HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION.

THE language of a nation, like the prevailing features, stature, and other traits of the people, is a part of its history, and its elements are derived from the speech of older races which have combined to form the new type. Most of the existing languages of Europe are composite, and each one corresponds in close analogy to the union of the races or tribes whose blended traits have become the characteristics of the modern nation.

Our inquiries will not go back farther than the Christian era; to trace the origin of words back to the Sanskrit through Asiatic colonization is a matter of great difficulty and uncertainty, and does not belong to a treatise so elementary as this. That the Latin and Greek languages appear to us as mainly original and uncompounded is due to the fact that the migrations that took place while these tongues were forming were prior to any authentic history. After the fall of the Roman empire, when each European tribe was left to establish its own government, their several original languages, more or less impregnated by the Latin of their former masters, began to receive their natural and diverse development. The laws and customs of each people, their cultivation of the arts of war or peace, their agricultural or maritime pursuits, their fertile plains or mountain fastnesses, their easy obedience to rulers or their fierce contests for independence, their local attachments or their roving, marauding disposition, — all these native tendencies and social and political influences were soon evident as well in their speech as in their character. And, if we did not know the speech of a single

modern European nation, we could, upon the basis of its original stock of words, with a knowledge of its wars offensive and defensive, its migrations and governmental changes, its wealth, customs, and general cultivation, predict with a good degree of certainty the prevailing character of its language and literature.

French, Spanish, and Italian are but three slightly-varying corruptions of Latin. The last is nearest to its original, with only slight additions by the barbarian conquerors of Italy. French, which is in one sense only a lingo, is for the most part only Latin debased by old Gallic and later Norman pronunciation. Spanish is the same noble tongue corrupted by an admixture of Arabic and by the indistinct articulation that prevails among the indolent dwellers in hot climates. People using northern languages, that bristle with sharp consonants and are choked with guttural sounds, would never have rolled "Cæsar Augustus" under lazy tongues until it came out limp and helpless as "Saragossa."

For our present purpose we need not go back farther than the invasion of Britain by the Romans; for subsequent political events neutralized and finally destroyed the influence of the Picts and Celts, and penned up in Wales or drove to the coast of Cornwall nearly all that remains of the original British tongue. The Roman occupation, though it covered a long period, does not appear to have made a very deep or lasting impression upon the customs or the language of the aborigines. The remains of their roads, their camps (castra), and vestiges of their law can still be seen; but in our language the only trace of the first is in the name for distance, mile, and in compounds of stratum, as in Stratford; the second lives in the terminations cester and caster, and in the abridged form of colonia, as in Lincoln; and the last is represented by debt a word that many a poor Briton probably learned to his cost in the courts. This, of course, is not intended as an exact statement; very many Latin words were probably used before the Romans abandoned the island which were afterwards forgotten during the long domination of other races. It is accurate enough to say that the Latin elements of our language did not come in through the

conquest, but have been introduced through the French, or have been transferred by scholars and naturalized by use.

A history of the invasions of the next following centuries is a history of the foundation of the language. It will not be necessary, even if it were possible, to give more than the most general account of these movements; for piratical excursions were as frequent then as rural picnics are now, and every sailor considered getting booty to be the original purpose and chief end of navigation. As has been already stated, the primitive British or Celtic element was driven out, and it cannot be proved that any part of its vocabulary remains, except in the Erse or Irish, Gaelic or Highland Scotch, and Cymric or Welsh, branches (if they are branches) of the old Celtic speech. A large proportion of the invasions came from the islands and coasts of, the North Sea and the Baltic. In Friesland, where the ancient language has not been wholly supplanted by the modern Dutch, the English-speaking traveller understands many simple phrases, and has but little difficulty in making his wants known. But whatever were the relative proportions of the Danes, Jutes, Angles, Frisians, and Saxons that occupied the British Islands, the warring elements were after a time composed under the rule of Saxon kings, the whole population was converted to Christianity, and their different dialects blended into Anglo-Saxon. The Danish invasions for the next century (787-878) were carried on by veritable heathens, worshippers of Woden and Thor, who butchered women and children as well as men, and who endeavored to destroy every church and every vestige of religion. It was one of the turning-points in England's history, therefore, when Saxon Alfred defeated these barbarians, and became, as it were, the schoolmaster as well as protector of his ignorant and long-suffering people. But many Danes had become permanent settlers, and a large portion of the eastern shore was set off for their occupancy and exempted from the jurisdiction of the Saxons. In time there were fresh arrivals of Scandinavians, ever increasing in numbers and in ferocity, until at last the land was overwhelmed, and a Danish king ruled over England.

Before this period swarms from the same "northern hive" had crossed the Straits of Dover, and descended upon the shores of France; and, although they had given up their own rude speech and adopted that of their vassals, they retained their connections with their kindred in the north and in England, and gave a new power and significance to the name of Norman. Intermarriages took place between the ruling families, and some of the refining influences of the more cultured South began to be felt among the sons of the Vikings. The natural effect of Norman rule upon language was in a measure anticipated. Before Duke Robert's son had thought of invading England, Norman-French was regarded as a polite and desirable language at the court of the Danish king. It is also proper to add that, as the whole island had been for a long period under Christian influences, the Latin liturgy of the church and the influence of the priests had made many Latin words and phrases familiar to those whose only speech was Anglo-Saxon. period are to be referred the corruption of monachus into "monk," claustra into "cloister," presbyter into "priest," kuriakon (belonging to the Lord, ó Kúquos,) into “church,” episcopus into "bishop," and also the profane rendering of the phrase used in the consecration of the wafer, Hoc est corpus, into the popular mummery over a sleight-of-hand performance, "hocus-pocus."

To this

The Norman conquest produced a mighty effect. The whole island, except in a few remote districts, had a common language, and similar laws and customs. These were at once rudely overthrown. The language of court and camp was ordained to be Norman-French. The dignities and great estates of the realm were allotted on feudal principles by the conqueror among his military chiefs. All that a powerful government could do for three hundred years was done to extirpate the Anglo-Saxon, the language of the common people; but it was as firmly based as the island itself, and the Normans at the most could only complement its homely vocabulary with the emblems of their higher culture and more stately manners. The memory of Norman rule is still preserved in the terms of the royal assent to acts of Parliament, and in many phrases

and usages in the law courts. An enduring record of the conquest is seen in the language, in which the harmonized Norman and Anglo-Saxon elements exhibit the results of the long conflict of opinions, customs, letters, and laws.

The fusion of Norman and Anglo-Saxon was very slowly accomplished. For four centuries at least there was one language for the nobleman and gentleman, and another for the common people. The currents of thought and expression had come together, forced into the same channel, but, like the waters of the Mississippi and the Missouri, they refused to mingle, and showed their diverse sources far below the point of union. In the end there was a tacit compromise. The facts of every-day life, the names of the heavenly bodies, the elements, the family relations, the house and home, domestic animals, crops, and tools of husbandry, the various modes of motion, simple articles of food and raiment, were all known by Anglo-Saxon names. But terms that belong to government, to the privileges of high birth, to the usages of courts, to the dress and equipment of knights and dames, to tournaments, crusades, and pilgrimages, to letters and art, were all of Norman origin.

Two paragraphs, the first wholly composed of Anglo-Saxon words, and the second of mostly Norman-French origin, will serve to illustrate the statement.

So the man (boor, or churl, as he was called by those above him) wedded a maid, and she became his wife (weaver), and bore him sons and daughters (milkers). They ate bread from corn grown in their lord's field; they cared for his swine, sheep, horses, hens, deer, and oxen, and were used to the axe, plough, flail, and sickle, as well as to rain, wind, hail, and snow. Their clothes, shoes, and hats were coarse, and their looks downcast. The moon and stars often found them at work. Their beds were of straw, and they rose from sleep before the sun to begin toil anew. When the goodman was near his end, and the skill of the leech was worthless, neighbors with friendly hands softly shut his dying eyes, then wrapped the dead body in a shroud, put him upon a bier, and buried him in a nameless grave in God's acre.