CHAPTER II THE TWELFTH AND THIRTEENTH CENTURIES IN all its most essential features the English language remained for a long period almost unaffected by the changes which followed at the Conquest. The vast mass of the people spoke under the Plantagenets the same tongue which their fathers had spoken under Edward the Confessor, and intermarriage between the two races who now lived side by side on English soil was so general, that English was doubtless the true. mother-tongue of many a young heir to Norman baronies. But still, some few generations had to pass before either the English language or the English people emerged from the yoke under which each alike had fallen. The English Chronicle, not without many a wail of sorrow for the troubles which had fallen upon the land, continued its old record. A few English homilies survive from the century that followed upon the Conquest. But otherwise the language of Egbert and of Alfred the Great, of Cædmon and of Cynewulf, was for the most part the spoken, but no longer the written language of the country. Clerks and learned men wrote in Latin. French was the tongue of the court and of law. Meanwhile English was undergoing more rapidly than before the change which quickly affects any vernacular which is not guarded by literary men and grammarians. It was losing its inflexions, and being chipped and shortened as it passed only from mouth to mouth. The great change by which the purity of the language was corrupted, and its powers enlarged was through a great influx of Norman. But French words were scarcely in Religious Thought in Old English Verse 23 general operation until the latter part of the thirteenth century. Layamon's long poem of 56,000 lines, written in King John's reign, contained barely ninety words. which were not of genuine English birth. The 'Proverbs of Alfred,' in the exact form in which they now survive to us, date from the time of Henry the Third. But the poem most likely belongs to the twelfth century, and may embody sayings which for some long time previous to that had been recited or sung by minstrels in many an English home. It is not supposed that the Witanagemote at Seaford is really historical, or that the sayings ascribed to King Alfred were all of them his. The English clung with tenacity to the memory of their noble-hearted ruler, and not only kept up a traditional memory of his teaching, but fathered upon him many wise sayings which, in the very same form, had long been a sort of common property of the Teutonic family, ascribed to Hendring or to any other venerated name. But whether the subjoined words record a genuine tradition of Alfred or not, they are, at all events, worthy of him, and are inspirited by a very pure and high Christian sentiment. If they were composed in the reign of Stephen, or in that of the first or second William, we can imagine with what pathetic yearning the English would turn from the miseries of their own time to the memory of days when they were free under their own heroic king : Alfred sate At Seaford, 'mongst his bishops, and his thanes, He, England's darling, comforter, and lord. How we might in the world worship attain, He spake, and bade us all dread Christ our Lord, Thus Alfred quoth: 'O son of mine, so dear, Grows wan, my strength is weak, my days on earth I must go hence; but thou shalt tarry here The widow's friend, the poor man's comforter, It would have been interesting to have had some reminiscences in old English verse of the fervid emotions excited by the early Crusades, and also of that earnest revival of religion which stirred the hearts of the people in the days of Henry the First. A solemn and meditative strain of sacred poetry, as a mode of expressing deep religious feeling, had been quite in accord with the temperament of the English before the Conquest. 1 The Proverbs of Alfred, 1-60 : Al Sevorde sete theynes monye, fele biscopes 2 Id. xxx. 573-604: Thus quad Alured: Sone min, swo leue, Site me nu bisides, and hich the wile sagen Sothe thewes. Sone min, ich fele, Thad min hew falewidth, and min wlite is wan. We can well Doubtless, the same spirit remained. believe that in the beginning of the twelfth century the religious movements of the day found expression in many a hymn sung in native English. But I am not aware that there are any English hymns now extant of the twelfth century, except a few verses written by St. Godric, a hermit of Finchall, near Durham, who died there in 1170. The good man himself thought highly of them, supposed that they had been put into his heart by special inspiration, and recommended them as a solace in pain, and strength in time of temptation. There is, however, nothing in the least degree worth quoting in the fragments of these hymns, collected by Ritson, in his Bibliographia Poetica.1 The Ormulum, as the author of it has called it from his own name, was written in unrhymed verse scarcely recognisable as verse, about the beginning of Henry the Second's reign, by Orm or Ormin, a canon-regular of St. Augustine. His aim was to put into simple English, adapted to recitation, the Gospel as read in the order of the Church, and to give a series of metrical homilies on their teaching. It had been the suggestion of his dear brother, Walter, who was one with him, he says, in brotherly love, one in baptism and faith, and one also in the canonical rule of life which both one and the other had adopted. To him he dedicated his completed work. Then, after some opening words: And for thee I have done it now, And now 'tis meet we both thank Christ That it is brought to end. I've gathered into this my book The gospels wellnigh all, Such as within the mass book are Through all the year at mass. 1 One line from a petition to Saint Nicolas may be instanced as a passing illustration of the northern English of that time: 'Tymbre us faire scone hus,' i.e. Build us a fair beautiful house.' I have after the Gospel stood, And so he continues in the very simplest and homeliest strain, and with many repetitions, addressing himself in the most earnest sincerity of purpose to his untaught hearers : For all that e'er on earth is need In faith, in deed they shall learn all And, therefore, whoso learneth it, He shall straightway be worthy held With ear should listen unto it, With heart should it believe, With tongue should make its tidings known, With doing should fulfil it, And so should win 'neath Christendom, Through God, true soul-salvation; And if that they will hearken it And follow it with deed, Then with Christ's aid I've holpen them Shelter of Him to win. And I shall have, for this my toil, Good boon from God at last, If that I, for the love of God, Have turned it into English speech For their souls' weal and need.2 The following, on Luke vii., is a portion of his Gospel narrative : Augustus hight in olden time A Roman Kaiser-king, 1 The Ormulum, ed. R. M. White; Dedic. 25-36: Icc itt hafe forthedd te, Acc all thurrh Cristess hellpe. 2 Id. 130, etc. : Forr al thatt æfre own erthe iss ned.' |