The Saxon spirit had been well nigh subdued by the strict and unjust laws imposed by the Norman kings. For one hundred and thirty years Norman-French had been the language of the court, the language of law, of chivalry and justice. The laws of the chase and the curfew,—and many others unknown to the Saxon constitution,—had been placed upon the necks of the inhabitants of the soil. With few exceptions the race of Saxon princes had been extirpated; and it was not until the reign of Edward III. that England became thoroughly united as one people. The English language at the close of the twelfth century was not yet born. The Saxon mother and Norman father were not yet wedded; the two languages were gradually getting acquainted with each other; or, as Scott has logically expressed it, “the necessary intercourse between the lords of the soil, and those oppressed inferior beings by whom that soil was cultivated, occasioned the formation of a dialect, compounded betwixt the French and the Anglo-Saxon, in which they could render themselves mutually intelligible to each other; and from this necessity arose by degrees the structure of our present English language, in which the speech of the victors and the vanquished has been so happily blended together, and which has since been so richly improved by importations from the classical languages, and from those spoken by the southern nations of Europe.” In the first chapter—and it is always well to read carefully the first chapter of Scott—we are introduced to a swine-herd, born thrall of Cedric of Rotherwood, one of the few powerful Saxon families existing in England at the time of our story. He is attended by a domestic clown, or jester, maintained at that time in the houses of the wealthy. With an art and unity like Shakspere, Scott emphasizes at the very outset the chief historic feature of his story, by putting the following conversation in the mouths of these Saxon menials: “How call you those grunting brutes running about on their four legs?” demanded Wamba, the jester. “Swine,” said the herd. “And swine is good Saxon,” said the jester; “but how call you it when quartered?” “Pork,” answered the cow-herd.