[48] Du Cange, p. 35. Raynouard, passim. M. de la Rue has called it, “un Latin expirant.” Recherches sur les Bardes d’Armorique. Between this and “un Français naissant” there may be only a verbal distinction; but, in accuracy of definition, I should think M. Raynouard much more correct. The language of this oath cannot be called Latin without a violent stretch of words: no Latin scholar, as such, would understand it, except by conjecture. On the other hand, most of the words, as we learn from M. R., are Provençal of the twelfth century. The passage has been often printed, and sometimes incorrectly. M. Roquefort, in the preface to his Glossaire de la Langue Romane, has given a tracing from an ancient manuscript of Nitard, the historian of the ninth century, to whom we owe this important record of language. [49] The chief difference was in orthography; the Northerns wrote Latin words with an _e_ where the South retained _a_; as charitet, caritat: veritet, veritat; appelet, apelat. Si l’on rétablissait dans les plus anciens textes Français les _a_ primitifs en place des _e_, on aurait identiquement la langue des troubadours. Raynouard, Observations sur le Roman du Rou, 1829, p. 5. [50] The proofs of this similarity occupy most part of the first and sixth volumes in M. Raynouard’s excellent work. It is a common error to suppose that French and Italian had a double source, barbaric as well as Latin; and that the northern nations, in conquering those regions, brought in a large share of their own language. This is like the opinion, that the Norman Conquest infused the French we now find in our own tongue. There are certainly Teutonic words, both in French and Italian, but not sufficient to affect the proposition that these languages are merely Latin in their origin. These words in many instances express what Latin could not; thus _guerra_ was by no means synonymous with _bellum_. Yet even Roquefort talks of “un jargon composé de mots Tudesques et Romains.” Discours Preliminaire, p. 19; forgetting which, he more justly remarks afterwards, on the oath of Charles the Bald, that it shows “la langue Romane est entièrement composée de Latin.” A long list could, no doubt, be made of French and Italian words that cannot easily be traced to any Latin with which we are acquainted; but we may be surprised that it is not still longer. |Early specimens of French.| |Poem on Boethius.|