in súnu-bhjas (compare the Latin ped-ibus),' our English word by entering into the third syllable. Sunubhjas was in time pared down in Teutonic mouths to sunub, and this again to sunum. This last corruption of the dative kept its ground in our island until Becket's time. The tendency of old, when we dwelt on the Oxus, and long afterwards, was to pack different words into one; our custom, ever since the days of Henry I., has been to untie the words so packed together; thus sunubhjas has been turned into by sons. We have two

of these old Datives still left, hwil-um, whilom, and seld

We keep to this day many prefixes to verbs (a, be, for, fore, gain, mis, un, with), and many endings of substantives and adjectives, common to us and to our brethren on the mainland; seen in such English words as leechcraft, man-kind, king-dom, maiden-head, wed-lock, gleeman, piece-meal, ridd-ell, kind-red, bishop-rick, friend-ship, dar-ling, sing-er, spin-ster, warn-ing, good-ness, stead-fast, mani-fold, East-ern, stân-ig (stony), aw-ful, god-less, winsome, gold-en, right-wis (righteous). Others, older still, I have given before. Many old Teutonic endings have unhappily dropped out of our speech, and have been replaced by meaner ware.

The Teutons, after turning their backs on the rest of

1 Pedibus is but the Latin form of the Sanscrit padbhyas.

2 I hope I have been plainer than Miss Cornelia Blimber, who told her small pupil that Analysis is the resolution of an object, whether of the senses or of the intellect, into its first elements-as opposed to Synthesis, you observe. Now you know what Analysis is, Dombey.' It is remarked that Dombey didn't seem to be absolutely blinded by the light thus let in upon his intellect.

their Aryan kin, compounded for themselves a new Perfect of the verb, known as the Weak form. The older Strong Perfect is formed by changing the vowel of the Present, as I sit, I sat, common to English and Sanscrit. But the new Perfect of the Teutons is formed by adding di-de (in Sanscrit, da-dhâu) to the stem. Thus, sealf-ie, I salve, becomes in the Perfect, sealfo-de, the de being contracted from dide. When we say, I loved, it is like saying, I love did. This comes out much plainer in our Gothic sister.1

Another peculiarity of the Teutons was the use of the dark Runes, still found engraven on stone, both in our island and on the mainland: these were in later times proscribed by Christianity as the handmaids of witchcraft.

The Celts were roughly driven out of their old abodes, on the banks of the Upper Danube and elsewhere, by the intruding Teutons. The former were far the more civilised of the two races: they have left in their word hall an abiding trace of their settlement in Bavaria, and of their management of salt works. The simple word leather is thought by good judges to have been borrowed from the Celts by their Eastern neighbours.2

Others suffered besides the Celts. A hundred years before Christ's birth, the Teutons forced their way into Italy, but were overthrown by her rugged champion Marius. Rather later, they matched themselves against

The Latins set Prepositions before dhâ and dadhâu, and thus formed abdo, abdidi; condo, condidi; perdo, perdidi. This last is nothing but the English I for-do (ruin), I for-did.

2 Garnett's Essays, pp. 150, 167.

Cæsar in Gaul, and felt the heavy hand of Drusus. The two races, the Latin and the Teutonic (neither of them dreamed that they were both sprung from a common Mother), were now brought fairly face to face. Our forefathers, let us hope, bore their share in the great fight, when the German hero smote Varus and his legions; we English should think less of Caractacus and Boadicea, more of Arminius and Velleda. Hitherto we have puzzled out our history from the words used by ourselves and our kin, without help from annalists; now at length the clouds roll away, and Tacitus shows us the Angli, sheltered by their forests and rivers, the men who worshipped Mother Earth, in her own sea-girt island, not far from the Elbe. Little did the great historian guess of the future that lay before the barbarians, whom he held up to his worthless countrymen with so skilful a pen. Some of these Teutonic tribes were to take the place of Rome and become the lords of her Empire, to bear her Eagle and boast her titles ; others of them, later in the world's history, were to rule more millions of subjects than Rome could ever claim, and were to found new empires on shores to her unknown. She had indeed done great things in law and literature; but her Senate might well have learned a lesson of public spirit from the assemblies held by these barbarians, assemblies to which we can trace a likeness in the later councils held in Wessex, Friesland, Uri, Norway. Rome's most renowned poets were to be outdone by Teuton Makers, men who would soar aloft upon bolder wing into the Unseen and the Unknown, and who would

paint the passions of mankind in more lifelike hues than any Latin writer ever essayed.1

But among the many good qualities of ourselves and our kinsmen, tender care for conquered foes has seldom been reckoned; Western Celt and Eastern Slavonian know this full well. Hard times were at hand; the old worn-out Empire of Rome was to receive fresh life-blood from the healthy Teutons. In the Fifth Century, our brethren overran Spain, Gaul, and Italy; becoming lords of the soil, and overlaying with their own words the old Latin dialects spoken in those provinces. To this time belongs the Beowulf, which is to us English (may I not say, to all Teutons ?) what the Iliad was to the Greeks. The old Epic, written on the mainland, sets before us the doughty deeds of an Englishman, before his tribe had come to Britain. There is an unmistakable Pagan ring about the poem; and a Christian transcriber, hundreds of years afterwards, has sought to soften down this spirit, which runs through the recital of the feats of Ecgtheow's bairn.

In the same age as the Beowulf were written the Battle of Finsborough and the Traveller's Song.

and the wealthy

In the latter, Attila, Hermanric, Cæsar are all mentioned. Pity it is that we have not these lays in their oldest form, in the English spoken not long after the first great Teutonic writer had

Most Englishmen will agree with Garnett, who writes, "We have a great regard for the Dutch, a still greater for the Germans, and an absolute enthusiasm for all the sons of Odin, whether Danes, Swedes, Norwegians, or Icelanders.'

given the Scriptures to his Gothic countrymen in their own tongue.1

The island of Britain was now no longer to be left in the hands of degenerate Celts; happier than Crete or Sicily, it was to become the cradle where a great people might be compounded of more than one blood. Bede, writing many years later, tells us how the Jutes settled themselves in Kent and Wight; how the Saxons fastened upon Essex, Sussex, and Wessex; how the Angles, coming from Anglen (the true Old England), founded the three mighty kingdoms of East Anglia, Mercia, and Northumbria, holding the whole of the coast between Stirling and Ipswich. It is with this last tribe that I am mainly concerned in this work. Fearful must have been the woes undergone by the Celts at the hands of the ruthless English heathen, men of blood and iron with a vengeance. So thoroughly was the work of extermination done, that but few Celtic words have been admitted to the right of English citizenship. The few that we have seem to show that the Celtic women were kept as slaves, while their husbands, the old owners of the land, were slaughtered in heaps.

Garnett gives a list of nearly two hundred of these words, many of which belong to household management; and others, such as spree, bam, whop, balderdash, &c., can scarcely be reckoned classical English.2

I do not quote in my Appendix any specimen of English before 680, as we cannot be sure that we have any such English exactly as it was written.

2

Philological Essays, p. 161. Some Celtic words, like gallop