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OLD ENGLISH AND NORMAN-FRENCH.

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THE proud Norman was not successful in 'imposing his own tongue upon the subjugated nation, when the fatal day of Hastings placed the British realm in the hands of his race. vain was Norman-French spoken from throne, pulpit, and judgment-seat; in vain did the Norman nobles long disdain to learn the language of the enslaved English. For a time the two tongues lived side by side, though in very different conditions: the one, the language of the master, at court and in the castles of the soldiers who had become noble lords and powerful barons; the other, the language of the conquered, spoken only in the lowly huts of the subjugated people.

The Norman altered and increased the latter, but he could not extirpate it. To defend his conquest,1 he took possession of the country; and, master of the soil, he erected fortresses and castles, and attempted to introduce new terms. The universe and the firmament, the planets, comets, and meteors, the atmosphere and the seasons, all were impressed with the seal of the conqueror. Hills became mountains, and dales valleys; streams were called rivers, and brooks rivulets; waterfalls changed into cascades, and woods into forests.

The deer, the ox, the calf, the swine, and the sheep appeared on his 'sumptuous table as venison, beef, veal, pork, and mutton. Salmon, sturgeon, lamprey, and trout became known as delicacies; serpents and lizards, squirrels, falcons and herons, cocks and pigeons, stallions and mules, were added to the animal kingdom.

Earls and lords were placed in rank below his dukes and marquises. New titles and dignities, of viscount, baron, and baronet, squire and master, were created; and the mayor presided over the English aldermen and sheriff; the chancellor and the peer, the ambassador and the chamberlain, the general and the admiral headed the list of officers of the government.

The king alone retained his name, but the state and the court became French: the administration was carried on according to the constitution; treaties were concluded by the ministers in their cabinet, and submitted for approval to the sovereign; the privy council was consulted on the affairs of the empire, and loyal subjects sent representatives to parliament. Here the members debated on matters of grave importance, on peace and war, ordered the army and the navy, disposed of the national treasury, contracted debts, and had their sessions and their parties.

At brilliant feasts and splendid tournaments collected the flower of chivalry; magnificent balls, where beauty and delicious music enchanted the assembled nobles, gave new splendour to society, polished the manners and excited the admiration of the ancient inhabitants; who, charmed by such elegance, recognised in their conquerors persons of superior intelligence, admired them, and endeavoured to imitate their fashions.

But the 'dominion of the Norman did not extend to the home of the Englishman,2 it stopped at the threshold of his house: there, around the fireside in his kitchen and the hearth in his room, he met his beloved kindred; the bride, the wife, and the husband, sons and daughters, brothers and sisters, tied to each other by love, friendship, and kind feelings, knew nothing dearer than their own sweet home.

The Englishman's flocks, still grazing in his fields and meadows, gave him milk and butter, meat and wool; the herdsman watched them in spring and summer; the ploughman drew his furrows, and used his harrows, and, in harvest, the cart and the flail; the reaper plied his scythe, piled up sheaves and hauled his wheat, oats, and rye to the barn. The waggoner drove his 'wain, with its wheels, felloes, spokes, and nave; and his team bent heavily under their yoke.

In his trade by land and sea, he still sold and bought; in the store or the shop, the market or the street, he cheapened his goods and had all his dealings, as pedler or weaver, baker or cooper, saddler, miller, or tanner. He lent or borrowed, trusted his neighbour, and with skill and care throve and grew wealthy. Later, when he longed once more for freedom, his warriors took their weapons, their axes, swords, and spears, or their 'dreaded bow and arrow. They leaped without stirrup into the saddle, and killed with dart and gavelock. At other times they launched their boats and ships, which were still pure English from keel to deck and from the helm or the rudder to the top of the mast, afloat and ashore, with sail or with oar.

As his fathers had done before him in the land of his birth, the Englishman would not merely eat, drink, and sleep, or spend his time in playing the harp and the fiddle, but by walking, riding, fishing, and hunting, he kept young and healthy; while his lady with her children were busy teaching or learning how to read and to write, to sing and to draw. Even needle-work was not forgotten, as their writers say that "by this they shone most in the world." The wisdom of later ages was not known then, but they had their home-spun sayings, which by all mankind are yet

looked upon as true wisdom, as: God helps them that help themselves: Lost time is never found again: When sorrow is asleep, wake it not !

Thus the two languages, now 'contending and then mingling with each other, continued for nearly four hundred years side by side in the British kingdom; the Norman-French, an 'exotic plant, deprived of its native soil and heat, flourishing for a time, but gradually withering and fading away; the language of the subject, like an indigenous tree, trimmed by the rough storm, grafted in many a branch by an unskilful hand, but still giving shade with its wide-spreading foliage, and bearing flowers and fruit in abundance.

The Normans had conquered the land and the race, but they struggled in vain against the language. It conquered them in its turn, and, by its spirit, converted them into Englishmen. In vain did they haughtily refuse to learn a word of that despised tongue, and indignantly asked, in the words of the minister of Henry III., "Am I an Englishman, that I should know these characters and these laws?" In vain it was that William and his successors filled bishopric and abbey with the most learned and best educated men of France, and 'deposed English •dignitaries, like Wulstan, Bishop of Worcester, because he was an "idiot who did not know the French tongue, and could not aid in the king's council."

Neither sufferings nor death itself, apparently, could teach those haughty Normans the necessity of learning the language of their new home. When in the year 1080 some Northumbrians presented to Vaulcher (Walchere), Bishop and Lord of Durham (Dunholme), an humble and submissive request, the proud prelate required, in answer to their request, that they should pay four hundred pounds of silver. Their astonished but determined spokesman asked for leave to consult with his associates, but, knowing the bishop's entire ignorance of English, he said to his friends: "Short rēd,4 gôd red; Slee ye se bisceop!"5 and immediately they fell upon the bishop and slew him and one hundred men of French and Flemish blood!......

Thus we see that conquest cannot 'exterminate a language, nor drive it from its native soil. The Normans, with all their power and strength, lords of the land, masters of the people, and with every advantage on their side, could not destroy a highly cultivated, ancient and national tongue, like the English. It rose against them and conquered them in its turn......

The Normans could, as conquerors, seat their Norman-French

on the throne and on the judge's bench, at the dais of the noble and in the refectory of the monk; but they found the door of manor and of cottage jealously guarded. Their number, moreover, was too small to allow them to spread all over the kingdom. The few Norman soldiers and their families, immured in castles, and too haughty to associate with the despised English, anxiously preserved their connection with France, where many still possessed estates, and held no intercourse but with their own countrymen.

The Norman-French tongue was, therefore, neither carried to all parts of the kingdom, nor supported by the aid of 'intellectual superiority. The Old English speech, on the other hand, had been carefully guarded and preserved by the people; it had never lost its hold upon their affections; persecution and the necessity of concealment had made it but all the dearer to the suffering race. It now made its way, slowly and almost 'imperceptibly, but with unerring and unceasing perseverance, from rank to rank, until it finally reached the very court from which it had been so ignominiously driven, and seated itself once more upon the throne of England!

administra'tion, exec'u- | extir'pate, up-root'.
appröv'al, sañc'tion. [tive.

contend'ing, struggling.
contract'ed, incurred'.
deposed', degraded.
dig'nitaries, men of rank.
domin'ion, rule.
dread'ed, feared.
enchant'ed, fas'cinated.
exotic, for'eign.
exter'minate, cast out.

fel'loes, rims.

firmament, heavens.
forgot'ten, overlooked'.
ignomin'iously,
fully.

shame'

impercept ibly, unnoticed.
impos'ing, forc'ing.
increased, enlarged'.
indigenous, na'tive.
indig'nantly, añ'grily.

[blocks in formation]

names.

DE VERE. intellec'tual, men'tal. nave, centre-block. persecu'tion, oppression. perseverance, persist'

ence.

refec'tory, dining-hall. rud'der, blade of the helm. sub'jugated, subdued'. submissive, hum'ble. sump'tuous, luxurious. wain, wag'gon.

"Bisceop, bishop, though an Old English word, is of classical origin, as is also the office which it names. The English translation of the word is over-seer. [Gr. epis kopos; Lat. episcopus.] The French evêque is from the same root, and the two words show how widely the derivatives of the same word in two languages may differ :Lat. Episcopus: O. Eng. bisceop, Eng. bishop; Ital. vescovo; O. Fr. evesque, Fr. evêque.

QUESTIONS.-What means did the Normans take to impose their language upon the English? With what result? Mention things and classes of things bearing Norman Where did the dominion of the Norman not extend? Mention classes of things bearing native English names. How long did the two languages exist side by side? What is the story of Walchere of Durham? What prevented the spread of NormanFrench all over the kingdom? What was the result of the struggle between the two languages?

VENICE.

1

WHEN At'tila, King of the Huns, devastated Italy in the middle of the fifth century, the citizens of Aquilei'a, Pad'ua, and other towns on the Adriat'ic, fled from the invader.

At the head of the gulf are about a hundred little islands, formed of mud and sand swept down by the rivers which drain the plains of Northern Italy. These islands are surrounded by shallow water, and protected from the waves by long bars of sand, between which by various narrow channels vessels pass out and in. Upon these islands the Vene'ti driven from the mainland established themselves, and there founded a city in the midst of the waters.

In their new home they missed the vines and the olives which clad their native slopes, as well as the bees and the cattle which they used to tend. The waste of wild sea-moor on which they now dwelt offered only a few patches of soil fit for cultivation, and these yielded but a scanty crop of stunted vegetables. The only supplies which Nature furnished were the fish which swarmed in the waters, and the salt which encrusted the beds of the lagoons.2

A more miserable, hopeless plight than that of the inhabitants of these little islands, it would be hard to conceive; and yet out of their slender resources they built up Venice! The sandbanks which they contested with the sea-fowl became the site of a great and wealthy city; and their fish and salt formed the 'original basis of a world-wide commerce. Their progress, however, was slow and laborious. Seventy years after the settlement was formed, they were still obliged to toil hard for a bare 'subsistence.

Some distinctions of rank-a tradition of their former condition—were maintained amongst them, but all were reduced to an equality of poverty. Fish was the common, almost the only, food of all classes. None could boast a better dwelling than a rude hut of mud and osiers. Their only treasure consisted of salt, which they transported to the mainland, receiving in exchange various articles of food and clothing; and, not less important, wood for boat-building. The security in which they pursued these humble occupations was, however, envied by Italians who were groaning under the tyranny and rapine of the barbarians, and the island-colony received accessions of population.

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