Þo be borh was strong and hende;" bo gan he þanne wende7 riht to Londene, bo borh he swipe lovede. He bi-gan þer ane tur; be strengeste of alle ban tune: Nou and evere more, In allere blisse: And all his leode11 lofde hine swipe, In his dages was so mochel mete, bat hit was onimete.12 When the burgh was strong and trim, Then gan he wend thence right to London, The burgh he greatly loved. a gate there-under made. Now and ever-more the name standeth there. and all his people loved him greatly. In his days was there so much meat, that it was without measure. 1. The guttural ch (or gh) first disappeared to the ear and then to the eye. We still have about 80 words in which it is retained for the eye, as might, light, etc. 2. Caer or Kair, the Celtic word for castle or stronghold. We have it in Caernarvon, Cardiff, etc. 3. King, really equal to kinsman, and connected with kin, kind, etc. 4. Burg, burgh, borough, bury, are all different forms of the same word=a place in which one may hide (bury) oneself (Ger. Burg, berg-en, etc.), Pittsburg, Edinburgh, Peterborough, Aldermanbury are examples. 5. That is, the fort on the Usk. Usk, Esk, Exe, Ox (in Oxford), Axe (in Axminster), are all forms of the Celtic word uisg, water, also found in the form whisky. 6. Our modern word handy. 7. Wend, still found in poetry. Its past is used as the past of go, which in Chaucer is still goed. 8. We have still this word in the form gin=trap. 9. Yet gate, a form still surviving in Scotland. 10. Hit, the right form and the neuter of he. Its possessive was his, now supplanted by the malformation its. 11. The German form is Leute; the modern English lay, only found in the compound layman. 12. Onimete = German, ohne Maass. Ex. 2. Get up the translation of the following passage from the ORMU 3. 1. Ahhte or aghte=oweing or owning property. 2. Finden. En is the "Middle English sign of the infinitive; an of the oldest English. Wade = weeds = clothes, still found in the phrase widow's weeds. 4. Aghenn, the infinitive. 5. For him, the dative. 6. That is, trade. 7. We have lost the verb to worthy; instead of it we use the noun worship as a verb. Ex. 3. Get up the translation of the following passage from ROBERT OF GLOUCESTER'S CHRONICLE:— THE BEGINNING OF ROBERT OF GLOUCESTER'S CHRONICLE. DATE ABOUT 1300. Engelond ys a wel god lond, ich wene1 of eche lond best, Yset in the ende of the world, as al 2 in the West. 6 The see goth him all aboute, he stont as an yle,3 Of foulës 21 and of bestës, of wylde and tame al so, Of salt fysch and eche fresch, and fayre ryveres ther to; 1. I ween. 2. As quite. 3. Yle or eyle, is the diminutive (by means of le, as in lit, little), of y, ey, ea, or ei (in Norwegian oe) = island. We find the word in Battersea = St. Peter's island: Chelsea Chesel ea, the shingle island; Jersey=Cæsar's island; Atheln-ey=Nobles' island; and in the word eyot or ait, the general name for an island in the Thames. The letter s is intrusive, and made its way into the word from a mistaken connection with the old French isle (île) Latin, insula. 4. Foes. The plural in n is also found in shoon, tren (trees), oxen, etc. 5. They need. 6. The less fear. 7. Unless it be through guile. Gyle is a French spelling of the English wile. Compare wise, guise; ward, guard; warden, guardian; etc. 8. Folk, connected with full; as German Volk with voll. (So the Latin po-pul-us.) 9. Same. 10. As men have seen sometimes. The Scotch still say whiles; and we have in English somewhile, erewhile. 11. Myle. Measurements of space and time, etc., had no plural ending in Old English ("Anglo-Saxon"). Thus we have six year, twenty horse, and we still have fortnight for fourteen nights, twelvemonth for twelve months, and ten stone, etc. 12. To go. 13. That is. 14. One. 15. Men may see. 16. The people miss it, or are in fault. 17. Other or, which is simply a contraction of other. We used to have other, nother (which still exists in Lancashire); but we now retain the Southern form of either, neither. Other and nother were shortened into or and nor. 18. Enough. The curious change of the final gh (which generally disappears into a y or a w) into the ƒ sound, is also observable in laugh, laughter, etc. 19. Trees. 20. So that. 21. Birds. 22. Leas. 23. Meads. Ex. 4. Translate the following. easy). * (If read aloud, it will be found very Of Lynkolne, so sayeth the gest.3 Compare the glowing eulogy of England in Shakspeare's Richard II. The vertu of the harpe, thurghe skylle and rygt, = 1. Bishop is a curtailment of episkopos overseer, or inspector. The French have softened the first p into v; and hence we have evesque, and evêque. We have dropped the first and last syllable. 2. Surname. 3. Story. 4. Mind. The word wit (the root of wit-an, to know), has been gradually narrowing its meaning for the last seven centuries. The first meaning seems to have been perception; then mind and mental power; next ability; then the power of saying clever things. 5. Study. 6. From camera. The coming together of the two liquids m and r, calls for a labial to rest upon; and thus the b has been introduced. Compare numerus, nombre; dissimulo, dissemble; similis, semblable. 7. Once. 8. This is the more correct way of spelling. The word is a Latin word (delectari); and the intrusion of the gh gives it the false appearance of an English word, in analogy with light, night, etc. 9. Cross. 10. Lere is the older Ex. 5. Turn into modern English the extract from ROBERT OF GLOUCESTER, on p. 28, covering the rendering given. Ex. 6. Write out the words in the two extracts from ROBERT OF GLOUCESTER which are now obsolete. Ex. 7. Write out those which differ, in spelling only, from the words now in use. = Ex. 8. Prepare the following notes on the passage from LAURENCE Minot. 1. Weal, a form of well, and found in common weal, wealth (which was once sounded weelth). The word wealth in the passage in the Prayer-Book,"Grant her in health and wealth long to live,❞—does not mean riches, but a good and healthy condition in the State. 2. Ywis, a late form of gewiss certainly. This has been wrongly changed by Coleridge and Macaulay into I wis. But the 1st per. sing. pres. of witan (to know) is I wot. 3. Fare = welfare. 4. Big is a Low German form of bauen (to build), and is connected with the Danish word for a town, by. 5. Full low. Full is here an adverb, and modifies low. A common adverb in Old English is well; as wel gode very good. 6. Fell-the transitive form of fall. Compare set, sit; drench, drink; lay, lie; and the German sprengen, springen. 7. Gart, still used in Scotland. = Ex. 9. Turn the passage from MINOT into modern English verse. Ex. 10. Collect from Ex. 1, 2, and 4 the words which are now obsolete, and give their meaning. Ex. 11. Collect instances in the above exercises in which 3 has changed into a modern y, and an ƒ into a v. Ex. 12. Turn the passage from ROBERT DE BRUNNE, into modern verse, and change the rhymes where necessary. CONCLUSIONS FROM CHAPTERS I. AND II. 1. After a careful reading of the extracts in the first two chapters, it must be plain that literature was in a very infantile condition, and very far from anything like free power over thought and expression. It is also tolerably evident that the language in which the author of Beowulf, Caedmon, and Orm wrote was English, and nothing but English. Here it is necessary to interpose a caution. It is very generally believed that what is called "Anglo-Saxon" is a different language from the English language; and that, somehow or other, there is a deep abyss between the two; and that there is a great break (or "solution of continuity") in the history both of the country and of the language. But this is not the case. The English people have always spoken the English language; and there is no period from the fifth down to the present century when they did not. The prevalent error on this subject has arisen from the use of the technical and artificial term (a mere book-term) Anglo-Saxon, and also from the use of the word translation. When we translate, we are always supposed to translate from one language into another. But we do not translate from the works of Caedmon in the same sense as we translate from the works of Virgil. There is an unbroken line of development, a continuous growth, of the English of Tennyson out of the English of Caedmon. The corrective to the prevalent error is twofold-historical and analogical. The historical corrective is the fact that our English has grown out of the English of the Beowulf, and is identical with it; the analogical corrective is to be found in the comparison of the growth of a tree or an animal. No one could recognise a likeness between an oak of thirteen hundred years old and an acorn or a year-old sapling; few could trace out the likeness in features or expression that really and essentially exists in the child of six months and the man of sixty years. 2. It will also be plain to the reader that all the poetry and prose, but more especially the poetry, of Englishmen down to the fourteenth century (with the single and brilliant exception of Laurence Minot, and he was of French origin) is dull, heavy, and only half articulate. Their works read like the feeble and clumsy efforts of half-educated country people to express their thoughts. The Norman-French leaven was needed to raise them out of their infantile condition, and to produce the free and powerful speech of a CHAUCER. 3. But the English language has gone through certain epochs; and philologists have tried to mark these. It must, however, be remembered that there is nowhere to be found a hard and fast line between different |