A page from Beowulf, taken from the manuscript now lodged in the British Library. The manuscript was damaged by fire in 1731, hence the odd shape to the page. The story is about a Scandinavian hero, Beowulf, who fights and kills a monster, Grendel, in Denmark. He is later made king of the Geats, in southern Sweden. There, as an old man, he kills a dragon in a fight that leads to his own death. Poetry of this kind was recited from memory (‘sung’, as Caedmon puts it) to the accompaniment of the harp – no small achievement, given that the poem contains over 3,000 lines.
The main dialect divisions (see map, p. 174) reflect the settlements of the invading tribes, with their different linguistic backgrounds, and these divisions are still apparent in the country today. The area occupied by the Angles produced two main dialects: Mercian was spoken in the Midlands, roughly between the River Thames and the River Humber, and as far west as the boundary with present-day Wales; Northumbrian was spoken to the north of Mercian, extending into the eastern lowlands of present-day Scotland, where it confronted the Celtic language of the Britons of Strathclyde. Kentish, spoken by the Jutes, was used mainly in the area of present-day Kent and the Isle of Wight. The rest of England, south of the Thames and west as far as Cornwall (where Celtic was also spoken), was settled by Saxons, the dialect being known as West Saxon. Most of the Old English manuscripts are written in West Saxon, because it was the kingdom of Wessex, under King Alfred, which became the leading political and cultural force at the end of the ninth century. However, modern standard English is descended not from West Saxon, but from Mercian, as this was the dialect spoken in the area around London, when that city became powerful in the Middle Ages (p. 203).
There is a clear line of descent from Old English to the English of the present day, in sounds, spelling, grammar, and vocabulary. About a third of the words we use on any page are of Old English origins. But what of the other two-thirds?
The history of English is one of repeated invasions, with newcomers to the islands bringing their own language with them, and leaving a fair amount of its vocabulary behind when they left or were assimilated. In the Anglo-Saxon period, there were two major influences of this kind.
The Christian missionaries not only introduced literacy. They also brought a huge Latin vocabulary, some of which was taken over into Old English. The Anglo-Saxons had encountered Latin before, in Europe, when several Latin words entered their language – such as weall ‘wall’, stræt ‘street’, ceap (‘bargain’, ‘cheap’), and win (‘wine’), and they brought these words with them to Britain. But there were only a few dozen such words. By contrast, the missionary influence resulted in around 450 new words coming into the language, mainly to do with the church and its services, but including many domestic and biological words. The vast majority have survived in modern times. At the same time, many Old English words were given new meanings – heaven, hell, God, gospel (‘good news’), Easter, Holy Ghost, sin – and there were several other usages, most of which have not survived (such as Scyppend ‘shaper’, used at the end of the Caedmon passage, p. 167, meaning ‘Creator’).
The origins and distribution of the main dialects of Old English
The second big linguistic invasion came as a result of the Danish (Viking) raids on Britain, which began in AD 787 and continued at intervals until the beginning of the eleventh century. Within a century, the Danes controlled most of eastern England. They were prevented from further gains by their defeat by King Alfred in 878 at Ethandun (modern Edington, in Wiltshire). A treaty was then drawn up in which the Danes agreed to settle only in the north-east third of the country – east of a line running roughly from Chester to London – an area that was subject to Danish law, and which thus became known as the Danelaw. In 991 a further invasion brought a series of victories for the Danish army, and resulted in the English king, Æthelred, being forced into exile, and the Danes seizing the throne. England stayed under Danish rule for twenty-five years.
Some Latin borrowings in the Old English period
abbot, alms, altar, anchor, angel, apostle, ark, cancer, candle, canon, cap, cedar, cell, chalice, chest, cleric, creed, cucumber, deacon, demon, disciple, elephant, epistle, fever, font, giant, grammatical, history, hymn, idol, laurel, lentil, lily, litany, lobster, marshmallow, martyr, mass, master, mat, noon, nun, offer, organ, oyster, paper, place, plant, pope, priest, prophet, psalm, purple, radish, relic, rule, sabbath, school, scorpion, shrine, sock, temple, tiger, title, tunic, verse.
The result of this prolonged period of contact was a large number of Danish settlements with Scandinavian names. There are over 1,500 place names of Scandinavian origin in England, especially in Yorkshire and Lincolnshire. Over 600 places end in -by, the Danish word for ‘farm’ or ‘town’ – Derby, Grimsby, Rugby, etc. Many of the remainder end in -thorp (‘village’), as in Althorp and Linthorpe; -thwaite (‘an isolated area’), as in Braithwaite and Langthwaite; or -toft (‘a piece of ground’), as in Lowestoft and Nortoft. Many Scandinavian personal names (e.g. surnames ending in -son, such as Davidson and Henderson) are also found in these areas (see p. 177).
In the long term, over 1,800 words of definite or probable Scandinavian origin entered the language during this period, and are still to be found in present-day standard English. Several thousand more continued to be used in regional dialects, especially those of the north-east. In fact, hardly any of these words actually turn up in Old English manuscripts, which shows the time it takes for words to become established, and to be used in literature (among the exceptions are law and riding, as in the ‘West Riding’ of Yorkshire, from þriding – a third part). Most of the words doubtless became established during the tenth and eleventh centuries, but written evidence for them is largely lacking until the thirteenth century, at the beginning of the Middle English
Scandinavian parish names in England, related to the boundary line of the Danelaw
period (see Chapter 11). Among these are most of the words which use sk sounds – skirt, sky, skin, whisk, etc.
The distribution of English family names ending in -son
The figures give the number of different surnames which are thought to have come from each county. The Scandinavian influence in the north and east is very clear.
Some Scandinavian loan words
are, awkward, band, bank, birth, both, brink, bull, call, clip, crawl, die, dirt, drag, dregs, egg, fellow, flat, freckle, gap, gasp, get, give, glitter, guess, harbour, hit, ill, keel, keg, kid, knife, leg, lift, loan, low, meek, muck, odd, race, raise, ransack, reindeer, root, rotten, rugged, scab, scare, score, scowl, scrap, seat, sister, sky, slaughter, sly, stack, steak, take, their, they, thrust, tight, trust, want, weak, window.
The closeness of the contact between the Anglo-Saxons and the Danish settlers during this period of 250 years is clearly shown by the extensive borrowings. Some of the commonest words in English came into the language at the time, such as both, same, get, give, and take. Three of the Old English personal pronouns were replaced by Scandinavian forms (they, them, their). And – the most remarkable invasion of all – the invading language even took over a form of the verb to be, the most widely used English verb. Are is of Scandinavian origin.
The Anglo-Saxon age was a time of enormous upheaval. Each invasion, whether physical or spiritual, was followed by a long period of social change which left its mark on the language, especially on the vocabulary. But none of the linguistic changes were as great as those which followed the most famous invasion of all, led by Duke William of Normandy in 1066, and which came to identify the second main period in English language history, Middle English.
Casting the Runes
Old English was first written using the runic alphabet. This alphabet was used in northern Europe, in Scandinavia, present-day Germany, and the British Isles, and it has been preserved in about 4,000 inscriptions and a few manuscripts. It dates from around the third century AD. No one knows exactly where the alphabet came from. It is a development of one of the alphabets of southern
Europe, probably the Roman, which runes resemble closely. The runic script could well have been invented in the Rhine area; we know that there were lively trade contacts here between Germanic people and Romans in the first centuries of our era.
The common runic alphabet used throughout the area consisted of twenty-four letters. It is written both from left to right and from right to left. Each letter had a name, and the alphabet as a whole is called the ‘futhorc’ (in Britain), from the names of its first six letters (in a similar way to our name ‘alphabet’, derived from the first two letters of the Greek alphabet, alpha and beta). The version found in Britain used extra letters to cope with the range of sounds found in Old English, and at its most developed form, in ninth century Northumbria, consisted of thirty-one letters. This alphabet is illustrated on p. 180, along with the names of the symbols in Old English and their meanings (where these are known). However, this list does not give all the variant shapes which can be found in the different inscriptions.
The inscriptions in Anglo-Saxon date from the fifth or sixth centuries AD. They are found on weapons, jewellery, monuments, and other arte-facts. Sometimes they simply tell who made or owned the object. Most of the Old English rune stones say little more than ‘X raised this stone in memory of Y’. Often the message is unclear.
The Old English runic alphabet
Rune Anglo-Saxon Name Meaning (where known)
f feoh cattle, wealth
u ūr bison (aurochs)
þ þorn thorn
o ōs god/mouth
r rād journey/riding
c cen torch
g [j] giefu gift
w wyn joy
h hægl hail
n nied necessity/trouble
l i is ice
j gear year
3 ēoh yew
p peor ?
x eolh ? sedge
s sigel sun
t tiw/tir Tiw (a god)
b beorc birch
e eoh horse
m man man
I lagu water/sea
ng ing Ing (a hero)
oe eþel land/estate
d dæg day
a ac oak
æ æsc ash
y yr bow
ea ear ? earth
g [?] gar spear
k calc ? sandal/chalice/chalk
k (name unknown)
14 13 12 11 10 9 8 7 6/5 4/3 2/1
u d e m • æ g æ m • æg og æg
= gægogæ mægæ medu
=? she-wolf reward to kinsman
= This she-wolf is a reward to my kinsman
The Undley bracteate (twice real size), and the runic transcription, transliterated into Old English. The image to the left of the helmeted head shows a she-wolf suckling two children – presumably a representation of the Romulus and Remus myth. The first six runes have been written as three groups of two – presumably because the rune-master wanted to be sure he had enough space for the whole inscription. The two small circles show the divisions between the words. With so little linguistic evidence to go on, the translation is uncertain – gægogæ, for example, may be a magical formula. The translation given here was made by Bengt Odenstedt.
They would be used in rituals by rune-masters, where the symbols would be given magical or mystical significance. The very name ‘runes’ means ‘secret’.
When runes came to be used in manuscripts, they were commonly used to convey ‘secret’ information. In one manuscript, a collection of riddles contains items in which runes are used to provide clues to the solution. In another, an author’s name is hidden – written in runic letters interspersed throughout a text. Over the centuries, the symbolic power of runes (perhaps arising from the way each symbol had a name, and represented a concept) has often been recognized. Runes continued to be used in Scandinavia until as late as the nineteenth century. Even in the twentieth century, they can be found in tales of mystery and imagination (such as the work of J. R. R. Tolkein).
The most famous runic inscriptions in Britain appear on the Ruthwell Cross, near Dumfries, a stone monument some 5 metres tall, and around the sides of a small bone box known as the Franks Casket. These both date from the early eighth century, and represent the Northumbrian dialect (p. 174). The earliest evidence of Old English is a runic inscription on the gold medallion (or bracteate) found at Undley in Suffolk in 1982, which has been dated AD 450–80 (p. 181).
Krist wæs on rodi
Christ was on the cross
ic wæs miþ blodæ bistemid
1 was with blood bedewed
Two sentences from the Ruthwell Cross, which has engraved upon it part of the Old English poem ‘The Dream of the Rood’. There are no spaces between the words in the original inscription.
The Ruthwell Cross, Ruthwell Church, Dumfriesshire, Scotland
11
Middle English
The year 1066 marks the beginning of a new social and linguistic era in Britain, but it does not actually identify the boundary between Old and Middle English. It was a long time before the effects of the invasion worked their way in to the language, and in the meantime, Old English continued to be used. Well past 1100, texts were still being composed in the West Saxon variety that had developed in the years following the reign of King Alfred.
‘Most of this is just a figure of speech now!’
Punch, 25 July 1984
An extract from the Peterborough Chronicle, for the year 1137
I ne can ne I ne mai tellen alle þe wunder ne alle þe
I not know nor I not can tell all the atrocities nor all the
pines ðat hi diden wreccemen on þis land, and ðat
cruelties that they did to wretched people in this land, and that
lastede þa xix intre wile Stephne was king, and æure it was
lasted the 19 winters while Stephen was king, and always it was
uuerse and uuerse. Hi læiden gæildes on the tunes
worse and worse. They imposed payments on the villages
æure umwile, and clepeden it tenserie. þa þe
at regular intervals, and called it protection money. When the
uureccemen ne hadden nan more to gyuen, þa ræueden hi
wretched people not had no more to give, then robbed they
and brendon alle the tunes, ðat wel þu myhtes faren
and burned all the villages, so that well you might go
al a dæis fare sculdest thu neure finden man in tune
all a day’s journey should you never find anyone in village
sittende, ne land tiled. þa was corn dære and flesc and
dwelling, nor land cultivated. Then was corn dear and meat and
caese and butere, for nan ne was o þe land. wreccemen
cheese and butter, for none not was in the land. Wretched people
sturuen of hungær; sume ieden on ælmes þe waren sumwile
died of hunger; some went on charity that were formerly
ricemen, sume flugen ut of lande. wes næure gæt mare
great men, some fled out of country. Was never yet more
wreccehed on land, ne næure hethen men werse ne diden þan
misery in land, nor never heathen men worse not did than
hi diden, for ouer sithon ne forbaren hi nouther
they did, for contrary to custom not spared they neither
circe ne cyrceiærd, oc namen al þe god ðat þarinne
church nor churchyard, but seized all the property that therein
was, and brenden sythen þe cyrce and altegædere. Ne
was, and burned afterwards the church and everything. Neither
hi me forbaren biscopes land ne abbotes ne preostes, ac
they not spared bishop’s land nor abbot’s nor priest’s, but
ræueden munekes and clerekes, and æuric man other þe
robbed monks and clerics, and every man another who
ouermyhte.
had the power.
The series of manuscripts which form the
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle clearly illustrate the period of change. This long work, which began to be compiled in Alfred’s time, recounts events in the history of Britain from the time of the Anglo-Saxon invasions until the middle of the twelfth century. In 1116, most of the monastery at Peterborough was destroyed by fire, along with many manuscripts. The monks immediately began to replace the writings which had been lost. They borrowed the text of the Chronicle from another monastery, copied it out, and then carried on writing the history themselves. They continued until 1131, but then the writing stopped – doubtless because of the chaotic conditions of civil war which existed in the reign of King Stephen.
When the writing begins again, in 1154, after the death of Stephen, the style is quite different. There are points of similarity with the previous work, but the overall impression is that the writers were starting again, using vocabulary and grammatical patterns which reflected the language of their time and locality, and inventing fresh conventions of spelling to cope with new sounds. The above extract has been set out in the same way as the Old English extract in the last chapter, using a word-for-word translation, but it is no longer necessary to add a free translation as well. Apart from a few phrases, the language now seems much closer to modern English; indeed, the Peterborough Chronicle is the earliest extensive text written in the East Midland dialect, from which modern standard English developed.
The English Language: A Guided Tour of the Language Page 19