No More Learning

The change of nomenclature will be a mere useless
pedantry if we allow ourselves to imagine that there was any
definite date at which people ceased to speak “Old English" and
began to speak “Middle English," or even that there ever was a
time when the English of the older generation and that of the
younger generation differed widely from each other. Nevertheless,
owing partly to the fact that the twelfth century was an age of
exceptionally rapid linguistic change, and partly to other causes
hereafter to be explained, it is quite true that, while the literary
remains of the first half of the century exhibit a form of the
language not strikingly different from that of preceding centuries,
those of the latter half present such an amount of novelty in
spelling and grammatical features as to make the most superficial
observation sufficient to show that a new period has begun. The
date 1150, as the approximate point of demarcation between the
Old and Middle periods of English, is, therefore, less arbitrary
than chronological boundaries in the history of a language usually
are; though, if we possessed full information respecting the spoken
English of the twelfth century, we should have to be content with
a much less precise determination. While the Middle English
period has thus a definite beginning, it has no definite ending.
It is, however, convenient to regard it as terminating about


## p. 384 (#404) ############################################

384
Changes in the Language
1500, because the end of the fifteenth century coincides pretty
closely with the victory of the printing-press over the scriptorium;
and many of the distinctive features of literary Modern English
would never have been developed if printing had not been invented.
2. CHANGES IN GRAMMAR
The most striking characteristic of Old English, as compared
with later stages of the language, is that it retained without
essential change the inflectional system which it possessed at the
beginning of its history. So far as regards the verbs, this system
was very imperfect in comparison with that of Greek, or even of
Latin. There was no inflected passive, the need of which was
supplied by the use of auxiliaries; and there were only two
inflected tenses: the present, which often had to serve for a future,
and the past. The use of auxiliaries for forming compound tenses
was comparatively rare. The three persons of the plural had only
one form, which, prehistorically, had been that of the third person;
and, in the past tense, the first and third person singular were alike.
On the other hand, the system of declension was nearly as elaborate
as in any of the languages of the Indogermanic family. Substantives
had four cases : nominative, accusative, genitive and dative. The
adjective had two sets of inflections for gender, number and case-
the one used when the substantive was "definite” (as when pre-
ceded by the article or some equivalent), and the other when it
was "indefinite. " So far as this description goes, it might appear
that the Old English machinery for expressing the grammatical
relations of substantives, adjectives and pronouns was as adequate
for its purpose as even that of Greek. But, owing to the effect of
prehistoric changes of pronunciation, which had assimilated many
terminations that were originally distinct, the Old English declen-
sion of these parts of speech was, in fact, full of inconvenient
ambiguities. This will be evident if we place side by side the
paradigms of the word guma, a man, in Gothic (which, in this
instance, agrees very nearly with primitive Germanic) and in Old
English.
Gothic. Old English
Sing. Nom.
guma
guma
Accus.
guman
guman
guming
gaman
Dative gumin
guman
Plur. Nom.
gumans
guman
Accus.
gumans
guman
Gen.
gumanē
gumena
Dative
gumam
Gen.
gumum


## p. 385 (#405) ############################################

Old English Grammar 385
The Gothic declension of this noun, it will be seen, has only one
weak point, namely, that the accusative plural had assumed the form
of the nominative. But, in Old English, the one form guman had
five different functions. There were, in Old English, many other
declensions of nouns besides that of which the word guma is an
example; and all of them were, more or less, faulty. The accusa-
tive had nearly always the same form as the nominative. In some
nouns the genitive singular, and in others the nominative plural,
did not differ from the nominative singular.
These observations apply to the West Saxon or southern dialect
of Old English, in which most of the extant literature is written.
But, while the West Saxon system of noun-inflection was thus
seriously defective, that of the Northumbrian dialect was far
worse, because, in that dialect, the final -n had come to be regularly
dropped in nearly all grammatical endings; and, further, the
unaccented final vowels were pronounced obscurely, so that we
often find them confused in our texts. It was quite an exceptional
thing for the case and number of a substantive to be unambiguously
indicated by its form. The ambiguities were, to some extent, ob-
viated by the inflection of the accompanying article or adjective;
but the declension even of these parts of speech, though better
preserved than that of the substantive, had, itself, suffered from
wear and tear, so that there were only a few of the endings that
had not a multiplicity of functions.
The imperfection of the Old English system of inflections must
sometimes have caused practical inconvenience, and some of the
changes which it underwent were due to instinctive efforts to
remedy its defects. These changes naturally began where the evil
was greatest, in the northern dialect. It used to be believed and
the notion is not altogether extinct-that the almost universal
substitution of -es for the many Old English endings of the geni-
tive singular and the nominative and accusative plural was a result
of the Norman conquest. But, in fact, the beginnings of this
alteration in the language can be traced to a far earlier time. In
the Northumbrian writings of the tenth century we find that, very
often, when the traditional ending of a noun failed to indicate
properly its case and number, the required clearness was gained by
assimilating its declension to that of those nouns which made
their genitives in -es and their plurals in -as. As -es was the
only ending of nouns that never marked anything but a genitive
singular, and -as the only ending that never marked anything but
a nominative or accusative plural, the improvement in lucidity was
E. L. I. CH. XIX,


## p. 386 (#406) ############################################

386
Changes in the Language
very considerable. We lack definite evidence as to the rapidity
with which these two endings came, in the northern dialect, to
be applied to nearly all substantives, but the process probably
occupied no very long time. The change of declension syn-
chronised with a tendency, which prevailed in all dialects, to
obscure the pronunciation of the vowels in all unstressed final
syllables, so that -as became -28. The practice of forming genitives
and plurals, as a general rule, with this ending spread from the
northern to the midland dialect; perhaps this dialect may, in part,
have developed it independently. In the Peterborough Chronicle
(about 1154), and in the north midland Ormulum (about 1200),
we find it fully established. The English of educated Londoners
had, in the fourteenth century, lost most of its original southern
peculiarities, and had become essentially a midland dialect.
Hence, the writings of Chaucer show, as a general rule, only the
-es plurals and the -es genitives; the “irregular plurals,” as we
may now call them, being hardly more numerous than in modern
standard English. Words adopted from French often retained
their original plurals in -8. The dative case disappeared from
midland English in the twelfth century, so that Chaucer's de-
clension of substantives is as simple as that of our own
day.
In purely southern dialects, the history of the noun-inflections
was quite different. The case-endings of Old English-West
Saxon and Kentish-were, to a great extent, retained, with
the alterations that resulted from the general reduction of their
vowels to an obscure e. One consequence of this "levelling" of
vowels was that there was a large number of nouns of which the
nominative singular ended in -e and the nominative plural in -en,
as name, namen, tunge (tongue), tungen (in Old English nama,
naman, tunge, tungan); and, as the -n was, in these words, felt as a
formative of the plural, it was dropped in the oblique cases of the
singular. Hence, in these words all the cases of the singular ended
in -e, and the nominative and accusative plural in -en. To the
extensive declension thus arising all nouns ending in -e came to be
assimilated, including feminine nouns in which this ending had
been extended from the oblique cases to the nominative singular,
such as honde hand (Old English hond, dative honda), sunne sin
(Old English synn, dative synne). We observe here the same
instinctive struggle against the ambiguities induced by the pro-
gress of phonetic change that we have seen in the noun-declension
of the northern and midland dialects, although the remedial


## p. 387 (#407) ############################################

Changes in Declension 387
devices adopted were different. In the period with which we are
here concerned, southern English did not greatly extend the es
genitives beyond their original range, while -es, as a plural ending,
was nearly confined to those nouns that had -as in Old English,
and to neuters (like word) in which the singular and plural
nominatives had had the same form. The Old English termination
-um, which marked the dative plural in all declensions, survived
as -en. The genitive plural had two forms, e and -ene (Old
English -a, -ena); the latter, as the more distinct, encroached on
the domain of the former, so that "king of kings" was kingene
king instead of kinge king (Old English cyninga cyning).
The history of pronominal forms, like that of the declension
of nouns, exhibits certain changes serving to relieve the want of
distinctness in the traditional system. These changes began in the
Anglian districts, and did not, for the most part, reach the Saxon
region till after Chaucer's time. The forms of the Old English
pronouns of the third person, in all dialects, were, in several
instances, curiously near to being alike in pronunciation. The
masculine nominative hê was not very different from the feminine
nominative and accusative hēo (also hie, hi), and this closely
resembled the plural nominative and accusative hie or hi. The
dative singular masculine and neuter was him, and the dative
plural was heom. The genitive and dative singular of the feminine
pronoun was hire, and the genitive plural was heora. The one
form his served for the genitive both of the masculine hē and of
the neuter hit. (The forms here cited are West Saxon, the diver-
gences of the other dialects being unimportant. ) As the pronouns
were most commonly unemphatic, such differences as those between
him and heom, hire and heora, would, usually, be slighter in speech
than they appear in writing, and with the general weakening of
unstressed vowels that took place in Middle English they were
simply obliterated. In southern Middle English the resulting
ambiguities remained unremedied; but, in the north and a great
part of the midlands, they were got rid of by the process (very rare
in the history of languages) of adopting pronouns from a foreign
tongue. In many parts of these regions the Danes and Northmen
formed the majority, or a powerful minority, of the population, and
it is from their language that we obtain the words now written
they, their, them and, perhaps, also she, though its precise origin is
not clear. She (written scw) occurs in the Peterborough Chronide
about 1154. It does not appear in Ormulum (about 1200), which
retains the native pronoun in the form zho; the somewhat
25—2


## p. 388 (#408) ############################################

388
Changes in the Language
later east midland Genesis and Exodus has both words, ghe or ge
and sge or sche. After 1300, scho is universal in the northern
dialect and sche in east midland; but ho was common in west
midland down to the end of the century, and still remains in
the local speech of many districts. Ormulum has always they
(written þe33), but retains heore, hemm beside the newer their,
them (written þezzre, þezzm); in the fourteenth century they,
their, them are found fully established in all northern and east
midland writings, while, in the west, hy for “they" continued
in use. Early in the twelfth century, the accusative form of all
pronouns, except the neuter hit, had been replaced by the dative.
Chaucer uses she and they; but his her serves both for “her”
(accusative, genitive and dative) and for "their,” and he has
always hem for "them. ” In the south, the curious form hise or
is was used for “them. ” With regard to the other pronouns it will
suffice to mention that the form ich (with ch pronounced as in
“rich”) was general in the south, while, elsewhere, the Old English
ic became I early in the thirteenth century.
The Old English inflections of adjectives and article, and, with
them, the grammatical genders of nouns, disappeared almost entirely
early in Middle English. The Kentish dialect of the fourteenth
century, indeed, was exceptionally archaic in these points; in the
Ayenbite (written 1340) we find, for instance, the accusative
masculine form of the adjective and article in “ane gratne dyeuel"
(a great devil) and "thane dyath,” for which Chaucer would have
written "a gret deuel” and “the deeth. " In other districts of
the south, also, considerable traces of grammatical gender and
adjective inflection are found quite late. But the north midland
English of Ormulum is, in these respects, nearly identical with
that of Chaucer. The article is regularly the undeclined; gender
is determined purely by sex; and the adjective (with rare ex-
ceptions) has no other inflectional endings than the final -e used
when the adjective precedes a definite or a plural noun. In the
north, where final unstressed vowels had been silent, the adjec-
tive and article were uninflected, and grammatical gender had
ceased to exist, before the fourteenth century.
Among the most easily recognisable characteristics of Middle
English dialects are certain differences in the conjugation of
the verb. In Old English, the third person singular, and all the
persons of the plural, of the present indicative, ended in -th, with a
difference in the preceding vowel: thus, lufian to love, læran to
teach, give (in West Saxon) he lufath, he læreth, and we lupiath,


## p. 389 (#409) ############################################

Conjugation in Middle English 389
wa lærath. In the northern dialect, this -th had, in the tenth
century, already begun to give way to -8; and northern writings
of about 1300 show -es both in the third singular and in the plural
as the universal ending. The midland dialect, from 1200 onwards,
had in the plural -en, perhaps taken over from the present sub-
junctive or the past indicative; this ending, often reduced to e,
remains in the language of Chaucer. The third singular ended in
-eth in midland English (so also in Chaucer); but the northern -8,
which has now been adopted almost everywhere, even in rustic
speech, is found in many midland writings of the fourteenth
century, especially in those of the west. The southern dialect
preserved the West Saxon forms with little change: we find he
luveth, we luvieth in the fourteenth century. The plural indicative
present of the verb to be had several quite unconnected forms in
Old English: sindon and bēoth in all dialects, earon, aron in North-
umbrian and Mercian. In the thirteenth century, sinden occurs
in the north midland Ormulum and some southern writings. In
the fourteenth century, northern writings have are (monosyllabic),
midland varies between aren or are and been, ben, while the
southern form is beoth or buth.
The Northumbrian dialect had, in the tenth century, already
reduced the -an of the infinitive to -A, and, in the northern
English of the fourteenth century, the infinitive and the first
person singular present were destitute of endings (the final -e,
though often written, being shown by the metre to be silent). In
other dialects, the infinitive ended in -en, for which -e occurs
with increasing frequency from the thirteenth century onwards.
Chaucer and Gower have both forms; their metre requires the
final -e to be sounded in this as in most of the other instances, but
it is probable that, in ordinary speech, it was generally silent before
A. D. 1400.
The forms of the present participle, which, in Old English, ended
in -ende, afford a well-marked criterion of dialect in Middle English.
The northern dialect had falland, the southern fallinde; in the
midland dialect, fallande or fallende gradually gave place to
fallinge, which is the form used by Chaucer.
It is impossible in this chapter to pursue the history of
early English inflections in all its details, but, before leaving the
subject of the development of the grammar, we must say a few
words on the question how far the rapid simplification of the
declension and conjugation in the twelfth and succeeding centuries
was an effect of the Norman conqueste The view, once universally


## p. 390 (#410) ############################################

390
Changes in the Language
held, and still entertained by many persons, that the establishment
of Norman rule was the main cause by which this change was
brought about, is now abandoned by all scholars. We have seen
that, in the north of England, the movement towards a simpler
grammatical system had made no small progress a hundred years
before duke William landed; and the causes to which this move-
ment was due were such as could not fail to be increasingly
effective. The intimate mixture of Danish and native popula-
tions in the north and over a great part of the midlands must, no
doubt, have had a powerful influence in reinforcing the tendencies
to change that already existed. So far as these districts are
concerned, it is not too much to say that the history of English
grammar would have been very nearly what it actually was if the
Conquest had never taken place. It is peculiarly worthy of note
that the southern dialect, which we should expect to be most
affected by the French influence, and which, with regard to
vocabulary, certainly was so, was, of all dialects of Middle English,
the most conservative in its grammar. And there is good reason
to believe that, even in the south, the spoken language had
travelled a considerable distance towards the Middle English
stage before the fateful date A. D. 1066. Only twenty years after
the Conquest, the Norman scribes of Domesday Book, writing
phonetically and without influence from English tradition, spell local
and personal names in a way which shows that the oral language
bad undergone certain changes that do not regularly manifest
themselves in native writings until much later. And some of the
charters of the time of Edward the Confessor, which exhibit
modernisms that are commonly attributed to the scribes of the
late MSS in which they are preserved, are, probably, less altered
from their original form than is generally imagined. This remark
applies especially to informal documents not proceeding from
professional scriveners, such, for instance, as the interesting letter
of the monk Edwin about 1057, printed in Kemble's Codex
Diplomaticus, No. 922.
What the Norman conquest really did was to tear away the
veil that literary conservatism had thrown over the changes of the
spoken tongue. The ambition of Englishmen to acquire the
language of the ruling class, and the influx of foreign monks into
the religious houses that were the sources of literary instruction,
soon brought about the cessation of all systematic training in the
use of English. The upper and middle classes became bilingual;
and, though English might still be the language which they


## p. 391 (#411) ############################################

Influence of the Norman Conquest 391
preferred to speak, they learned at school to read and write
nothing but French, or French and Latin. When those who had
been educated under the new conditions tried to write English,
the literary conventions of the past generation had no hold upon
them; they could write no otherwise than as they spoke. This is
the true explanation of the apparently rapid change in the
grammar of English about the middle of the twelfth century.
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.