it always uses yle for the adjective (compare Scotch of that ilk, i.e., of the same, of a place bearing the same name). § 30. The Norman-French. The Normans (or North-men) were a body of Scandinavian adventurers, who, while their countrymen, the Danes, were making conquests in England, succeeded in establishing themselves on the opposite coast of France. In 912, King Charles the Simple ceded to Duke Rollo and his Norman followers the province which took from them its name of Normandy. Here they soon ceased to speak their own language, adopting that which was spoken by the native population. If in this they took the same course with their Danish kinsmen in England, the change was a much greater one in the case of the Normans; for the Scandinavian differed far less from the Anglo-Saxon, another member of the same Teutonic family, than from the French, which was a daughter of the Latin. The influence of the Norman-French began to be felt in England even before the Norman conquest of the country. It seems to have been much used at the Confessor, who followed the reigned from 1042 to 1065. Saxon birth, had spent his When he became king of England, he surrounded himself with Normans, exciting thus the jealousy of his native subjects, who in 1052 constrained him to banish the obnoxious foreigners. After his death, Duke William of Normandy laid claim to the English crown; and the hard fought battle of Hastings, in court of Edward the Danish dynasty, and This prince, though of youth in Normandy. 1066, in which Harold, the Saxon king, was slain, and his army totally defeated, established the claim of the Conqueror. This event, which has affected the whole subsequent history of England, has had the most important influence on its language. It was not, indeed, the intention of William to suppress the language of his new subjects. He is said to have made an attempt, though an unsuccessful one, to acquire it himself. But the political and social conditions which followed the conquest were extremely unfavourable to the language of the conquered people. Their obstinate resistance and repeated insurrections led the Conqueror to treat them with the utmost severity. They were shut out from offices of state; they were removed from ecclesiastical positions; they were deprived of lands and reduced to poverty and wretchedness. The court, the nobility, the landed gentry, the clergy, the army, were all Norman. The Anglo-Saxon language was banished from these circles, and the French took its place. The instruction of the schools was given in French alone. There was nothing to stimulate, there was every thing to discourage, the cultivation of the native language. TRANSITION FROM ANGLO-SAXON TO MODERN ENGLISH. § 31. Periods. For five centuries after the Norman conquest, the language of England was in a constant and rapid process of change. During the first of these centuries, we may believe that it had not yet departed very widely from the earlier type. The last monument of the old language is the concluding part of the Saxon Chronicle, in which the history is brought down to the death of King Stephen in 1154. We cannot, however, suppose that the writer of that part has used the idiom which was spoken by the people in his own time. The change by which, in grammatical endings, the older vowels a, o, u, have all passed into e, is found in High German from the beginning of the twelfth century; it probably took place even earlier in our language. In the second century after the conquest, the old inflection, with the change just described, is still for the most part retained, but in a state of much confusion and corruption: this is called the Semi-Saxon period. In the third century, a large part of the old inflexion has disappeared, while no great proportion of French words has yet come into the language: this is called the Old English period. In the fourth and fifth centuries, we find a vast body of French words mixed with those of native stock, while the old inflexion is brought down to that minimum which remains in the language at this day this is called the Middle English period. It must be remembered that the process of change was gradual and incessant: the language did not remain fixed for a time, and then on a sudden leap to a new position. Hence the periods here distinguished are in some degree arbitrary, at least as regards their boundaries; and writers may be found of the same period who are separated from each other by marked differences of language. : D § 32. Changes. It is implied in the foregoing statements that the changes in our language, consequent on the Norman occupation of England, were mainly of two kinds: 1. The loss of the AngloSaxon inflexion, and, 2. The introduction of new words from the French. The latter change did not go on to any great extent until more than two centuries after the conquest; yet no one can doubt that it was caused by that event. But in regard to the earlier change, the loss of the ancient in→ flexion,-it is maintained by some writers that this was in no degree occasioned by the coming of the Normans. A similar change in the modern languages of Latin origin is often explained from the difficulty which the barbarian conquerors of the Roman Empire must have found in mastering the complex system of Latin inflexion. The explanation, whether satisfactory or not for the Romance languages, cannot be applied to ours; for the change in question had nearly run its course before any large part of the Normans had begun to speak English. It is true also that changes of the same nature have been made, and not very far from the same time, in the other Germanic idioms: in each of them, the one vowel e has taken the place of other vowels in grammatical endings, and in each, a part of the endings have been confounded with one another, or have disappeared altogether. What is peculiar to the English is the rapidity of this movement and the extent to which it was carried. No written language of Germanic stock, no unwritten dialect of any province or people, shows, even at the present day, a loss of inflexion equal to what appears in the English of five hundred years ago. This striking peculiarity in the effect compels us to seek for a peculiar cause; and no cause can be found so likely to produce it, as the long subjection of the English-speaking people to a people of different race and language. The tendencies and influences which would in any case have given a new form to the English, as they have to its sister idioms, derived additional force and greater quickness of operation from the depressed circumstances of the English people. The language shared in the suffering and degradation which fell on those who spoke it. Used only by the lower classes, and regarded with contempt by the higher, shut out from the schools, from cultivated society, and, with few exceptions, from works of literature, it was left without standards of correctness; it was deprived of those conservative influences which might otherwise have retarded the progress of change and disintegration. The § 33. Semi-Saxon Period, 1150-1250. Anglo-Saxon inflexion is still in a great measure retained, but with e instead of other vowels in the endings, and with much confusion and irregularity of use. This period is represented chiefly by three works: 1. The Brut of Layamon, a long, narative poem, which recites the early fabulous history of Britain. It is a free translation, or, more truly, a working over, of the Roman de Brut, composed in French by Wace, and finished in 1155. Layamon was a priest, who lived at Ernley, in North Worcestershire, near the close of the twelfth century. His |