TEUTONIC CHARACTER OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 17 into English from the first days of the Conquest, and CHAP. II. a somewhat larger stock of Latin ecclesiastical terms1 was naturally brought in by the Christian missionaries. But, with these two very small classes of exceptions, the English language retained its purely Low-Dutch character down to that great infusion of Romance words. into our vocabulary which was a result, though not an immediate result, of the Norman Conquest. And, to this day, though the Romance infusion divides the vocabulary of our dictionaries with our natural Teutonic speech, it still remains only an infusion, an infusion greater in degree, but essentially the same in kind, as the Teutonic infusion into the Romance languages. As it is impossible to put together the shortest French sentence without the use of Romance words, so it is impossible to put together the shortest English sentence without the use of Teutonic words. But it is possible to compose sentence after sentence of French without a single Teutonic word, and it is equally possible to compose sentence after sentence of English without a single Romance word. In Britain too the arts of Rome perished as utterly as the language and the religion of Rome; arts, language, and religion were all brought back again at a later period and in a corrupted form. The laws of Rome perished utterly; they exer- Slight and cised no influence upon our insular jurisprudence, until, ence of the in times after the Norman Conquest, the Civil Law was Law in introduced as something utterly exotic. And even then England. our insular jurisprudence was too strong for it; the Imperial legislation never gained that supremacy which it gained in most parts of the Continent, and even in the Scottish portion of our island. In England again the local Local nonomenclature is throughout essentially Teutonic. A few of England great cities and a few great natural objects, London on the essentially Thames and Gloucester on the Severn, still retain names 1 Words like Mass, Priest, Bishop, Angel, Candle. C late influ Roman menclature Teutonic. tants. the Celtic CHAP. II. older than the English Conquest; but the great mass of the towns and villages of England bear names which were given them either by the Angles and Saxons of the fifth and sixth centuries or by the Danes of the ninth and tenth. Probable In short, though the utter extirpation of a nation is an extirpation of the Cel- impossibility, there is every reason to believe that the tic inhabi Celtic inhabitants of those parts of Britain which had become English at the end of the sixth century had been as nearly extirpated as a nation can be. The women would doubtless be largely spared, but as far as the male sex is concerned, we may feel sure that death, emigration, or personal slavery were the only alternatives which the vanquished found at the hands of our fathers. The Nature of nature of the small Celtic element in our language would element in of itself prove the fact. Nearly every Welsh word which has found its way into English expresses some small domestic matter, such as women and slaves would be concerned with; nearly all the words belonging to the nobler occupations, all the terms of government and war, and nearly all the terms of agriculture, are thoroughly Teutonic. In short, everywhere but in Britain an intruding nation sat down by the side of an elder nation, and gradually lost itself in its mass. In Britain, so far as such a process is possible, the intruding nation altogether Difference supplanted the elder nation. The process of the Conquest again, its gradual character, the way in which the land cess of the was won, bit by bit, by hard fighting, was of itself widely Conquest in Britain different from the Gothic settlements in Italy or Spain. This peculiar character of the English Conquest would of English confirms this view. in the ac tual pro and elsewhere. 1 I mean the extirpation of anything worthy to be called a nation, of any people who had attained the position to which all the inhabitants of the Roman Empire had attained. The dying out of savage tribes before the arts and arms of highly civilized Europeans is another matter. 2 Yet the legend of Hengest's daughter, as told by Nennius-her name Rowena is a later absurdity-absolutely worthless as a piece of personal history, seems to point to the fact that the invaders brought their women with them, at least to some considerable extent. CAUSES OF THE PECULIAR CHARACTER OF THE CONQUEST. itself favour the complete displacement of the former in- CHAP. II. habitants, by giving the remnant of the vanquished in any district the means of escape to those districts which were yet unconquered. the differ ence. 19 This remarkable contrast between the English Conquest Causes of of Britain and the other Teutonic settlements within the Empire seems to be due to two main causes. The position of Britain differed from that of Italy or Gaul or Spain, and the position of the Angles and Saxons differed from that of Goths, Burgundians, or even Franks. The event Britain less thoroughly alone might seem to show that the Roman occupation of Romanized Britain had not brought about so complete a Romaniza- than Gaul and Spain. tion of the country as had taken place in Gaul and Spain. The evidence of language looks the same way. In Spain and in Gaul the ante-Roman languages survive only in a few out-of-the-way corners; the speech of the land is Roman. But in Britain whatever is not English is not Roman but Celtic. The surviving Britons retained, and still retain, their own native language and not the language of their Roman conquerors. It would seem that the Roman occupation of Britain was, after all, very superficial, and that, when the legions were withdrawn, things largely fell back into their ancient barbarism. The English therefore found a more stubborn, because a more truly national, resistance in Britain than their Teutonic kinsmen found elsewhere. But, on the other hand, they did not find that perfect and striking fabric of Roman laws, manners, and arts which elsewhere impressed the minds of the conquerors, and changed them from destroyers into disciples. Again, the Goths above Familiarall, and the Franks in some degree, had long been other Teufamiliar with Rome. in peace and in war. They had re- Roman sisted Roman attempts at conquest and they had repaid civilizathem in kind. They had served in the Roman armies, and had received lands and honours and offices as the reward tons with tion. CHAP. II. The Eng of their services. They were, in short, neither wholly ignorant of Roman civilization nor utterly hostile to it. But our forefathers came from lands where the Roman eagle had never been seen, or had been seen only during the momentary incursions of Drusus and Germanicus. They had never felt the charm which led Gothic Kings to glory in the title of Roman Generals, and which led them to respect and preserve the forms of Roman civilization and the monuments of Roman art. Our forefathers appeared in the Isle of Britain purely as destroyers; nowhere else in Western Europe were the existing men and the existing institutions so utterly swept away. The English wiped out everything Celtic and everything Roman as thoroughly as everything Roman was wiped out of Africa by the Saracen conquerors of Carthage. A more fearful blow never fell on any nation than the landing of the Angles and Saxons Results of was to the Celt of Britain. But we may now be thankful liar charac- for the barbarism and ferocity of our forefathers. Had we ter of the stayed in our earlier land, we should have remained unEnglish Conquest. distinguished from the mass of our Low-Dutch kinsfolk. the pecu We Had we conquered and settled only as Goths and Bur- BRITAIN AT THE END OF THE SIXTH CENTURY. 21 77 Britons or Romans. In our new country we developed CHAP. II. our system for ourselves, partly by purely native growth, partly by independent intercourse with the common centre of civilization. The Goth is merged in the Romance population of Italy, Spain, and Aquitaine; the Old-Saxon has lost his national being through the subtler proselytism of the High-German; but the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes, transplanted to the shores of Britain, have won for themselves a new name and a new national being, and have handed on to us the distinct and glorious inheritance of Englishmen. of Britain century. Thus, before the end of the sixth century, by far the Condition greater and more fertile portion of Britain had become hea- at the end then and Teutonic. The land had been occupied by various of the sixth tribes; and most probably, as always happens in such migrations, all the settlers had not been perfectly homogeneous. A certain following of allies or subjects of other races is almost sure to follow under the shadow of the main body. But it is clear that that main body was so distinctly and predominantly of Low-Dutch blood and speech as to swallow up any foreign elements which may have accompanied it during its migration, as well as any that it may have incorporated during the process of the Conquest or after its completion. Three kindred tribes, Angles, Saxons, and The counJutes, are, in the common national tradition, said to have pied by divided the land among them in very unequal proportions. various For Saxons a contemporary foreign notice substitutes tribes, Frisians.1 But Angles, Saxons, Frisians, were all tribes Saxons, of one common stock, all speaking mere dialectic varieties Jutes, and of one common tongue. From the very beginning of the 1 Prokopios, Bell. Goth. iv. 20. Βριττίαν δὲ τὴν νῆσον ἔθνη τρία πολυανθρωπότατα ἔχουσι, βασιλεύς τε εἷς αὐτῶν ἑκάστῳ ἐφέστηκεν· ὀνόματα δὲ κεῖται τοῖς ἔθνεσι τούτοις "Αγγιλοί τε καὶ Φρίσσονες καὶ οἱ τῇ νήσῳ ὁμώνυμοι BpíTTwves. Prokopios' account of Britain is mixed up with a great deal of fable, but here at least is something clear and explicit.. try occu kindred Angles, Frisians. |