In page 323, we see the beginning of what was to become a well-known English oath : "Ye,' he seyde, 'graunte mercy.' In page 95, we see a sense that has been long given in England to the French word touch, 'to speak of: ' In Y touchede of pys yche lake. page 109, we see how liquid consonants run into each other: What sey ge, men, of ladyys pryde, This in the French is trainant. Thus Bononia became Bologna, and Lucera was sometimes written Nucera. In page 229, single is opposed to unmarried; simples hom is translated by sengle knave. In page 4, we see how in the Danelagh French words as well as English underwent clipping. The French enticer loses its first syllable; and our lower orders still use this maimed verb: Pe fende and oure fleshe tysyn us perto. We saw how seventy years earlier espier became spy in Suffolk. In page 9, a French impersonal Verb appears, to repent him.' In page 72, we see the unhappy French word, which has driven out the true English afeard, at least from polite speech. Fu tant affraie is there turned into he was a frayde. In this poem we also see the French peyne driving out the English pine. At page 325, we light on the old coverde (convaluit); and at page 222, we see the new French form, recovere. But Robert writes to new,' not 'to renew.' In page 30, les tempestes cesserent is translated by tempest secede; we have long confounded the sound of c with that of s. In page 358, we see that our g had been softened in sound, for Robert writes the word mageste (majestas). In this way brig got the sound of bridge. In page 7, Robert translates the deable, the supposed idol of the Saracens, by maumette and termagaunt: both of these are as yet masculine in gender; Layamon had used them earlier. In page 77, we see terme eslu, certein, nome, turned into a certeyn day of terme. But this certain was not used as an equivalent for quidam until Chaucer's time. Our bard finds it needful to give long explanations in English rime of the strange words mattok, sacrilege, and miner (pages 31, 266, 331). I have kept the greatest changes of all to the last; in page 321 we find a French Participle doing duty for a Preposition, Passyng alle pyng hyt hap powere. And in page 180, My body y take pe here to selle To sum man as yn bondage. This bondage is the first of many words in which a French ending was tacked on to an English root. So barren had our tongue become by the end of this un lucky Thirteenth Century, that we had to import from abroad even our terminations, if we wanted to frame new English nouns and adjectives. We were in process of time to make strange compounds like godd-ess, forbear-ance, odd-ity, nigg-ard, upheav-al, starv-ation, trust-ee, fulfil-ment, latch-et, wharf-inger, king-let, fish-ery, tru-ism, love-able, whims-ical, talk-ative, slumbr-ous.1 What a falling off is here! what a lame ending for a Teutonic root! Desinit in piscem mulier formosa superne. We were also to forget the good Old English adjectival isc or ish, and to use foreign endings for proper names like Alger-ine, Gael-ic, Syri-ac, Chin-ese, Wykehamist, Wesley-an, Irving-ite, Dant-esque.2 Cromwell in his despatches talks of the Lincoln-eers. By-and-by French prefixes drove out their English brethren, even when the root of the word was English; we are now doomed to write embolden and enlighten, and to replace the old edniwian by renew. Mistrust has been almost wholly driven out by distrust. We have happily two or three Teutonic endings still in use, when we coin new adjectives and nouns; one of these is ness. It had English rivals in full vigour at the end of the Fourteenth 1 Bowyer, in Robert of Gloucester, may descend from some overlooked English bog-er, though ier is a French ending; there may be a confusion between the two endings. The worst compound I ever met with was mob-ocracy. I half fear to point it out, lest the penny-a-liners should seize upon it as a precious jewel. What a difference does the Irish ending een make when added to squire! In this last word the old Teutonic ending isc has gone from Germany to Italy, then to France, and at last to England. Century, but they have now dropped out of use; what our penny-a-liners now call inebriety might in 1380 be Englished not only by Chaucer's dronkenesse, but by Wickliffe's drunkenhede, by Mirc's dronkelec, and by Gower's drunkeshepe. Our lately-coined pigheadedness and longwindedness show that there is life in the good old ness yet. Such new substantives as Bumbledom and rascaldom prove that dom is not yet dead; and such new adjectives as peckish and rubbishy show a lingering love for the Old English adjectival endings. More than one Englishman might when a child have given ear to the first Franciscan sermons ever heard in Lincolnshire, and might at fourscore and upwards have listened to the earliest part of the Handlyng Synne. Such a man (a true Nævius), on contrasting the number of Romance terms common in 1300 with the hundreds of good old Teutonic words of his childhood, words that the rising generation understood not, might well mourn that in his old age England's tongue had become strange to Englishmen.2 But about this time, 1300, the Genius of our language, as it seems, awoke from sleep, clutched his remaining hoards with tighter grip, and thought that we had lost too many old words already. Their rate of disappearance between 1220 and 1290 had been Other roots, with all these four endings, may be found in Stratmann's Dictionary. 2 As to the speech of religion, compare the Creed at page 138, with the description of Charity at page 198; yet there are but sixty years between them. In later times, Caxton says that he found an amazing difference between the words of his childhood and those of his old age: Hobbes and Cibber must have remarked the same, as to turns of expression. most rapid, as may be seen by the Table at the end of this Chapter; some hundreds of those left were unhappily doomed to die out before 1520, but the process of their extinction was not speedy, as the same Table will show. After 1300, the Franciscans began to forsake their first love; one of the earliest tokens of the change was the rearing in 1306 of their stately new London Convent, which took many years to build, and where hundreds of the highest in the land were buried. It arose in marked contrast to the lowly churches that had been good enough for the old friars, the first disciples of St. Francis. Their great lights vanished from Oxford; the most renowned name she boasts in the Fourteenth Century is that of their sternest foe. About 1320 they were attacked in English rimes, a thing unheard of in the Thirteenth Century. We now learn that a friar Menour will turn away from the needy to grasp at the rich man's gifts; the brethren will fight over a wealthy friend's body, but will not stir out of the cloister at a poor man's death; they 'wolde preche more for a busshel of whete, Than for to bringe a soule from helle out of the hete.' 1 These rimes were written about the date of Wickliffe's birth. The Franciscans had by this time done their work in England, though they were to drag on a sluggish life in our shires for two hundred years longer. Curious it is, that the time of their fiery activity coin 1 Political Songs (Camden Society), p. 331. Churchmen, lawyers, physicians, knights, and shopkeepers are all assailed in this piece. |