The Early History of English

By Annie Whitehead

Here’s a little test: Torpenhow. Know how to pronounce it? Know its derivation? If it helps at all, it’s in Cumbria, and it’s a hill… and its name means hill hill hill. That’s English for you. But why? How did our language become so, well, strange? Or should that be weird? Why do we have so many different words for the same thing, and why does our spelling not even abide by its own rules?

I think the first clue might be that, as historian Ann Williams remarked, “We have little idea about what ‘spoken’ English was like before 1100 - virtually all the surviving texts are written in the literary standard (Standard West Saxon in modern scholarship) which was never a spoken language. The abrupt change in the Peterborough Chronicle in 1121 (pictured below) marks the moment when the scribe ceased to write in Standard West Saxon, and began to write in something like the local spoken dialect.”

And in reply, historian Stephanie Evans Mooers Christelow had this to add: “There is also the fact that people speak the language of their mothers: French men who married English women had bicultural children who most likely spoke English. French soldiers stationed in English towns had to learn English, and the French who resided in English villages did as well. According to the Cambridge History of the English Language, French vocabulary and syntax did not begin to significantly affect the English language until about 1300.”

So, there are two intriguing pieces of information here: a hint at the marked differences between written and spoken language, and the fact that it’s too easy, and inaccurate, to blame all our language anomalies on the Norman Conquest. So where did they come from?

Two thirds of England’s rivers take their names from ‘Celtic’ words, for example, Avon. We have place names which are a mixture - in the case of Much Wenlock, Much is from Anglo-Saxon mycel, meaning great, Wenlock comes from Celtic wininicas, white area, and the Anglo-Saxon loca, (place.) We have Roman influence, too, with castra (fort), seen in places such as Chester, and Manchester. Of course, the Anglo-Saxons did build forts of their own - burhs, which give Britain all the burgh and borough place names. But the Anglo-Saxons didn’t just come to fight, and/or defend, they also came to stay. They cleared places, to make space for their settlements, and gave us word endings like ley, ly, leay and leigh, which all mean 'clearing'. The Scandinavians followed suit and also added place names - by, booth, and thwaite.

The Normans did add a few of their own - Ashby was given to the de la Zuche family, (giving us Ashby de la Zouche) and Bewdley came from Beau Lieu (beautiful place).

But the Norman-French did not settle in with the same comfort as the Anglo-Saxons and the Scandinavians, nor in the same number. As we saw above, the commoners kept speaking English, which was still evolving, nevertheless, and came to add many French words.

There is a wealth of information to be gleaned from the study of our place names, and as Margaret Gelling says in her Signposts to the Past, “The linguistic agility which enables modern English speakers to accept Salop as a form of Shropshire is paralleled by the ease with which Keighley is an accepted spelling form of a name pronounced Keethley.” (If you can, get a copy of her book and marvel at her enlightening discourse on the ‘correct’ pronunciation of Shrewsbury!)

Of course, places names have different pronunciations not just because of language development, as in the case of Shrewsbury (Shrowsbury/Shroosberry.) So what can regional dialect tell us?

What Fettle Mun is a book on Cumbrian dialect by Tim Barker. Remember Torpenhow? Well, it is pronounced Tra’penner, or Truhpenner. The Tor bit is from an ancient British word, meaning hill. The Pen is from Celtic (Welsh) and it means hill. How is Old Norse, and it means… hill. Yes, Barker confirms that our language is definitely a hybrid.

Cumbria has the same root as the Welsh word for Wales - Cymru. The shepherds’ counting system, Yan, T’yar, tethera, methera, pimp, is very close to the Welsh for 1-5 (Un, dai, tri, pedwar, pimp).

The Lakeland dialect contains lots of thees and thous, similar to older English - Dost thou is still in evidence is phrases like Duster, as in "Duster want a cup o’tea?"

English development is not unique, but it is unusual. Other languages have remained more pure; Canadian French, for example, is much closer to medieval French, and American English bears traces of that spoken by those on the Mayflower who, being English, would nevertheless have talked of fall coming after summer, and of having ‘gotten’ things.

But here in England we can find even earlier traces. Staying in Cumbria, The Dictionary of Cumberland Dialect (Ed. Richard LM Biers) tells us that gang means go, remarkably similar to the Old English (OE) for 'going' : gangan.

At the other end of the country, In Broad Norfolk, Jonathan Mardle tells us that in the ninth century the Danes invaded the East coast and martyred the Christian king, Edmund. People in East Norfolk used to call the carrion-crow ‘Harra the Denchman’ (Harold the Danishman) which suggests a very long folk-memory of the Anglo-Saxon terror of the heathen vikings.

Norfolk shepherds also have a counting system which sounds rather familiar - Ina, tina, tether, wether, pink.

They still call a song thrush a Mavis, the OE name, and they retain OE plurals - childr, housen. There is much of what we would term biblical language:  "Go ye into the village."

East Anglia became part of the Danelaw. The Danes inter-mingled and Danish became part of the East Anglian dialect. Then came the Flemish weavers in the 14th century. Then an influx of Dutch and Walloon weavers in the 16th century - the ‘strangers’ - brought the word ‘lucum’ (attic window) from the French ‘lucarne’. So not all of our French words come necessarily from Norman French. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves.

Those who came to England early on spoke a Germanic language (Indo-European). The word for father in a document of AD800 is faeder. In Old High German it’s Fater and in Old Frisian fadar or feder. Modern German gives us Vater. We can see the connection. The Story of English (McCrum, Cran & MacNeil) adds that other Frisian words, ko (cow) lam (lamb) goes (goose) boat (boat) dong  (dung) and rein (rain) suggest that had the Conquest not happened, we might all be speaking something akin to modern Dutch.

We should therefore expect some hybrids (as we’ve seen in the place names) and some alternatives with the arrival of the Normans eg wedding/marriage. Although why we don’t have Lapin for rabbit, when it was the French who introduced rabbits to England - can anyone tell me?? (Seriously, I would love to know!)

But leaving aside hybrids, dialect and alternatives, why the different spellings of seemingly similar words?

OE contains barely a dozen Celtic words, and most of them, as we have seen, are geographical. And most place names are English or Danish. OE was not uniform, it had local varieties which as we’ve seen are still discernible today, and also regional accents as diverse as 'Geordie' in the north-east, Dorset with its soft ‘burrs’ and Kent, with speech patterns that go back to Jutish origins. The impact of Old Norse (ON) is harder to gauge because words were so similar to OE. But it has given us beck, laithe, garth - all generally found in areas of Viking settlement in the north, as is riding, a word for an administrative unit, which as an interesting aside, is also used in Canada for a parliamentary constituency.

Certain developments affected vocabulary: the coming of Christianity brought biblical words - Greek and Latin - and gave OE the ability to speak of concepts (frumweorc: from fruma, beginning, and weorc, work, which gives OE for creation), and the Conquest brought a linguistic ‘apartheid’ in areas of religion and law, with the introduction of words like felony, perjury, attorney, bailiff and nobility.

But many of our unusual spellings simply boil down to phonetics. The English had two letters for the th sound (þ and  ð) which became virtually interchangeable. They had no silent letters; every letter was pronounced. But there were weaknesses in the system - the same letter, c, was used for cold and child (cild) and king (cyning).

G was both hard and soft, and was also used for a sound similar to the ending of Scottish ‘loch’, as well as the j sound in hedge, which was written with a cg spelling (hecg). The sh sound was written sc - (scip = ship).

So h, c and g were being used for several sounds.

There were similar problems with vowels; with no clue given in the spelling as to the length of the vowels. The scribes experimented with double letters and accents, but it wasn’t ideal. They had no silent letters, remember, so vowels couldn’t be used as clues to pronunciation.  But post-1066, double vowels came to be used (sweet, queen).

The Normans might not have had everyone speaking French, but they introduced new ways of hinting at pronunciation of English - sc became sh, cw became qu, and cg became dg, as in hedge.

They brought in the letter w, but this looked too much like v v (havving), so doubling up went out and the silent e was added to aid pronunciation (have, live). And suddenly it starts to become clear why we have all our spelling anomalies.

For anyone wondering about  through, trough, throw, threw, thorough, bough, and tough, I recommend David Crystal’s book, Spell it Out, for it would seem that a lot of our peculiar spellings were born of a need to show how words should be pronounced.

So, whilst the Normans might not have altered the way we spoke, they certainly altered the way our words were spelled.

It is my intention to revisit this subject, and in a future post I will look at how Old English and Anglo-Norman turned into what we call Middle English, and how, why and when even the nobility stopped speaking French.

See Part II of the Story of English Here
[all the above images are in the public domain, via Wikipedia]

~~~~~~~~~~

Annie Whitehead is a history graduate and prize-winning author. Her first novel, To Be A Queen, is the story of Aethelflaed, daughter of Alfred the Great, who came to be known as the Lady of the Mercians. It was long-listed for the Historical Novel Society’s Indie Book of the Year 2016, and it has been awarded a B.R.A.G. Gold Medallion.

Her second novel, Alvar the Kingmaker, is a tale of intrigue, deceit, politics, love, and murder in tenth-century Mercia. It charts the career of the earl who sacrificed personal happiness to secure the throne of England for King Edgar, and, later, Aethelred the Unready. It too has just been awarded a B.R.A.G. Gold Medallion.

Most recently, she has contributed to the anthology of short stories, 1066 Turned Upside Down, in which nine authors re-imagine the events of 1066, and which has just been awarded HNS Editors’ choice and long-listed for Book of the Year 2017.

Author Page
Alvar the Kingmaker
To Be A Queen
Website
Blog
1066 Turned Upside Down

Jockies, Marshals and Knights

by Sue Millard

Horse power

If there is one facet of human endeavour that we cannot get away from as historians, it is people’s need to travel, and for many millennia their most rapid means of transport was the horse. 

Just as there were names for the types of horses and the jobs they were suited to, there were names for the people who used and worked with horses. Let’s have a look at some of them.

Smiths, Farriers and Marshals

Smith

The original sense of this word was apparently a craftsman, a skilled worker, not only in in metal but in wood or other material. Its origins lie in Common Germanic and Old English. In the Lindisfarne Gospel c 950AD, Matthew xiii. 55 has a gloss (translation between the lines) of Ah ne ðis is smiðes vel wyrihta sunu? (Is not this the carpenter’s or wright's son?)

By ~1300 the term "smith" had moved towards metalwork, eg in the Cursor Mundi:  Als it war dintes on a steþi Þat smythes smittes in a smeþey. (As it were strokes on an anvil, that smiths smite in a smithy.) Although the alliteration is there for the sake of the poetry, it also gives us the clue that a smith is one who smites, who uses a hammer.

Smiths could also specialise in their own particular metals. Goldsmiths and silversmiths were recorded in around 1000AD and coppersmiths in the early 1300s, but tinsmiths (whitesmiths) not until the 19^th century.

Black-smiths were workers of iron, and their trade included the making and mending of agricultural equipment, tools, and weapons. The 1248 Close Rolls of Henry III mention “Master Henry the Blacksmith”. They did not exclusively shoe horses, though no doubt every village blacksmith would provide this service simply because all local work and all passing trade was either on foot or on horseback.

Farrier

A farrier, on the other hand, was entirely geared towards the care of horses and their shoeing. The old Latin term ferrārius was taken into Old French where it became ferrier, from the Latin for ferrum, iron.  In medieval Latin ferrum (often ferrus) meant a horseshoe. The Oxford English Dictionary surprised me here because I had thought the term might have been imported to England during the Norman period, but their first record of it is in 1562 in an Act of Queen Elizabeth I, where the farrier is defined alongside the blacksmith, as working in a parallel trade. 

The farrier was also the horse doctor: F. Markham, 1622: Five Decades Epist. of Warre  v. ii. §6:  An excellent Smith or Farryer who shall euer be furnished with Horse~shooes, nayles, and drugges, both for inward and outward applycations.

Marshal

In fact, the Anglo-Norman word for a shoeing smith was not farrier but marshal, from marescal. It is much older than farrier, and in fact in 1086 it was recorded in the Domesday Book as a surname. At first it meant simply a person responsible for the upkeep of horses, especially their feet – the company’s mechanic, if you like – but by degrees, from its responsibility, it acquired other meanings, such as a high officer within a royal household. By 1213 it had become the term for a commander of cavalry in an army, and it has retained its military sense up to the present day.

Pages, Squires and Knights

Page

In Anglo-Norman and Old French a page was a young male servant (c1225), a boy or  a youth generally of noble birth, who was attached to the service of a person of high rank (second half of the 14th cent.) His duties were domestic rather than warlike.

Squire

A squire was a young man of good birth attendant upon a knight, helping him to dress and put on armour. When they travelled or went to war, he led his master’s war horse, himself riding a rouncy (cob) and leading the destrier on his right while the knight rode a more comfortable and less aggressive palfrey.  Beket, in

The South English Legendary, c1300–1325 wrote:  For-to honouri þis holi man þer cam folk i-novȝ;..Of Eorles and of barones and manie kniȝtes… and of squiers. (People came to honour this holy man – earls and barons and many knights and squires.)

The spellings of this word can be very inventive, anything from skuyeris to swyers!

Knight

The Old English / Middle English cniht has links with the continental word knecht which has connotations of “young man” or “lad” – a servant, or someone active and fit to be a soldier. 1086,   Þænne wæron mid him ealle þa rice men..abbodas & eorlas, þegnas & cnihtas. (Then were with him all the rich men, abbots and earls, thegns and knights.)  

Knight – like the modern southern English colloquial use of “squire” – could also be extended to address a man, especially a male servant, of any age. This familiar usage existed alongside the better-known medieval feudal meaning, of a military man who served a king. A knight had gone through degrees of service, being first a page and then a squire, until he “won his spurs” as an acknowledged man of rank. The link with horses here is simply that the knight, being a military officer, needed fighting transport, and he relied on his squire to look after it.

Jockey

Compared to all these ancient words, jockey, the quintessential horse term for a race-rider, is relatively modern, being recorded first in the early 16^th C as iocky and in Shakespeare’s Richard III as iockey. 

I have seen assertions that it refers to 'Eachaidhe' in Gaelic, the word meaning “horsemen”, and pronounced yachey. However, there were much older Gaelic terms meaning horse – capall, rois (hros) and marc. And it seems unlikely that the language of an underclass (Irish or Scottish Gaels) would influence the language of an aristocracy who could afford to buy and keep horses solely for racing.

“Jocky” or “jockey” is more likely to be (as the OED states) John or Jack or Jacky: lowly people, serving boys; a term for  the “boy”, “the johnnie” or “the lad” who looks after the stable and other menial tasks, who is light and agile enough to be given the ride on the racehorses. We still hear an echo of this meaning in upper middle class phrases for a workman or employee, like “that window-cleaner johnnie”. It’s much like “a lad” in racing parlance, who is anyone who looks after racehorses – young or old, male or female, they are “lads” and only occasionally “lasses”!

The references in this article are culled from the pages of the Oxford English Dictionary.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Sue Millard, in her pursuit of all things historical and equine, manages the Fell Pony and Countryside Museums web site, http://www.fellponymuseum.org.uk  Her book web site is Jackdaw E Books  http://www.jackdawebooks.co.uk

Beowulf: Is the Oldest English Epic Historical Fiction?

By Kim Rendfeld

Was Beowulf the product of a poet’s lively imagination? Borrowed from tales told by the fire? Based on actual historical events? The more I look into the origins of oldest epic in the English language, the more I believe it is a combination of all of the above.

Beowulf was composed somewhere between the middle of the seventh century and end of the 10th, a period that overlaps with the migration of peoples who lived in Germany and Scandinavia. Faithful readers of the poem will remember that it’s set in Scandinavia, so it should come as no surprise that the migrants took their stories with them. They maintained cultural ties to the Baltic in the fifth and sixth centuries, and Anglo-Scandinavian trade in glass claw beakers (fancy drinking vessels) continued into the seventh.

The folk might have told tales about a ruler’s death in battle on a foreign land. They might have made references to a sixth century enemy from today’s Sweden. They might have woven in objects from daily life such as harps and helmets. If the purpose was to entertain rather than educate during long winter nights, someone might have embellished the tale with a hero and monsters.

A reenactor displays some replicas of grave goods
from the Sutton Hoo ship-burial
Photo by Ziko van Dijk

Today, we have tantalizing clues to where the poet borrowed from history. Gregory of Tours’s History of the Franks recounts a Danish-Frankish war, estimated to have occurred around 523, in which the Danish king was killed – similar to passages describing the death of Hygelac, Beowulf’s kinsman. A high-status burial mound in Sweden may be the final resting place of Ohthere, a king who is named a few times in the poem. Artifacts from Sutton Hoo are consistent with objects mentioned in the epic.

We might never know the true origin of the oldest epic in the English language and will likely never know who wrote it. But even with its mysteries, it reveals something valuable: the culture of its writer.

Through the poem, we see that the characters in Beowulf are Christian but practice their faith differently than most modern day believers. They are much more interested in justice than mercy. When Grendel, the monster descended from Cain, wreaks havoc, they want vengeance. The pagan influence was still strong. The image of boars on a helmet was a sign of strength as well as a beast sacred to a god, and the characters burned their dead, piling grave goods on the pyre.

Whoever wrote Beowulf likely meant to entertain his contemporaries, perhaps even a lord looking for a diversion or claiming descent from the hero to assert power, but the poet left a gift for all generations.

Sources

Beowulf, translated by Seamus Heaney (very good reading, even if you’re not doing research)

The Origins of Beowulf: And the Pre-Viking Kingdom of East Anglia, by Sam Newton

Formation and Resolution of Ideological Contrast in the Early History of Scandinavia (PhD thesis) Carl Edlund Anderson. University of Cambridge, Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse & Celtic (Faculty of English)

Images via Wikimedia Commons in the public domain or used under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License.

Kim Rendfeld studied Beowulf in college and rediscovered the epic poem as she was researching her second novel, The Ashes of Heaven’s Pillar (August 28, 2014, Fireship Press), a tale of the lengths a medieval mother with go to protect her children when she’s lost everything else. Her latest release is a companion to The Cross and the Dragon (2012, Fireship Press), a tale of love amid the wars and bloods of Charlemagne’s reign. For more about Kim visit her blog, Outtakes of a Historical Novelist, at kimrendfeld.wordpress.com or her website, kimrendfeld.com or send an e-mail to kim [at] kimrendfeld [dot] com.

Old English - The Language of the Anglo Saxons

by Richard Denning

The Anglo Saxon’s used a language called Old English which evolved out of Old German – the language spoken in the homelands in West Germany. Old English was in use between the 5th and 11th centuries when it merged with Norman French and produced middle English – the language of Chaucer.

Old English looks and sounds VERY alien to a modern English speaker. Here is a reading of the Lord’s Prayer in Old English:

Here is the text in Old English and Modern English Fader ure au ae eart on heofonum; Si ain nama gehalgod to becume in rice gewure in willa on eoran swa swa on heofonum. urne gedghwamlican hlaf syle us todag and forgyf us ure gyltas swa swa we forgyfa urum gyltendum and ne geld au us on costnunge ac alys us of yfele solice

Translation of the Old English Text

Father our thou that art in heavens
be thy name hallowed
come thy kingdom
be-done thy will
on earth as in heavens
our daily bread give us today
and forgive us our sins
as we forgive those-who-have-sinned-against-us
and not lead thou us into temptation
but deliver us from evil. truly
Whilst much of modern English comes from the French brought over by the Normans in 1066, the majority originated in the older form of old English. This then is how our ancestors would have sounded. Much of Old English survives in the names we use for our days and for our towns.

Anglo Saxon Day Names

The Germanic races took the Roman day names that they encountered with dealings with the Roman Empire and translated it into Old German, Old Norse and ultimately Old English. They replaced the Roman god names with their own (with the exception of Saturday).

Modern English day  

Old English day  

English day meaning  

Latin day name  

Latin day name meaning

Monday
Monandag
“Moon’s day”
Dies Lunae
“Day of the Luna”

Tuesday
Tiwesdag
“Tiw’s day”
Dies Martis
“Day of Mars”

Wednesday
Wodnesdag
“Woden’s day”
Dies Mercurii
“Day of Mercury”

Thursday
Thunorsdag
“Thunor’s day”
Dies Iovis
“Day of Jupiter”

Friday
Frigedag
“Frija’s day”
Dies Veneris
“Day of Venus”

Saturday
Saturnesdag
“Saturn’s day”
Dies Saturni
“Day of Saturn”

Sunday
Sunnandag
“Sun’s day”
Dies Solis
“Day of the Sun”

Anglo Saxon Town and Place Names

Many elements in our modern English place names ultimately come from Anglo Saxon place names (although in the north and east from Norse names). Often a name would combine a reference to the owner of the land and some description about it. Here are some common elements in place names:

barrow - a wood
burna (-borne) - a brook, stream
burh (modern word – borough) - Fortified town
combe - Small valley
ford - a shallow river crossing
dun – a hill
eg (-ey) - an island
halh – a nook, corner of land
ham – a homestead
hamm – an enclosure, water-meadow
hurst - wooded hill
ingas (-ing) - the people of …
leah (-ley) - a clearing
stede – a place, site of a building
tun – an enclosure, farmstead
well – a well, spring
wick - Farm or dwelling
worth – an enclosure, homestead

Here are some examples of Old English place names and the modern name and what it means:.

Birmingham
Beorma+inga+ham
enclosure of the sons (or descendants) of Beorma

Oxford
Oxon Ford
Place where Oxon can cross the river

Warwick
Weir+wic
Dwelling by the weir

Hastings
Hast+ ingas
Hasta’s people

Hertford
Hart+ford
Place where stags forded the river 

Cantley
Canta + leah
Canta’s clearing

Downham
dun + ham
Hill village

Elmswell
elm + wella
Elm-trees’ spring


Wortham
worth + ham
Homestead with enclosure

Colby
Koli + by
Koli’s farmstead

Westhorpe
vestr + thorp
Westerly outlying farmstead

Stanton
stan + tun
Stony farmstead

Gisleham
Gysela + ham
Gysela’s homestead

Anglo Saxon Months

The Anglo-Saxon year was originally divided into twelve lunar months (which mean ‘moons’), but this created a problem because a lunar cycle is about 29 days. The result was a 354 day year. After only a few years the lunar and solar months would be out of alignment. To get around this issue the Anglo-Saxons would have leap years and would insert an extra month into the summer. The summer was one long 2 month period called liaa, roughly corresponding to June and July.So the leap years was called ÐriliÃi (three liÃas).

The year began on Modranecht, Mothers’ Night, the 25th of December. This festival was later adopted as the date for Christmas in the typical pragmatic style of the Church. It's possible that Anglo-Saxons honoured female ancestral spirits on this day.

December and January were both called Giuli, or’Yules’. Yule, was the name for the winter solstice period – the shortest days in the year when the anglo Saxons would drive away the darkness by feasting. December was roughly equivalent to Ærra Geola, or ‘before Yule’, and January was Æfterra Geola, ‘after Yule’.

February was known as Solmona or ‘Mudmonth’.

March was Hreamona possibly named after a goddess Hrea of which we know little.

April corresponded with the lunar month of Eostermona named again after an obscure deity called Eostre. This month has survived into modern times as the word Easter which is typically celebrated in March or April.

May was Ðrimilcemona, ‘month of three milkings’. “So called because in this month the cattle were milked three times a day,” commented the 7th century historian Bede.

As has been said June was known as Ærra Liaa, ‘first’ or ‘preceding’ Liaa and July was Æfterra Liaa, ‘following Liaa’. The word Liaa might mean sailing as this was the time of year when sailing was easiest due to calm weather. So this was the summer sailing season.

August was called Weodmonað, ‘weed month’ probably because weeds and crops wwere growing fast.

September was Haligmonað, ‘holy month’. It was a time to give thanks to the gods for the fruits of the summer harvest. Harvest festivals stll survive in many countries into the modern period.

October was Winterfille – the begining of winter.

November was called Blotmona. This many have been a month of sacrifices BUT more likely it was the time of year when the animals would be saluaghtered and preserved for the coming winter feasts.

Material on this page is sourced from Omniglot Wikipedia and English Place names