to the Britons. The Saxon form is coccel, but the word is not found in the kindred dialects. This is the more remarkable, because most of the tree and plant names are common to us with the German, Dutch, Danish, &c. The words alder, apple, ash, aspen, beam, bean, beech, bere, birch, bloom, blossom, bramble, clover, corn, elm, flax, grass, holt, leek, lime, moss, nightshade, oak, radish, reed, root, rye, shaw, thistle, thorn, tree, waybread, weed, wheat, wood, wormwood, wort, yarrow, yew,—are more or less common to the cognate languages. This is not the case with cockle, and therefore it may perhaps be British. Another plant-name, which is probably British, is willow. This may well be traced to the Welsh helig as its nearer relative, without interfering with the more distant claims of saugh, sallow, salix. Whin also, and furze, have perhaps a right here. With strong probability also may we add to this botanical list the terms husk, haw, and more particularly cod, a word that merits a special remark. In Anglo-Saxon times it meant a bag, a purse or wallet1. Thence it was applied to the seedbags of plants, as pease-cod. This seems to be the Welsh cwd. The puff-ball is in Welsh cwd-y-mwg, bag of smoke. Owen Pughe quotes this Welsh adage :-'Egor dy gwd pan gaech borchell'; i. e. 'Open thy bag when canst get a pig!'-an expression which for picturesqueness must be allowed the palm over our English proverb 'Never say no to a good offer.' What establishes the British origin of this word is the large connection it has in Welsh, and its appearance also in Brittany. Thus in Welsh there is the diminutive form cydyn, a little pouch, and the verb cuddio, to hide, with many allied words; in Breton there is kód, pocket. 1 See a spirited passage in the Saxon Chronicle of Peterborough, A.D. 1131, į and my note there. The compound cock-boat is probably a bilingual compound, of which the first part is the Welsh cach, a boat, a word which has several derivatives in Welsh. Bard is unquestionably British, and so is glen, and likewise flannel; but then these made their entry later, and do not belong to the present subject, which is the immediate influence of the British on the Saxon. 21. We can never expect to know with anything like precision what were the relations of the British and Saxon languages to each other and to the Latin language, until each has been studied comparatively to a degree of exactness beyond anything which has yet been attempted. All the Gothic dialects must be taken into comparison on the one hand, and all the Keltic dialects on the other. The interesting question for us is-How far the British population at large was Romanised? Some think that habits of speaking Latin were almost universal, and they appeal to the rude inscribed stones of the earlier centuries which are found in Wales, and which are in a Latin base enough to be attributed to illiterate stonemasons. These stones are called in evidence to shew that a knowledge of Latin was diffused through the whole community. On this view, which receives support also from the number of Latin words in Welsh, the arrival of the Saxons prevented this island from becoming the home of a Romanesque people like the French or Spanish. 22. The British language as now spoken in Wales is called, by those who speak it, Cymraeg; but the AngloSaxons called it Wylsc, and the people who spoke it they called Walas, which we have modernised into Wales and Welsh. So the Germans of the continent called the Italians and their language Welsch. At various points on the frontiers of our race, we find them giving this name to the conterminous Romance-speaking people. This is the most. probable account of the names Wallachia, the Walloons in Belgium, and the Canton Wallis in Switzerland. On this principle we called the Romanised Britons, and the Germans called the Italians, by the same name— -Welsh. In Acts x. 1, where we read 'Cornelius, a centurion of the band called the Italian band,' Luther's version has 'Cornelius, ein Hauptmann von der Schaar, die da heisst die Welsche.' The French, who were such unwelcome visitors and settlers in this country in the reign of Edward the Confessor, are called by the contemporary annalist 'þa welisce men.' When Edward himself came from the life of an exile in France, he was said by the chronicler to have come 'hider to lande of weallande.' It is the same word which forms the last syllable in Cornwall, for the Kelts who dwelt, there were by the Saxons named the Walas of Kernyw. The word was weal or wealh, feminine wylen; and it is an illustration of the servile condition to which the old inhabitants were reduced, that the words wealh and wylen came to signify male and female slave. § 3. Influence of the Church on the Language. 23. About the year A.D. 600, Christianity began to be received by the Saxons. The Jutish kingdom of Kent was the first that received the Gospel, and the Church was supreme in Kent before Northumbria began to be converted. Yet the Anglian kingdom of Northumbria gained afterwards the leading position as a Christian nation in Saxondom; and being distinguished for learning and literature as well as for zeal, this people exerted a permanent influence on the national language. Intimately connected with this is the political supremacy which the northern kingdom enjoyed in this island for a hundred years. It is evident that there was great and substantial progress in religion, civilisation, and learning; of which fact the permanent memorial is the name and works of Bæda, who died in 735, after having seen the decline of the greatness of his people. Canterbury was the metropolis of Christianity, but the kingdom of Northumbria was its most powerful seat. It was the attachment of this northern Church to the Roman interest that effectually put a stop to the progress of the Scotian discipline in this island. The power of this Anglian nation and the admiration she excited in her neighbours, caused them to emulate her example, to read her books, to form their language after hers, and to call it ENGLISC. The Angles first produced a cultivated bookspeech, and they had the natural reward of inventors and pioneers, that of setting a name to their product. Of all the losses which are deplored by the investigator of the English language, perhaps there is none greater than this, that the whole Anglian vernacular literature should have perished in the ravages of the Danes upon the Northhumbrian monasteries. Of the existence of such a native literature there is no room for doubt. Bæda tells us of such ; and he himself was occupied on a translation when he died. Thus the obscure name of Angle emerged into celebrity, and furnished us with the comprehensive names of English and England, which have continued to designate our country, tongue, and nation. The name of England is confined by geographic limits; but the name of ENGLISH has widened with the growing area of the countries, colonies and dependencies that are peopled or governed by the children of our tongue. 24. The extant works of Bæda are all in Latin, but they afford occasional glimpses of information about the spoken Englisc of his day. As for example, in the Epistle to Ecgberht, he advises that prelate to make all his flock learn by heart the Creed and the Lord's Prayer. In Latin, if they understand it, by all means, says he,-but in their own tongue if they do not know Latin. Which, he adds, is not only the case with laity, but with clerks likewise and monks. And markedly insisting on his theme, as if even then the battle of the vernacular had to be fought, he goes on to give his reasons why he had often given copies of translations to folk that were no scholars, and many of them priests too. One of his most interesting chapters is that in which he gives the traditional story of the vernacular poet Cædmon, who by divine inspiration was gifted with the power of song, for the express purpose of rendering the Scripture narratives into popular verse. The extant poems of the Creation and Fall and Redemption, which are preserved in archaic Saxon verse, are attributed to this Cædmon; and it is possible that they may be his work, having undergone in the process of copying a partial modification. We gather from the account in Bæda, that the practice of making ballads was in a high state of activity, and also that vernacular poetry was used as a vehicle of popular instruction in the seventh century in Northumbria. And it is interesting to reflect that in all our island there is no district which to this day has an equal reputation for lyric poetry, whether we think of the medieval ballads, or of Burns, or of the Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border. 25. It was in the monastery of Whitby, under the famous government of the abbess Hilda, that the first sacred poet of our race devoted his life to the vocation to which he had been mysteriously called. If something of the legendary hangs over his personal history, this only shews how strongly his poetry had stirred the imagination of his people. A nation |