No More Learning

It would, however, be a mistake to say that the new conditions
produced by the Conquest were wholly without influence on the
inflectional structure of the spoken language. Under the Norman
kings and their successors, England was politically and adminis-
tratively united as it had never been before ; intercourse between
the different parts of the country became less difficult; and the
greater freedom of intercommunication assisted the southward
diffusion of those grammatical simplifications that had been
developed in the northern dialect. The use of the French
language among large classes of the population, which has left
profound traces in the English vocabulary, must have tended to
accelerate the movement towards disuse of inflectional endings ;
though this influence must remain rather a matter of abstract
probability than of demonstrable fact, because we have no means
of distinguishing its effects from those of other causes that
were operating in the same direction. Perhaps the use of the
preposition of instead of the genitive inflection, and the polite
substitution of the plural for the singular in pronouns of the
second person, were due to imitation of French modes of expression;
but, in other respects, hardly any specific influence of French upon
English grammar can be shown to have existed.
In the main, therefore, the differences between the grammar of
Old English and that of the English of Chaucer's day must be
ascribed to internal agencies, helped to a certain extent by the
influence of the language of the Scandinavian settlers. The French
influence introduced by the Norman conquest had only a com-
paratively small effect.
3. PRONUNCIATION AND SPELLING.
The runic alphabet that had been used by the heathen English
was, soon after their conversion, superseded (for most purposes) by
the Latin alphabet of 22 letters, to which afterwards were added
the three characters p (w, called wynn), Þ (th, called thorn), which


## p. 392 (#412) ############################################

392 Changes in the Language
belonged to the runic alphabet, and , differentiated from d by the
addition of a cross-bar. The last-mentioned character was used
indifferently with ḥ, the two sounds of our modern th (in thick and
in this) not being graphically distinguished. The u or v, and the i,
were, in ordinary Old English spelling, used only as vowels, the
Latin practice of using them as consonants not being followed.
On the early coins, the sound expressed in modern French by u
and in German by ü was rendered by writing a V with an I inside
it. This compound character in MSS became y, and this was
identified with the Roman y. Instead of qu, the combination cp
was used in Old English; k occurs in some MSS, but was commonly
replaced by c; % was used, though very seldom, with its con-
temporary Latin value of ts.
It is not necessary to give in this place any account of the
changes in orthography during the Old English period. About
A. D. 1000, the vowels were probably sounded nearly as in modern
Italian, except that æ stood for a sound intermediate between
those of a and e (i. e. the modern southern sound of a in pat), and
that y, as already remarked, was like the French U The long
vowels, which had the same sounds as the corresponding short
vowels prolonged, were, at an early period, denoted by doubling,
and, later, by a mark (about equally resembling an acute and a
circumflex accent) over the letter; but this was often omitted.
The consonants had, for the most part, the same sounds as in
modern English, but some exceptions must be mentioned. Several
consonant letters had more than one sound, and, in the case of
most of these, modern English retains the Old English pronuncia-
tion, though not always the same written symbol. Thus, in fan
fan, æfen even, sæd seed, rīsan rise (sounded “rize"), þynne thin,
brābor brother, caru care, cealc chalk, scēap sheep, scol school,
god good, gēar year, þing thing, sengan to singe, docga dog, ecg
edge, the Old English sounds of f, 8, B, C, 80, 9, ng and cg were
exactly, or nearly, those of the letters occupying the same place
in the modern forms of these words. In the middle or at the
end of a word, g was sounded differently according to the
nature of the neighbouring vowels : in dæg day it was pro-
nounced like y in “year,” but in the plural dagas days it had
a sound that might be written gh, differing from the ch in Loch
just as g differs from k. The letter h, when initial, was pronounced
as at present; but, in other positions, it was pronounced like the
German ch (either guttural as in ach or palatal as in ich, accord-
ing to the sounds which it followed). It will be seen that, with


## p. 393 (#413) ############################################

Middle English Spelling 393
few exceptions, our ancestors of the eleventh century pronounced
the consonantal part of their words much as we do, even when
they wrote it with different letters.
The striking change in the written language of England during
the twelfth century was, to a considerable extent, a matter of mere
spelling. As was pointed out in the preceding section, soon after
the Norman conquest children ceased to be regularly taught to
read and write English, and were taught to read and write French
instead. When, therefore, the mass of the new generation tried to
write English, they had no orthographical traditions to guide
them, and had to spell the words phonetically according to French
rules. They used ch instead of the old c, when it was pronounced
as in cirice church. The sound of the Old English sc in sceamu
shame, which did not exist at that time in French, was rendered
by ss, ssh, sch, or sh. The French qu took the place of cp. The f
between vowels (pronounced v) was replaced by u or v (these being
still, as long afterwards, treated as forms of one and the same
letter, used indifferently for vowel and consonant). The Old
English symbol 2 was dropped, its place being taken by a or e.
The sound of the Old English y, in the dialects where it survived,
was expressed by u; and that of the Old English long u was
written ou, as in French.
Of course, these changes did not take place all at once. It is
not to be supposed that no one ever read an Old English MS, and
there was, for a long time, some mixture of the traditional spelling
with the new one. Some few English sounds admitted of no
tolerable representation in the French alphabet; and for the
expression of these the native characters were retained in use.
The letters 5, 8 and p were used, though often blunderingly, even
by scribes who, in other respects, were thoroughly French in their
spelling ; though often we find their sounds awkwardly rendered
by t, th, ht, or d, and U. And in the twelfth century, though the
continental variety of the Roman alphabet was generally used for
writing English, it was found convenient to retain the native form
of the letter g for those two of its sounds that the French g lacked,
namely, those of gh and y (as in year). A new letter was thus
added to the alphabet, and, though it came to be written 3, exactly
like the contemporary form of %, it preserved its name “yok"
until the fourteenth century. It may be remarked in passing that
the ambiguity of pronunciation of this letter has misled modern
writers into calling the author of the Brut “ Layamon " instead of
“ Laghamon”; the incorrect form, however, bas become too well


## p. 394 (#414) ############################################

394
Changes in the Language
known to be displaced. In addition to the two original values of
the "yok,” it very early obtained a third use, being employed
(without indicating any change of pronunciation) instead of the
Old English h in certain positions, as in knizt, ibrozt, rouz, for
which the older spelling was cniht, gebroht, ruh. But, in the
fourteenth century, many writers substituted y or i for 3, when
pronounced as in zeer (year), and gh in all other cases. In the
thirteenth century, the letters p and Ở went out of use, the former
being replaced by the northern French w. The letter þ was
retained; but, although it was still called "thorn" in the four-
teenth century, it seems in Chaucer's time to have been regarded
as a mere compendium for th, which generally took its place except
initially. It may be noted that Thomas Usk, in the acrostic
sentence of his Testament of Love (1387) spells bin (thine) with
the four letters THIN. The adoption of a number of French
words like ioie (joy), in which ¿ was pronounced like the modern
English j, introduced the consonantal use of this letter into
English orthography.
The Old English initial combination hl survived (written Ih) in
some dialects down to the fourteenth century; but hr was very
early reduced to r. For the Old English hw, Middle English
writers substituted wh, though the h was, at first, often omitted
in this combination as in other positions, by scribes of French
education. The northern spelling qua, quilk for wha, whilk (who,
which) arose from a dialectal pronunciation of qu as wh, which
still survives locally in a few words.
From the twelfth century onwards, the letter y, when used
as a vowel, was treated as a mere alternative form of i.
Ormulum is written in a peculiar phonetic spelling devised
by the author himself. This is based, to a considerable extent, on
native tradition, though the handwriting is of the continental
type. There are, however, some of the new features. Orm uses
ch and sh as we do now, and retains the Old English form of g for
the two sounds which the French g had not A device peculiar
to himself is the appropriation of different shapes of the letter g to
the two sounds in god (good) and egge (edge). But the most note-
worthy characteristic of his orthography is the method of indicating
the quantity of the vowels. The shortness of a vowel, in a syllable
ending with a consonant, is shown by doubling the following
consonant, as in Crisstenndom. When the short vowel ended a
syllable in the middle of a word, Orm marked it as in tåkenn,
and very often (though not always) indicated a long vowel by one,


## p. 395 (#415) ############################################

two, or fibrous systems, it is onenglish pronuthus far nohere were
Development of Sounds 395
two, or even three "acute accents" over the letter. This elaborate
and cumbrous system found no imitators, but, as preserved in the
author's autograph MS, it is one of the most important aids that
we possess for ascertaining the English pronunciation of the time.
The changes in spelling that we have thus far noticed are
merely changes in the manner of representing sound. There were
others that were the result of altered pronunciation. It very
often happens that very considerable changes take place in the
sounds of a language without affecting the spelling, even when (as
was, apparently, the case in Middle English) there is no general
prejudice against deviations from traditional correctness of ortho-
graphy. Pronunciation, as a general rule, is not altered deliberately,
but unconsciously. In the utterance of what is intended and
believed to be one and the same vowel or consonant sound, each
generation may vary to an almost imperceptible extent from that
which preceded it; and, if these slight changes are all in the same
direction, the difference may, in the end, become indefinitely great.
The normal result in such cases is that the letter comes to have a
new phonetic value, and the spelling is not affected. The reason
why there were exceptions to this normal course of things in
Middle English was partly that sometimes two originally distinct
sounds so developed as to become identical, and partly that the
orthography of French supplied a kind of external standard.
The history of the changes in English pronunciation down to
the time of Chaucer is far too intricate to be treated here with
any approach to completeness; but a few of its salient points may
be briefly indicated.
The first remark to be made is that the course of development
of several of the Old English sounds was quite different in different
parts of the country. When we compare the modern English
pronunciation of home, stone, with the Scotch and northern hame,
stane, we see the last term of a divergent development (which
began very early) of the Old English long a (pronounced as a in
father). While the northern dialect progressively altered the
sound in one direction, the midland and southern dialects pro-
gressively altered it in the opposite direction. We cannot precisely
tell how far the change in the northern pronunciation had pro-
ceeded in the fourteenth century, because the spelling was not
affected. But, in other dialects, as we know from various kinds of
evidence, the sound was that of the “open ő" as in lord, and it
was expressed in writing by o or 00. The words “goad” (Old
English gād) and “good” (Old English göd) are both written good


## p. 396 (#416) ############################################

396
Changes in the Language
in Chaucer's spelling, but they were not pronounced alike; if the
sounds had been confused they would not have been separated
again in later pronunciation; and Chaucer never rimes a word
that has the “open o" with one containing the “close o. ” The
latter retained its old pronunciation (that of the French o in rose),
perhaps a little modified in the direction of its modern equivalent,
the oo in cool.
The long e, like the long o, had an "open" and a “close”
pronunciation, which Chaucer also keeps apart in his rimes.
The open è comes from the Old English (Anglian) ā, ea, and the
close è from Old English ē, 20. A word like chepe to buy (from
Old English cēapian) which had the openē, could not correctly
rime with a word like kepe to keep (from cēpan) which had the
close è. In northern dialects, the distinction was so slight that
poets freely allowed the two sounds to rime with one another.
In all the dialects of Middle English, the short vowels å, , ,
when ending an accented syllable, were lengthened, ĕ and
becoming open ? and open 0. In Chaucer's pronunciation, mete
meat (Old English měte) was an exact rime to grete, the plural of
the adjective great (Old English greate), but not to grete to greet
(Old English grētan); þrote throat (Old English brotu) rimed
with hote to command (Old English hätan), but not with bote
benefit (Old English bõt).
The Old English y (pronounced ü) kept its original sound in
the south-west, and, perhaps, in parts of the west midland, being
written u when short, and ui or uy when long; in Kent, it had
become e before the Conquest; elsewhere, it was sounded exactly
like i, and written, like that sound, indifferently i or y. The words
“fire," "sin,” “knit,” have, accordingly, in the different localities
the three types of form fuir, ver, fir; sunne, zenne, sinne; knutte,
knette, knitte. Chaucer, whose London English was mainly east
midland, uses occasionally a Kentish form like knette -
With regard to the pronunciation of consonants, there is
little that needs to be said, as, for the most part, the Old English
sounds not only continued unchanged down to the end of the
fourteenth century, but remain so to the present day. The
pronunciation of initial f and s as v and % (“ vather came vrom
Zummerzet"), which sounds so strange to visitors to the south-
western counties, was, in the fourteenth century, current all over
the south; in fact, the Kentish Ayenbite of Inwyt, of 1340, exhibits
this pronunciation in the orthography with greater regularity than
any other extant book. The gh sound of the letter 3 gradually


## p. 397 (#417) ############################################

397
Words adopted from French
changed into that of w, and this change was represented in the
spelling. In the earlier of the two MSS of the poetical chronicle
called the Brut, written at the beginning of the thirteenth
century, the author's name appears as “Lazamon," but, in the later
MS, written before 1300, it is turned into “Laweman. ” On the
other hand, in 1340, the Kentish Ayenbite has still forms like
zorze (sorrow) instead of Chaucer's sorwe.
4. CHANGES IN VOCABULARY.
If the Norman conquest had little influence on the development
of English grammar, its effects on the vocabulary of the language
were profound. It introduced, as we have already observed, an
age in which all educated Englishmen spoke French in addition to
their native tongue, and, for the most part, wrote nothing but
French and Latin. French became the language of law and
government, of war and of the chase, and of all that pertained to
the life of the wealthier classes. Of the vernacular literature
from the Conquest to the middle of the fourteenth century, by far
the greater part consisted of translations from French and Latin.
It is true that, down to the end of the thirteenth century, nearly
all that was written in English was intended for readers who were
comparatively unlearned; but even these readers could be reason-
ably supposed to have some degree of acquaintance with the
fashionable language, for, as a rule, the man who absolutely knew
nothing but English probably could not read at all. And when,
once more, it became customary to write in English for highly
educated people, authors could venture, without any fear of not
being understood, to borrow freely from the literary, as well as
from the popular, vocabulary of the French language.
Under these circumstances, it is not wonderful that the English
language received a large and rapidly increasing accession of
French words. A few, indeed, seem to have come in even before
the Norman conquest: catchpoll (kæcepol) occurs in a glossary of
the early eleventh century, and proud (Old English prūt, Old
Norse prūðr), if it be really French, must have been adopted much
earlier. In the Peterborough Chronicle, written about 1154, the
French' words amount to nearly a score. Their character is sig-
nificant. They include emperice empress, cuntesse countess (of
Anjou), curt court (king Henry II “ held mycel curt” at London
in 1164), dubbian to dub a knight, prison, privilege, rente, tenserie


## p. 398 (#418) ############################################

398 Changes in the Language
(the name of an impost). We are told that king Henry II " dide
god iustice and makede pais (peace). ” It is noteworthy, as indica-
tive of foreign influence in the monasteries, that we find such
words as miracle and procession, and that carited (charity) appears
as the technical name at the abbey of Peterborough for a banquet
given to the poor. .
About a hundred words of French origin may be collected from
the southern and south midland homilies of the twelfth century,
although these works are, to a great extent, only slightly modernised
transcripts of older originals. Most of these new words, as might
be expected, relate to matters of religion or of ecclesiastical
observance; but a few, such as poor, poverty, riches, honour,
robbery, must have been already in popular use. The north
midland Ormulum, written about 1200, is almost entirely free
from French words. The author intended his work to be recited
to illiterate people, and, therefore, strove to use plain language.
But his employment of such a word as gyn, ingenuity (a shortened
form of the French engin) shows that, even in his neighbourhood,
the vernacular of the humbler classes had not escaped the contagion
of French influence.
At the beginning of the thirteenth century, Layamon uses
nearly a hundred French words, many of which, it is interesting to
note, are not identical with those occurring in the corresponding
passages of his original. In the later text of the Brut, written
about 1275, the reviser has not unfrequently substituted words
of French etymology for the native words used by Layamon
himself.
The southern version of the Ancren Riwle, which is nearly
contemporary with Layamon's Brut, is much more exotic in
vocabulary, more than four hundred French words having been
enumerated as occurring in it. It appears, however, from certain
passages in this work, that the women for whose instruction it was
primarily written were conversant not only with French, but also
with Latin. We may, therefore, presume that the author has
allowed himself greater freedom in introducing literary French
words than he would have done if he had been addressing readers
of merely ordinary culture. Still, it is probable that a very
considerable number of the words that appear in this book for
the first time had already come to be commonly used among
educated English people. The occurrence of compounds of French
verbs and adjectives with native prefixes, as bi-spused (espoused),
mis-ipaied (dissatisfied), unstable, is some evidence that the writer
esponding
t unfreons of the R


## p. 399 (#419) ############################################

Scandinavian Words in English 399
was in these instances making use of words that were already
recognised as English.
In the writings of the end of the thirteenth century and the
first half of the fourteenth, the proportion of Romanic words is so
great that we may correctly say that the literary English of the
period was a mixed language. The interesting group of poems,
perhaps all by one author, consisting of Alisaunder, Arthur and
Merlin and Coeur de Lion, contain many long passages in which
nearly every important verb, noun and adjective is French. Nor
is this mixed vocabulary at all peculiar to works written in the
south of England. In Cursor Mundi, and even in the prose
of Richard Rolle, which are in the northern dialect, there is, on
the average, at least one French word in every two lines. The
alliterative poetry of the west midland and northern dialects
from about 1350 onwards has an extraordinary abundance of
words of French origin, many of which are common to several of
the poets of this school, and do not occur elsewhere. The notion
prevalent among writers of the seventeenth and eighteenth cen-
turies, that Chaucer corrupted the English language by the copious
introduction of French words, was curiously wide of the mark.
In reality, his language is certainly less marked by Gallicisms
than that of most of the other poets of his time, and even than
that of some poets of the early years of the fourteenth century.
It cannot be absolutely proved that he ever, even in his transla-
tions, made use of any foreign word that had not already gained
a recognised place in the English vocabulary.
The English literature of the eleventh century is almost wholly
written in the southern dialect, which was comparatively little
exposed to Scandinavian influence. We find in it, therefore, only
a very small number of Norse or Danish words, such as félaga
a business partner, “fellow”; lagu law; hūscarl "house-carl,”
member of the king's household ; hūsbonda master of a house,
"husband”; hūsting assembly of the “housecarls"; ütlaga out-
law. But when, in the thirteenth century, the language spoken in
the north and the north midlands again began to appear in a
written form, the strongly Scandinavian character of its vocabulary
becomes apparent. The diction of Ormulum, whose author bore
a Scandinavian name, is full of Danish words, many of which
are not otherwise found in English literature, though some of
these are preserved in modern rustic dialects. In Cursor Mundi,
in Genesis and Exodus, in Havelok, in the writings of Robert
Mannyng of Brunne in Lincolnshire, and in the west midland


## p. 400 (#420) ############################################

400
Changes in the Language
alliterative poetry, the large Scandinavian element must, even if
other peculiarities of dialect had been absent, have been quite
sufficient to render these works very difficult reading for natives of
the south of England. In several instances, native words that were
in extremely common use were superseded by Danish synonyms :
call took the place of cīgan (another Old English word of the same
meaning, cleopian, remained as clepe), niman was displaced by take
and weorpan by cast.
The freedom with which words could be adopted from French
to express complex and abstract notions had a marked effect in
checking the augmentation of the English vocabulary by means
of composition. The new compounds that arose in Middle English
down to the end of the fourteenth century are extremely
few. Individual writers occasionally ventured on experiments in
this direction, especially in translations of Latin formations like
Dan Michel's ayenbite ("again-biting ") for remorse; or Wyclif's
hamersmyter for the malleator of the Vulgate, and soul-havers for
animantia; but their coinages seldom found general acceptance.
The prefixes be-, for- and with- (in the sense of “against "), were,
however, used to form many new verbs. The old derivative suffixes,
for the most part, continued in use. New abstract nouns were
formed from adjectives and substantives by the addition of the
endings -ness, -hode and -hede (the modern -hood, -head) and -ship;
new adjectives in -sum, -ful, -lich (-ly); and new agent-nouns in
-ere. The ending -ing was more and more frequently added to
verbs to form nouns of action, and, before the end of the fourteenth
century, the derivatives so formed had come to be used as mere
gerunds. The suffix -liche (-ly) became a regular means of forming
adverbs. As the Old English endings -en and -icge, used to
form nouns denoting persons of the female sex, had become
obsolete, the French -esse was adopted, and added to native words,
as in goddesse, fiendesse and sleeresse (a female slayer). In the
southern dialect of the thirteenth century, there appears a curious
abundance of feminine agent-nouns formed from verbs by adding
the suffix -ild, of which there are one or two examples in Old
English, though, singularly enough, they have been found only in
Northumbrian. Instances of this formation from the Anoren
Riwle are beggild a woman given to begging, cheapild a female
bargainer, grucchild a female grumbler, mathelild a female
chatterer, totild a woman fond of peeping; other words of this
formation which do not imply any disparagement are fostrild
a nurse, and motild a female advocate. Besides the feminines


## p. 401 (#421) ############################################

Loss of Native Words
401
in -esse, the fourteenth century shows a few examples of the
practice, which afterwards became common, of appending Romanic
suffixes to native words. Hampole has trowable for credible,
Wyclif everlastingtee (after eternitee), and Chaucer slogardrie
and slogardie ("sluggardry'), and eggement instigation (from the
verb "to egg").
Several of the new words that came into very general use in or
before the fourteenth century are of unknown or doubtful origin.
Such are the verb kill, which appears first in Layamon under the
form cullen; and the substantive smell (whence the verb), which
superseded the Old English stenc (stench), originally applicable no
less to a delightful odour than to an unpleasant one. Some of the
new words, as left (hand), which took the place of the Old English
wynstre, and qued bad, have cognates in Low German, but are not
likely to have been adopted from the continent; they more pro-
bably descend from non-literary Old English dialects. Boy and
girl (the latter originally applied to a young person of either sex),
lad and lass, are still of uncertain origin, though conjectures more
or less plausible have been offered.
Not less remarkable than the abundance of new words added
to the English vocabulary in the early Middle English period is the
multitude of Old English words that went out of use. Anyone who
will take the trouble to go through a few pages of an Old English
dictionary, noting all the words that cannot be found in any writer
later than about the year 1250, will probably be surprised at their
enormous number. Perhaps the most convenient way of illus-
trating the magnitude of the loss which the language sustained
before the middle of the thirteenth century will be to take a piece
of Old English prose, and to indicate those words occurring in it
that became obsolete before the date mentioned. The follow-
ing passage is the beginning of Aelfric's homily on St Cuthbert,
written about A. D. 1000. Of the words printed in italics, one
or two occur in Ormulum and other works of the beginning
of the thirteenth century, but the majority disappeared much
earlier.
Cuthbert, the holy bishop, shining
in many merits and holy honours, is
in glory, reigning in the kingdom of
heaven with the Almighty Creator.
Cuthbertus, se hālga biscop, sci-
nende on manegum geearnungum and
håligum gepinchum, on heofenan rice
mid pam ælmihtigum Scyppende on
boere blisse ridiemde, puldray.
Bēda, se snotera Engla þēoda
lāreow, bises hálgan líf endebyrdlice
mid wunderfullum herungum, âgper
E. L. I. CH. XIX.
Boda, the wise teacher of the
English peoples, wrote this holy
man's life in order with wonderful
26


## p. 402 (#422) ############################################

402
Changes in the Language
ge æfter anfealdre gereccednysse ge
after lēoplicere gyddunge, āwrāt. Us
sãôde sõplice Bēda þæt seēadiga
Cuthberhtus, þă på he was eahta-
wintre cild, arn, swā swā him his
nytenlice yld tihte, plegende mid his
efenealdum; ao se almihtiga God
wolde styran þære nytennysse his
gecorenan Cuthberhtus þurh myne-
gunge gelimplices lāreowes, and
Āsende him to ån prywintre cild, þæt
his dyslican plegan mid stæppigum
wordum wislice brēade.
praises, both according to simple
narration and according to poetic
song. Beda has truly told us that
the blessed Cuthbert, when he was
a child of eight, ran, as his ignorant
age impelled him, playing with chil-
dren of his own age; but Almighty
God willed to guide the ignorance of
his chosen Cuthbert by the admoni.
tion of a fitting teacher, and sent to
him a child throo years old, who
rebuked his foolish play wisely with
serious words.
In the first thirty lines of Aelfric's homily on St Gregory, there
occur the following words, none of which survived beyond the
middle of the thirteenth century: andweard present, gedeorf
labour, gecnyrdny88 study, gesæliglice blessedly, būgeng worship,
ætbregdan to turn away, gebīgan to subdue, drohtnung manner of
life, swutellīce plainly, wer man, gereccan to relate, ĉawfæst pious,
ācenned born, æpelboren nobly born, mægþ kindred, wita senator,
geglengan to adorn, swēgan to sound, be called, wacol watchful,
bebod command, herigendlīce laudably, geswutelian to manifest.
It is common to regard the obsolescence of Old English words
after the Conquest as a mere consequence of the introduction
of new words from French. The alien words, it is supposed, drove
their native synonyms out of use. It is not to be denied that this
was, to a considerable extent, the case. On the whole, however, it
would probably be more true to say that the adoption of foreign
words was rendered necessary because the native words expressing
the same meanings had ceased to be current. When the literary
use of English bad for one or two generations been almost entirely
discontinued, it was inevitable that the words that belonged purely
to the literary language should be forgotten. And a cultivated
literary dialect always retains in use a multitude of words that
were once colloquial, but which even educated persons would
consider too bookish to be employed in familiar speech. There
were also, no doubt, in the language of English writers from Alfred
onwards, very many compounds and derivatives which, though
intelligible enough to all readers, were mere artificial formations
that never had any oral currency at all. When the scholars of
England ceased to write or read English, the literary tradition was
broken ; the only English generally understood was the colloquial
speech, which itself may very likely have lost not a few words in
the hundred years after Aelfric's time.


## p. 403 (#423) ############################################

The Poetical Vocabulary
403
It might, perhaps, have been expected that the special vocabu-
lary of Old English poetry would have survived to a greater extent
than we find it actually to have done. We should not, indeed,
expect to find much of it in that large portion of Middle English
poetry which was written in foreign metres and in imitation of
foreign models. But, about the year 1350, there arose a school
of poets who, though they were men of learning and drew
their material from French and Latin sources, had learned their
art from the unliterary minstrels who had inherited the tradition
of the ancient Germanic alliterative line. These poets have an
extraordinarily abundant store of characteristic words, wbich are
not found in prose literature or in the contemporary poetry of a
different school. It might naturally be supposed that this dis-
tinctive vocabulary would consist largely of the words that had
been peculiar to poetic diction in Old English times. But,
in fact, nearly all the words marked in Sweet's Anglo-Saxon
Dictionary with the sign (t) as poetical are wanting in Middle
English. The fourteenth century alliterative poets use some of
the ancient epic synonyms for “man” or “warrior": bern, renk,
wye and freke, representing the Old English beorn, rinc, wiga
and freca. A few words that in Old English were part of the
ordinary language, such as mãlan (Middle English mele), to speak,
are among the characteristic archaisms of the later alliterative
poets. The adjective æpele, noble, became, in the form athil, one
of the many synonyms for “man," and often appears as hathel,
probably through confusion with the Old English hæleb, a man.
The word burde, a lady, which is familiar to modern readers from
its survival in late ballad poetry, seems to be the feminine of the
Old English adjective byrde, high-born, of which only one instance
is known, and that in prose. Several of the poetic words of the
west midland school are of Scandinavian origin, as trine and cair
(Old Norse keyra, to drive), which are both used for “to go. ” The
very common word tulk, a man, represents, with curious trans-
formation of meaning, the Old Norse tulkr, an interpreter.
It is
possible that some of these words, which are not found in modern
dialects, were never colloquial English at all, but were adopted by
the poets of the Scandinavian parts of England from the language
of the ruling class.
The disappearance of the greater part of the old poetical
vocabulary is probably due to its having been, in later Old
English times, preserved only in the literary poetry which obtained
its diction from the imitation of written models. To this poetry
26—2


## p. 404 (#424) ############################################

404 Changes in the Language
the alliterative poets of the fourteenth century owed nothing; the
many archaisms which they retained were those that had been
handed down in the unwritten popular poetry on which their
metrical art was based.
5. ENGLISH DIALECTS IN THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY.
Writers on the history of the English language have been
accustomed to quote, as if it related to the condition of things
in the year 1385, the following passage from Trevisa : “All the
language of the Northumbrians, and specially at York, is so sharp,
slitting and froting, and unshape, that we southern men may that
language unnethe (hardly) understand. ” This sentence, however,
is not Trevisa's own, but translates a quotation by Higden from
William of Malmesbury's Gesta Pontificum, written before 1125.
The fact that Higden and Trevisa reproduce Malmesbury's words
without comment, can hardly be said to prove anything. Still,
although Trevisa's adoption of Malmesbury's statement is not,
considered by itself, very good evidence as to the amount of
dialectal divergence existing in his own time, it appears likely
that, on the whole, the difference between the speech of the north
and that of the south had rather increased than diminished be-
tween the twelfth and the fourteenth century. It is true that the
decay of the old inflexions had removed some of the dialectal
distinctions of the earlier period, and that greater freedom of
intercommunication between different parts of the country had
not been without effect in producing some mixture of forms.
But, on the other hand, the development of pronunciation had been
divergent, and the gains and losses of the vocabulary had been, to
a great extent, different in the different regions.
It must be remembered that, throughout the fourteenth century
strongly marked differences of dialect were not, as now, confined
to the less educated classes ; nor is there any clear evidence that
any writer attempted to use for literary purposes any other dialect
than that which he habitually spoke. It is true that Wyclif was
a man of northern birth, and that the language of his writings is
distinctly of the midland type. But this is only what might have
been expected in the case of a distinguished Oxford teacher, whose
life, probably from early boyhood, had been spent at the university.
Men of the highest culture continued to write in each of the three
or four principal varieties of English. The dialects may have been
somewhat less unlike in their written than in their spoken form,
iv markocated clase use for
life, probanted in the case type. But


## p. 405 (#425) ############################################

Dialects in the Fourteenth Century 405
because the spelling was too much under the influence of tradition
to represent accurately the divergent development of the original
sounds. But, in spite of the nearness of Canterbury to London,
it is probable that Chaucer would not have found it quite easy to
read the Ayenbite of Inwyt, which was written about the time
when he was born; nor would he have felt much more at home
with the writings of his contemporaries among the west midland
alliterative poets or those of northern poets like Laurence Minot.
At any rate, a modern reader who has learned to understand
Chaucer without great difficulty commonly finds himself very
much at a loss when first introduced to the Ayenbite, the Morte
Arthure, or Sir Gawayne. Northern prose, indeed, is to us
somewhat easier, because, owing to the loss of inflexions, its
language is, in some respects, more modern than even that of
Chaucer.
An outline of the distinctive features of Middle English
dialects has already been given in the sections of this chapter
treating of grammar and pronunciation. The following compara-
tive list of forms of words may assist the reader to obtain a
general notion of the extent and nature of the diversities of the
written language of different parts of the country in the fourteenth
century.
Kentish South-Western E. Midland W. Midland Northern
Fire
veer
vuir, fuir fiir
fuir
fier
Sin
zenne
sunne
sinne sinne
I shall say Ich ssel zigge Ich schal sigge I shal seyn I shal saie I sal sai
She says by zeyth
heo sayth she seyth ho saith scho sais
They say hy ziggeth hy siggeth they seyn hy, thai sayn thai sai
liviynde liviinde livinge living livand
Her name hare nome bor nome her name hur name her nam
Their names hare nomen hure nomenhir names hur namus thair names
sin
Living
The English of Scotland, so far as we know, was hardly used
for literary purposes until the last quarter of the fourteenth
century, when Barbour wrote his Bruce. It is doubtful whether
the other works ascribed to Barbour are not of later date, and
The Bruce itself has come down to us in manuscripts written
a hundred years after the author's time. The specific features
distinguishing the Scottish dialect from northern English across
the border will, therefore, be more conveniently reserved for
treatment in a later chapter.
It must not be supposed that the forms above tabulated were
the only forms current in the districts to which they are assigned,
or that none of them were used outside the regions to which they


## p. 406 (#426) ############################################

406
Changes in the Language
typically belong. Local varieties of speech within each dialect
area were doubtless many, and the orthography was unfixed and
only imperfectly phonetic. Literary works were copied by scribes
who belonged to other parts of the country than those in which the
works were composed; and, consequently, the texts as we have them
represent a mixture of the grammar, pronunciation and vocabulary
of different dialects. Vernacular writers, especially poets, often
added to their means of expression by adopting words and forms
from dialects other than their own. Hence, although in the
last years of the fourteenth century the establishment of a common
literary language was still in the future, and the varieties even of
the written speech continued to be strongly marked, there are few
writings of the period that can be regarded as unmixed representa-
tives of any single dialect.
The tendencies that ultimately resulted in the formation of a
uniform written language began to act before the fourteenth
century closed. In London, the seat of legislative and administra-
tive activity, the influx of educated persons from all parts of
the kingdom led to the displacement of the original southern
dialect by the dialect of the east midlands, which, in virtue of its
intermediate character, was more intelligible both to southern and
northern men than northern English to a southerner or southern
English to a northerner. The fact that both the university towns
were linguistically within the east midland area had, no doubt, also
its effect in bringing about the prevalence of this type of English
among the educated classes of the capital. The works of Chaucer,
which, in the next age, were read and imitated not only in the
southern kingdom but even in Scotland, carried far and wide the
knowledge of the forms of London English ; and the not very
dissimilar English of Oxford was, in like manner, spread abroad
through the enormous popularity of the writings of Wyclif and his
associates. Even in the lifetime of these two great writers, it
had already become inevitable that the future common English
of literature should be English essentially of the east midland
type.


## p. 407 (#427) ############################################

CHAPTER XX
THE ANGLO-FRENCH LAW LANGUAGE
THE profound effects of the Norman conquest on the vocabulary
of the English language have already been considered. It remains
to notice a special cause which had its own peculiar influence on
the language, namely, the long retention of French in the courts
of law. The words thus naturalised have become a part of the
current speech of Englishmen, and have passed into the language
in which English books have been written. This long familiarity
with the structure and vocabulary of another tongue had its
effect on literary style, just as the long familiarity with Latin had
in the case of the monastic writers.
The effect on the vocabulary is certain and considerable, though
it is impossible to draw any definite line and decide which words
are due to the use of the French language in the courts, and which
to its more general use outside the courts. Again, it would
require special investigation in the case of individual words to
determine when they ceased to be known only to lawyers and
became familiar (frequently with a changed significance) to laymen.
It is to the Year Books that we must turn to see what the
language of the courts actually was in the middle ages. These
books form a series (not unbroken) of summaries of cases decided
from the reign of Edward I to that of Henry VIII, while there
is a note book of even earlier cases, of the reign of Henry III”.
Maitland has shown good reason for concluding that this note
book was used by Bracton in writing his great treatise.
Some portions of these Year Books have been edited in recent
years a: but, for the present purpose, the most important edition
is that of the year books of Edward II edited by Maitland for the
Selden Society. To volume 1 of this series Maitland prefixed a
most valuable Introduction from which the following pages are
i Bracton's Note Book, ed. F. W. Maitland.
Cf. the Rolls Series, edited by Horwood and Pike, and the Selden Society Series,
edited by Maitland, Vols. 1, 11, 1II.
3 Pp. 408–12.


## p. 408 (#428) ############################################

408
The Anglo-French Law Language
extracts, reprinted by permission of the council of the Selden
Society:
“We know 'law French' in its last days, in the age that lies
between the Restoration and the Revolution, as a debased jargon.
Lawyers still wrote it; lawyers still pronounced or pretended to
pronounce it. Not only was it the language in which the moots
were holden at the Inns of Court until those ancient exercises
ceased, but it might sometimes be heard in the courts of law, more
especially if some belated real action made its way thither. The
pleadings, which had been put into Latin for the record, were also
put into French in order that they might be 'mumbled' by a
serjeant to the judges, who, however, were not bound to listen to
his mumblings, since they could see what was written in 'the
paper books? . ' What is more, there still were men living who
thought about law in this queer slang-for a slang it had become.
Roger North has told us that such was the case of his brother
Francis. If the Lord Keeper was writing hurriedly or only for
himself, he wrote in French. "Really,' said Roger, 'the Law is
scarcely expressible properly in English. ' A legal proposition
couched in the vulgar language looked to his eyes 'very uncouth'
So young gentlemen were adjured to despise translations and read
Littleton's Tenures in the original'.
Roger North was no pedant; but he was a Tory, and not only
was the admission of English to the sacred plea rolls one of those
exploits of the sour faction that had been undone by a joyous
monarchy, but there was a not unreasonable belief current in royalist
circles that the old French law-books enshrined many a goodly
prerogative, and that the specious learning of the parliamentarians
might be encountered by deeper and honester research. Never-
theless, that is a remarkable sentence coming from one who lived
on until 1734: ‘Really the Law is scarcely expressible properly in
English. '
Had it been written some centuries earlier it would have been
very true, and its truth would have evaporated very slowly. The
Act of 1362, which tried to substitute la lange du paiis for la lange
francais, qest trope desconue as the oral language of the courts, is
an important historical landmark. But we know that it was
1 Roger North, Lives of the Norths, 1826, 1, 30.
· Lives of the Northe, I, 33; Roger North, 4 Discourse on the Study of the Laws,
1824, p. 13.
3 36 Edw. III. stat. c. 15 (Commissioners' edition). Observe francais, not
francaise. Having written trop, the scribe puts a tittle over the p, which seems to


## p. 409 (#429) ############################################

Retention of French in the Courts 409
tardily obeyed, and indeed it attempted the impossible. How tardy
the obedience was we cannot precisely tell, for the history of this
matter is involved with the insufficiently explored history of
written pleadings. Apparently French remained the language of
'pleadings' properly so called, while English became the language
of that 'argument' which was slowly differentiated from out of the
mixed process of arguing and pleading which is represented to us
by the Year Books Fortescue's words about this matter are well
known? In 1549 Archbishop Cranmer, contending with the rebels
of Devonshire over the propriety of using English speech in the
services of the Church, said, 'I have heard suitors murmur at the
bar because their attornies pleaded their causes in the French
tongue which they understood not? ' In Henry VIII's day, when
the advocates of a reception of Roman law could denounce thys
barbarouse tong and Old French, whych now seruyth to no purpose
else,' moderate reformers of the Inns of Court were urging as the
true remedy that students should be taught to plead in good
French: the sort of French, we may suppose, that John Palsgrave,
natyf de Londres et gradué de Paris, was teaching No doubt
they felt with Roger North that really the Law is scarcely
expressible properly in English
The law was not expressible properly in English until the lange
du paiis had appropriated to itself scores of French words; we may
go near to saying that it had to borrow a word corresponding to
almost every legal concept that had as yet been fashioned. Time
was when the Englishman who in his English talk used such a
word as 'ancestor' or 'heir,' such a word as 'descend,' 'revert,' or
‘remain,' must have felt that he was levying an enforced loan.
For a while the charge of speaking a barbarous jargon would fall
rather upon those who were making countless English words by the
simple method of stealing than upon those whose French, though
it might be of a colonial type, had taken next to nothing from the
vulgar tongue. Very gradually the relation between the two
languages was reversed. An Act of Parliament could do little
to hasten the process ; more might be done by patriotic school-
masters.
When the history of English law is contrasted with the history
show that he meant trope. The word tittle is useful. Thereby we mean '& small line
drawn over an abridged word, to supply letters wanting' (Cotgrave). It is the Spanish
tilde, which we see, e. g. in doña.
| Fortescue de Laudibus, c. 48.
? Cranmer, Remains (Parker Soc. ), p. 170.
3 Maitland, English Law and the Renaissance, pp. 43, 72.


## p. 410 (#430) ############################################

410 The Anglo-French Law Language
of its next of kin, the existence of law French is too often forgotten.
It is forgotten that during the later middle age English lawyers
enjoyed the inestimable advantage of being able to make a technical
language. And a highly technical language they made. To take
one example, let us think for a moment of an heir in tail rebutted
from his formedon by a lineal warranty with descended assets. '
Precise ideas are here expressed in precise terms, every one of
which is French: the geometer or the chemist could hardly wish
for terms that are more exact or less liable to have their edges
worn away by the vulgar. Good came of this and evil. Let us dwell
for a moment on an important consequence. We have known it
put by a learned foreigner as a paradox that in the critical
sixteenth century the national system of jurisprudence which
showed the stoutest nationalism was a system that was hardly
expressible in the national language. But is there a paradox here?
English law was tough and impervious to foreign influence because
it was highly technical, and it was highly technical because English
lawyers had been able to make a vocabulary, to define their
concepts, to think sharply as the man of science thinks. It would
not be a popular doctrine that the Englishry of English law was
secured by la lange francais gest trope desconue; but does it not
seem likely that if English law had been more homely, more volks-
thümlich, Romanism would have swept the board in England as it
swept the board in Germany ? . . .
Now, as regards vocabulary, there is a striking contrast between
the earliest and the latest year books. A single case of Henry VIII's
day shows us 'deer, hound, otters, foxes, fowl, tame, thrush, keeper,
hunting. ' We see that already the reporter was short of French
words which would denote common objects of the country and
gentlemanly sport. What is yet more remarkable, he admits
'owner? ' But in Edward II's day the educated Englishman was
far more likely to introduce French words into his English than
English words into his French. The English lawyer's French
vocabulary was pure and sufficiently copious. It is fairly certain
that by this time his 'cradle speech' was English; but he had not
been taught English, and he had been taught French, the language
of good society. Even as a little boy he had been taught his
moun et ma, toun et ta, soun et sa. Of our reporters we may be
far more certain that they could rapidly write French of a sort
than that they had ever written an English sentence, John of
* Y. B. 12 Hen. VIII, f. 3 (Trin. pl. 8); Pollock, First Book of Jurisprudence, 281.
? See the treatise of Walter of Biblesworth in Wrigbt, Vocabularies, 1, 144.


## p. 411 (#431) ############################################

The Making of Legal Terms
411
Cornwall and Richard Penkrich had yet to labour in the grammar
schools.
Let us look for a moment at some of the words which ‘lay in
the mouths' of our serjeants and judges: words descriptive of
logical and argumentative processes: words that in course of
time would be heard far outside the courts of law. We see 'to
allege, to aver, to assert, to affirm, to avow, to suppose, to
surmise (surmettre), to certify, to maintain, to doubt, to deny,
to except (excepcioner), to demur, to determine, to reply, to
traverse, to join issue, to try, to examine, to prove. ' We see
'a debate, a reason, a premiss, a conclusion, a distinction, an
affirmative, a negative, a maxim, a suggestion. ' We see 're-
pugnant, contrariant, discordant. ' We see 'impertinent' and
'inconvenient' in their good old senses. We even see 'sophistry. '
Our French-speaking, French-thinking lawyers were the main
agents in the distribution of all this verbal and intellectual
wealth. While as get there was little science and no popular
science, the lawyer mediated between the abstract Latin logic
of the schoolmen and the concrete needs and homely talk of
gross, unschooled mankind Law was the point where life and
logic met.
And the lawyer was liberally exercising his right to make
terms of art, and yet, if we mistake not, he did this in a manner
sufficiently sanctioned by the genius of the language. Old French
allowed a free conversion of infinitives into substantives. Some of
the commonest nouns in the modern language have been infinitives :
diner, déjeuner, souper, pouvoir, devoir, plaisir; and in the list
whence we take these examples we see un manoir and un
plaidoyer. English legal language contains many words that
were thus made: 'a voucher, an ouster, a disclaimer, an inter-
pleader, a demurrer, a cesser, an estover, a merger, a remitter,
a render, a tender, an attainder, a joinder, a rejoinder,' though
in some cases the process has been obscured. . . . Were we still 'to
pray oyer of a bond,' we should use a debased infinitive, and
perhaps it is well that nowadays we seldom hear of 'a possibility
of reverter' lest a pedant might say that revertir were better.
Even the Latin roll felt this French influence: ‘his voucher'
is vocare suum, and recuperare suum is ‘his recovery. '
But the most interesting specimen in our legal vocabulary of a
French infinitive is ‘remainder. In Edward II's day name and
thing were coming to the forefront of legal practice. The name
was in the making. When he was distinguishing the three writs of


## p. 412 (#432) ############################################

412 The Anglo-French Law Language
formedon (or better of forme de doun) it was common for the
lawyer to slip into Latin and to say en le descendere, en le reverti,
en le remanere. But the French infinitives also were being used,
and le remeindre (the 'to remain,' the 'to stay out' instead of
the reversion or coming back) was soon to be a well-known sub-
stantive. It was not confused with a remenaunt, a remnant, a
part which remains when part is gone. What remained, what
stayed out instead of coming back, was the land'. In French
translations of such deeds as create remainders it is about as
common to see the Latin remanere rendered by demorer as to see
an employment of remeindre, and it is little more than an accident
that we do not call a remainder a demurrer and a demurrer
a remainder. In both cases there is a 'to abide'; in the one the
land abides for the remainder-man (celui a qi le remeindre se
tailla); in the other case the pleaders express their intention of
dwelling upon what they have said, of abiding by what they have
pleaded, and they abide the judgment of the court. When a cause
'stands over,' as we say, our ancestors would say in Latin that it
remains, and in French that it demurs (loquela remanet: la parole
demoert): 'the parol demurs,' the case is 'made a remanet. '
The differentiation and specification of "remain' and 'demur,'
'remainder' and 'demurrer,' is an instance of good technical
work. . . .
We might dwell at some length on the healthy processes which
were determining the sense of words. There is, for example,
tailler (to cut or carve), which can be used of the action of one
who shapes or, as we say, 'limits' a gift in some special manner,
but more especially if the result of his cutting and carving is a
‘tailed fee. ' There is assez (enough) with a strange destiny before
it, since it is to engender a singular 'asset. ' We might endeavour
to explain how, under the influence of the deponent verbs sequi
and prosequi which appear upon the Latin roll, the phrase il fut
nounsuivy (he was non-suited) is a nearer equivalent for il ne
suivit pas than for il ne fut pas suivi. Of our lawyers as word-
makers, phrase-makers, thought-makers, much might be said. "
1 Pollock and Maitland, Hist. Eng. Law, u, 21; Challis, Law of Real Property,
And ed. p. 69.


## p. 413 (#433) ############################################

APPENDIX TO CHAPTER VII
THE OLD ENGLISH SUNG, OR BALLAD, METRE
[It has been thought desirable to print in this place the following account of
Old English metre as adjusted on the stress-system to ballads. ]
The chief characteristio of the old popular metre, which suddenly assumes
such prominence in later Old English literature, is that in each half-line, instead
of the two beats of the rhetorical metre, we have four beats, two of which
are chief beats with full-stress, while the other two are half-stress. Between
every two of the four beats there is, generally, an unstressed sinking. Elision
of the sinking may take place in any position, and is usual before a final
half-stress.
The Old English sung, or ballad, metre is, fundamentally, a four-beat
rhythm which must end in a stress. It differs from the ordinary four-foot
ballad verse in this, that a far greater difference is postulated between the
force of the four stresses. In any natural English four-beat doggerel,
granted it be not of expert composition, we come upon the distinction of
full-stresses (%) and minor stresses, here called half-stresses (1); e. g.
The kíng was in the counting-house.
In Old English verse, these stresses and half-stresses could not be arranged
as one liked: the line had to be balanced.
Fully balanced lines can be divided thus:
A. (* x) 4(xx) +(x) x + (x)
Modern English forms:
The kíng was in the counting-house
The queen was in the parlour.
Old English examples:
and þa éarme mèn hit beceórodon
his rice mèn hit máendòn.
B. (x x) = x(x) 4(x x) + x(x) 4.
Examples in modern English are rare.