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CHAPTER IV.

THE INROAD OF FRENCH WORDS INTO ENGLAND.

THE nearer we approach 1303, the more numerous become the French words, upon which the right of English citizenship was being bestowed. In the Thirteenth Century the greatest change that ever revolutionised our tongue was made. A baleful Century it was, when we look to English philology; though a right noble Century, in its bearing on English politics and English architecture. The last word suggests a comparison: if we may liken our language to a fine stone building, we shall find that in that wondrous age a seventh part of the good old masonry was thrown down, as if by an earthquake, and was withdrawn from mortal ken. The breach was by slow degrees made good with bricks, meaner ware borrowed from France; and since those times, the work of destruction and reparation has gone on, though to a lesser extent than before. We may put up with the building as it now stands, but we cannot help sighing when we think of what we have lost.

Of old, no country was more thoroughly national than England: of all Teutonic lands she alone set down her annals, year after year, in her own tongue; and this went on for three Centuries after Alfred began to reign. But

the grim year 1066, the weightiest year that England has seen for the last twelve centuries, has left its mark deeply graven both on our history and on our speech. Every time almost that we open our lips or write a sentence, we bear witness to the mighty change wrought in England by the Norman Conqueror. Celt, Saxon, Angle, and Dane alike had to bow their heads beneath a grinding foreign yoke. It is in English poetry that we can trace the earliest change. Poetry always clings fast to old words, long after they have been dropped by prose; and this was the case in England before the Conquest. If we take a piece of Old English prose, say the tales translated by Alfred, or Ælfric's Homilies, or a chapter of the Bible, we shall find that we keep to this day three out of four of all the nouns, adverbs, and verbs employed by the old writer; but of the nouns, adverbs, and verbs used in any English poem, from the Beowulf to the song on Edward the Confessor's death, about half have dropped for ever. From Harold's death to John's grant of the Charter, English prose did not let many old words slip. But it was far otherwise with England's old poetic diction, which must have been artificially kept up. Of all the weighty words used in the Song on the Confessor's death, as nearly as possible half have dropped out of our speech. In the poems written a hundred years after the Conquest, say the rimes on

1 Substantives, adjectives, adverbs, and verbs, I call weighty words;' they may alter, while the other parts of speech hardly change at all. I cannot see the use of counting, as Marsh does, every of and the and him, in order to find out the proportion of home-born English in different authors.

the Lord's Prayer published by Dr. Morris, the proportion of words of weight, now obsolete, is one-fifth of the whole, much as it is in English prose of that same date.1 In the poem of 1066, nearly fifty out of a hundred of these words are clean gone; in the poem of 1170, only twenty out of a hundred of these words cannot now be understood. I think it may be laid down, that of all the poetic words employed by English Makers, nearly one-third passed away within a hundred years of the Battle of Hastings. Henry of Huntingdon makes laughable mistakes, when he tries to turn into Latin the old English låy on Brunanburgh fight, though its words must have been in the mouths of poets only fourscore years before his time. English poetry could not thrive without patrons; and these, the Abbots and Aldermen who thronged the Winchester Court of old, had been swept away to make room for men who cared only for the speech of Rouen and Paris. The old Standard of English died out if chronicles were written at Peterborough, or homilies still further to the South, they were compiled in corrupt English, at which Bede or Alfred would have stared. As to English poetry, its history for one hundred years is all but a blank. Old legends of England's history, it is true, such as those that bear on Arthur or Havelok, were dressed up in verse; but the verse was French, for thus alone could the minstrel hope that his toil would be rewarded. In 1066, England's King was praised in good ringing English lines, that may have been shouted

1 Morris, Early English Homilies, First Series, I. 55 (Early English Text Society). I gave a specimen at page 77.

1

by boisterous wassailers around the camp fires on the eve of Hastings; sixty years later, England's Queen was taught natural history in French verse, and was complimented therein as being 'mult bele femme, Aliz numée.' About a hundred years after the battle of Hastings, an English writer gave the names of the wise English teachers of old, Bede, Cuthbert, Aidan, Dunstan, and others; he then complained how woefully times were changed-new lords, new lore:

[Nu is] peo leore forleten.

and pet folc is forloren.
nu beop opre leoden.

peo læ[re}] ure folc.

and feole of pen lorpenes losiæp.
and pat folc forp mid.2

The speech of the upper and lower classes in England, for two hundred years after 1066, was almost as distinct as the Arve and the Rhone are when they first meet. We see, however, that a few French words very early found their way into English. A shrewd observer long ago told us how ox, sheep, and swine came to be called beef, mutton, and pork, when smoking on the board. Treading in his steps, I venture to guess how our bluff forefathers began their studies in the French tongue. We may imagine a cavalcade of the new aristocracy of England, ladies and knights, men who perhaps fought at Hastings in their youth; these alight from their steeds at the door of one of the churches,

1 Wright, Popular Treatises on Science, p. 74.

2 Page 5 of the Worcester manuscript, referred to at page 84 of this work.

that have lately arisen throughout the land in a style unknown to Earl Godwine. The riders are accosted by a crowd of beggars and bedesmen, who put forth all their little stock of French: Lady Countess, clad in ermine and sabeline, look from your palfrey. Be large of your treasure to the poor and feeble; of your charity bestow your riches on us rather than on jogelours. We will put up our orisons for you, after the manere and custom of our religion. For Christ's passion, case our poverty in some measure; that is the best penance, as your chaplain in his sermon says. By all the Confessors, Patriarchs, and Virgins, show us mercy.' Another speech would run thus: Worthy Baron, you have honour at Court; speak for my son in prison. Let him have justice; he is no robber or lecher. The sergeants took him in the market; these catchpoles have wrought him sore miseise. So may Christ accord you peace at the day of livreison!' Not one of these forty French words were in English use before the battle of Hastings; but we find every one of them set down in writing within a century after that date, so common had they then become in English mouths. Those of the needy, who knew but little French, must have learnt at least how to bawl for justice, charity, mercy, on seeing their betters. The first letter of the word justice shows that a new French sound was taking root in England. The words Emperice and mercy, used in these times, brought in new hissing sounds; the s in English came already quite often enough.

They may be found in the Saxon Chronicle and in the First Series of Homilies (Early English Text Society).