ing lines will illustrate this crude mixture of French with English : 1. That us telleth the maistres saunz faile. 2. Hy ne ben no more verreyment. 3. And to have horses auenaunt, To hem stalworth and asperaunt. 4. Toppe and rugge, and croupe and cors 61. Now we come to a great original work. The rhyming Chronicle of Robert of Gloucester is a fine specimen of west-country English, which touches the dialect of The Owl and Nightingale at many points:-the infinitives ending in - or -y, or -ie, as conseili to counsel; he wolde susteini he would sustain; he ne let nozt clupie al is folc, he let not call all his folk; duc William uorbed alle his to robby, duke William forbad all his (men) to rob; hoseli to housel; pis noble duc William him let crouny king, this noble duke William made them crown him king. In other points this dialect differs strongly from the Dorset, as exhibited in the Owl and Nightingale. The latter has the initial ʼn very constant in such words as Ich habbe I have, þu havest thou hast, ho hadde she had; whereas in Robert of Gloucester it is adde. He writes is for his, ire for hire (her), om for home. The Dorset, on the other hand, retains the h in hit it; writes the owl down as a 'hule' and a 'houle'; never fails in sh, but rather strengthens it by the spelling sch, as scharpe, schild, schal, schame; whereas the Gloucester dialect eludes the h in such instances, and writes ss, as ssolde should, ssipes ships, ssriue shrive, ssire shire, bissopes bishops; and even Engliss English, Frenss French. 62. The following line offers a good illustration both of this feature, and also of the metre of this Chronicle, which is not very equable or regular, but of which the ideal seems to be the fourteen-syllable ballad-metre : Hou longe ssolle hor luper heued above hor ssoldren be? How long-a shall their hated heads Perhaps this ss may have been a difference of orthography rather than of pronunciation: which is made probable by the substitution of the ss for ch where we must suppose a French pronunciation of the ch, which is about the same as our sh sound. Thus, in the long piece presently to be quoted, we have Michaelmas written Misselmasse. The Commencement of Robert of Gloucester's Chronicle, Engelond ys a wel god lond, ich wene of eche lond best, The see goth hym al a boute, he stont as an yle. Of salt fysch and eche fresch, and fayre ryueres ther to; England is a very good land, I ween of every land (the) best; set in the end of the world, as in the utter west. The sea goeth it all about; it standeth as an isle. Their foes they need the less fear, except it be through guile of folk of the same land, as has been seen sometime. From south to north it is eight hundred mile long; and four hundred mile broad to go from east to west, that is, through the middle of the country and not as by the one end. Plenty of all goods men may in England see, unless the people are in fault or the years are bad. For England is full enough of fruit and of trees; of woods and of parks, that joy it is to see; of fowls and of beasts, wild and tame alike; of salt fish and eke fresh, and fair rivers thereto; of wells sweet and cold enow, of pastures and of meads; of silver ore and of gold, of tin and of lead; of steel, of iron, and of brass; of good corn great store; of wheat and of good wool, better may be none. 63. The most famous and oftest quoted piece of Robert of Gloucester is that wherein he sums up the consequences of the Battle of Hastings. It contains the clearest and best statement of the bilingual state of the population in his own time, that is, before A.D. 1300. Bituene Misselmasse and Sein Luc, a Sein Calixtes day, In be zer of grace, as it vel also, A pousend and sixe sixti, pis bataile was ido. Jon pritti 3er he was of Normandie duc er. po pis bataile was ydo, duc Willam let bringe Vaire his folc, that was aslawe, an erpe þoru alle pinge. Willam hit sende hire vaire inou, witoute eny þing þare uore: To be hous of Waltham, 7 ibrozt aner pe pere, Hit was per vaire an erpe ibro3t, as it 3ut is. alle his, As king and prince of londe, wip nobleye ynou. Azen him wip uair procession pat folc of toune drou, 7 vnderueng him vaire inou, as king of þis lond. pus com lo Engelond, in to Normandies hond. þe Normans ne coupe speke po, bote hor owe speche, speke French as hii dude at om hor children dude also teche. So þat heiemen of his lond, þat of hor blod come, Vor bote a man conne Frenss, me telp of him lute, Ac lowe men holdep to Engliss to hor owe speche zute. Ich wene per ne bep in al þe world contreyes none, pat ne holdep to hor owe speche bote Englond one. Ac wel me wot uor to conne bope well it is, Vor be more pat a man can, the more wurpe he is. F It will hardly be necessary to translate the whole of this passage for the reader. We will modernise a specimen to serve as a guide to the rest. The last ten lines shall be selected as recording the linguistic condition of the country. And the Normans could not then speak any speech but their own; and they spoke French as they did at home, and had their children taught the same. So that the high men of this land, that came of their blood, all retain the same speech which they brought from their home. For unless a man know French, people regard him little but the low men hold to English, and to their own speech still. I ween there be no countries in all the world that do not hold to their own speech, except England only. But undoubtedly it is well to know both; for the more a man knows, the more worth he is. 64. These examples will perhaps suffice to give an idea of the dissevered and dialectic condition of the native language from the twelfth to the fourteenth century. During this long interval the reigning language was French, and this fashion, like all fashions, went on spreading and embracing a wider area, and ever growing thinner as it spread, till in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries it was become an acknowledged subject of derision. Already, before 1200, the famous Abbot Sampson, of Bury St. Edmunds, was thought to have said a good and memorable thing when he gave as his reason for preferring one man to a farm rather than another, that his man could not speak French. The French which was spoken in this country had acquired an insular character; it was full of Anglicisms and English words, and in fact must often have been little more than deformed English. Even well-educated persons, such as Chaucer's gentle and ladylike Prioress, spoke a French which, as the poet informs us, was utterly unlike 'French of Paris.' What then must have been the French of the homely upland fellows Trevisa tells of and oplondysch men wol lykne hamsylf to gentil men, and fondep with great bysynes for to speke Freynsch, for to be more ytold of'? 65. In Piers Plowman we have the dykers and delvers doing a bad day's work, and singing scraps of French songs for pastime : Dykers and Delvers that don here werk ille, And driveth forth the longe day, with 'Deu vous saue, dam Emme.' Prologue, 103. We might almost imagine, that now for the second time in history it was on a turn of the balance whether. Britain should bear a nation of the Romanesque or of the Gothic type. But all the while the native tongue was growing more and more in use; and at length, in the middle of the fourteenth century, we reach the end of its suppression and obscurity. Trevisa fixes on the great plague of 1349 as an epoch after which a change was observable in regard to the popular rage for speaking French. He says: "This was moche used tofore the grete deth, but sith it is somdele chaunged.' But the most important date is 1362, when the English language was re-installed in its natural rights, and became again the language of the Courts of Law. 66. In the specimens of English which have now passed before us, we are struck with their diversity and the absence of any signs of convergency to a common type. The only feature which they agree in with a sort of growing consent, is in the dropping of the old inflections and the severance connection with the Anglo-Saxon accidence. Among the most tenacious of these inflections was the genitive plural of substantives in -ENA and of adjectives in -Ra. This -ENA drooped into the more languid ene; and the -RA appeared as -er or -r, as in their, aller, alderliefest. Throughout the whole of this period there is such a tendency to variety and dialectic subdivision, that it has been found hard to say how many dialects there were in the country. Higden, writing in the fourteenth century, said |