Oldalképek
PDF
ePub

their endings; but some names of living creatures were neuter, the termination overbearing the meaning.* Confusion was inevitable in a time when the language was neglected: and a very obvious remedy presented itself, after a while, in our modern rule of determining all genders by the signification of the words.

Thirdly: The Definite and Indefinite Declensions of Adjectives are confounded; and the Feminine terminations of adjectives and pronouns are neglected. We have seen, in the Chronicle, the inflectional terminations of the adjectives disappearing altogether; although some of these did not altogether lose their hold for many generations.†

Fourthly there is an occasional use of the Weak preterites and participles of verbs, (the forms which our grammarians have been accustomed to call Regular,) instead of the Strong or Irregular forms. Fifthly: There is a constant substitution of -en for -on in the Plurals of Verbs; and the final -e is often discarded.

Sixthly: There is great uncertainty in the Government of Prepositions.

Having already encountered all the corruptions thus enumerated, we have really few others to learn, and none that are nearly so important. A few there are, however, which throw light on the formation of the new tongue.

Besides the article an (still used also as a numeral, and declined), our other article a now appears, being used as indeclinable, and prefixed to consonants, as with us. The gender of nouns, pretty correct in the earlier text, is less so in the later; and the feminine is often neglected altogether. In respect of pronouns, the accusative him for hine, (already traceable in the Chronicle,) appears frequently in the later text; and in it, too, the relative takes the undeclined form woche, instead of the older while or wulc. The conjugation of verbs is generally that of the Anglo-Saxon, with the exceptions already noted: but it suffers also certain other changes, which lead us fast towards English. The preposition to is inserted before infinitives; the common infinitive termination -an is changed into -en (as likewise elsewhere the final -a into -e); the final -n of

Thus, wif, a woman, was neuter. The word was not promoted to the dignity of real gender till it was compounded in wif-man (literally, a femaleman), whence comes woman.

"All the indefinite inflections of the adjective may be found in the manuscripts of the thirteenth century; but there is much inconsistency in the manner of using them, and that sometimes even in the same manuscript. The only inflections (of the adjective) which survived long enough to affect the language of Chaucer and his contemporaries, were those of the nominative and genitive plural." Guest: in the Transactions of the Philological Society; vol. i.: 1844.

the infinitive is omitted, sometimes in the earlier manuscript, and generally in the later; and a difficult gerundive form in -nne or ne, (which has not happened to occur to us,) is indeed retained, but is confounded with the present participle in -nde, the original of our participle in -ing.

5. A few lines of the Brut, with the scantiest annotation, may suffice to exemplify these remarks, and serve, in some degree, as a ground of comparison with the older diction of the Chronicle.

Our extract is from the account of the great battle of Bath, in which the illustrious Arthur is said to have signally discomfited the Saxons. The semi-stanzas are separated by colons.*

Ther weoren Sæxisce men: folken1 alre2 ærmest ;3
There were Saxon men of-folks all most-wretched;
And tha Alemainisce men: geomerest
And the Alemannish men saddest
Arthur mid his sweorde: fæie-scipe wurhte:

Arthur with his sword

alre leoden :

of-all nations.

death-work wrought.

[blocks in formation]

Thá isah Arthur: athelest10 kingen :11

When saw Arthur, noblest of-kings,

Whar12 Colgrim at-stod: and æc stal13 wrohte :
Where Colgrim at-stood, and eke place worked,
Thá clupede the king: kenliche lude:

[merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors]

1 For folca; genitive plural, of folc.

*

2 Ealra (sometimes alra) is the correct genitive plural of call or all.

3 Literally, poorest (German).

4 See Cædmon, Note 5.

5 For leoda; from leod (German, leute).

6 Literally, fey-ship; Anglo-Saxon, fæge; Scottish, fey. See Guy Mannering.

7 For sona.

8 Good Anglo-Saxon from inf. abelgan. 9Good Anglo-Saxon. The verb beon, to be, gives, in the present, ic beó, thú býst, he býth; and wesan, to be, gives ic eom, thú eart, he is.

10 Superlative from the Anglo-Saxon, æthel or ethel (German, edel). 11 The error marked in Note 1.

12 Modern spelling, for hw-.

13 Hence stall; perhaps here it means fight; whence stalwart, brave.

* Madden's Layamon, iii. 468-471; the text of the older manuscript. The passage, with a translation, is also in Guest's "History of English Rliythms," vol. ii. 1838.

Nú him is al swá there gat: ther he14 thene hul wat :
Now to-him is all as to-the goat, where she the hill keeps.
Thenne cumeth the wulf wilde: touward hire winden: 15

Then comes the wolf wild,
Theh the wulf beon16 áne:

toward her tracks: búten ælc imane :17

Though the wolf be one, without all company,
And ther weoren in áne loken: fíf hundred gaten:
And there were in one fold five hundred goats,
The wulf heom to iwiteth : 18 and alle heom abiteth :
The wolf them to cometh,
and all them biteth.

*

*

*

*

Ich am wulf, and he is gat: the gume19 scal beon faie :20
I am wolf, and he is goat: the man shall be fey!

14 The word gat is first used correctly as feminine, being joined with there; and then it is held as masculine, being represented by he. But, possibly, he may be a corruption for the feminine heó, which seems to have sometimes taken that form in the later dialect of the west. See Transactions of the Philological Society: vol. i. p. 279: 1844.

15 A noun from windan, to wind or twine.

16 Plural of subjunctive; wrongly used for singular.

17 From man; as the Old English and Scottish word, menye or meinye, a company.

Witun, to depart.

19 Anglo-Saxon, guma.

See Note 6.

CHAPTER III.

THE OLD ENGLISH PERIOD.

A. D. 1250-A. D. 1500.

FORMATION OF THE STRUCTURE OF THE ENGLISH TONGUE.

[ocr errors]

1. Principle of the Change-Inflections deserted-Substitutes to be foundThe First Step already exemplified.-2. Stages of the Re-Construction — Early English-Middle English. EARLY ENGLISH.-3. Character of the Early English-Specimens.-4. Extract from The Owl and the Nightingale.-5. Extract from the Legend of Thomas Becket. MIDDLE ENGLISH.-6. Character of Middle English-The Main Features of the Modern Tongue established-Changes in Grammar-Changes in Vocabulary-Specimens-Chaucer.-7. Extracts from Prologue to the Canterbury Tales.-8. Extracts from the Knight's Tale.-9. Specimen of Chaucer's Prose.-10. Language in the Early Part of the Fifteenth Century-Extract from Lydgate's Churl and Bird.-11. Language in the Latter Part of the Fifteenth Century-Its Character-The Structure of the English Tongue substantially Completed-Extract from The Paston Letters. THE LANGUAGE OF SCOTLAND.-12. A Gothic Dialect in NorthEastern Counties-An Anglo-Saxon Dialect in Southern CountiesChanges as in England.-13. The Scottish Tongue in the Fourteenth Century-Extract from Barbour's Bruce.-14. Great Changes in the Fifteenth Century-Extract from Dunbar's Thistle and Rose.

1. ESCAPING from the perplexities of the Semi-Saxon, we have reached an era in which the language may reasonably be called English. The principles in respect of which our modern speech deviates from its Germanic root, now begin to operate actively.

Some of the changes which have already been observed by us, suggest and illustrate these principles: others may seem to lead us away from them. The primary law is exemplified by very many of the words we have analyzed. It is this.

The Anglo-Saxon, like the Latin, though not to the same extent, was rich in inflections: a given idea being denoted by a given word, many of the modifications of that idea could be expressed by changes in the form of the word, without aid from any other words. In the course of the revolution, most of the inflections disappeared. Consequently, in expressing the modifications of an idea denoted

by a given word, the new language has oftenest to join with that word other words denoting relations.

Such a change occurs when the inflections of a Latin verb have their place supplied by auxiliary verbs, and those of the noun by prepositions. It is exemplified when the genitive "Roma" is translated into the French "De Rome," and "Nos amavimus" into "Nous avons aimé."

The first step of it has been exemplified, again and again, in the Semi-Saxon passages which we have analyzed. If we were to try the experiment of blotting out, in our extracts, every word that has not had its inflection corrupted, we should find that very few words indeed were left. Sometimes a word has lost its inflected part, and, along with it, the idea expressed by the inflection. Many words which originally had diverse inflected terminations have all been made to end alike, the inflection thus coming to signify nothing. Perhaps, also, it may have occurred to some readers, that the verbs had suffered less alteration than the substantives and adjectives. If we have made this remark on the few words contained in our specimens, we had better not lose sight of it. It will immediately appear to be true universally.

2. We now enter on the period of Re-construction, which may be described as extending from the middle of the thirteenth century through the fourteenth and fifteenth. The language of those two hundred and fifty years may be called Old English.

It first appears in a state so equivocal, that we may be inclined to doubt whether it deserves to be called English at all. But when we leave it, at the close of this period, it has assumed a shape really different in no essential feature from the English of modern times. The critic to whom we owe our dissection of Layamon's Semi-Saxon has proposed, for the sake of convenience, to arrange this new development of the tongue in two successive stages. The first of these, reaching for a century from his approximate date of 1230, he calls Early English. He gives the name of Middle English to the speech of the period between 1330 and 1500.

It is not possible to fix on any point of time, at which the distinction between the two stages is clear on both sides. Nor, though we disregard dates, is the line between the two marked very deeply, at all its points, by internal characteristics. Yet there are evident steps of progress, which may aptly be denoted by the use of the two descriptive terms.

EARLY ENGLISH.

3. As our usher into the region of the Early English, we may

« ElőzőTovább »