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 A History of the English Language Fifth Edition Baugh and Cable’s A History of the English Language has long been considered the standard work in the field. A History of the English Language is a comprehensive exploration of the linguistic and cultu...

 A History of the English Language Fifth Edition Baugh and Cable’s A History of the English Language has long been considered the standard work in the field. A History of the English Language is a comprehensive exploration of the linguistic and cultural development of English, from the Middle Ages to the present day. The book provides students with a balanced and up-to-date overview of the history of the language. The fifth edition has been revised and updated to keep students up to date with recent developments in the field. Revisions include: a revised first chapter, ‘English present and future’ a new section on gender issues and linguistic change updated material on African-American Vernacular English A student supplement for this book is available, entitled Companion to A History of the English Language. Albert C.Baugh was Schelling Memorial Professor at the University of Pennsylvania. Thomas Cable is Jane and Roland Blumberg Centennial Professor of English at the University of Texas at Austin. THE COUNTIES OF ENGLAND A History of the English Language Fifth Edition Albert C.Baugh and Thomas Cable  First published 1951 by Routledge & Kegan Paul Second edition 1959 Third edition 1978 Fourth edition published 1993 by Routledge Authorized British edition from the English language edition, entitled A History of the English Language, Fifth Edition by Albert C.Baugh and Thomas Cable, published by Pearson Education, Inc., publishing as Prentice Hall, Inc. Copyright © 2002 Routledge 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005. “To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to http://www.ebookstore.tandf.co.uk/.” All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission from Routledge. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 0-203-99463-9 Master e-book ISBN ISBN 0-415-28098-2 (hbk) ISBN 0-415-28099-0 (pbk)  Contents Preface viii 1 English Present and Future 1 2 The Indo-European Family of Languages 16 3 Old English 38 4 Foreign Influences on Old English 67 5 The Norman Conquest and the Subjection of English, 1066–1200 98 6 The Reestablishment of English, 1200–1500 116 7 Middle English 146 8 The Renaissance, 1500–1650 187 9 The Appeal to Authority, 1650–1800 238 10 The Nineteenth Century and After 279 11 The English Language in America 331 Appendix A Specimens of the Middle English Dialects 387 Appendix B English Spelling 399 Index 406  MAPS The Counties of England ii The Home of the English 42 The Dialects of Old English 48 The Dialects of Middle English 178 The Dialects of American English 356 ILLUSTRATIONS William Bullokar’s Booke At Large (1580) 196 The Editors of the New (Oxford) English Dictionary 321 Extract from the Oxford English Dictionary 323 The American Spelling Book of Noah Webster 353  Preface Before the present author ever became associated with Albert C.Baugh’s A History of the English Language, several generations of teachers and students had appreciated its enduring qualities. Not least of these, and often remarked upon, was the full attention paid to the historical and cultural setting of the development of the language. This original emphasis has made it possible for subsequent editions to include discussions of current issues and varieties of English in ways that could not have been specifically foreseen in 1935. The fifth edition continues this updating by expanding the sections on African American Varnacular English and Hispanic American English, adding a section on Gender Issues and Linguistic Change, and incorporating small changes throughout. Once again global events have affected global English and necessitated revisions, especially in the first and last chapters. Baugh’s original text was supported by footnotes and bibliographies that not only acknowledged the sources of his narrative but also pointed directions for further study and research. In each successive edition new references have been added. To avoid documentary growth, sprawl, and incoherence by simple accretion, the present edition eliminates a number of references that have clearly been susperseded. At the same time it keeps many that might not usually be consulted by students in order to give a sense of the foundations and progress of the study of the subject. In the first edition Baugh stated his aim as follows: The present book, intended primarily for college students, aims to present the historical development of English in such a way as to preserve a proper balance between what may be called internal history—sounds and inflections—and external history—the political, social, and intellectual forces that have determined the course of that development at different periods. The writer is convinced that the soundest basis for an undersanding of present-day English and for an enlightened attitude towards questions affecting the language today is a knowledge of the path which it has pursued in becoming what it is. For this reason equal attention has been paid to its earlier and its later stages. As in previous editions, the original plan and purpose have not been altered. The various developments of linguistic inquiry and theory during the half century after the History’s original publication have made parts of its exposition seem to some readers overly traditional. However, a history presented through the lens of a single theory is narrow when the theory is current, and dated when the theory is superseded. Numerous other histories of English have made intelligent use of a particular theory of phonemics, or of a specific version of syntactic deep and surface structure, or of variable rules, or of other ideas that have come and gone. There is nothing hostile to an overall linguistic theory or to new discoveries in Baugh’s original work, but its format allows the easy adjustment of separable parts. It is a pity that a new preface by convention loses the expression of thanks to colleagues whose suggestions made the previous edition a better book. The fifth edition has especially benefited from astute comments by Traugott Lawler and William Kretzschmar. The author as ever is sustained by the cartoonist perspective of Carole Cable, who he trusts will find nothing in the present effort to serve as grist for her gentle satiric mill. T.C. A History of the English Language  PHONETIC SYMBOLS [a] in father [a] in French la in not in England (a sound between [a] and ) [æ] in mat [ε] in met [e] in mate [I] in sit [i] in meat in law [o] in note [U] in book [u] in boot [Λ] in but [ə] in about [y] in German für [eI] in play [oU] in so [aI] in line [aU] in house in boy [ŋ] in sing [θ] in thin [ð] in then [š] in shoe [ž] in azure [j] in you [ ] enclose phonetic symbols and transcriptions. : after a symbol indicates that the sound is long. ′ before a syllable indicates primary stress: [ə′bΛv] above. In other than phonetic transcriptions ę and indicate open vowels, ẹ and ọ indicate close vowels. * denotes a hypothetical form. > denotes ‘develops into’; string; ME weng >wing). The spelling Ingland occurs in Middle English, and the vowel is accurately represented in the Spanish Inglaterra and Italian Inghilterra. 7 The term Anglo-Saxon is occasionally found in Old English times and is often employed today to designate the earliest period of English. It went out of use after the Norman Conquest until revived in the sixteenth century by the antiquarian William Camden. Although amply justified by usage, it is logically less defensible than the term Old English, which has the advantage of suggesting the unbroken continuity of English throughout its existence, but it is too convenient a synonym to be wholly discarded.  A history of the english language 46 a distinctive type of conjugation of the verb—the so-called weak or regular verbs such as fill, filled, filled, which form their past tense and past participle by adding -ed or some analogous sound to the stem of the present. And it shows the adoption of a strong stress accent on the first or the root syllable of most words,8 a feature of great importance in all the Germanic languages because it is chiefly responsible for the progressive decay of inflections in these languages. In the second place it means that English belongs with German and certain other languages because of features it has in common with them and that enable us to distinguish a West Germanic group as contrasted with the Scandinavian languages (North Germanic) and Gothic (East Germanic). These features have to do mostly with certain phonetic changes, especially the gemination or doubling of consonants under special conditions, matters that we do not need to enter upon here. And it means, finally, that English, along with the other languages of northern Germany and the Low Countries, did not participate in the further modification of certain consonants, known as the Second or High German Sound-Shift.9 In other words it belongs with the dialects of the lowlands in the West Germanic area. 38. The Periods in the History of English. The evolution of English in the 1,500 years of its existence in England has been an unbroken one. Within this development, however, it is possible to recognize three main periods. Like all divisions in history, the periods of the English language are matters of convenience and the dividing lines between them purely arbitrary. But within each of the periods it is possible to recognize certain broad characteristics and certain special developments that take place. The period from 450 to 1150 is known as Old English. It is sometimes described as the period of full inflections, because during most of this period the endings of the noun, the adjective, and the verb are preserved more or less unimpaired. From 1150 to 1500 the language is known as Middle English.10 During this period the inflections, which had begun to break down toward the end of the Old English period, become greatly reduced, and it is consequently known as the period of leveled inflections. The language since 1500 is called Modern English. By the time we reach this stage in the development a large part of the original inflectional system has disappeared entirely, and we therefore speak of it as the period of lost inflections. The progressive decay of inflections is only one of the developments that mark the evolution of English in its various stages. We shall discuss in their proper place the other features that are characteristic of Old English, Middle English, and Modern English. 8 This is obscured somewhat in Modern English by the large number of words borrowed from Latin. 9 The effect of this shifting may be seen by comparing the English and the German words in the following pairs: English open—German offen; English water—German wasser; English pound— German pfund; English tongue—German zunge. 10 Some of the developments which distinguish Middle English begin as early as the tenth century, but a consideration of the matter as a whole justifies the date 1150 as the general line of demarcation.  Old english 47 39. The Dialects of Old English. Old English was not an entirely uniform language. Not only are there differences between the language of theearliest written records (about A.D. 700) and that of the later literary texts, but the language differed somewhat from one locality to another. We can distinguish four dialects in Old English times: Northumbrian, Mercian, West Saxon, and Kentish. Of these Northumbrian and Mercian are found in the region north of the Thames settled by the Angles. They possess certain features in common and are sometimes known collectively as Anglian. But Northum-brian, spoken north of the Humber, and Mercian, between the Humber and the Thames, each possess certain distinctive features as well. Unfortunately we know less about them than we should like since they are preserved mainly in charters, runic inscriptions, a few brief fragments of verse, and some interlinear translations of portions of the Bible. Kentish is known from still scantier remains and is the dialect of the Jutes in the southeast. The only dialect in which there is an extensive collection of texts is West Saxon, which was the dialect of the West Saxon kingdom in the southwest. Nearly all of Old English literature is preserved in manuscripts transcribed in this region. The dialects probably reflect differences already present in the continental homes of the invaders. There is evidence, however, that some features developed in England after the settlement. With the ascendancy of the West Saxon kingdom, the West Saxon dialect attained something of the position of a literary standard, and both for this reason and because of the abundance of the materials it is made the basis of the study of Old English. Such a start as it had made toward becoming the standard speech of England was cut short by the Norman Conquest, which, as we shall see, reduced all dialects to a common level of unimportance. And when in the late Middle English period a standard English once more began to arise, it was on the basis of a different dialect, that of the East Midlands. 40. Some Characteristics of Old English. The English language has undergone such change in the course of time that one cannot read Old English without special study. In fact a page of Old English is likely at first to present a look of greater strangeness than a page of French or Italian because of the employment of certain characters that no longer form a part of our alphabet. In general the differences that one notices between Old and Modern English concern spelling and pronunciation, the lexicon, and the grammar. The pronunciation of Old English words commonly differs somewhat from that of their modern equivalents. The long vowels in particular have undergone considerable modification. Thus the Old English word stān is the same word as Modern English stone, but the vowel is different. A similar correspondence is apparent in hālig—holy, gān—go, bān—bone, rāp—rope, hlāf—  A history of the english language 48 THE DIALECTS OF OLD ENGLISH Note. Only the major dialect areas are indicated. That the Saxon settlements north of the Thames (see § 34) had their own dialect features is apparent in Middle English. loaf, bāt—boat. Other vowels have likewise undergone changes in fōt (foot), cēne (keen), metan (mete), (fire), riht (right), hū (how), and hlūd (loud), but the identity of these words with their modern descendants is still readily apparent. Words like hēafod (head),  Old english 49 fæger (fair), or sāwol (soul) show forms that have been contracted in later English. All of these cases represent genuine differences of pronunciation. However, some of the first look of strangeness that Old English has to the modern reader is due simply to differences of spelling. Old English made use of two characters to represent the sound of th: þ and ð, thorn and eth, respectively, as in the word wiþ (with) or ðā (then), which we no longer employ. It also expressed the sound of a in hat by a digraph œ (ash), and since the sound is of very frequent occurrence, the character contributes not a little to the unfamiliar appearance of the page. Likewise Old English represented the sound of sh by sc, as in scēap (sheep) or scēotan (shoot), and the sound of k by c, as in cynn (kin) or nacod (naked); c was also used for the affricate now spelled ch, as in (speech). Consequently a number of words that were in all probability pronounced by King Alfred almost as they are by us present a strange appearance in the written or printed text. Such words as ecg (edge), scip (ship), bæc (back), benc (bench), þorn (thorn), pæt (that) are examples. It should be noted that the differences of spelling and pronunciation that figure so prominently in one’s first impression of Old English are really not very fundamental. Those of spelling are often apparent rather than real, as they represent no difference in the spoken language, and those of pronunciation obey certain laws as a result of which we soon learn to recognize the Old and Modern English equivalents. A second feature of Old English that would quickly become apparent to a modern reader is the rarity of those words derived from Latin and the absence of those from French which form so large a part of our present vocabulary. Such words make up more than half of the words now in common use. They are so essential to the expression of our ideas, seem so familiar and natural to us, that we miss them in the earlier stage of the language. The vocabulary of Old English is almost purely Germanic. A large part of this vocabulary, moreover, has disappeared from the language. When the Norman Conquest brought French into England as the language of the higher classes, much of the Old English vocabulary appropriate to literature and learning died out and was replaced later by words borrowed from French and Latin. An examination of the words in an Old English dictionary shows that about 85 percent of them are no longer in use. Those that survive, to be sure, are basic elements of our vocabulary and by the frequency with which they recur make up a large part of any English sentence. Apart from pronouns, prepositions, conjunctions, auxiliary verbs, and the like, they express fundamental concepts like mann (man), wīf (wife, woman), cild (child), hūs (house), weall (wall), mete (meat, food), gœrs (grass), lēaf (leaf), fugol (fowl, bird), gōd (good), hēah (high), strang (strong), etan (eat), drincan (drink), (sleep), libban (live), feohtan (fight). But the fact remains that a considerable part of the vocabulary of Old English is unfamiliar to the modern reader. The third and most fundamental feature that distinguishes Old English from the language of today is its grammar.11 Inflectional languages fall into two classes: synthetic 11 The principal Old English grammars, in the order of their publication, are F.A.March, A Comparative Grammar of the Anglo-Saxon Language (New York, 1870), now only of historical interest; P.J.Cosijn, Altwestsächsische Grammatik (Haag, 1883–1886); E.Sievers, An Old English Grammar, trans. A.S.Cook (3rd ed., Boston, 1903); K.D.Bülbring, Altenglisches Elementarbuch (Heidelberg, 1902); Joseph and Elizabeth M.Wright, Old English Grammar (2nd ed., Oxford, 1914), and the same authors’ An Elementary Old English Grammar (Oxford, 1923); Karl Brunner,  A history of the english language 50 and analytic. A synthetic language is one that indicates the relation of words in a sentence largely by means of inflections. In the case of the Indo-European languages these most commonly take the form of endings on the noun and pronoun, the adjective and the verb. Thus in Latin the nominative murus (wall) is distinguished from the genitive muri (of the wall), dative muro (to the wall), accusative murum, etc. A single verb form like laudaverunt (they have praised) conveys the idea of person, number, and tense along with the meaning of the root, a conception that we require three words for in English. The Latin sentence Nero interfecit Agrippinam means “Nero killed Agrippina.” It would mean the same thing if the words were arranged in any other order, such as Agrippinam interfecit Nero, because Nero is the form of the nominative case and the ending -am of Agrippinam marks the noun as accusative no matter where it stands. In Modern English, however, the subject and the object do not have distinctive forms, nor do we have, except in the possessive case and in pronouns, inflectional endings to indicate the other relations marked by case endings in Latin. Instead, we make use of a fixed order of words. It makes a great deal of difference in English whether we say Nero killed Agrippina or Agrippina killed Nero. Languages that make extensive use of prepositions and auxiliary verbs and depend upon word order to show other relationships are known as analytic languages. Modern English is an analytic, Old English a synthetic language. In its grammar Old English resembles modern German. Theoretically the noun and adjective are inflected for four cases in the singular and four in the plural, although the forms are not always distinctive, and in addition the adjective has separate forms for each of the three genders. The inflection of the verb is less elaborate than that of the Latin verb, but there are distinctive endings for the different persons, numbers, tenses, and moods. We shall illustrate the nature of the Old English inflections in the following paragraphs. 41. The Noun. The inflection of the Old English noun indicates distinctions of number (singular and plural) and case. The case system is somewhat simpler than that of Latin and some of the other Indo-European languages. There is no ablative, and generally no locative or instrumental case, these having been merged with the dative. In the same way the vocative of direct address is generally identical with the nominative form. Thus the Old English noun has only four cases. The endings of these cases vary with different nouns, but they fall into certain broad categories or declensions. There is a vowel declension and a consonant declension, also called the strong and weak declensions, according to whether the stem ended in Germanic in a vowel or a consonant, and within each of these types there are certain subdivisions. The stems of nouns belonging to the vowel declension ended in one of four vowels in Germanic (although these have disappeared in Old English): a, ō, i, or u, and the inflection varies accordingly. It is impossible here to Altenglische Grammatik (3rd ed., Halle, Germany, 1965), based on Sievers; Randolph Quirk and C.L.Wrenn, An Old English Grammar (2nd ed., London, 1973); and Alistair Campbell, Old English Grammar (Oxford, 1959). The first volume, on phonology, has appeared in Richard M.Hogg’s A Grammar of Old English (Oxford, 1992). Two classroom texts with grammars and readings are F.G.Cassidy and Richard N.Ringler, Bright’s Old English Grammar & Reader (3rd ed., New York, 1971), and Bruce Mitchell and Fred C.Robinson, A Guide to Old English (5th ed., Oxford, 1992).  Old english 51 present the inflections of the Old English noun in detail. Their nature may be gathered from two examples of the strong declension and one of the weak: stān (stone), a masculine a-stem; giefu (gift), a feminine ō-and hunta (hunter), a masculine consonant- stem. Forms are given for the four cases, nominative, genitive, dative, and accusative: Singular N. stān gief-u hunt-a G. stān-es gief-e hunt-an D. stān-e gief-e hunt-an A. stān gief-e hunt-an Plural N. stān-as gief-a hunt-an G. stān-a gief-a hunt-ena D. stān-um gief-um hunt-um A. stān-as gief-a hunt-an It is apparent from these examples that the inflection of the noun was much more elaborate in Old English than it is today. Even these few paradigms illustrate clearly the marked synthetic character of English in its earliest stage. 42. Grammatical Gender. As in Indo-European languages generally, the gender of Old English nouns is not dependent upon considerations of sex. Although nouns designating males are often masculine and those indicating females feminine, those indicating neuter objects are not necessarily neuter. Stān (stone) is masculine, mōna (moon) is masculine, but sunne (sun) is feminine, as in German. In French the corresponding words have just the opposite genders: pierre (stone) and lune (moon) are feminine while soleil (sun) is masculine. Often the gender of Old English nouns is quite illogical. Words like mœgden (girl), wīf (wife), bearn (child, son), and cild (child), which we should expect to be feminine or masculine, are in fact neuter, while wīfmann (woman) is masculine because the second element of the compound is masculine. The simplicity of Modern English gender has already been pointed out (§ 11) as one of the chief assets of the language. How so desirable a change was brought about will be shown later. 43. The Adjective. An important feature of the Germanic languages is the development of a twofold declension of the adjective: one, the strong declension, used with nouns when not 12 When the stem is short the adjective ends in -u in the nominative singular of the feminine and the nominative and accusative plural of the neuter.  A history of the english language 52 accompanied by a definite article or similar word (such as a demonstrative or possessive pronoun), the other, the weak declension, used when the noun is preceded by such a word. Thus we have in Old English gōd mann (good man) but sē gōda mann (the good man). The forms are those of the nominative singular masculine in the strong and weak declensions respectively, as illustrated below. STRONG DECLESION WEAK DECLENSION Masc. Fem. Neut. Masc. Fem. Neut. 12 Singular N. gōd gōd gōd gōd-a gōd-e gōd-e G. gōd-es gōd-re gōd-es gōd-an gōd-an gōd-an D. gōd-um gōd-re gōd-um gōd-an gōd-an gōd-an A. gōd-ne gōd-e gōd gōd-an gōd-an gōd-e I. gōd-e gōd-e Plural N. gōd-e gōd-a gōd gōd-an G. gōd-ra gōd-ra gōd-ra gōd-ena or gōd-ra D. gōd-um gōd-um gōd-um gōd-um A. gōd-e gōd-a gōd gōd-an This elaboration of inflection in the Old English adjective contrasts in the most striking way with the complete absence of inflection from the adjective in Modern English. Such complexity is quite unnecessary, as the English language demonstrates every day by getting along without it. Its elimination has resulted in a second great advantage that English possesses over some other languages. 44. The Definite Article. Like German, its sister language of today, Old English possessed a fully inflected definite article. How complete the declension of this word was can be seen from the following forms: SINGULAR PLURAL Masc. Fem. Neut. All Genders N. sē sēo ðæt ðā G. ðæs ðæs ðāra D. A. ðone ðā ðæ ðā I.  Old english 53 While the ordinary meaning of sē, sēo, ðœt is ‘the’, the word is really a demonstrative pronoun and survives in the Modern English demonstrative that. Its pronominal character appears also in its not infrequent use as a relative pronoun (=who, which, that) and as a personal pronoun (=he, she, it). The regular personal pronoun, however, is shown in the next paragraph. 45. The Personal Pronoun. From the frequency of its use and the necessity for specific reference when used, the personal pronoun in all languages is likely to preserve a fairly complete system of inflections. Old English shows this tendency not only in having distinctive forms for practically all genders, persons, and cases but also in preserving in addition to the ordinary two numbers, singular and plural, a set of forms for two people or two things— the dual number. Indo-European had separate forms for the dual number in the verb as well, and these appear in Greek and to a certain extent in Gothic. They are not found, however, in Old English, and the distinction between the dual and the plural was disappearing even from the pronoun in Old English. The dual forms are shown, however, in the following table of the Old English personal pronoun: Singular N. ic ðū hē (he) hēo (she) hit (it) G. mīn ðīn his hiere his D. mē ðē him hiere him A. mē (mec) ðē (ðec) hine hīe hit Dual N. wit (we two) git (ye two) G. uncer incer D. unc inc A. unc inc Plural N. wē gē hīe G. ūser (ūre) ēower hiera D. ūs ēow him A. ūs (ūsic) ēow (ēowic) hīe 46. The Verb. The inflection of the verb in the Germanic languages is much simpler than it was in Indo- European times. A comparison of the Old English verb with the verbal inflection of Greek or Latin will show how much has been lost. Old English distinguished only two simple tenses by inflection, a present and a past, and, except for one word, it had no inflectional forms for the passive as in Latin or Greek. It recognized the indicative, subjunctive, and imperative moods and had the usual two numbers and three persons.  A history of the english language 54 A peculiar feature of the Germanic languages was the division of the verb into two great classes, the weak and the strong, often known in Modern English as regular and irregular verbs. These terms, which are so commonly employed in modern grammars, are rather unfortunate because they suggest an irregularity in the strong verbs that is more apparent than real. The strong verbs, like sing, sang, sung, which represent the basic Indo-European type, are so called because they have the power of indicating change of tense by a modification of their root vowel. In the weak verbs, such as walk, walked, walked, this change is effected by the addition of a “dental,” sometimes of an extra syllable. The apparent irregularity of the strong verbs is due to the fact that verbs of this type are much less numerous than weak verbs. In Old English, if we exclude compounds, there were only a few over 300 of them, and even this small number falls into several classes. Within these classes, however, a perfectly regular sequence can be observed in the vowel changes of the root. Nowadays these verbs, generally speaking, have different vowels in the present tense, the past tense, and the past participle. In some verbs the vowels of the past tense and past participle are identical, as in break, broke, broken, and in some all three forms have become alike in modern times (bid, bid, bid). In Old English the vowel of the past tense often differs in the singular and the plural; or, to be more accurate, the first and third person singular have one vowel while the second person singular and all persons of the plural have another. In the principal parts of Old English strong verbs, therefore, we have four forms: the infmitive, the preterite singular (first and third person), the preterite plural, and the past participle. In Old English the strong verbs can be grouped in seven general classes. While there are variations within each class, they may be illustrated by the following seven verbs: I. drīfan (drive) drāf drifon (ge) drifen 13 II. cēosan (choose) cēas curon coren III. helpan (help) healp hulpon holpen IV. beran (bear) bær boren V. sprecan (speak) spræc sprecen VI. faran (fare, go) fōr fōron faren VII. feallan (fall) fēoll fēollon feallen14 13 The change of s to r is due to the fact that the accent was originally on the final syllable in the preterite plural and the past participle. It is known as Grammatical Change or Verner’s Law for the scholar who first explained it (cf. § 16). In Modern English the s has been restored in the past participle (chosen) by analogy with the other forms. The initial sound has been leveled in the same way. 14 The personal endings may be illustrated by the conjugation of the first verb in the above list, drīfan:  Old english 55 The origin of the dental suffixes by which weak verbs form their past tense and past participle is strongly debated. It was formerly customary to explain these as part of the verb do, as though I worked was originally I work—did (i.e., I did work). More recently an attempt has been made to trace these forms to a type of verb that formed its stem by adding -to- to the root. The origin of so important a feature of the Germanic languages as the weak conjugation is naturally a question to which we should like very much to find the answer. Fortunately it is not of prime importance to our present purpose of describing the structure of Old English. Here it is sufficient to note that a large and important group of verbs in Old English form their past tense by adding -ede, -ode, or -de to the present stem, and their past participles by adding -ed, -od, or -d. Thus fremman (to perform) has a preterite fremede and a past participle gefremed; lufian (to love) has lufode and gelufod; libban (to live) has lifde and gelifd. The personal endings except in the preterite singular are similar to those of the strong verbs and need not be repeated. It is to be noted, however, that the weak conjugation has come to be the dominant one in our language. Many strong verbs have passed over to this conjugation, and practically all new verbs added to our language are inflected in accordance with it. INDICATIVE SUBJUNCTIVE Present Present ic drīf-e ic drīf-e ðū drīf-st (-est) ðū drīf-e hē drīf-ð(-eð) hē drīf-e wē drīf-að wē drīf-en gē drīf-að gē drīf-en hīe drīf-að hīe drīf-en Past Past ic drāf ic drif-e ðū drif-e ðū drif-e hē drāf hē drif-e wē drif-on wē drīf-en gē drif-on gē drif-en hīe drif-on hīe drif-en In addition to these forms the imperative was drīf (sing.) and drīfað (plur.), the present participle drīfende, and the gerund (i.e., the infinitive used as a verbal noun) tō drīfenne. 47. The Language Illustrated. We have spoken of the inflections of Old English in some detail primarily with the object of making more concrete what is meant when we call the language in this stage synthetic.  A history of the english language 56 In the later chapters of this book we shall have occasion to trace the process by which English lost a great part of this inflectional system and became an analytic language, so that the paradigms which we have given here will also prove useful as a point of departure for that discussion. The use of these inflections as well as the other characteristics of the language so far pointed out may be seen in the following specimens. The first is the Lord’s Prayer, the clauses of which can easily be followed through the modern form, which is familiar to us from the King James version of the Bible. Fæder ūre, þū þe eart on heofonum, sī þīn nama gehālgod. Tōbecume þīn rīce. Gewurþe ðīn willa on eorðan swā swā on heofonum. Ūrne gedæghwāmlīcan hlāf syle ūs tō dæg. And forgyf ūs ūre gyltas, swā swā wē forgyfað ūrum gyltendum. And ne þū ūs on costnunge, ac, ūs of yfele. Sōþlīce. The second specimen is from the Old English translation of Bede’s Ecclesiastical History and tells the story of the coming of the missionaries to England under St. Augustine in 597: Old english 57  A history of the english language 58 48. The Resourcefulness of the Old English Vocabulary. To one unfamiliar with Old English it might seem that a language which lacked the large number of words borrowed from Latin and French that now form so important a part of our vocabulary would be somewhat limited in resources. One might think that Old English, while possessing adequate means of expression for the affairs of simple everyday life, would be unable to make the fine distinctions that a literary language is called upon to express. In other words, an Anglo-Saxon might seem like someone today who is learning to speak a foreign language and who can manage in a limited way to convey the meaning without having a sufficient command of the vocabulary to express those subtler shades of thought and feeling, the nuances of meaning, that one is able to suggest in one’s native language. This, however, is not so. When our means are limited we often develop unusual resourcefulness in utilizing those means to the full. Such resourcefulness is characteristic of Old English. The language in this stage shows great flexibility, a capacity for bending old words to new uses. By means of prefixes and suffixes a single root is made to yield a variety of derivatives, and the range of these is greatly extended by the ease with which compounds are formed. The method can be made clear by an illustration. The word mōd, which is our word mood (a mental state), meant in Old English ‘heart’, ‘mind’, ‘spirit’, and hence ‘boldness’ or ‘courage’, sometimes ‘pride’ or ‘haughtiness’. From it, by the addition of a common adjective ending, was formed the adjective mōdig with a similar range of meanings (spirited, bold, high-minded, arrogant, stiff-necked), and by means of further endings the adjective mōdiglic ‘magnanimous’, the adverb mōdiglīce ‘boldly’, 15 The original is here somewhat normalized.  Old english 59 ‘proudly’, and the noun mōdignes ‘magnanimity’, ‘pride’. Another ending converted mōdig into a verb mōdigian, meaning ‘to bear oneself proudly or exultantly’, or sometimes, ‘to be indignant’, ‘to rage’. Other forms conveyed meanings whose relation to the root is easily perceived: gemōdod ‘disposed’, ‘minded’, mōdfull ‘haughty’, mōdlēas ‘spiritless’. By combining the root with other words meaning ‘mind’ or ‘thought’ the idea of the word is intensified, and we get mōdsefa, mōdgeþanc, mōdgeþoht, mōdgehygd, mōdgemynd, mōdhord (hord=treasure), all meaning ‘mind’, ‘thought’, ‘understanding’. Some sharpening of the concept is obtained in mōdcræft ‘intelligence’, and mōdcræftig ‘intelligent’. But the root lent itself naturally to combination with other words to indicate various mental states, such as glœdmōdnes ‘kindness’, mōdlufu ‘affection’ (lufu=love), unmōd ‘despondency’, mōdcaru ‘sorrow’ (caru=care), mōdlēast ‘want of courage’, mādmōd ‘folly’, ofermōd and ofermōdigung ‘pride’, ofermōdig ‘proud’, hēahmōd ‘proud’, ‘noble’, mōdhete ‘hate’ (hete=hate). It will be seen that Old English did not lack synonyms for some of the ideas in this list. By a similar process of combination a number of adjectives were formed: micelmōd ‘magnanimous’, swīþmōd ‘great of soul’ (swīþ=strong), stīþmōd ‘resolute’, ‘obstinate’ (stīþ=stiff, strong), gūþmōd ‘warlike’ (gūþ=war, battle), torhtmōd ‘glorious’ (torht=bright), mōdlēof ‘beloved’ (lēof−dear). The examples given are sufficient to illustrate the point, but they far from tell the whole story. From the same root more than a hundred words were formed. If we had space to list them, they would clearly show the remarkable capacity of Old English for derivation and word formation, and what variety and flexibility of expression it possessed. It was more resourceful in utilizing its native material than Modern English, which has come to rely to a large extent on its facility in borrowing and assimilating elements from other languages. 49. Self-explaining Compounds. In the list of words given in the preceding paragraph are a considerable number that we call self-explaining compounds. These are compounds of two or more native words whose meaning in combination is either self-evident or has been rendered clear by association and usage. In Modern English greenhouse, railway, sewing machine, one-way street, and coffee-table book are examples of such words. Words of this character are found in most languages, but the type is particularly prevalent in Old English, as it is in modern German. Where in English today we often have a borrowed word or a word made up of elements derived from Latin and Greek, German still prefers self-explaining compounds. Thus, for hydrogen German says Wasserstoff (water-stuff); for telephone Fernsprecher (far-speaker); and for fire insurance company Feur|versicherungs|gesellschaft. So in Old English many words are formed on this pattern. Thus we have lēohtfæt ‘lamp’ (lēoht light+fœt vessel), medu-heall ‘mead-hall’, dœgred ‘dawn’ (day-red), ealohūs ‘alehouse’, ealoscop ‘minstrel’, ēarhring ‘earring’, eorþcrœft ‘geometry, fiscdēag ‘purple’ (lit. fish-dye), fōtādl ‘gout’ (foot-disease), gimmwyrhta ‘jeweler’ (gem-worker), fiellesēocnes ‘epilepsy’ (falling-sickness; cf. Shakespeare’s use of this expression in Julius Caesar), frumweorc ‘creation’ (fruma beginning+work), and many more. The capacity of English nowadays to make similar  A history of the english language 60 words, though a little less frequently employed than formerly, is an inheritance of the Old English tradition, when the method was well-nigh universal. As a result of this capacity Old English seems never to have been at a loss for a word to express the abstractions of science, theology, and metaphysics, even those it came to know through contact with the church and Latin culture. 50. Prefixes and Suffixes. As previously mentioned, a part of the flexibility of the Old English vocabulary comes from the generous use made of prefixes and suffixes to form new words from old words or to modify or extend the root idea. In this respect it also resembles modern German. Among the words mentioned in the preceding paragraphs there are several that are formed with the suffixes -ig, -full, -lēas, -līce, -nes, and -ung. Others frequently employed include the adjective suffixes -sum (wynsum) and -wīs (rihtwīs), the noun suffixes -dōm (cyningdōm, eorldōm), -end, and -ere denoting the agent, -hād (cildhād), -ing in patronymics, -ung (dagung dawn), -scipe (frēondscipe), and many more. In like manner the use of prefixes was a fertile resource in word building. It is particularly a feature in the formation of verbs. There are about a dozen prefixes that occur with great frequency, such as ā-, be-, for-, fore-, ge-, mis-, of-, ofer-, on-, tō-, un-, under-, and wiþ-. Thus, with the help of these, Old English could make out of a simple verb like settan (to set) new verbs like āsettan ‘place’, besettan ‘appoint’, forsettan ‘obstruct’ foresettan ‘place before’, gesettan ‘people’, ‘garrison’, ofsettan ‘afflict’, onsettan ‘oppress’, tōsettan ‘dispose’, unsettan ‘put down’, and wiþsettan ‘resist’. The prefix wiþenters into more than fifty Old English verbs, where it has the force of against or away. Such, for example, are wiþcēosan ‘reject’ (cēosan=choose), wiþcweþan ‘deny’ (cweþan=say), wiþdrīfan ‘repel’, wiþsprecan ‘contradict’, and wiþstandan. Of these fifty verbs withstand is the only one still in use, although in Middle English two new verbs, withdraw and withhold, were formed on the same model. The prefix ofer- occurs in more than a hundred Old English verbs. By such means the resources of the English verb were increased almost tenfold, and enough such verbs survive to give us a realization of their employment in the Old English vocabulary. In general one is surprised at the apparent ease with which Old English expressed difficult ideas adequately and often with variety. ‘Companionship’ is literally rendered by gefērascipe; ‘hospitality’ by giestlīþnes (giest stranger, liþe gracious); gītsung ‘covetousness’ (gītsian=to be greedy). Godcundlic ‘divine’, indryhten ‘aristocratic’ (dryhten=prince), giefolnes ‘liberality’ (giefu=gift), gaderscipe ‘matrimony’ (gadrian=to gather), ‘medicine’ ( =physician) illustrate, so to speak, the method of approach. Often several words to express the same idea result. An astronomer or astrologer may be a tunglere (tungol=star), tungolcræftiga, tungolwītega, a tīdymbwlātend (tīd=time, ymb=about, wlātian=to gaze), or a tīdscēawere (scēawian= see, scrutinize). In poetry the vocabulary attains a remarkable flexibility through the wealth of synonyms for words like war, warrior, shield, sword, battle, sea, ship—sometimes as many as thirty for one of these ideas—and through the bold use of metaphors. The king is the leader of hosts, the giver of rings, the protector of eorls, the victory-lord, the heroes’ treasure-keeper. A sword is the product of files, the play of swords a battle, the battle-seat  Old english 61 a saddle, the shield-bearer a warrior. Warriors in their woven war-shirts, carrying battle- brand or war-shaft, form the iron-clad throng. A boat is the sea-wood, the wave-courser, the broad-bosomed, the curved-stem, or the foamy-necked ship, and it travels over the whale-road, the sea-surge, the rolling of waves, or simply the water’s back. Synonyms never fail the Beowulf poet. Grendel is the grim spirit, the prowler on the wasteland, the lonely wanderer, the loathed one, the creature of evil, the fiend in Hell, the grim monster, the dark death-shadow, the worker of hate, the mad ravisher, the fell spoiler, and the incarnation of a dozen other attributes characteristic of his enmity toward humankind. No one can long remain in doubt about the rich and colorful character of the Old English vocabulary. 51. Old English Syntax. One of the most obvious features of syntactic style in any language is the degree to which grammatical and semantic relationships are expressed by subordinate clauses. A high proportion of long sentences with subordination, as in the prose of Edward Gibbon or Henry James or the poetry of John Milton, is known as hypotactic style, whereas shorter sentences and a higher proportion of principal clauses, as in the prose of Ernest Hemingway, is paratactic. Parataxis may also be interpreted as immature and childish, as in examples given by S.O.Andrew: Then I asked him; then he replied… They came to a place on the road; there stood a temple. There lived in the convent a certain monk; he was called Martin: he said…16 16 S.O.Andrew, Syntax and Style in Old English (Cambridge, UK, 1940), p. 87. There are clear differences in our modern perceptions of Old English written in this paratactic style and Old English written with many embedded clauses. The problem is in determining whether a particular clause is independent or subordinate, because the words that do the subordinating are often ambiguous. Thus, Old English þā the beginning of a clause can be either an adverb translated ‘then’ and introducing an independent clause, or a subordinating conjunction translated ‘when’ and introducing a dependent clause. Similarly, can be translated as ‘there’ or ‘where’, þonne as ‘then’ or ‘when’, swā as ‘so’ or ‘as’, as ‘formerly’ or ‘ere’, siððan as ‘afterward’ or ‘since’, nū as ‘now’ or ‘now that’, þēah as ‘nevertheless’ or ‘though’, and forðām as ‘therefore’ or ‘because’. In each pair the first word is an adverb, and the style that results from choosing it is a choppier style with shorter sentences, whereas the choice of the second word, a conjunction, results in longer sentences with more embedded clauses. Current research in Old English syntax aims to understand the use of these ambiguous subordinators and adverbs. The conclusions that emerge will affect our modern perception of the  A history of the english language 62 sophistication of Old English writing in verse and prose. Earlier editors tended to read a high degree of parataxis in Old English and to punctuate their editions accordingly. This reading fitted in with the idea that English subordinating conjunctions had their origins in adverbs. However, one can accept the adverbial origin of conjunctions and still argue, as Andrew did in 1940, that Old English style had attained a high degree of subordination (although Andrew’s conclusions now seem extreme). Furthermore, it is important to bear in mind that parataxis and hypotaxis are stylistic options and not syntactic necessities, because Old English clearly had the means for a highly subordinated style. Syntactic investigators now find generally more hypotaxis than earlier editors did, but the efforts are directed toward discovering specific structural cues before making generalizations. The most obvious cues are in the word order of the clause as a whole, which includes familiar historical patterns of subject and verb such as S…V, VS, and SV. These patterns have been intensively analyzed for the principles operating in the placement of the finite verb, which typically occurs in second position in main clauses, and in final position in subordinate clauses.17 In addition, there are more subtle cues in the patterning of auxiliaries, contractions, and other structures.18 Finally, as Bruce 17 See Robert P.Stockwell and Donka Minkova, “Subordination and Word Order Change in the History of English,” in Historical English Syntax, ed. Dieter Kastovksy (Berlin, 1991), pp. 367– 409. See also two essays in Parameters of Morphosyntactic Change, ed. Ans van Kemenade and Nigel Vincent (Cambridge, UK, 1997): Anthony Kroch and Ann Taylor, “Verb Movement in Old and Middle English: Dialect Variation and Language Contact,” pp. 297–325; and Ans van Kemenade, “V2 and Embedded Topicalization in Old and Middle English,” pp. 326–52. 18 See, for example, Daniel Donoghue, Style in Old English Poetry: The Test of the Auxiliary (New Haven, CT, 1987), and Mary Blockley, “Uncontracted Negation as a Cue to Sentence Structure in Old English Verse,” Journal of English and Germanic Philology, 89 (1990), 475–90. Mitchell reminds us, it may be anachronistic to impose modern categories that result from our translations into words such as ‘then’ and ‘when’, “implying that the choice was simply between a subordinate clause and an independent clause in the modern sense of the words.”19 We should be especially cautious about imposing modern notions that equate hypotaxis with sophistication and parataxis with primitiveness until we know more about the full range of syntactic possibilities in Old English. Ongoing research in this subject promises to revise our ideas of the grammatical, semantic, and rhythmic relationships in Old English verse and prose. 52. Old English Literature. The language of a past time is known by the quality of its literature. Charters and records yield their secrets to the philologist and contribute their quota of words and inflections to our dictionaries and grammars. But it is in literature that a language displays its full power, its ability to convey in vivid and memorable form the thoughts and emotions of a 19 Old English Syntax, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1985), I, § 1879.  Old english 63 people. The literature of the Anglo-Saxons is fortunately one of the richest and most significant of any preserved among the early Germanic peoples. Because it is the language mobilized, the language in action, we must say a word about it. Generally speaking, this literature is of two sorts. Some of it was undoubtedly brought to England by the Germanic conquerors from their continental homes and preserved for a time in oral tradition. All of it owes its preservation, however, and not a little its inspiration to the reintroduction of Christianity into the southern part of the island at the end of the sixth century, an event whose significance for the English language will be discussed in the next chapter. Two streams thus mingle in Old English literature, the pagan and the Christian, and they are never quite distinct. The poetry of pagan origin is constantly overlaid with Christian sentiment, while even those poems that treat of purely Christian themes contain every now and again traces of an earlier philosophy not wholly forgotten. We can indicate only in the briefest way the scope and content of this literature, and we shall begin with that which embodies the native traditions of the people. The greatest single work of Old English literature is Beowulf. It is a poem of some 3,000 lines belonging to the type known as the folk epic, that is to say, a poem which, whatever it may owe to the individual poet who gave it final form, embodies material long current among the people. It is a narrative of heroic adventure relating how a young warrior, Beowulf, fought the monster Grendel, which was ravaging the land of King Hrothgar, slew it and its mother, and years later met his death while ridding his own country of an equally destructive foe, a fire-breathing dragon. The theme seems somewhat fanciful to a modern reader, but the character of the hero, the social conditions pictured, and the portrayal of the motives and ideals that animated people in early Germanic times make the poem one of the most vivid records we have of life in the heroic age. It is not an easy life. It is a life that calls for physical endurance, unflinching courage, and a fine sense of duty, loyalty, and honor. A stirring expression of the heroic ideal is in the words that Beowulf addresses to Hrothgar before going to his dangerous encounter with Grendel’s mother: “Sorrow not…. Better is it for every man that he avenge his friend than that he mourn greatly. Each of us must abide the end of this world’s life; let him who may, work mighty deeds ere he die, for afterwards, when he lies lifeless, that is best for the warrior.” Outside of Beowulf Old English poetry of the native tradition is represented by a number of shorter pieces. Anglo-Saxon poets sang of the things that entered most deeply into their experience—of war and of exile, of the sea with its hardships and its fascination, of ruined cities, and of minstrel life. One of the earliest products of Germanic tradition is a short poem called Widsith in which a scop or minstrel pretends to give an account of his wanderings and of the many famous kings and princes before whom he has exercised his craft. Deor, another poem about a minstrel, is the lament of a scop who for years has been in the service of his lord and now finds himself thrust out by a younger man. But he is no whiner. Life is like that. Age will be displaced by youth. He has his day. Peace, my heart! Deor is one of the most human of Old English poems. The Wanderer is a tragedy in the medieval sense, the story of a man who once enjoyed a high place and has fallen upon evil times. His lord is dead and he has become a wanderer in strange courts, without friends. Where are the snows of yesteryear? The Seafarer is a monologue in which the speaker alternately describes the perils and hardships of the sea  A history of the english language 64 and the eager desire to dare again its dangers. In The Ruin the poet reflects on a ruined city, once prosperous and imposing with its towers and halls, its stone courts and baths, now but the tragic shadow of what it once was. Two great war poems, the Battle of Brunanburh and the Battle of Maldon, celebrate with patriotic fervor stirring encounters of the English, equally heroic in victory and defeat. In its shorter poems, no less than in Beowulf, Old English literature reveals at wide intervals of time the outlook and temper of the Germanic mind. More than half of Anglo-Saxon poetry is concerned with Christian subjects. Translations and paraphrases of books of the Old and New Testament, legends of saints, and devotional and didactic pieces constitute the bulk of this verse. The most important of this poetry had its origin in Northumbria and Mercia in the seventh and eighth centuries. The earliest English poet whose name we know was Cædmon, a lay brother in the monastery at Whitby. The story of how the gift of song came to him in a dream and how he subsequently turned various parts of the Scriptures into beautiful English verse comes to us in the pages of Bede. Although we do not have his poems on Genesis, Exodus, Daniel, and the like, the poems on these subjects that we do have were most likely inspired by his example. About 800 an Anglian poet named Cynewulf wrote at least four poems on religious subjects, into which he ingeniously wove his name by means of runes. Two of these, Juliana and Elene, tell well-known legends of saints. A third, Christ, deals with Advent, the Ascension, and the Last Judgment. The fourth, The Fates ofthe Apostles, touches briefly on where and how the various apostles died. There are other religious poems besides those mentioned, such as the Andreas, two poems on the life of St. Guthlac, a portion of a fine poem on the story of Judith in the Apocrypha; The Phoenix, in which the bird is taken as a symbol of the Christian life; and Christ and Satan, which treats the expulsion of Satan from Paradise together with the Harrowing of Hell and Satan’s tempting of Christ. All of these poems have their counterparts in other literatures of the Middle Ages. They show England in its cultural contact with Rome and being drawn into the general current of ideas on the continent, no longer simply Germanic, but cosmopolitan. In the development of literature, prose generally comes late. Verse is more effective for oral delivery and more easily retained in the memory. It is there-fore a rather remarkable fact, and one well worthy of note, that English possessed a considerable body of prose literature in the ninth century, at a time when most other modern languages in Europe had scarcely developed a literature in verse. This unusual accomplishment was due to the inspiration of one man, the Anglo-Saxon king who is justly called Alfred the Great (871–899). Alfred’s greatness rests not only on his capacity as a military leader and statesman but on his realization that greatness in a nation is no merely physical thing. When he came to the throne he found that the learning which in the eighth century, in the days of Bede and Alcuin, had placed England in the forefront of Europe, had greatly decayed. In an effort to restore England to something like its former state he undertook to provide for his people certain books in English, books that he deemed most essential to their welfare. With this object in view he undertook in mature life to learn Latin and either translated these books himself or caused others to translate them for him. First as a guide for the clergy he translated the Pastoral Care of Pope Gregory, and then, in order that the people might know something of their own past, inspired and may well have arranged for a translation of Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People. A  Old english 65 history of the rest of the world also seemed desirable and was not so easily to be had. But in the fifth century when so many calamities were befalling the Roman Empire and those misfortunes were being attributed to the abandonment of the pagan deities in favor of Christianity, a Spanish priest named Orosius had undertaken to refute this idea. His method was to trace the rise of other empires to positions of great power and their subsequent collapse, a collapse in which obviously Christianity had had no part. The result was a book which, when its polemical aim had ceased to have any significance, was still widely read as a compendium of historical knowledge. This Alfred translated with omissions and some additions of his own. A fourth book that he turned into English was The Consolation of Philosophy by Boethius, one of the most famous books of the Middle Ages. Alfred also caused a record to be compiled of the important events of English history, past and present, and this, as continued for more than two centuries after his death, is the well-known Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. King Alfred was the founder of English prose, but there were others who carried on the tradition. Among these is Ælfric, the author of two books of homilies and numerous other works, and Wulfstan, whose Sermon to the English is an impassioned plea for moral and political reform. So large and varied a body of literature, in verse and prose, gives ample testimony to the universal competence, at times to the power and beauty, of the Old English language. BIBLIOGRAPHY For the prehistory of Europe and Britain, authoritative studies include V.G.Childe, The Dawn of European Civilization (6th ed., London, 1957), J.G.D.Clark, The Mesolithic Age in Britain (Cambridge, UK, 1932), and Stuart Piggott, The Neolithic Cultures of the British Isles (Cambridge, UK, 1954). For the Roman occupation of England the work of F.Haverfield is important, especially The Romanization of Roman Britain, rev. G.Macdonald (4th ed., Oxford, 1923), and The Roman Occupation of Britain (Oxford, 1924). A standard handbook is R.G.Collingwood and lan Richmond, The Archaeology of Roman Britain (rev. ed., London, 1969). The Roman occupation and the Germanic invasions were originally treated in one volume of the Oxford History of England in 1936, Roman Britain and the English Settlements, a classic known as “Collingwood and Myres,” but the expansion of knowledge in both subjects made two separate volumes necessary: Peter Salway, Roman Britain (Oxford, 1981) and J.N.L.Myres, The English Settlements (Oxford, 1986). F.M.Stenton, Anglo-Saxon England (3rd ed., Oxford, 1971), also in the Oxford History, is a masterly account of the period, to which may be added R.H.Hodgkin, A History of the Anglo-Saxons (3rd ed., Oxford, 1952); Kenneth Jackson, Language and History in Early Britain (Edinburgh, 1953); P.Hunter Blair, An Introduction to Anglo-Saxon England (2nd ed., Cambridge, UK, 1977); and Dorothy Whitelock, The Beginnings of English Society, Pelican History of England, Vol. 2 (1952; rev. ed., Baltimore, MD, 1974). A useful aid to the histories in illustrating the geographic framework is David Hill, An Atlas of Anglo-Saxon England (Toronto, 1981). For further historical studies, see Simon Keynes, Anglo-Saxon History: A Select Bibliography, OEN Subsidia 13 (Binghamton, NY, 1987). An excellent overview of archaeology is David M.Wilson, ed., The Archaeology of Anglo-Saxon England (London, 1976). The importance for Anglo-Saxon studies of the Sutton Hoo excavation in 1939 is documented in the text and illustrations of R.Bruce-Mitford’s The Sutton Hoo Ship Burial (3 vols., London, 1978–1983). For the phonology and morphology of Old English the best sources are the grammars mentioned on p. 56. Two works that provide Indo-European and Germanic background to the synchronic grammars are Samuel Moore and Thomas A. Knott, Elements of Old English (10th ed., Ann Arbor, MI, 1969) and, informed by  A history of the english language 66 recent linguistics, Roger Lass, Old English: A Historical Linguistic Companion (Cambridge, UK, 1994). For larger structures, see Bruce Mitchell, Old English Syntax (2 vols., Oxford, 1985) and Mary Blockley, Aspects of Old English Poetic Syntax: Where Clauses Begin (Urbana, IL, 2001). A major resource for the study of Old English is the Dictionary of Old English, in progress at Toronto. The new dictionary will replace J.Bosworth, An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, ed. T.N.Toller (Oxford, 1898), and Toller’s Supplement (Oxford, 1921). Among the associated projects of the new dictionary are R.L.Venezky and Antonette di Paolo Healey, A Microflche Concordance to Old English (Toronto, 1980) and R.L.Venezky and Sharon Butler, A Microfiche Concordance to Old English: The High Frequency Words (Toronto, 1985). Separate from the dictionary is A Thesaurus of Old English, ed. Jane Roberts and Christian Kay (2 vols., 2nd ed., Amsterdam, 2001). For both of these sources and other lexical studies, see Alfred Bammesberger, ed., Problems of Old English Lexicography: Studies in Memory of Angus Cameron (Regensburg, Germany, 1985). The main works on Old English etymology are F.Holthausen, Altenglisches etymologisches Wörterbuch (2nd ed., Heidelberg, 1974) and A.Bammesberger, Beiträge zu einem etymologischen Wörterbuch des Altenglischen (Heidelberg, 1979). Other linguistic scholarship can be found listed in Matsuji Tajima, Old and Middle English Language Studies: A Classified Bibliography, 1923–1985 (Amsterdam, 1988). A literary reference that is also valuable for language study is Stanley B.Greenfield and Fred C.Robinson, A Bibliography of Publications on Old English Literature to the End of 1972 (Toronto, 1980); see also Stanley B.Greenfield and Daniel G.Calder, A New Critical History of Old English Literature (New York, 1986) and Malcolm Godden and Michael Lapidge, eds., The Cambridge Companion to Old English Literature (Cambridge, UK, 1991). Current bibliographies of Anglo-Saxon studies appear annually in the Old English Newsletter and in Anglo-Saxon England.  4 Foreign Influences on Old English 53. The Contact of English with Other Languages. The language that was described in the preceding chapter was not merely the product of the dialects brought to England by the Jutes, Saxons, and Angles. These formed its basis, the sole basis of its grammar and the source of by far the largest part of its vocabulary. But other elements entered into it. In the course of the first 700 years of its existence in England it was brought into contact with at least three other languages, the languages of the Celts, the Romans, and the Scandinavians. From each of these contacts it shows certain effects, especially additions to its vocabulary. The nature of these contacts and the changes that were effected by them will form the subject of this chapter. 54. The Celtic Influence. Nothing would seem more reasonable than to expect that the conquest of the Celtic population of Britain by the Anglo-Saxons and the subsequent mixture of the two peoples should have resulted in a corresponding mixture of their languages; that consequently we should find in the Old English vocabulary numerous instances of words that the Anglo- Saxons heard in the speech of the native population and adopted. For it is apparent that the Celts were by no means exterminated except in certain areas, and that in most of England large numbers of them were gradually assimilated into the new culture. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle reports that at Andredesceaster or Pevensey a deadly struggle occurred between the native population and the newcomers and that not a single Briton was left alive. The evidence of the place-names in this region lends support to the statement. But this was probably an exceptional case. In the east and southeast, where the Germanic conquest was fully accomplished at a fairly early date, it is probable that there were fewer survivals of a Celtic population than elsewhere. Large numbers of the defeated fled to the west. Here it is apparent that a considerable Celtic-speaking population survived until fairly late times. Some such situation is suggested by a whole cluster of Celtic place-names in the northeastern corner of Dorsetshire.1 It is altogether likely that many Celts were held as slaves by the conquerors and that many of the Anglo- Saxons chose Celtic mates. In parts of the island, contact between the two peoples must have been constant and in some districts intimate for several generations.  A history of the english language 68 55. Celtic Place-Names and Other Loanwords. When we come, however, to seek the evidence for this contact in the English language, investigation yields very meager results. Such evidence as there is survives chiefly in place-names.2 The kingdom of Kent, for example, owes its name to the Celtic word Canti or Cantion, the meaning of which is unknown, while the two ancient Northumbrian kingdoms of Deira and Bernicia derive their designations from Celtic tribal names. Other districts, especially in the west and southwest, preserve in their present-day names traces of their earlier Celtic designations. Devonshire contains in the first element the tribal name Dumnonii, Cornwall means the ‘Cornubian Welsh’, and the former county Cumberland (now part of Cumbria) is the ‘land of the Cymry or Britons’. Moreover, a number of important centers in the Roman period have names in which Celtic elements are embodied. The name London itself, although the origin of the word is somewhat uncertain, most likely goes back to a Celtic designation. The first syllable of Winchester, Salisbury, Exeter, Gloucester, Worcester, Lichfield, and a score of other names of cities is traceable to a Celtic source, and the earlier name of Canterbury (Durovernum) is originally Celtic. But it is in the names of rivers and hills and places in proximity to these natural features that the greatest number of Celtic names survive. Thus the Thames is a Celtic river name, and various Celtic words for river or water are preserved in the names Avon, Exe, Esk, Usk, Dover, and Wye. Celtic words meaning ‘hill’ are found in place- names like Barr (cf. Welsh bar ‘top’, ‘summit’), Bredon (cf. Welsh bre ‘hill), Bryn Mawr (cf. Welsh bryn ‘hill and mawr ‘great’), Creech, Pendle (cf. Welsh pen ‘top’), and others. Certain other Celtic elements occur more or less frequently such as cumb (a deep valley) in names like Duncombe, Holcombe, Winchcombe; torr (high rock, peak) in Torr, Torcross, 1 R.E.Zachrisson, Romans, Kelts, and Saxons in Ancient Britain (Uppsala, Sweden, 1927), p. 55. 2 An admirable survey of the Celtic element in English place-names is given by E.Ekwall in the Introduction to the Survey of English Place-Names, ed. A.Mawer and F.M.Stenton for the English Place-Name Society, 1, part 1 (Cambridge, UK, 1924), pp. 15–35.  Foreign influences on old english 69 Torhill; pill (a tidal creek) in Pylle, Huntspill; and brocc (badger) in Brockholes, Brockhall, etc. Besides these purely Celtic elements a few Latin words such as castra, fontana, fossa, portus, and vīcus were used in naming places during the Roman occupation of the island and were passed on by the Celts to the English. These will be discussed later. It is natural that Celtic place-names should be more common in the west than in the east and southeast, but the evidence of these names shows that the Celts impressed themselves upon the Germanic consciousness at least to the extent of causing the newcomers to adopt many of the local names current in Celtic speech and to make them a permanent part of their vocabulary. Outside of place-names, however, the influence of Celtic upon the English language is almost negligible. Not more than a score of words in Old English can be traced with reasonable probability to a Celtic source. Within this small number it is possible to distinguish two groups: (1) those that the AngloSaxons learned through everyday contact with the natives, and (2) those that were introduced by the Irish missionaries in the north. The former were transmitted orally and were of popular character; the latter were connected with religious activities and were more or less learned. The popular words include binn (basket, crib), bratt (cloak), and brocc (brock or badger); a group of words for geographical features that had not played much part in the experience of the Anglo- Saxons in their continental home—crag, luh (lake), cumb (valley), and torr3 (outcropping or projecting rock, peak), the two latter chiefly as elements in place-names; possibly the words dun (dark colored), and ass (ultimately from Latin asinus). Words of the second group, those that came into English through Celtic Christianity, are likewise few in number. In 563 St. Columba had come with twelve monks from Ireland to preach to his kinsmen in Britain. On the little island of lona off the west coast of Scotland he established a monastery and made it his headquarters for the remaining thirty-four years of his life. From this center many missionaries went out, founded other religious houses, and did much to spread Christian doctrine and learning. As a result of their activity the words ancor (hermit), (magician), cine (a gathering of parchment leaves), cross, clugge (bell), gabolrind (compass), mind (diadem), and perhaps (history) and cursian (to curse), came into at least partial use in Old English. It does not appear that many of these Celtic words attained a very permanent place in the English language. Some soon died out, and others acquired only local currency. The relation of the two peoples was not such as to bring 3 Cf. E.Ekwall, “Zu zwei keltischen Lehnwörtern in Altenglischen,” Englische Studien, 54 (1920), 102–10.  A history of the english language 70 about any considerable influence on English life or on English speech. The surviving Celts were a submerged people. The Anglo-Saxon found little occasion to adopt Celtic modes of expression, and the Celtic influence remains the least of the early influences that affected the English language. 56. Three Latin Influences on Old English. If the influence of Celtic upon Old English was slight, it was doubtless so because the relation of the Celt to the Anglo-Saxon was that of a submerged culture and because the Celt was not in a position to make notable contributions to Anglo-Saxon civilization. It was quite otherwise with the second great influence exerted upon English—that of Latin—and the circumstances under which they met. Latin was not the language of a conquered people. It was the language of a highly regarded civilization, one from which the Anglo-Saxons wanted to learn. Contact with that civilization, at first commercial and military, later religious and intellectual, extended over many centuries and was constantly renewed. It began long before the Anglo-Saxons came to England and continued throughout the Old English period. For several hundred years, while the Germanic tribes who later became the English were still occupying their continental homes, they had various relations with the Romans through which they acquired a considerable number of Latin words. Later when they came to England they saw the evidences of the long Roman rule in the island and learned from the Celts additional Latin words that had been acquired by them. And a century and a half later still, when Roman missionaries reintroduced Christianity into the island, this new cultural influence resulted in a quite extensive adoption of Latin elements into the language. There were thus three distinct occasions on which borrowing from Latin occurred before the end of the Old English period, and it will be of interest to consider more in detail the character and extent of these borrowings. 57. Chronological Criteria. In order to form an accurate idea of the share that each of these three periods had in extending the resources of the English vocabulary it is first necessary to determine as closely as possible the date at which each of the borrowed words entered the language. This is naturally somewhat difftcult to do, and in the case of some words it is impossible. But in a large number of cases it is possible to assign a word to a given period with a high degree of probability and often with certainty. It will be instructive to pause for a moment to inquire how this is done. The evidence that can be employed is of various kinds and naturally of varying value. Most obvious is the appearance of the word in literature. If a given word occurs with fair frequency in texts such as Beowulf, or the poems of Cynewulf, such occurrence indicates that the word has had time to pass into current use and that it came into English not later than the early part of the period of Christian influence. But it does not tell us how much earlier it was known in the language, because the earliest written records in English do  Foreign influences on old english 71 not go back beyond the year 700. Moreover the late appearance of a word in literature is no proof of late adoption. The word may not be the kind of word that would naturally occur very often in literary texts, and so much of Old English literature has been lost that it would be very unsafe to argue about the existence of a word on the basis of existing remains. Some words that are not found recorded before the tenth century (e.g., pīpe ‘pipe’, cīese ‘cheese’) can be assigned confidently on other grounds to the period of continental borrowing. The character of the word sometimes gives some clue to its date. Some words are obviously learned and point to a time when the church had become well established in the island. On the other hand, the early occurrence of a word in several of the Germanic dialects points to the general circulation of the word in the Germanic territory and its probable adoption by the ancestors of the English on the continent. Testimony of this kind must of course be used with discrimination. A number of words found in Old English and in Old High German, for example, can hardly have been borrowed by either language before the Anglo-Saxons migrated to England but are due to later independent adoption under conditions more or less parallel, brought about by the introduction of Christianity into the two areas. But it can hardly be doubted that a word like copper, which is rare in Old English, was nevertheless borrowed on the continent when we find it in no less than six Germanic languages. Much the most conclusive evidence of the date at which a word was borrowed, however, is to be found in the phonetic form of the word. The changes that take place in the sounds of a language can often be dated with some definiteness, and the presence or absence of these changes in a borrowed word constitutes an important test of age. A full account of these changes would carry us far beyond the scope of this book, but one or two examples may serve to illustrate the principle. Thus there occurred in Old English, as in most of the Germanic languages, a change known as i-umlaut4 This change affected certain accented vowels and diphthongs (œ, and ) when they were followed in the next syllable by an or j. Under such circumstances œ and ă became ĕ, and became ā became and became The diphthongs became later Thus *baŋkiz>benc (bench), *mūsiz> plural of mūs (mouse), etc. The change occurred in English in the course of the seventh century, and when we find it taking place in a word borrowed from Latin it indicates that the Latin word had 4 Umlaut is a German word meaning ‘alteration of sound’. In English this is sometimes called mutation.  A history of the english language 72 been taken into English by that time. Thus Latin monēta (which became *munit in Prehistoric OE)>mynet (a coin, Mod. E. mint) and is an early borrowing. Another change (even earlier) that helps us to date a borrowed word is that known as palatal diphthongization. By this sound-change an or in early Old English was changed to a diphthong ( and respectively) when preceded by certain palatal consonants (ċ, ġ, sc). OE cīese (L. cāseus, cheese), mentioned above, shows both i–umlaut and palatal diphthongization In many words evidence for date is furnished by the sound-changes of Vulgar Latin. Thus, for example, an intervocalic p (and p in the combination pr) in the late Latin of northern Gaul (seventh century) was modified to a sound approximating a v, and the fact that L. cuprum, coprum (copper) appears in OE as copor with the p unchanged indicates a period of borrowing prior to this change (cf. F. cuivre). Again Latin ĭ changed to ẹ before A.D. 400 so that words like OE biscop (L. episcopus), disc (L. discus), sigel, ‘brooch’ (L. sigillum), etc., which do not show this change, were borrowed by the English on the continent. But enough has been said to indicate the method and to show that the distribution of the Latin words in Old English among the various periods at which borrowing took place rests not upon guesses, however shrewd, but upon definite facts and upon fairly reliable phonetic inferences. 58. Continental Borrowing (Latin Influence of the Zero Period). The first Latin words to find their way into the English language owe their adoption to the early contact between the Romans and the Germanic tribes on the continent. Several hundred Latin words found in the various Germanic dialects at an early date—some in one dialect only, others in several—testify to the extensive intercourse between the two peoples. The Germanic population within the empire by the fourth century is estimated at several million. They are found in all ranks and classes of society, from slaves in the fields to commanders of important divisions of the Roman army. Although they were scattered all over the empire, they were naturally most numerous along the northern frontier. This stretched along the Rhine and the Danube and bordered on Germanic territory. Close to the border was Treves, in the third and fourth centuries the most flourishing city in Gaul, already boasting Christian churches, a focus of eight military roads, where all the luxury and splendor of Roman civilization were united almost under the gaze of the Germanic tribes on the Moselle and the Rhine. Traders, Germanic as well as Roman, came and went, while Germanic youth returning from within the empire must have carried back glowing accounts of Roman cities and Roman life. Such intercourse between the two peoples was certain to carry words from one language to the other. The frequency of the intercourse may naturally be expected to diminish somewhat as one recedes from the borders of the empire. Roman military operations, for example, seldom extended as far as the district occupied by the Angles or the Jutes. But after the conquest of Gaul by Caesar, Roman merchants quickly found their way into all parts of the Germanic territory, even into Scandinavia, so that the inhabitants of these more remote sections were by no means cut off from Roman influence. Moreover,  Foreign influences on old english 73 intercommunication between the different Germanic tribes was frequent and made possible the transference of Latin words from one tribe to another. In any case some sixty words from the Latin can be credited with a considerable degree of probability to the ancestors of the English in their continental homes. The adopted words naturally indicate the new conceptions that the Germanic peoples acquired from this contact with a higher civilization. Next to agriculture the chief occupation of the Germanic tribes in the empire was war, and this experience is reflected in words like camp (battle), segn (banner), pīl (pointed stick, javelin), weall (wall), pytt (pit), (road, street), mīl (mile), and miltestre (courtesan). More numerous are the words connected with trade. They traded amber, furs, slaves, and probably certain raw materials for the products of Roman handicrafts, articles of utility, luxury, and adornment. The words cēap (bargain; cf. Eng., cheap, chapman) and mangian (to trade) with its derivatives mangere (monger), mangung (trade, commerce), and mangunghūs (shop) are fundamental, while pund (pound), mydd (bushel), sēam (burden, loan), and mynet (coin) are terms likely to be employed. From the last word Old English formed the words mynetian (to mint or coin) and mynetere (money-changer). One of the most important branches of Roman commerce with the Germanic peoples was the wine trade: hence such words in English as wīn (wine), must (new wine), eced (vinegar), and flasce5 (flask, bottle). To this period are probably to be attributed the words cylle (L. culleus, leather bottle), cyrfette (L. curcurbita, gourd), and sester (jar, pitcher). A number of the new words relate to domestic life and designate household articles, clothing, and the like: cytel (kettle; L. catillus, catīnus) mēse (table), scamol (L. scamellum, bench, stool; cf. modern shambles), teped (carpet, curtain; L. tapētum), pyle (L. pulvinus, pillow), pilece (L. pellicia, robe of skin), and sigel (brooch, necklace; L. sigillum). Certain other words of a similar kind probably belong here, although the evidence for their adoption thus early is not in every case conclusive: cycene (kitchen; L. coquīna), cuppe (L. cuppa, cup), disc (dish; L. discus), cucler (spoon; L. cocleārium), mortere 5 The OE flasce should have become flash in Modern English, so that the word was probably reintroduced later and may have been influenced (as the OED suggests) by the Italian fiasco. (L. mortārium, a mortar, a vessel of hard material), līnen (cognate with or from L. līnum, flax), līne (rope, line; L. līnea), and gimm (L. gemma, gem). The speakers of the Germanic dialects adopted Roman words for certain foods, such as cīese (L. cāseus cheese), spelt (wheat), pipor (pepper), senep (mustard; L. sināpi), cisten (chestnut tree; L. castanea), cires (bēam) (cherry tree; L. cerasus), while to this period are probably to be assigned butere (butter; L. ),6 ynne (lēac) (L. ūnio, onion), plūme (plum), pise (L. pisum, pea), and minte (L. mentha, mint). Roman contributions to the building arts are evidenced by such words as cealc (chalk), copor (copper), pic (pitch), and tigele (tile), while miscellaneous words such as mūl (mule), draca (dragon), pāwa (peacock), the adjectives sicor (L. sēcūrus, safe) and calu (L. calvus, bald), segne (seine), pīpe (pipe, musical instrument), biscop (bishop), cāsere (emperor), and Sæternesdæg (Saturday) may be mentioned. OE cirice (church) derives from a word borrowed into West Germanic during this period, though probably from Greek κυρικóv covrather than from Latin.7 In general, if we are surprised at the number of words acquired from the Romans at so early a date by the Germanic tribes that came to England, we can see nevertheless that the  A history of the english language 74 words were such as they would be likely to borrow and such as reflect in a very reasonable way the relations that existed between the two peoples. 59. Latin through Celtic Transmission (Latin Influence of the First Period). The circumstances responsible for the slight influence that Celtic exerted on Old English limited in like manner the Latin influence that sprang from the period of Roman occupation. From what has been said above (see page 45) about the Roman rule in Britain, the extent to which the country was Romanized, and the employment of Latin by certain elements in the population, one would expect a considerable number of Latin words from this period to have remained in use and to appear in the English language today. But this is not the case. It would be hardly too much to say that not five words outside of a few elements found in place-names can be really proved to owe their presence in English to the Roman occupation of Britain.8 It is probable that the use of Latin as a spoken language did not long survive the end of Roman rule in the island and that such vestiges as remained for a time were lost in the disorders that accompanied the Germanic invasions. There was thus no opportunity for direct contact between Latin and Old English in England, and such Latin words as could have found their way into English would have had to come in through Celtic transmission. The Celts, indeed, had adopted a considerable number of Latin words—more than 600 have been identified—but the relations between the Celts and the English were such, as we have already seen, that these words were not passed on. Among the few Latin words that the Anglo-Saxons seem likely to have acquired upon settling in England, one of the most likely, in spite of its absence from the Celtic languages, is ceaster. This word, which represents the Latin castra (camp), is a common designation in Old English for a town or enclosed community. It forms a familiar element in English place-names such as Chester, Colchester, Dorchester, Manchester, Winchester, Lancaster, Doncaster, Gloucester, Worcester, and many others. Some of these refer to sites of Roman camps, but it must not be thought that a Roman settlement underlies all the towns whose names contain this common element. The English attached it freely to the designation of any enclosed place intended for habitation, and many of the places so designated were known by quite different names in Roman times. A few other words are thought for one reason or another to belong to this period: port (harbor, gate, town) from L. portus and porta; munt 6 Butter is a difficult word to explain. The unweakened t suggests early borrowing. Butter was practically unknown to the Romans; Pliny has to explain its meaning and use. But a well-known allusion in Sidonius Apollinaris testifies to its use among the Burgundians on their hair. The bishop complains of the rancid odor of Burgundian chiefs with buttered hair. 7 The OED has an interesting essay on the uncertainties of the etymology of church. Other words that probably belong to the period of continental borrowing are ynce (ounce, inch), palenise (palace), solor (upper room), tæfel (chessboard), miscian (to mix), and olfend (camel), but there is some uncertainty about their origin or history. 8 J.Loth in Les Mots latins dans les langues brittoniques (Paris, 1892, p. 29) assigns fifteen words to this period. Some of these, however, are more probably to be considered continental borrowings.  Foreign influences on old english 75 (mountain) from L. mōns, montem; torr (tower, rock) possibly from L. turris, possibly from Celtic; wīc (village) from L. vīcus. All of these words are found also as elements in place-names. It is possible that some of the Latin words that the Germanic speakers had acquired on the continent, such as street (L. strāta via), wall, wine, and others, were reinforced by the presence of the same words in Celtic. At best, however, the Latin influence of the First Period remains much the slightest of all the influences that Old English owed to contact with Roman civilization. 60. Latin Influence of the Second Period: The Christianizing of Britain. The greatest influence of Latin upon Old English was occasioned by the conversion of Britain to Roman Christianity beginning in 597. The religion was far from new in the island, because Irish monks had been preaching the gospel in the north since the founding of the monastery of lona by Columba in 563. However, 597 marks the beginning of a systematic attempt on the part of Rome to convert the inhabitants and make England a Christian country. According to the well-known story reported by Bede as a tradition current in his day, the mission of St. Augustine was inspired by an experience of the man who later became Pope Gregory the Great. Walking one morning in the marketplace at Rome, he came upon some fair-haired boys about to be sold as slaves and was told that they were from the island of Britain and were pagans. “‘Alas! what pity,’ said he, ‘that the author of darkness is possessed of men of such fair countenances, and that being remarkable for such a graceful exterior, their minds should be void of inward grace?’ He therefore again asked, what was the name of that nation and was answered, that they were called Angles. ‘Right,’ said he, ‘for they have an angelic face, and it is fitting that such should be co-heirs with the angels in heaven. What is the name,’ proceeded he, ‘of the province from which they are brought?’ It was replied that the natives of that province were called Deiri. ‘Truly are they de ira’ said he, ‘plucked from wrath, and called to the mercy of Christ. How is the king of that province called?’ They told him his name was Ælla; and he, alluding to the name, said ‘Alleluia, the praise of God the Creator, must be sung in those parts.’” The same tradition records that Gregory wished himself to undertake the mission to Britain but could not be spared. Some years later, however, when he had become pope, he had not forgotten his former intention and looked about for someone whom he could send at the head of a missionary band. Augustine, the person of his choice, was a man well known to him. The two had lived together in the same monastery, and Gregory knew him to be modest and devout and thought him well suited to the task assigned him. With a little company of about forty monks Augustine set out for what seemed then like the end of the earth. It is not easy to appreciate the difftculty of the task that lay before this small band. Their problem was not so much to substitute one ritual for another as to change the philosophy of a nation. The religion that the Anglo-Saxons shared with the other Germanic tribes seems to have had but a slight hold on the people at the close of the sixth century; but their habits of mind, their ideals, and the action to which these gave rise were often in sharp contrast to the teachings of the New Testament. Germanic philosophy exalted physical courage, independence even to haughtiness, loyalty to one’s family or leader that left no wrong unavenged. Christianity preached meekness, humility, and  A history of the english language 76 patience under suffering and said that if a man struck you on one cheek you should turn the other. Clearly it was no small task that Augustine and his forty monks faced in trying to alter the age-old mental habits of such a people. They might even have expected difficulty in obtain