further additions to our vocabulary or stock of words. And since some of the sources from which new words were derived in and before the fifteenth century were still drawn upon in the sixteenth century and later, we will anticipate a little and carry on this part of the subject into the seventeenth century. First, as to French. When the Norman or Anglo-French died out and thus ceased to supply fresh words, we borrowed words from central or literary French instead. Caxton, for instance, introduced resist and playsir (pleasure).^ Thus fresh words kept coming in from that language and have never ceased to do so. But ever since French ceased to be a lan- guage spoken in England, and still more when the sound of our ^ Skeat, Etymological Dictionary, Principles of English Etymology, First and Second Series. Kington Oliphant, The New English. Eadie, Tlie English Bible. ^ See Skeat, Principles of English Etymology, Second Series, p. 155. Additions to the Vocabulary 303 vowels began to get farther oif from their French pronuncia- tion, they have not been adopted into the language in the same half-unconscious way as they were down to Chaucer's time. In the fifteenth century and shortly before that time there was a tendency to change some of the French words already in the language so as to make them more like the Latin from which they originally came, and these attempts went on in the sixteenth century. The revival of learning which began in the fourteenth century caused Latin to be more studied ; learned people became more ' classical ' in their tastes, and were oifended at finding many words, both in French and English, which were obviously derived from Latin, so shame- fully corrupted. Some of these were brought nearer to Latin, in spelling at all events. For instance, Chaucer has the form parfit, this word was brought back to the Latin form perfect ; ^ so too delitable became delectable. Vitaille has become victuals ^ like victualia, just as we have already seen that dette was changed to debt to agree with debitmn, in spelling at all events, though no doubt few people were sufficiently conscientious to pronounce the two last words as they spelt th«m. But \a fault, ' the earlier form of which is/aMfe,the sound has now been altered as well, and brought nearer to the Latin folio, from which the word ultimately comes. ^ Receipt for the older receit is a compromise, the completely 'classical' form is, of course, recept ; and in the same way deceipt is found, though that spelling did not survive. These alterations of course imply that the words were derived straight from Latin (which they were not) and are absurd pieces of pedantry and ignorance. The study of Latin at the same time introduced a good many duplicate words from that language, very distinct in shape from ' But perfite is found still surviving in the Geneva Bible, 1560, and perfit in the Authorised Version as it was at iirst printed. — Eadie, The English Bible, vol. ii. p. 258. 2 See Kington Oliphant, Tlie New English,, vol. i. p. 167, etc. 2 See Shakespeare, Love's Labowr's Lost, V. i. 21; Skeat, Principles of English Etymology, First Series, p. 324, etc. ; and above, p. 200. 304 History of English the form that they had assumed in French. The new word did not usually turn out the old one as a sham, but, as dis- tinct words, they lived on together, usually acquiring different senses when naturalised, if they had not got them already. Among these pairs are — Learned ' Form. Natural French Form, ,1 pursue ' feat purvey nephew Latin. prosecute prosecntum fact factum, provide providere nepotism nepotem The borrowing of words direct from Latin went on and in- creased. We have already seen (pp. 196, 274) how many of our religious terms come from Latin, especially through the influence of what was the ' Authorised Version ' of the Bible in the Middle Ages, the Latin Vulgate. But sometimes a word which seems to be derived directly from Latin has reaUy gone through French almost unaltered — that is to say, it has been taken into French from Latin books, and has not passed through colloquial Latin into the French language. In this case it is often impossible to say from the mere look of the word whether it has passed through French or not. The words which we borrow straight from Latin take just such a form as they would have if they had been ' learned ' words in French. Sometimes we have borrowed a word from French in both its forms ; for instance, the English words — ' Colloquial * Form {throv/jk Low Latin). obeisance penance ransom {Anglo-French ransoun) ' Learned ' Form. Classical Latin. obedience obedientiam penitence poenitentiam redemption redemptionem The number of words taken from Latin nearly in their Latin form, whether directly or through French, received constant additions. The sixteenth centxiry, for instance, ^ Still a law term in Scotland, where the prosecutor is called 'the pursuer.' Additions to the Vocabulary 305 introduced multitudes of them. Shakespeare is full of such words, and these often show that they have not left Latin long by their meaning being as it is in that language, though it has since his time been worn down and altered. For instance, in the lines from Julius Ccesar — For, I believe, they are portentous things Unto the climate that they point upon,i — portentous retains the original meaning of portent, ' that which portends or forebodes.' It has now lost its exact meaning, and is nothing but a strong word for ' very extraordinary.' Again, in this passage from Ricliard III. — Madam, and you, my mother, will you go To give your censures in this weighty business 1 ^ — censure merely means ' opinion,' or the expression of it, like the Latin censura. It has now been specialised, and means ' the expression of an adverse opinion.' Some of these words too still show their origin by their accent being on the syllable which has it in Latin, or at least by its not falling so far back as in English words generally. Of course the tendency has since been to level the naturalised strangers under the rules of accent to which native words submit. But this, like all processes in language, requires time to work itself out. Thus in Shakespeare we find aspect, abject,^ and other instances, as the metre shows. Most of the words with which Greek supplied us came through Latin ; some of these passing through French as well. A few, such as dynasty, tactics, were derived directly from Greek, which, early in the sixteenth century, began to be studied in England once more. 1 I. iii. 31, 32. Portentous has passed through French. — Skeat, Etymo- logical Dictionary. ^ II. ii. 143, 144. ' 'Whose ugly and xmnatural aspect.' — Richard III., I. ii. 23. 'We are the queen's abjects, and must chey.' — Ibid., I. i. 106 (see Abhott, Shakespearian Grammar, p. 388, etc.). These two lines will not scan with the accent thrown back by the ordinary English rule (see p. 202, etc.). X 3o6 History of English English has also borrowed a considerable number of words from Dutch, though of course nothing approaching the number which we owe to Latin, directly or through French. These seem not to have arrived in any quantity before the sixteenth century, but they began to come in the fourteenth and even earlier. There was plenty of intercourse between the two countries to give them an introduction. England was not then a manufacturing country ; the raw wool which was our chief source of wealth was taken to the Netherlands (now Belgium and Holland) to be manufactured there. Henry VII., when his throne was endangered through the support given to Perkin Warbeck by the Yorkist Duchess of Burgundy, whom we have already seen as Caxton's patroness, stopped the export of wool to the Netherlands, which then belonged to the Dukes of Burgundy. This had its effect ; they 'desired peace, because their country was nourished by the king's country.' So too Chaucer says of his merchant — He wolde the see were kept for any thing Bitwixe Middelburgh and Orewelle.^ It is therefore very natural that some Dutch words should have found their way into English then, as they also did in Elizabeth's time, chiefly through the Englishmen who went to help the Netherlanders in their revolt against the Spaniards. Besides, when the Duke of Parma took Antwerp,^ it is said that a third of the merchants and manufacturers took refuge in London.^ It is therefore only natural that some Dutch words should have come into English in the fourteenth or fifteenth, and more in the sixteenth century ; but they are not very easy to identify. For English and Dutch are both of them Low 1 Prologue, U. 276, 277. Middelburgh is in Holland, close to Flushing. The Orwell rims out in Suffolk, near Harwich. 'For any thing '= whatever happened, ' kept '= guarded from pirates, and so on. ^ "Where Flemish, a Low German dialect akin to Dutch, was then spoken, as it still is to some considerahle extent. ' See Skeat, Principles of English Etymology, First Series, p. 483, and the whole chapter. See also Appendix B. Additions to the Vocabulary 307 German languages, and consequently it is often impossible to tell by the form of the words to which language they originally belong. Sometimes, indeed, it is possible to decide with cer- tainty. BkTc, for instance, is a Dutch word. It is own brother to thatch, or tlmck (both being related to Latin te,g6), but it has been affected by one of those changes or ' shiftings ' of consonants which spread over Germany after the ancestors of the English had crossed the sea (p. 40). Most of them were confined to High German, and it is these which have had a large share in making that language as different from English as it now is. But this change (which also shows its effects in 'c^as,' Low German '«Zat,' English ' se and whom (which are by origin as much cases of the neuter what as of who, which is properly the masculine and feminine nominatiye) are still occasionally used of things, just as they are in Genesis i. 11. ^ Certain rules have been laid down, according to which each is generally used, by Abbott, Shakespearian Grammar, p. 176. They are not easy to master, have many exceptions, and are now obsolete. Sixteenth-Century English 343 the Merchant of Venice, the Prince of Morocco, in speaking of the caskets, says — The first, of gold, who this inscription bears, ' Who chooseth me shall gain what many men desire ; ' The second, silver, which this promise carries, ' Who chooseth me shall get as much as he deserves.' ^ The Authorised Version in its use of the relatives is more like the 1549 Prayer-Book than Shakespeare. It uses which, whose, whom frequently, and sometimes, but less often, who,^ as in Acts xviii. 27. Wliich is still used of persons, for instance — How is it that thou, being a Jew, askest drink of me, which am a woman of Samaria ? ^ {d) Mine, my ; thine, thy. Mine and thine were the oldest forms, used originally both before a consonant and before a vowel. As early as Layamon and Orm (about 1200) mi, thi began to be used, but before consonants only. There is a curious survival of the old universal use of thine in Tyndale, 'thyne neghbour.' The general practice in our translation of the Bible is for thine to be used before a vowel, and it is sometimes used before an H. Thy is used before consonants, but also sometimes before a vowel or H, for instance — Why doth thine heart carry thee away 1 and what do thy eyes wink at 1 * Mine and my are used in the same way. Shakespeare too makes use of the alternative forms before vowels almost indifferently. 5 (e) The (Ipd, pp. 271, 295) is used almost for the last time by Tyndale — But none of tho thinges move me.^ It was superseded by the Northern those. ^ II. vii. 4-7. Quoted by Abbott, Shakespearian Graimnar, p. 181. ^ As also does the Great Bible, see Psalm Ixv. 6, 7. 3 St. John iT. 9. ^ Job xv. 12. ^ But see Abbott, Shakespearian Granvmar, p. 160. ^ Acts XX. 24. 344 History of English (/) It is curious to find the Southern substitute for he, namely a, still used in Shakespeare. Ha or a, had been in use ever since the twelfth century for he, she, it, and they, and is found in almost the latest piece of distinctly Southern literature — namely, Trevisa's work (1387 A.D.), for instance — Also gentil-men children buj> ytau3t for to speke Freynsoh fram tyme Jjat a bii)> yrokked in here cradel.^ It occurs not unfrequently in Shakespeare, for instance — I know that Deformed ; a has been a vile thief this seven year ; a goes up and down like a gentleman : I remember his name.^ These are the Watchman's words, but it is not confined to the lower classes in Shakespeare. A gentleman uses it four lines further on. It is, of course, still alive in provincial English, especially that of the South- West, in such remarks as — ' A comes to me and a says, says he.' But it certainly has no longer a place in our literature. We will now leave the grammar of the sixteenth century, and look at some other points in the language of that time. The soft form of G, g, or Y finally lost its place during this century in give, again, against — words in which at one time it seemed as much established as in yelp or yield (pp. 273, 277, 295). Tyndale has it frequently, for instance — I wyll yeve vnto the the keyes of the kyngdom of heven.^ But in the same chapter he has geve. So too in the ninth chapter of St. Matthew we find — Thy sinnes are foryeven the . To foryeve synnes. ^ Skeat, Principles of English Etymology, First Series, p. 30 ; and Morria and Skeat, Spmmens of Early English, Part II. p. 241 — a bulp = ttey are. * Much Ado about Nothing, III. iii. 133. ^ St. Mattliew xvi, 19. Sixteenth-Century English 34S though sometimes the word has a hard G as at present. So too he writes — Nether shall eny cite or housholde devyded ayenst it sylfe contynue. So yf satan cast out aatan then ys he devyded ayenst him sylfe. 1 But in other passages he has againe and agaynst. On the ■whole the form with Y is almost at its last gasp, though, as was said before, yeven is found in a letter written by Queen Elizabeth. Ax is used by Tyndale instead of ask — And the chefe preste axed them sayinge : Dyd not we straytely commaunde you that ye shuld not teache in this name ? ^ This form of the word had been classical English in Alfred's time, classical English in Chaucer. It now appears for nearly the last time in literature, though our less-educated countrymen still hold fast to this time-honoured form. Finally, we may notice, among the mass of idioms to be found in the sixteenth century which we do not now use, three which are especially striking — the double comparative and superlative, and the double negative. These are merely intended to make the comparative or superlative or negation stronger, and are most natural idioms. We find the double superlative in the Bible — After the most straitest sect of our religion.^ So too in Shakespeare — This was the most unMndest cut of all.* Of the double comparative there are many examples in Shakespeare — How much more elder art thou than thy looks ! ^ and more better in the Tempest.^ 1 St. Matthew xii. 25, 26. " Acts v. 27, 28. ^ Acts xxvi. 5. Badie, The English Bible, vol. ii. p. 262. * Julius Ccesar, III. ii. 187; also Cymbeline, II. iii. 2. = Merchant of Venice, IV. i. 251. " I. ii. 19. 346 History of English The double (or treble) negative is a thoroughly English idiom, in use from the earliest times. In Anglo-Saxon — Ne ndn ne dorste of Sdm dsege hyne ndn J^ing mdre axigean. JVor none not durst from that day Mm no thing more ask.^ In Chaucer — He nevere yet no vileinye ne sayde In al his lyf, un-to no maner wight.^ In Shakespeare — I have one heart, one bosom and one truths And that no woman has ; nor never none Shall mistress be of it, save I alone.^ In the Authorised Version — And shall not leave to my husband neither name nor remainder upon the earth.* This idiom is now only represented by such 'illiterate' expressions as — I never said nothing to nobody. All these forms of expression perished partly from excessive love of correctness (since they seem to say the same thing twice over), partly, and the double negative more especially, from imitating the Latin style and idiom, which has had a very large influence upon English. For to, with the infini- tive, as, for instance — Thou shalt make room enough under me for to gof is another of these idioms which were common in the sixteenth century, and have now disappeared from literary English. And besides the phrases and idioms in the Bible which are ^ Anglo-Saxon Gospels, about 1000 a.d. St. Matthew xxii. 46. Koch, Sistorische Grammatik. ^ Prologue, 11. 70, 71. ^ Twdfth Night, III. 1. 170-172. Koch, Sistorische Grammatik. * 2 Samuel xlv. 7. Eadie, The English Bible, vol. ii. p. 260. ' Psalm zviii. 36, Prayer-Book Version ; and in Authorised Version, Acts It. 28. Sixteenth-Century English 347 now obsolete,^ there is a mass of expressions in Shakespeare which we do not now use — some due to the earlier English (like the idioms spoken of above), some which seem to be experiments in language. For the age of Elizabeth saw the first great outburst of literature in England since the language had lost most of its inflexions. There was now little to show whether a word was adjective or adverb, a distinction which had been marked by a final -e (p. 272), whether it was verb or noun. This want is now supplied by usage, by the custom of the language as shown in its writings. But in the Elizabethan age there was little literature to copy, except in obsolete English. Therefore, as there was no fixed custom to follow, and since the words no longer had marked on them, sa to speak, what parts of speech they were, the field was open for experiments in language, and there were bold and original men to make them. As Dr. Abbott says, in Eliza- bethan English " any noun, adjective, or neuter verb can be used as an active verb. You can ' happy ' ^ your friend, ' malice ' ^ or ' foot ' * your enemy, or ' fall ' ^ an axe upon his neck." So too you can charader (carve) your thoughts on trees ; ® and a she is a woman (or her name) in the lines — Bun, run, Orlando ; carve on every tree The fair, the chaste and unexpressive sAe.'^ There is a good deal of this freedom still in English. We stiU make no distinction between adjective and adverb in 'he does it right,' 'go slow.' We use verbs as nouns, for instance, 'a run,' 'a downpour.' 'To fall an axe' is only the ^ e.g. Whereof every one tear twins, Song of Solomon, iv. 2. Asa his heart was perfect, 1 Kings xv. 14 (as it stood in 1611). Even to the mercy seatward, Exod. xxxvii. 9. See Eadie, The English Bible, vol. il. p. 253, etc. ^ Make happy, Sonnets, vi. 2 Bear malice against, North's Plutarch. * = kick, Cymheline, III. v. 148. To ' toe ' is now used in the same way, but this is slang. ^ = let fall, cause to fall. As Tou Like It, III. v. 5. Abbott's Shakespeci/rian Qrannnar, Introduction, and p. 199, etc. 6 As You Uke It, III. ii. 6. ' Ibid., 9, 10. 348 History of English same kind of change as when we speak of ' breathing ' a horse or ' rising ' a fish. To ' violent ' ^ (act violently) is not a more startling expression than when people who have to do with horses speak of one horse ' savaging ' another. But there are now some limits to what is possible in the language. Usage has to some extent settled how we must write English, and a good many of the experiments of Shakespeare's time are too bold for the English of the present day. We may, in conclusion, sum up roughly the share which the different dialects have had in forming this ' standard ' English, which in the sixteenth century is nearly complete. The bulk of it is East Midland, and the Southern colouring which this had on its first assuming the character of the one literary dialect has been taken out of it to a large extent, so that ' standard 'English is, and was in Shakespeare's time, very much the same as the ordinary spoken dialect of Northamptonshire, for instance, or of Southern Lincolnshire, the country of Robert of Brunne, and perhaps of Orm. Still the Southern speech has left its traces in clipped past participles (pp. 291, 334), such as hound,, swung, as well as in the form of certain words, such as vat (Northern fat, in wine^fat % vixen (the feminine of fox), and also in children, which has the favourite Southern plural in -en, added to the remains of the old plural of the word 'child«r.' Coverdale is thoroughly impartial between the two, writing 'thou shalt see thy child«rs children.'^ The most important contribution of the North has been the 3rd person singular in -s ; it has also given us hers, owrs, yowrs, and those, and each dialect has supplied some words which had been peculiar to itself,* and, no doubt, has contributed something towards our present pronunciation, though the share of each is not often easy to assign with certainty. ' FroUus and Cressida, IV. iv. 4. Abbott, Shakespearian Orammar, p. 202. " St. Mark xii. 1. ' Psalm cxxviii. 6. * Said is a very distinct instance of a Northern word. It is another (Danish) form of road, which is used in the sense of ' raid ' or ' foray ' in 1 Samuel xzrii. 10. See Skeat, Etymological Dictionary. CHAPTER XXII CHANGES IN 'STANDARD' ENGLISH SINCE 1625 Changes in English mostly small since 1625 — Changes in pronunciation since Chaucer — Not marked by spelling — How the former pronuncia- tion is ascertained — Traces of it in English dialects — Changes of English vowel-sounds — Changes of EA, 01 proved — Dropping and changes of consonants — Changes in grammar — Additions to vocabulary — Latin and Greek words — French words— "Words from European languages other than French — Words from distant countries — Changes in style — What style is — Latin influence on English prose — The choice of words — The Johnsonian style — French words and idioms dragged into English — German intruders — English poetical style — Specimens of English prose — Hooker, Bacon, MUton, Addison, Johnson, Scott, Thackeray, the Modern Johnsonian style, Macaulay.i We have now begun to go over old ground. In Chapter I. something was said about recent changes in English, and so the end of the book has been joined on to the beginning, like a snake with its tail in its mouth. On that occasion, however, what was aimed at was merely to illustrate the changes of language in general. And so, to complete our sketch of English in the right order, something will now be said of the main changes which have taken place in the language since the early part of the seventeenth century, since Shakespeare and our present version of the Bible. But as a good many of these have been mentioned incidentally, and since, except ^ Sweet, History of English Sounds. Earle, English Prose. Kington Oliphant, The Neiui English. Skeat, Etymological Dictionary ; Principles of English Etymology, First Series. 3 so History of English the changes in pronunciation and style, they are mostly small compared with those which have heen described already, the sketch of them will be in outline only. These changes in our language may be grouped under four heads : changes in pronunciation, in grammar, in the stock of words or vocabulary, and in style, which last, of course, includes as an important part of it the selection of words which an author uses. In speaking of pronunciation and style we shall have to look back beyond 1625. (1) Changes in pronunciation.^ These, unlike the other changes, cannot be said to be slight. And, besides, we have some arrears to make up under this head, since nothing or next to nothing has been said of the sounds of English since Chaucer, who died in 1400 A.D. (see pp. 200, 201). We have seen that English altered its pronunciation before 1400, as it has done since that date. For instance, long A changed to 0, as in tw&, two, where Northumbrian or Lowland Scotch still keeps the A (p. 253). Thus the spelling changed as well as the sound. Our ancestors did not write two,, and say two, as on our modern principle of having an unalterable spelling for each word we should probably have done. For, since the change from A to was made, we have come to pronounce the word ' tu ' 2 or 'too,' though we still spell it T, W, 0. Thus, until about the sixteenth century, the spelling changed more or less with the sound, though it was not always up to date. And this plan seems reasonable, since the object of writing a word is, one would think, to express its sound. Our principle of spelling at present (due to the printers) is this. A certain collection of letters is taken to denote a particular word, but we do not trouble ourselves whether these ^ See Sweet, History of English Sounds. Skeat, Principles of English Etymology, First Series, and Man of Lawes Tale. 2 From the influence of tlie W (as in who= 'hu'), which is a sort of con- sonantal U. Changes in 'Standard' English since 1625 351 letters represent the present sound of the word correctly or not. For Instance, in knight exactly half of the letters are silent. Our present spelling in most words represents their sound in the fifteenth or the sixteenth century. The date at which this change of principle took effect cannot of course be accurately assigned. It was in progress from the fifteenth to the end of the seventeenth century. The writing of final -e (unpronounced) in the fifteenth century is a sort of foretaste of the new system ; it is just the same as our now writing W in lorite, GH in light, and so on. Of course the question how the language was pronounced is a very important one. It is English, as spoken, which is the actual language. Writing is, or ought to be, merely a set of symbols to express its sounds. And it is possible to find out with some considerable approach to accuracy what the pronunciation of English at particular periods was. If any one were asked how this could be discovered, he would probably say, ' By the spelling, and by rhymes in poetry.' Of these the first tells us a great deal up to the fifteenth century, and a certain amount after that. For instance, we learnt something from Caxton's two ways of spelling please (p. 300). But from the fifteenth century spelling fails us more and more. Printing began to fix or crystallise it. As to rhymes, these will tell us something about final syllables. But they will not necessarily give us much in- formation. If in a poem we find that say rhymes to may, this does not let us know how AY was pronounced in English at that particular time. Of course if say frequently rhymes to convey, we should conclude that AY and EY were then at all events nearly alike in sound, but we may or may not be able to find out from this how both were pro- nounced. Then we must make allowance for what are called ' printers' rhyraes,' where the two words are spelt the same, but are now pronounced differently, love rhyming to move, for instance, or wood to Jlood. These satisfy the eye in reading a 352 History of English poem, but sound imperfect when they are read aloud. So that we cannot find out everything from the spelling, and from rhymes. But there are other ways in which information has been gained about the pronunciation of English in former times. For instance, there is an English Hymn to the Virgin, toritten as Welsh (not translated into Welsh),^ just as we saw that English got to be written as if it were French (p. 181, etc.) The date of this is about 1500. And, from the sixteenth century downwards, there are French grammars, which of course say what English sounds correspond to particular sounds in French, as well as treatises on English itself, describing the sounds of the letters, at the time when the writer lived, by comparison with other languages, Italian for instance, and also the way of forming them in the mouth. From all these sources of information the authorities on the subject, such as Mr. Sweet, have been able to discover a great deal about the pronunciation of English at particular periods. ' ' ' We will not go through these changes in detail, but give a mere sketch to show the sort of changes which were taMng place. Now we saw that in the time of Chaucer (died 1400) the English vowels still had much the same sounds as in Latin (' new ' or correct pronunciation), or in Italian, nearly as in German at present, nearly as in the French of Chaucer's time. There are a good many traces of this older pronunciation of our language in the various English dialects at the present day. Thus the short A in the fourteenth century was sounded nearly as it is very commonly pronounced in the country, in the word man,^ for instance, what we should call ' broad ' but not like Lowland Scotch ' mon.' The old sound of the long E is kept in the Somersetshire ai (he), thaiz {these), ^ A language wtich has hardly altered its sounds since then. — Sweet, History of English Sounds, p. 203. 2 It is very much like the German A in mann, like the A in. father, only short. Changes in ' Standard' English since 1625 353 bairiint (been't, am not), raint (rent).^ The old I is preserved in Lowland Scotch chiel (child), in Somersetshire eesi (his), leedl (little), and in Suffolk deek (dyke or ditch). One sound of was as it is still constantly pronounced in the country, in Wiltshire for instance, like OA in broad. The Old English U keeps its old spelling and sound in the word rune ; hut this is a ' learned ' word.^ It was generally written OU (as the sound would have been expressed in French), and the old sound has been preserved in ' standard ' English in the word uncouth, and also in the name of the river Ouse (in Anglo-Saxon Use). House in Chaucer's time would have rhymed to this. The instances given above are chiefly of long vowels. In Chaucer's time there was no difference between long and short vowels, except that long A, for instance, had a longer or fuller sound than short A. Since then long and shortvowels have gone each its own way ; the short having been much more station- ary than the long ones. Short E has not altered in sound since the time before the Conquest. Send, for instance, has not changed, so far as the first syllable is concerned, from Anglo-. Saxon sendan. It is pronounced as it was in Alfred's time. The same is the case with short I, as in bit. But the long letters corresponding to these have moved away from them. The sound of long E is now what a Eoman, if he could be revived, would call long I, and long I is nearly what he would write as AI. At any rate it is a diphthong. Long A too, as in name, has moved up into the place of long E.^ Now these changes have been in progress almost ever since ' 'The Dialect of West Somerset,' by Frederic Thomas Elworthy, Transactions of the Philological Society, 1876-76. In the writing of all these words the sound is given as much as possible according to ordinary English spelling. " In Shakespeare, King John, II. i. 566, it is roun(d). 2 It is impossible to pronounce an English long I, as in site, without moving the tongue dv/rmg the pronunciation of it — that is to say, without two different positions of the tongue. On the other hand, in an English long E, as in seed, for instance, we put our tongue in the right position and keep it still while we are making the soimd. — The general tendency of the vowels in English has been to get pronounced further forward in the mouth, also with the tongue more raised. — JBncyclopcedia Britannica, Ninth Edition, article ' The English Language.' 2a 354 History of English Chaucer's time. We can see the start of them in different dialects in the fifteenth century, while the letters for the vowels still suggested their old sound. Thus declare is spelt ' declair ' ; leeks is written ' lykys ' ; here ' hyr ' ; feel ' fyle.' ^ All these are found in Norfolk writings, and look as if the Northern pronunciation of long A and E (p. 225) was working its way South, as was the case with Northern words, such as ours, those. And the Wars of the Eoses, when so many armies from the North marched to the South, and Southern armies into the North, may have tended to spread the Northern pronunciation of these vowels. At any rate they assumed something like their present pronunciation in the English of the sixteenth century. So far, then, these are the facts, that the short vowels E and I have remained the same throughout the history of the language. That short A came to be pronounced as at present in the sixteenth century. And that in the same century the long E was pronounced much as it is now (as in tree, for instance), and long A was about half-way towards our present pronunciation of it (as in name), like a lengthened form of the A in hath.^ The sound of the other vowels, and of most of the diphthongs, was more or less different. The consonants, such as K in knead, which are now silent were then pronounced. Therefore the pronunciation of Shakespeare and of the translators of our Bible was still very unlike the sound which their writings now suggest to us, though the language was moving in this direction. We will not work our way through the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries, noticing the pronunciation of each vowel or diphthong at each particular time. This ^ Even in the fourteenth century there are words showing a change in the modern direction. BrS [brae) in Robert of Brunne shows the Northern pronunciation of long A. Besides this there are such words as geme {game), pire {peer). — Kington Oliphant, The New English, vol. i., from which work all the above words are taken. ^ The sound is to be heard in some people's pronunciation of path, for instance, which nearly rhymes to hath, but is longer. Changes in 'Standard' English since 1625 355 would, for one thing, be impossible to do accurately with- out learning a set of symbols not quite the same as the ordinary English alphabet. But we will take as specimens two combinations of letters, EA and 01, and we shall see from them that English did not settle down into its present pronunciation all at once, at the beginning or end of the seventeenth century for instance, but that, though its written form has long been the same, its sounds have been changing, as sounds in a language do. Our fixed spelling has been only a drag on the progress of the language. It may have made the waggon go slower, but it has not stopped it.^ We have already seen how EA was sounded by Caxton, namely like AY, or rather perhaps like E in there, when the word is very fully pronounced. It was a combination of letters revived in his time, but not common until considerably later, when it was used to express this ' open ' sound of E. But this distinction of ' open ' E and ' close ' E (as in mMii) did not last ; in the seventeenth century EA was used for both.^ EA still often has this same value of a French E in Somersetshire English, and also in the English spoken in Ireland, which represents an older form of the language, not having moved on in the same way as the speech of England itself. But in ' standard ' English as well, down to the middle of the eighteenth century at any rate,^ EA stood for this same sound. This is not only learnt from the old books on English men- tioned above, but we can test it by rhymes. As has been said above, a rhyme is much better evidence of sounds corre- sponding when the spelling of the two words is not the same. A clear example is to be found in Cowper's poem on ^ It has sometimes restored a sound lost or changed, see below, p. 357. * Much as it still is in hear and Irrmk respectively. ' Mr. Sweet {History of English Sounds, p. 235) says that the change to a long E (as we pronounce it now) took place ' towards the middle of the eighteenth century. ' But the rhymes carry it on later. Either then the poets kept to an old-fashioned use, founded on the practice of their predecessors, but not justified by contemporary pronunciation, or the EA was still pro- nounced as AY by some people. Probably the fact is due to both causes. 356 History of English Alexander Selkirk, written towards the end of the eighteenth century (1780-85) — I am monarch of all I suraei/, My right there is none to dispute, From the centre all round to the sea I am lord of the fowl and the brute. This is a very late instance of a rhyme depending on the old pronunciation of EA. Again, the word tea is U in the dialect of Chinese from which we derive the word. -Pope, in a poem of 1712, makes it rhyme to obey and away^ as the French IM would still do. In a hymn by Dr. Watts of 17,19 there is another example — The busy tribes of flesh and blood. With all their lives and cares, Are carried downwards by Thy flood And lost in following years. And in other hymns or psalms of the eighteenth century, or rhe very end of the seventeenth, we have sea rhyming to away, seas rhyming to graze,^ lead to made, and fear to care. In fact, there are too many instances of it for its former pronunciation to be doubtful, on the ground of rhymes alone, though in some words, especially before a D, as in head, EA was already shortened to £, as at present.^ ' To tear,' ' to wear,' break, great, yea are fossils in the language of the present day, relics of the older pronunciation. The E probably has something to do with this, except of course in yea, which is an old-fashioned word with an old-fashioned pronunciation. ^ Next, as to 01. In the seventeenth century this got to be pronounced like Modern English I, as it still is in the country and in vulgar English ; as, for instance, in the advice about the fish — Don't have them iiled, Sir, but briled. If they're biled they're spiled. ' Skeat, Etymological Dictionary. ^ Long A having by that fime acquired very nearly its present sound. '' Sweet, History of English Sounds, p. 236. Changes in ^'Standard' English since 1625 357 So at the end of the seventeenth century we get such rhymes as — I'll mention Eahab with due praise, In Babylon's applauses Jom, Tlie fame of Ethiopia raise, With that of Tyre and Palestme.' But the spelling caused the sound to be altered back in the latter half of the eighteenth century. This temporary change in the pronunciation of 01 accounts for the present form of the verb ' to riW It occurs as early as the fourteenth century, and was once spelt roil, at the time when it was a ' classical ' English word. Then it suffered a reverse of fortune, and was for a long time unrecognised in literature, and consequently had no fixed spelling of its own. It is even now hardly more than slang. While it was in this reduced condition its 01 changed to I, just as hoil became hile. But no one thought of altering back its pronunciation afterwards ; it had no spelling to redeem it, as it was seldom written. And so it has remained as rile ever since it changed, a monument of the time when 01 was pro- nounced like I in English generally. The changes in the consonants consist chiefly in the drop- ping of many letters which were still pronounced in Chaucer's time, and even much later. Our keeping signs for sounds after they had become meaningless is a still stranger piece of conservatism than our not having shifted the vowels when their sounds changed.^ An A, an E, or an I, if they do not imply the same sound as they once did, at all events signify some sound, while our silent consonants either merely show that the vowel before them is long, as GH usually does, or are reduced to an obscure vowel-sound, like E in many places, or they mean nothing at all, like the W in write, K in hnot, or G in ^ Ps. Ixxxvii., New Version of the Psalms. Tate and Brady, 1696. ''■ Still in French silent letters occur even more frequently than in English, and H in the middle of German words, e.g. lahm, nehmen, means nothing but that the preceding vowel is long, like GH or silent E in Modern English. 3 5 8 History of English gnash. But these sounds were not commonly, or at any rate universally dropped until it was becoming fixed as a law that such and such, a word should be spelt in such and such a way, however it might be pronounced. GrH, which had implied a sound like German CH, was, by the sixteenth century, weakened to a sort of mere breath, like an H, and almost universally dropped in the seventeenth century. In amgh, laugh, tough, and other words it had already acquired the sound of an F. The K in hnije, knave, knee was plainly once pronounced, since canif is the same word as knife, being borrowed from Frankish, a Teutonic language. And it was still fully pro- nounced in the sixteenth century.^ In the latter part of the seventeenth century, and early in the eighteenth, it was like an H — ' Anife,' Anave,' ' hnee.' Now it has vanished altogether in pronunciation. The history of G- in gnaw, gnash seems to have been very similar. E was pronounced wherever it is written in Chaucer's time and much later. It has been getting weaker ever since the end of the sixteenth century, and now has its own proper sound only if it comes immediately before a vowel in the same word, or in one following without a pause ; as, for instance, in rich, hearing, there it is. Otherwise it is never more than a vowel of the most obscure kind, as in here they are, in which sentence here is something like hee-a, only less distinct, while in are the E has no sound at all. The W in vyrite, wretched, and so on, was not, as is some- times thought, impossible to pronounce. It means that the lips were to be rounded in pronouncing the E, much as in the French word roi. Its sound was dropped in the seventeenth century. WH in what, where is really the ' breathed ' form of W, which is a 'voiced' letter^ (see p. 4, note). It has had a ^ As it still is in the eister-language, German, e. g. knabe, Term. ' The H was probably more distinctly pronounced at a very early period. — See Sweet, History qf English Sounds, p. 135, from which work this part of the chapter is mainly drawn. Changes in ' Standard' English since 1625 359 chequered career in the language. In the Peterborough Chronicle for the years 1135 and 1137 we find wua for hwa {who), and wile for hwile, ' witte sunne dei ' 1 for Whitsunday in the Old English Homilies of the twelfth century, and wat for what in Eobert of Gloucester (1298). But the WH was, for the most part, kept distinct from W by careful speakers until about 1770, when it began to be generally pronounced the same as its 'voiced' brother, and in the first half of the present century was universally sounded in that way. Quite recently, perhaps since 1865 or 1870, a reaction has set in, partly from the spelling, partly through the Scotch and Irish having retained the sound. The WH is now struggling with W in the pronunciation of words like which, when, and the victory is still uncertain. As regards the letter H itself, a struggle has been going on for a still longer time. As we know, among uneducated people, in London especially, H is dropped under ordinary circum- stances, but put in where it is required for emphasis, regard- less of the spelling. Now an H is made by forcibly breathing out air from the lungs just before the rest of the word is begun. Emphasis is laid on a word in the same way by a jerk of the lungs on the accented syllable. If this is done too soon, ' us ' becomes 'Aus,' the emphasis coming out before the word. Putting in an H, then, is an instance of ' misplaced emphasis.' ^ A good example is — Well, if a /laitch and a ho and a /lar and a Aess and a /le don't spell 'orse, my name ain't 'Enry 'Olmes. Here the emphatic syllables have the H. The name of each letter is a part of the crushing proof, the climax of which is 1 In Morris's Old English Homilies. This, which is not a piece of ignor- ance in the writer, ought to remind us that WAitounday is for T^Aitesunday, and has not any mysterious connection with the German word Pfingsten, which must have assumed its present form after the English had left the Con- tinent. Besides, being heathens, they would not have used the word then at all. * Sweet, History of English Sounds, p. 32 ; and Handbook of Phonetics. 360 History of English past before "orse,' and the last clause is said in a tone of quiet confidence. Now these tendencies, both to drop H where there was no emphasis, as well as to insert it wrongly, date from a very early period in our language. Thus we meet with examples of H-dropping in Orm, who uses «< for hit, as also does Robert of Gloucester, and in this word the H is now entirely lost. Robert of Gloucester also drops it in 3« ahh&\ (y« 7ia«e), ys Qiis). But the H was also wrongly inserted ; for instance — He bring hus ut of this wo, in a poem of about 1230.^ The most terrible example is at the end of the Apostles' Creed, in the East Midland dialect of English (about 1250), namely, ' life with-Autin Aend.' ^ The in- sertion of the H, though it is very common among uneducated people, has never had a chance of taking a recognised place in ' standard ' English. But it appears that in the latter part of last century H at the beginning of words was being generally dropped,^ until this came to be thought ' vulgar.' It is now, as we know, very carefully pronounced by educated persons, except in such sentences as 'Did 'eV 'Tell 'im,' where it has absolutely no emphasis. 'The spelling, and the horror of dropping it, has also given it to words like hospital, herb, humble, in which it had always been silent in English^ — that is, for 500 years at least, just as it was in their French originals. (2) In grammar the changes have been slight since 1625, and most of them have been mentioned already. The 3rd person singular of the verb, present tense, no longer ends in -eth, except in prayers and hymns, modelled on the language of the Bible, and occasionally in secular poetry, poetry being always old-fashioned in its language to a greater or less degree. The use of the subjunctive has become greatly restricted. And we noticed in the last chapter some forms of words, especially verbs, which were current English in the 1 Kington Oliphant, Old and Middle Mnglish, p. 301. ^ Ihid., p. 317. ' Sweet, History of Jinglish Sounds, p. 259. Changes in ' Standard' English since 1625 361 sixteenth century and later, but are now obsolete. In recent years the tendency has been to be extremely accurate, and so we have given up such forms as ' I have todk^ or shook, or drank, which were incorrect according to the history of the word, and never quite established themselves, though they are in themselves no worse than ' I have held,' or ' I have sat ' (the perfect being used for the past participle in both eases), and were very commonly written. Again, such past tenses as ' I sprung,' ' it rung,' ' he begun,' which were common so lately as in Sir Walter Scott, are no longer thought right. Thou is practically obsolete, with the person of the verb belonging to it, though it lasted till about a century ago. Thy, thine have gone with it, and so has mine (except where it stands alone), so far as our ordinary language, both spoken and written, is concerned. And an is not used for a before an H. (3) Next we come to the additions to our vocabulary, or stock of words, made since 1625. Now the number of words in the language has been "very largely increased since the early part of the seventeenth century, and yet, first, the words in ordinary use are on the whole much the same as they were then; and, secondly, we have opened no fresh sources of any importance since that time from which to increase our stock of words.^ As to the first point, the language of the Bible was, as we saw, old-fashioned in 1611. And yet the number of words in it which have disappeared, or have changed their meaning, since the translation (or revision) was made is extremely small compared with the whole number. Ear (plough), scrip, mete (measure), leasing (lying), are among those which are gone. Wont, come to pass, are almost entirely obsolete. Fowl no longer means 'any bird ' ; and offend does not give the notion of ' causing a difficulty ' to some one. But the bulk of the words used both in the Authorised Version and in Shakespeare are still quite ' But Greek is much more largely drawn upon. 362 History of English familiar to us. No doubt the cause of this partly is that Modern English is to a very large extent modelled on our translation of the Bible ; but the fact remains the same. The ways in which our stock of words has been increased in the last three centuries are chiefly these ^ — (a) By the formation of words from Latin and Greek, mostly as terms for new discoveries or inventions, or for the purpose of accurate naming and classification in Science. Of the first kind are words like electricity (electrum, ^Aeicrpov, amber, which is ' electric ' when rubbed), telegraph (TrjXe, far, ypdcfxa, write), phonograph {