[82] It is a proof of this difficulty that the best masters of our ancient language have lately introduced the word semi-Saxon, which is to cover everything from 1150 to 1250. See Thorpe’s preface to Analecta Anglo-Saxonica, and many other recent books. 48. The Anglo-Norman language is a phrase not quite so unobjectionable as the Anglo-Norman constitution; and as it is sure to deceive, we might better lay it aside altogether.[83] In the one instance, there was a real fusion of laws and government, to which we can find but a remote analogy, or rather none at all, in the other. It is probable, indeed, that the converse of foreigners might have something to do with those simplifications of the Anglo-Saxon grammar, which appear about the reign of Henry II., more than a century after the Conquest; though it is also true, that languages of a very artificial structure, like that of England before that revolution, often became less complex in their forms, without any such violent process as an amalgamation of two different races.[84] What is commonly called the Saxon Chronicle is continued to the death of Stephen, in 1154, and in the same language, though with some loss of its purity. Besides the neglect of several grammatical rules, French words now and then obtrude themselves, but not very frequently, in the latter pages of this Chronicle. Peterborough, however, was quite an English monastery; its endowments, its abbots, were Saxon; and the political spirit the Chronicle breathes, in some passages, is that of the indignant subjects, _servi ancor frementi_, of the Norman usurpers. If its last compilers, therefore, gave way to some innovations of language, we may presume that these prevailed more extensively in places less secluded, and especially in London. [83] A popular and pleasing writer has drawn a little upon his imagination in the following account of the language of our forefathers after the Conquest:--“The language of the church was Latin; that of the king and nobles, Norman; that of the people, Anglo-Saxon; _the Anglo-Norman jargon was only employed in the commercial intercourse between the conquerors and the conquered_.” Ellis’s Specimens of Early English Poets, vol. i. p. 17. What was this jargon? and where do we find a proof of its existence? and what was the commercial intercourse hinted at? I suspect Ellis only meant, what has often been remarked, that the animals which bear a Saxon name in the fields acquire a French one in the shambles. But even this is more ingenious than just; for muttons, beeves, and porkers are good old words for the living quadrupeds. [84] “Every branch of the low German stock from whence the Anglo-Saxon sprung, displays the same simplification of its grammar.” Price’s Preface to Warton, p. 110. He therefore ascribes little influence to the Norman conquest or to French connections. |Layamon.|