ENGLISH GRAMMAR.

PART I.

HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION.

§ 1. THE English Language was originally foreign to the British Isles; into which it was introduced from Germany. The exact limits of that part of Germany which gave origin to the English invasion cannot be traced. They lay, however, to the North rather than the South; they lay most especially in Holstein, in Hanover, and in Westphalia. The Eyder is generally considered to have been a boundary in the direction of Denmark, or the country of the Danes.

The Elbe, too, was, to some extent, a boundary on the east; beyond which the whole land was Slavonic, i. e. the occupancy of populations akin to the Poles and Russians. In the direction, however, of Friesland, Holland, and the Rhine, the line of demarcation is obscure. So it is in that of the Hartz Mountains.

§2. The chief population by which the English language was spoken was that of the Angles or Engles; and the native name by which it was first known was the English Speech (Englisc Spræc). The Latin for this was Sermo Anglorum, or Lingua Anglorum.

In the language, however, of the original Britons the

B

Angles were called Saxons; indeed, at the present time, the Welsh, the Irish, the Scotch Highlanders, and the Manksmen of the Isle of Man, call an Englishman a Saxon, and the English language Saxon.

It is nearly certain that this term Saxon was, also, used by the Romans and the Franks; and it is quite certain that out of the two names combined has arisen the term AngloSaxon; by which is meant the English language in its oldest known form; the English language, as it was spoken in the time of Ecbert, Alfred, Athelstan and the kings before the Norman Conquest.

§ 3. The first Angle settlements were on the eastern coast of Britain, in the counties of Northumberland, Durham, Yorkshire, Lincolnshire, Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex, and Kent; also in Sussex and Hampshire on the south. They advanced westwards by degrees. At the present time

Wales is British, and parts of Scotland Gaelic.

§ 4. Wales, a peculiar and curious word, is now the name of a country; but at first it was that of a people-meaning the Welshmen. Its older form is Wealhas, the plural of Wealh. It was an Anglo-Saxon word used to denote those populations which resided on the borders of the AngloSaxons, but were not themselves Anglo-Saxon. Hence, it was applied by the Angles to the remains of the ancient Britons. It is, then, anything but a Welsh denomination. Neither is it applied to the Welsh exclusively. Neither are the Angles the only Germans who have had recourse to it when they wished to designate a nation which was other than German. It applies to the Italians; Welschland being a German name for Italy. The Valais districts of Switzerland are the districts occupied by the Welsh, i. e. the Nongermans. The parts about Liege constitute the Walloon country; a country on the frontier of Germany, but not German. Wallachia too, is only another Wales or Welshland.

§ 5. It is the western parts of our island which have

longest preserved the original British; and it is in the east that we must look for the first traces of the English language. The forms of speech which it displaced were, in all probability, British in the country districts, and Latin in the towns. The proportion that these two lan guages bore to one another is unknown. Some maintain that the former was all but obliterated, and that when the Angles entered Britain they found little in the way of language except the Latin of the more educated Romans and the mixed dialects of the soldiers; many of whom were from the more barbarous provinces of the empire. Be this as it may, one fact of considerable importance is certain, viz. that the older language, whatever it was, was absolutely displaced by the mother-tongue of the English. In other words, there was neither intermixture nor fusion. The present English represents the language of the Angles; what it contains of either the older British or the older Latin being of slight account.

§ 6. Without, then, knowing the exact details of either the geographical distribution of the English language as it was spoken upon German soil, or those of its introduction into Britain, we have still a clear, though general, view both of its origin and of the direction in which it diffused itself. What do we know about its date?

The exact date of the introduction of the English language into Britain is not known.

As early as A.D. 290 there were Franks in the parts about London. Whether, however, they were permanent settlers, or mere temporary invaders, we have no means of deciding. Besides which, the Franks, though Germans, were not Angles. Nevertheless, the text which names them is important.

Translation of a Panegyric by Mamertinus, addressed to the Emperors Maximian and Diocletian.

"By so thorough a consent of the Immortal Gods, O unconquered Cæsar, has the extermination of all enemies whom you have attacked, and of the

Franks more especially, been decreed, that even those of your soldiers who missed their way on a foggy sea, but reached the town of London, destroyed promiscuously and throughout the city the whole remnant of that mercenary multitude of barbarians, which, after escaping the battle, sacking the town, and attempting flight, was still left-a deed whereby your provincials were not only saved, but delighted by the sight of the slaughter."

Again-A D. 306, Constantius died at York, and his son, Constantine, assumed the empire, assisted by Eroc, King of the Alemanni. The Alemanni, however, though Germans, were not Angles.

Thirdly-In a work entitled Notitia Utriusque Imperii, of which the date, as inferred from internal evidence, lies between A.D. 396 and A.D. 408, we find a Littus Saxonicum, or rather two Littora Saxonica,-—one in Gaul, one in Britain. The latter seems to have extended from the Wash to the Southampton Water, inasmuch as it contained the following stations:

Fourthly-A.D. 597, St. Augustine taught Christianity to Ethelbert, king of Kent, concerning whom Beda writes. thus:

"There lived at that time (A.D. 597) Ethelbert, King of Kent, and very powerful, who had extended his kingdom as far as the boundary of the great river Humber, which divides the Northern and Southern divisions of the Angles.-These" (viz. the missionaries) "brought with them interpreters from the nation of the Franks."

This indicates the necessity of a language which should be neither British nor Roman, but German. Still, the Frank language was not the language of the Angles.

Finally-The Venerable Beda, in his Ecclesiastical History, written about A.D. 730, gives us the following

statement:

'This, at the present time, according to the number of the books in which the Divine Law is written, explores and confesses the one and the same knowledge of supreme truth and true sublimity in the language of five nations (gentium), viz. the Angles, the Britons, the Scots, the Picts, and the Latins, which, from the perusal of the Scriptures, is made common to all the others."

§ 7. There are, of course, other data for the history of the introduction of the English language into Britain, and the origin of the name England. None, however, are, at once, important and historical. The ordinary statements respecting the settlements of Hengest and Horsa in Kent; of Ella in Sussex; of Cerdic in Hampshire; of certain nameless captains in the Eastern Counties; and of Ida in Northumberland, one and all, rest upon testimony long subsequent to the dates assigned to the respective events, and upon evidence to which no one has succeeded in assigning an adequate foundation.

So early as A.D. 449, according to the current chronology, Hengest and Horsa land on the Isle of Thanet; but it is as late as A.D. 597 before Christianity is introduced into the kingdom of Kent; the interval having been a period of darkness and fable.

Again-It is as late as the eighth century before the work upon which the belief in the usual details of the early history of the Angles rests, is composed. The reign of Ceolwulf began A.D. 729, and ended A.D. 737; and it is to Ceolwulf, king of Northumberland, that the Ecclesiastical History of the Venerable Beda is dedicated.. It contains the usual details of the Anglo-Saxon history and ethnology; but it also contains a notice of the data upon which they are given; a notice which, if it fail to prove them absolutely untrustworthy, is still sufficient to show that they are anything but conclusive.