great a study Orm had made of this subject we are not left to gather from observation of his spelling, for he has emphatically called attention to it in the opening of his work. HOW TO SPELL. And whase wilenn shall piss boc efft operr sipe writenn himm bidde icc pat he't write rihht swa summ piss boc him tæchepp and tatt he loke well patt he an bocstaff write twiggess eggwhær þæt itt uppo piss boc iss writen o þatt wise. loke well patt he't write swa, for he ne magg nohht elless on Ennglissh writenn rihht te word, patt wite he well to sope. And whoso shall purpose to make another copy of this book, I beg him to write it exactly as this book directeth; and that he look well that he write a letter twice wherever upon this book it is written in that wise. Let him look carefully that he write it so, for else he cannot write it correctly in English-that know he well for certain! 51. There is another point of orthography which is (almost) peculiar to this author. When words beginning with follow words ending in d or t, he generally (with but a few, and those definite exceptions) alters the initial to t. Where (for example) he has the three words þatt and batt and be succeeding one another continuously, he writes, not batt þatt be, but patt tatt te. One important exception to this rule is where the word ending with the d or t is severed from the word beginning with by a metrical pause; in that case the change does not take place, as— 7 agg affter be Goddspell stannt patt tatt te Goddspell menepþ. and aye after the Gospel standeth that which the Gospel meaneth. Here the stannt does not change the initial of the next word, because of the metrical division that separates them. Other examples of these peculiarities may be seen in the following extract. CHARACTER OF A GOOD MONK. Forr himm birrp beon full clene mann, and all wipputenn ahhte, Buttan þatt mann himm findenn shall And tær iss all þatt eorplig þing And himm birrp æfre staudenn inn And agg himm birrp beon fressh þærto bi daggess and by nihhtess; And tat iss harrd and strang and tor and hefig lif to ledenn, And forbi birrp wel clawwstremann onnfangenn mikell mede, Att hiss Drih htin Allwældennd Godd, forr whamm he mikell swinnkepp. And all hiss herrte and all hiss lusst birrp agg beon towarrd heoffne, And himm birrp geornenn agg þatt an hiss Drihhtin wel to cwemenn, Wipp daggsang and wipp uhhtennsang wipp messess and wipp beness, &c. TRANSLATION. For he ought to be a very pure man and altogether without property, Except that he shall be found in simple meat and clothes. And that is all the earthly thing that minster-man should own, Except a knife and sheath and comb and needle, if he want it. And all this shall they find for him, and it is his duty to take care of it, For he may neither do with it, neither give it nor sell. And he must ever stand in (vigorously) to praise and worship God, And aye must he be fresh thereto by daytime and by nights; And that's a hard and stiff and rough and heavy life to lead, And therefore well may cloister'd man At the hand of his Lord Allwielding God, And all his heart and his desire ought aye be toward heaven; And he should yearn for that alone, With day-time chant and chant at prime, The poems of Layamon and Orm may be regarded as appertaining to the old Saxon literature. Layamon and Orm both cling to the old in different ways: Layamon in his poetic form, Orm in his diction. Both also bear traces, in different ways, of the earlier processes of that great change which the French was now working in the English language. The long story of the Brut is told in lines which affect the ancient style; but the style is chaotic, and abounds in accidental decorations, like a thing constructed out of ruins. In the Ormulum the regularity is perfect, but it is the regularity of the new style of versification, learnt from foreign teachers. The iambic measure sits admirably on the ancient diction for Orm, new as he is in his metre, is old in his grammar and vocabulary. The works differ as the men differed: the one, a secular priest, has the country taste for an irregular poetry with alliteration and every other reverberatory charm; the other, a true monk, carries his regularity into everything-arrangement, metre, orthography. He is an English-speaking Dane, but educated in a monastery that has already been ruled by a succession of French abbots. From these two authors, as from some half-severed promontory, we look across the water studded with islands, to where the continent of the modern English language rears its abrupt front in the writings of Chaucer. § 7. The triumph of French. 52. In the two great works which have occupied us during the preceding pages, the Englisc has made its latest stand against the growing ascendancy of the French. We now approach the time when for a century and a half French held a recognised position as the language of education, of society, of business, and of administration. Long before 1250 we get traces of the documentary use of French, and long after 1350 it was continued. Trevisa says it was a new thing in 1385 for children to construe into English in the grammar schools, where they had been used to do their construing into French. If we ask what manner of French it was, we must point to that now spoken by the peasants of Normandy, and perhaps still more to the French dialect which has been preserved in the Channel Islands. A bold relic of our use of French as the language of public business still survives in the formula LE ROI LE VEULT or LA REINE LE VEULT, by which the royal assent to bills is announced in Parliament. In the utterance of this puissant sentence it is considered correct to groll the R after the manner of the peasants of Normandy. One particular class of words shall be noticed in this place as the result of the French rule in England. This is a group of words which will serve to depict the times that stamped them on our speech. They are the utterance of the violent and selfish passions. 53. Almost all the sinister and ill-favoured words which were in the English language at the time of Shakspeare, owed their origin to this unhappy era. The malignant passions were let loose, as if without control of reason or of religion; men hotly pursued after the objects of their ambition, covet ousness, or other passions, till they grew insensible to every feeling of tenderness and humanity; they regarded one another in no other light but as obstructives or auxiliaries in their own path. Such a state of society supplied the nascent English with a mass of opprobrious epithets which have lasted, with few occasional additions, till the present day. Of these words a few may be cited by way of example. And first I will instance the word juggler. This word has It is, first, a person who makes a livelihood by amusing tricks. Secondly, it has the moral sense of an impostor or deceiver. Both these senses date from the French period of our history. two senses. To jape is to jest coarsely; a japer is a low buffoon; japery is buffoonery; and jape-worthy is ignominiously ridiculous. To jangle is to prate or babble; a jangler is a man-prater, and a jangleress is a woman-prater. Bote Iapers and Ianglers. Iudasses children. Piers Plowman, 35. 54. Ravin is plunder; raveners are plunderers; and although this family of words is extinct, with the single exception of ravenous as applied to a beast of prey, yet they are still generally known from the English Bible of 1611. Ribald and ribaldry are of the progeny of this prolific period. Ribald was almost a class-name in the feudal system. One of the ways, and almost the only way, in which a man of low birth who had no inclination to the religious life of the monastery could rise into some sort of importance and consideration, was by entering the service of a powerful baron. He lived in coarse abundance at the castle of his patron, and was ready to perform any service of whatever nature. He was a rollicking sort of a bravo or swash |