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until very late times that perspiration replaced in polite speech the English word akin to the Sanscrit swéda, or that belly was thought to be coarser than stomach.

Architecture was another craft in which the clergy took the lead; Alan de Walsingham by no means stood alone. English words were well enough, when a cot or a farm-house was in hand; but for the building of a Castle or a Cathedral, scores of French technical words had to be called in: at Canterbury, William the Englishman doubtless employed much the same diction as his predecessor, William of Sens. Indeed, the new style of building, brought from France more than a hundred years before the time of these worthies, must have unfolded many a new term of art to King Edward's masons at Westminster. In our own day, the great revival of Architecture has led to a wonderful enlargement of diction among the common folk; every working mason now has in his mouth scores of words for the meaning of which learned men forty years ago would have searched in dictionaries.

The Preacher in his religious or secular character was not the only importer of French words. We must now consider three other agents who helped forward the great change—the Lady, the Knight, and the Lawyer.

Paris and Rouen were the oracles of the fair sex. These cities supplied articles of dress, wherewith the ladies decked themselves so gaily as to draw down the

The clergy were also great engineers in war, as we read in the accounts of the Crusades against the Albigenses and Eccelin da Romano. The renowned Chillingworth wanted to play the same part at the siege of Gloucester in 1643.

wrath of the pulpit. One preacher of 1160 goes so far as to call smart clothing 'the Devil's mousetrap ;? yellow raiment and blanchet (a way of whitening the skin) seem to have been reckoned the most dangerous of snares to womankind, and therefore also to mankind.1 In the Essex Homilies an onslaught is made upon the Priest's wife and her dress; we hear of 'hire chemise smal and hwit, hire mentel grene, hire nap of mazere.' 2 The Ancren Riwle does not dwell on this topic of dress so much as might have been expected; only a few French articles are there mentioned. A little later, the high-bred dames are thus assailed:

Peos prude levedies
Pat luvyep drywories
And brekep spusynge,
For heore lecherye,
Nullep here sermonye

Of none gode pinge.3

In the days of Edward I., we find scores of French words, bearing on ladies' way of life, employed by our writers. Many were the articles of luxury that came from abroad; commerce was binding the nations of Christendom together. The English chapman and monger now withdrew into low life, making way for the more gentlemanly foreigner, the marchand. Half of our trades bear French names; simple hues like red and blue do well enough for the common folk, but our higher classes must have a greater range of choice; hence come the foreign scarlet, vermilion, orange, and others.

Homilies, First Series, p. 53. Homilies, Second Series, p. 163.
Old English Miscellany, p. 77.

The Knight had three great pleasures-war, hunting, and cookery. He at first lived much apart from the mass of Englishmen ; but the mighty struggle of the Thirteenth Century knit fast together the speakers of French and of English, the high and the low. One of the first tokens of this union is the Ballad on Lewes fight; it may have been written by some Londoner, who uses a few French words, such as might have been picked up in the great Earl Simon's tent. Six years earlier, the Reformed Government had thought it worth while to publish King Henry's adhesion to the new system, in English, as well as in French and Latin. In the reign of Henry's son, the work of amalgamation went on at full speed. From this time dates the revival of the glories of England's host, which has seldom since allowed thirty years to pass without some doughty deed of arms, achieved beyond our borders; for there were but few quarrels at home henceforward. Now it was that a number of warlike French romances were Englished, such as the Tristrem, the Havelok, the Horn, and, above all, the renowned Alexander.1 Legends about King Arthur were most popular; the Round Table became a household word; and the adjective round grew to be so common, that it was in the end turned into a preposition, as we find in the Alexander. The word adventure, brought from

1 Many French words must have been brought in, simply for the sake of the rimes, literally translated; thus in the Floriz and Blauncheflur of about 1290:

'banne sede be burgeis

bat was wel hende and curtais.'

France, was as well known in England as in Germany.1 Our per aventure, having been built into the English Bible centuries later, is likely to last. Old Teutonic words made way for the outlandish terms glory, renown, army, host, champion. England was becoming, under her great Edward, the most united of all Christian kingdoms; the yeomen who tamed Wales and strove hard to conquer Scotland looked with respect upon the high-born circle standing next to the King. What was more, the respect was returned by the nobles: we have seen the tale of the Norfolk farmer at page 200; and this, I suspect, could hardly have happened out of England. France has always been the country that has given us our words for soldiering from the word castel, brought over in 1048, to the word mitrailleuse, brought over in 1870. Englishmen of old could do little in war but sway the weighty axe or form the shield-wall under the eye of such Kings as Ironside or Godwine's son; it was France that taught us how to ply the mangonel and trebuchet.2 Many hunting terms, borrowed from the same land, may

1 Our word adventurer seems to be sinking in the mire. A lady told me the other day that she thought it unkind in Sir Walter Scott to call Prince Charles Edward 'the young Adventurer.' Thus, what but sixty years ago described a daring knight, now conveys to some minds the idea of a scheming knave. It is a bad sign for a nation, when words that were once noble are saddled with a base meaning. Further on, I shall call attention to the Italian pœnitentia and virtus.

2 The Editor of Sir John Burgoyne's Life, in 1873, complains of the poverty of the English military vocabulary, when he talks of a coup de main and an attaque brusquée, Vol. II. 346. Even so late as 1642, we were forced to call in French and German engineers, at the outbreak of the Civil Wars.

be found in the Sir Tristrem. Several of the French words used in cookery may be read in the Lay of Havelok, who himself served for some time as a swiller of dishes we here find pastees, wastels, veneysun, and many other terms of the craft; our common roast, boil, fry, broil, toast, grease, brawn, larder bear witness as to which race it was that had the control of the kitchen.

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We have spoken of the Lady and the Knight; we now come to the Lawyer. The whole of the Government was long in the hands of the French-speaking class. Henry II., the great organiser of English law, was a thorough Frenchman, who lived in our island as little as he could; the tribunals were in his time reformed; and the law-terms, with which Blackstone abounds (peine forte et dure, for instance), are the bequest of this age. The Roman law had been studied at Oxford even before Henry began to reign. The Legend of St. Thomas, drawn up about 1300, swarms with French words when the Constitutions of Clarendon are described; and a charter of King Athelstane's, turned into the English spoken about 1250, shows how many of our own old law terms had by that time been supplanted by foreign ware.2 Our barristers still keep the old French pronunciation of their technical word recórd; the oyez of our courts is well known.

Those who administered the law were either churchmen or knights.

2 Kemble, Cod. Dip., v. 235. We here find grantye, confirmye, and custumes. We are therefore not surprised to learn, that few or none in 1745 could explain the old English law terms in the Baron of Bradwardine's charter of 1140, 'saca et soca, et thol et theam, et infangthief et outfangthief, sive hand-habend, sive bak-barand.'

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