by Ed West
Another of Harold’s daughters, Gytha, fled to Denmark and was married to the far-flung Duke of Kiev. Their descendant Isabella of France would marry the ineffectual English king Edward II and through her the royal family, as well as the vast majority of English people,7 can trace their descent to Harold as well as William.
The biggest impact of the Norman invasion was on the English language, which was replaced by French and Latin as the medium of government and law for three centuries. It might well have gone extinct, just as at least eight previous native languages of England had been, but most likely sheer weight of numbers and its established literature helped it survive.
Eventually English was adopted by the new aristocracy, but it was a changed language, and Old English is totally incomprehensible to us. Today at least a quarter and as many as a half of English words are of French origin, and the Norman invasion helped to add great nuance to the language. French words are usually more formal or aristocratic sounding: ascend, rather than rise, status rather than standing, mansion rather than house, cordial rather than hearty. Almost all words relating to government and justice are Norman, including prison, jury, felony, traitor, govern and, of course, justice. Likewise titles are mostly Norman French, including sovereign, prince, duke and baron—although not king or lord.
The most famous contrast is between the words for beasts in the field and those on plates, since the English words for animals—pigge, sceap, cu—survived, while the French terms for the dishes—porce, mutton, boeuf—took over. Words for semi-skilled trades like baker and shoemaker are Anglo-Saxon, while highly skilled, well-paid professions like mason and tailor are French. French-derived English words sound more flouncy, which is why George Orwell famously advised people to use Anglo-Saxon terms if possible.
Thanks to the Normans we have two words for many conditions, such as friendship and amity, brotherhood and fraternity, motherhood and maternity, rise and ascend, cheer and cherish, cave and cavern, stand and stay, cow and beef, think and pensive, smell and odour, help and aid, weep and cry, weird and strange, harbour and port, worthy and valuable, and knowledge and science.
Often the nouns stayed native while the adjective went French, so that we have water/aquatic, mouth/oral, son/filial and sun/solar. Another curious result was that in legal English this bilingualism led to lots of lexicon doublets, made up of an English and French word, such as breaking and entering, fit and proper, and wrack and ruin.
Curiously, some words have come to English both through Norman and Parisian French, giving us almost-twin doublets such as convey and convoy, gaol and jail, warden and guardian, warrant and guarantee, and wile and guile.8
Old English disappears as a written language soon after 1135, when the second to last Anglo-Saxon Chronicle was written just as the country slid into anarchy. Nineteen years later the last ever entry shows a language that was radically different, far closer to modern English than what went before. Anglo-Saxon used German constructions, with verbs at the end of the sentence, like Yoda from Star Wars. That all changed with the Normans. Gender was now on its way out, spelling was simplified, most of the conjugations were gone, and nouns were reduced to two inflections. If it wasn’t for the Normans we’d all be speaking German; instead we speak a sort of pidgin German.
The very last piece of writing considered Old English dates from around 1190 in Canterbury; forty years later it is recorded that a monk at Worcester was trying to learn Old English but by 1300 some Anglo-Saxon text was noted as being an ‘unknown language’; Middle English, the language of Geoffrey Chaucer, was born.
But it is not true that the Normans alone made English more French and less German. French may have become very influential anyway, as by the twelfth century it had become the lingua franca of western Europe, France the cultural centre of the continent for the next few hundred years, and most French words entered English after 1200, when the Normans were no longer in charge. In fact even before the conquest English had absorbed a number of French words, such as bacon, ginger, capon, dancer, weapon, prison, service, market and proud.9 The period of peak borrowing was the last quarter of the fourteenth century, when 2,500 new loan words are identified; by this stage English had already replaced French as the language of Parliament, and England now occupied much of France rather than the other way around.10 In contrast, in Layamon’s Brut from around 1200, a popular verse history of the country, there are only 250 French loan words in thirty thousand lines, so the French influence must have come later.11
English would eventually replace Norman French as the language of government; in 1362 Parliament made English its official language while in 1399 Henry IV became the first king to have English as his native language since his ancestor Harold II. He opened Parliament by shouting ‘Yes, yes, yes!’ while his son Henry V would spend his short, spectacular career on a rampage through Normandy, as demented in his confidence in God’s support as William I. Henry V, the prototype English soccer hooligan abroad, could barely understand French at all.
By 1385 English had recovered so well that someone wrote that ‘nowadays children at grammar school know no more French than their left heel, and that is a misfortune for them if they should cross the sea and travel in foreign countries.’ And things have barely changed since. It wasn’t until the following century that English replaced French in courts, however, and a sort of ‘degenerate French’ was still used in law courts until the seventeenth century.12
Stephen’s death in 1154 marked the end of the Norman age and the start of a new dynasty, called the Angevins or Plantagenets, after the type of flower Geoffrey of Anjou wore on his lapel in order to disguise himself while hunting. His son Henry II now ruled a vast empire that included the whole western half of France. This all came to an end when his incompetent son John lost Normandy in 1204, and from this point on the Anglo-Norman aristocrats began to see themselves as firmly English. While a judge in 1157 could speak of ‘us Normans’ needing protection ‘against the wiles of the English’13 just twenty years later crown treasurer Richard fitz Nigel observed ‘the races have become so fused that it can scarcely be discerned who is English and who is Norman’. By that decade everyone could speak English fluently, and under John the reference to all subjects, ‘Angli et Franci’, was finally dropped from royal charters.
A disastrous attempt by John to win back his French lands in 1214 led to a revolt by the barons, which culminated the following year with a peace agreement called the ‘great charter’, or Magna Carta. The Anglo-Norman elite, many of whom were from mixed marriages, had become English, and their variation of French, cut off by the English Channel, was now laughed at in Paris. Today Norman, or ‘Jersey French’, remains one of three official languages in the Channel Islands, although almost no one can understand it. The islands were the only parts of the Duchy that remained in English hands after 1204 and today the Queen is still officially Duke of Normandy (not, strangely, duchess—the Normans would never accept a woman in charge, of course).
Driven underground, the English language could have gone altogether. Today only 4,500 of 30,000 Anglo-Saxon words are still in use in English, but not only did bits of Anglo-Saxon survive—it became the backbone of modern English. In fact it is impossible to make any sense without it. Today almost all of the most common hundred English words predate the conquest; the most popular French-derived word is just, ranked at 105.
Famously, when in 1940 Britain faced an invasion more devastating than that of 1066 its war time leader Winston Churchill made a speech that King Harold might have understood: ‘We shall fight on the beaches; we shall fight on the landing grounds; we shall fight in the fields and the streets; we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.’ All but the final word are of Anglo-Saxon origin.13
Almost nine centuries after the conquest an enormous armada was launched in the opposite direction, comprised of the armies of three English-speaking nations, Britain, the United States and Canada. The British forces in the 1944 invasion of No
rmandy were led by Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery, from a Norman family that had settled in Scotland in the twelfth century. His ancestor Roger de Mundegumbrie had made the reverse trip with William. Bayeux was captured by the British on June 7, 1944, and at the graveyard of the 56th British infantry division which took the town, less than a mile from where the tapestry can now be viewed, there is today a Latin inscription which reads: Nos a Guillelmo victi, victoris patriam liberavimus: ‘Those whom William conquered returned to liberate the land of the conqueror.’
Bibliography
This is an introduction to the subject and far more can be discovered in detail from the following:
Ackroyd, Peter Foundations
Asbridge, Thomas The Greatest Knight
Bartlett, Robert The Making of Europe
Barlow, Frank The Godwins
Borman, Tracy Matilda: Queen of the Conqueror
Bradbury, Jim The Battle of Hastings
Bridge, Anthony The Crusades
Bridgeford, Andrew 1066: The Hidden History of the Bayeux Tapestry
Brooke, Christopher The Saxon and Norman Kings
Bryson, Bill Mother Tongue
Castor, Helen She-Wolves
Clarke, Stephen 1000 years of Annoying the French
Crossley-Holland, Kevin The Anglo-Saxon World
Clements, Jonathan Vikings
Crystal, David The Stories of English
Denzinger, Danny and Lacey, Robert The Year 1000
Gimson, Andrew Gimson’s Kings and Queens
Higham, Nicholas J. and Ryan, Martin J. The Anglo-Saxon World
Hindley, Geoffrey The Anglo-Saxons
Howarth, David The Year of the Conquest
Lacey, Robert Great Tales of English History
McLynn, Frank 1066
Morris, Marc The Norman Conquest
Neveux, Francois A Brief History of the Normans
Oliver, Neil The Vikings
O’Brien, Harriet Queen Emma and the Vikings
Ormrod, W. H. The Kings and Queens of England
Parker, Philip The Norseman’s Fury
Poole, A.L. Domesday Book to Magna Carta
Ramirez, Janina The Private Lives of the Saints
Schama, Simon A History of Britain, Volume 1
Stanton, Sir Frank The Anglo-Saxons
Strong, Roy The Story of Britain
Tombs, Robert The English and Their History
White, R.J. England, A History
Wood, Harriet Harvey The Fall of Anglo-Saxon England
Endnotes
Introduction
1. http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=bigot.
2. Malfoy translates as ‘bad faith’ and Voldemort as ‘theft of death’. Without laboring the point almost all the Harry Potter villains have French-sounding aristocratic names, including Professor Quirinus Quirrell and Bellatrix Lestrange. In contrast goodies Dumbledore, Hagrid and Black all sound Anglo-Saxon. Granger, being the Anglo-Norman word for bailiff, is the exception to my half-baked theory.
3. https://www.ft.com/content/57f2dec2-5e7d-11e6-bb77-a121aa8abd95.
4. As a young man the duke had joined the army, as befitting someone of his class, although his passion was for the working-class sport of soccer. His father prevented him from signing for Fulham Football Club because he thought the sport involved too much unmanly kissing and he preferred upper-class rugby.
5. The concept is highly disputed among historians anyway. Some believe the definition is basically meaningless.
Chapter 1
1. See Saxons vs Vikings, book 2 in the series, for further information. More importantly, buy it.
2. Tombs, Robert.
3. Tombs.
4. Tombs.
5. The historian Robert Tombs argues that French literature only began in England after 1066 in imitation of English, and that the French epic The Song of Roland, about a heroic but rather dim-witted attack on the Saracens by the Franks, was written in England. In fact in real life Roland fought fellow Christians, not Saracens, but like Hollywood producers epic poets were casual about historic accuracy.
6. The English were new to all this, and one chronicler in Italy wrote that the English traders in Pavia once started an enormous brawl over excise duty.
7. The book states that all the children agree that they should make peace with the farmer ‘because he provides us with food and drink … No matter who or what you are, whether a priest, or a monk, or a peasant, or a soldier, concern yourself with the task before you and perform it, and be what you are, for it is very harmful and disgraceful for a man not to know who and what he is and what he needs to be.’
8. The Colloquy includes a proud hunter, employed by the king, who catches stags in nets and hunts boards with lances, and says ‘A hunter can’t afford to be timid, because all kinds of wild animals live in the woods’. The Fisherman says he takes from lakes and rivers ‘eels and pike, minnows, trout … and whatever small fish happen to be swimming in the river’.
9. Father’s Day was only invented in West Virginia in 1908 in dedication to 361 miners who died in an explosion the previous December.
10. Among the other surviving works of the era is The Twelve Charms, which dates from the tenth and eleventh centuries, and includes a chant to pray for good crops with the magic words ‘Erce, Erce, Erce, eorpan motor’. Eorpan motor means ‘mother of earth’ and ‘Erce’ supposedly refers to a long-forgotten fertility goddess, although it could just be nonsense.
11. Slavery also brought some revenue in for the crown: when a horse was sold buyer and seller would each pay a penny, when a man was sold they paid four pence.
12. From the Old English for ‘to move’, as in the German fahren. Much of Old English resembles German.
13. Howarth, David.
14. Stanton, Sir Frank.
Chapter 2
1. Ramirez, Janina.
2. Hilda Roderick Ellis Davidson, Gods and Myths of Northern Europe.
3. Almost all of England’s counties existed by this point, except two in the far north and Rutland, a tiny area which historically was the dowry given to the Queen of England.
4. Or at least Byrhferth’s Life of St Oswald says so.
5. She’s more accurately called Ælfthryth but all the names of this period can be spelt a number of ways and I’ve tried to make them as simple as possible to avoid you feeling like you’re trying to follow a baffling foreign novel.
6. O’Brien, Harriet.
7. Dunstan also apparently let rip at Ethelred’s baptism, according to twelfth century historian William of Malmesbury, shouting ‘By God and His Mother, he will be a wastrel when he is a man’. That sounds like the sort of thing you remember yourself saying much later.
8. The Vikings never touched what is now US soil, however, and the Nordic inscription discovered in Minnesota in 1898, the Kensington Runestone, is generally regarded as a hoax. But they did get as far south as Newfoundland, which is impressive enough.
9. The Normans were called ‘The gray foreigners’ on account of their chainmail. Vikings were also called ‘the blue men’.
10. http://www.irishtimes.com/news/why-people-in-iceland-look-just-like-us-1.1104676.
11. The more poetic story is that two of the Rus visited the majestic Hagia Sofia in Constantinople and felt that they were close to heaven, and although it is a truly magnificent building the more likely explanation is that, as Vladimir himself said, ‘Drinking is the joy of all Rus. We cannot exist without that pleasure.’ One can imagine that the Islamic pitch to the Rus must have stumbled when this small print was mentioned. ‘Hang on, have those other guys left?’
12. Ibn Fadlan’s story became the basis for the Michael Crichton novel, Eaters of the Dead, later turned into the film, The 13th Warrior.
13. Clements, Jonathan.
14. “The Fortunes of Men” trans. Henry Morley. The Library of the World’s Best Literature. An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917, http://www.bartleby.com/library/poem/264.html.
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15. The Phoenix is a happier poem, about the time of the ‘happy Land’ where the Phoenix live, where ‘neither warm weather nor winter sleet can work the least harm here’. Then there is Waldere, a poem about Walter of Aquitaine, a Visigoth king on the run from Attila the Hun who fights another prince, Guthere, to impress his lover; again, though, only fragments remain. This story ends happily, but generally speaking the poetry at the time was bleak.
16. Anglo-Saxon Riddles of the Exeter Book, trans. PAULL F. BAUM. Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press, 1963.
17. Ibid.
Chapter 3
1. Continental Saxons from what is now Germany, not to be confused with the Saxons who teamed up with the Angles in Britain.
2. Ragnar, whose surname means hairy trousers, appears in various sagas, dying a number of times and becoming father to an improbable number of Viking leaders. Today he is probably most famous as the lead character in the TV series Vikings.
3. http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/did-normans-descend-vikings-what-genetics-tell-us-about-viking-legacy-1560298.
4. Bradbury, Jim.
5. This became a place of devotion after St Michael the Archangel had appeared to a local bishop and, he claims, punched him in the head, which seems strikingly aggressive for a visitation, but then the Normans were violent people and maybe that was the only way the angel could get his attention. The bishop’s head is still on display and does indeed contain a skull fracture.
6. O’Brien.
7. According to William of Malmesbury, the most important English historian of the period.
8. William of Jumieges, who was writing not long after the events, said that Ethelred defiled the kingdom ‘with such a dreadful crime that in his own reign even the heathens judged it is a detestable, shocking deed.’ Murdering ‘the Danes who lived peacefully and quite harmoniously throughout the kingdom … he ordered the women to be buried up to the waists and the nipples to be torn from their breast by ferocious mastiffs set upon them. He also gave orders to crunch little children against doorposts’. William was a propagandist for the Normans, though, so he was probably lying.