It is necessary to distinguish, as far as that is possible, between languages as such and their speakers. Languages are not hostile one to another. They are, in the contrast of any pair, only similar or dissimilar, alien or akin. In this, actual historical relationship may be and commonly is involved. But it is not inevitably so. Latin and British appear to have been similar to one another, in their phonetic and morphological structure, to a degree unusual between languages sufficiently far separated in history to belong to two different branches of western Indo-European language. Yet Goidelic Celtic must have seemed at least as alien to the British as the language of the Romans.
English and British were far sundered in history and in structure, if less so in the department of phonetics than in morphology. Borrowing words between the two would have presented in many cases small difficulty; but learning the other speech as a language would mean adventuring into an alien country with few familiar paths. As it still does. [12]
Between the speakers of British and English there was naturally hostility (especially on the British side); and when men are hostile the language of their enemies may share their hatred, On the defending side, to the hatred of cruel invaders and robbers was added, no doubt, contempt for barbarians from beyond the pale of Rome, and detestation of heathens unbaptized. The Saxons were a scourge of God, devils allowed to torment the Britons for their sins. Sentiments hardly less hostile were felt by the later baptized English for the heathen Danes. The invective of Wulfstan of York against the new scourge is much like that of Gildas against the Saxons: naturally, since Wulfstan had read Gildas and cites him.
But such sentiments, especially those expressed by preachers primarily concerned with the correction of their own flock, do not govern all the actions of men in such situations. Invasion has as first objectives wealth and land; and those who are successful leaders in such enterprises are eager rather for territory and subjects than for the propagation of their native tongue, whether they are called Julius or Hengest or William. On the other side leaders will seek to hold what they can, and will treat with the invaders for their own advantage. So it was in the days of the Roman invasions; and small mercy did the Romans show to those who called themselves their friends.
Of course in the first turmoils the defenders will not try to learn the language of the barbarian invaders, and if, as the story goes in the case of the English-speaking adventurers, these are in part revolted mercenaries, there will be no need. Neither do successful land-grabbers in the first flush of loot and slaughter bother much about 'the lingo of the natives'. But that situation will not last long. There will come a pause, or pauses – in the history of the spread of English there were many – in which the leaders will look ahead from their small conquests to lands still beyond their grasp, and sideways to their rivals. They will need information; in rare cases they may even display intelligent curiosity. [13] Even as Gildas accuses the surviving British princes of warring with one another rather than with the enemy, so the kings of small English realms at once began to do the same. In such circumstances sentiments of language against language, Roman against barbarian, or Christendom against heathendom will not outweigh the need for communication.
How was such communication carried on? Indeed for that matter how were the many surviving British place-names borrowed, once we move farther in and leave the ports and coastal regions that pirates in the Channel might long have known? We are not told. We are left to an estimate of probabilities, and to the difficult analysis of the evidence of words and place-names.
It is, of course, impossible to go into details concerning the problems that these present. Many of them are familiar in any case to English philologists, to whom the Latin loan-words in Old English, for instance, have long been of interest. Though it is probably fair to say that in this matter the importance of the Welsh evidence is not yet fully recognized.
According to probability, apart from direct evidence or linguistic deductions, Latin of a kind is likely to have been a medium of communication at an early stage. Though medium gives a false impression, suggesting a language belonging to neither side. Latin must have been the spoken language of many if not most of the defenders in the south-cast; while some sort of command of Latin is likely to have been acquired by many 'Saxons'. They had been operating in the Channel and its approaches for a long time, and had gained precarious footholds in lands of which Latin was the official tongue. [14]
Later British and English must have come face to face. But there was certainly never any iron-curtain line, with everything English on the one side, and British on the other. Communication certainly went on. But communications imply persons, on one ride or both, who have at least some command of the two languages.
In this connexion the word wealhstod is interesting; and I may perhaps pause to consider it, since it has not (as far as I am aware) received the attention that it deserves. It is the Anglo-Saxon word for an 'interpreter'. It is peculiar to Old English; and for that reason, besides the fact that it contains the element wealh, walk (on which I will say more in a moment), it is a fair conclusion that it arose in Britain. The etymology of its second element stod is uncertain, but the word as a whole must have meant for the English a man who could understand the language of a Walh, the word they most commonly applied to the British. But the word does not seem necessarily to have implied that the wealhstod was himself a 'native'. He was an intermediary between those who spoke English and those who spoke a waelisc tongue, however he had acquired a knowledge of both languages. Thus Ælfric says of King Oswald that he acted as St Aidan's wealhstod, since the king knew scyttisc (sc. Gaelic) well, but Aidan ne mihte gebigan his spraece to Norðhymbriscum swa hraþe þa git. [15]
That the Walas or Britons got to know of this word would not be surprising. That they did seems to be shown by the mention among the great company of Arthur in the hunting of the Twrch Trwyth (Kulhwch and Olwen) of a man who knew all languages; his name is given as Gwrhyr Gwalstawt Ieithoed, that is Gwrhyr Interpreter of Tongues.
Incidentally it is curious to find a bishop named Uualchstod mentioned in Bede's History, belonging to the early eighth century (about a.d. 730); for he was 'bishop of those beyond Severn', that is of Hereford, Such a name could not become used as a baptismal name until it had become first used as a 'nickname' or occupational name, and that would not be likely to occur except in a time and region of communications between peoples of different language.
It would certainly seem that eventually at any rate the English made some efforts to understand Welsh, even if this remained a professional task for gifted linguists. Of what the English in general thought about British or Welsh we know little, and that only from later times, two or three centuries after the first invasions. In Felix of Crowland's life of St Guthlac (referring to the beginning of the eighth century) British is made the language of devils. [16] The attribution of the British language to devils and its description as cacophonous arc of little importance. Cacophony is an accusation commonly made, especially by those of small linguistic experience, against any unfamiliar form of speech. More interesting is it that the ability of some English people to understand 'British' is assumed. British was, no doubt, chosen as the language of the devils mainly as the one alien vernacular at that time likely to be known to an Englishman, or at least recognized by him.
In this story we find the term 'British' used. In the Anglo-Saxon version of the Life the expression Bryttisc sprecende appears. This no doubt is partly due to the Latin. But Brettas and the adjective brittisc, bryttisc continued to be used throughout the Old English period as equivalents of Wealas (Walas) and wielisc (waelisc), that is of modern Welsh, though it also included Cornish. Sometimes the two terms were combined in Bretwalas and bretwielisc.
In modern England the usage has become disastrously confused by the maleficent interference of the Government with the usual object of governments: uniformity. The misuse of British begins after the union of the crowns of England and Scotland, when
in a quite unnecessary desire for a common name the English were officially deprived of their Englishry and the Welsh of their claim to be the chief inheritors of the title British.
'Fy fa fum, I smell the blood of an Englishman', wrote Nashe in 1595 (Have with уou to Saffron Walden).
Child Rowland to the dark tower came,
His word was stil: Fie, foh, and fum,
I smell the blood of a British man,
Edgar says, or is made to say, in King Lear (III. iv).
The modern Englishman finds this very confusing. He has long read of British prowess in battle, and especially of British stubbornness in defeat in many imperial wars; so when he hears of Britons stubbornly (as is to be expected) opposing the landing of Julius Caesar or of Aulus Plautius, he is apt to suppose that the English (who meekly put themselves down as British in hotel-registers) were already there, facing the first of their long series of glorious defeats. A supposition far from uncommon even among those who offer themselves for 'honours' in the School of English.
But in early times there was no such confusion. The Brettas and the Walas were the same. The use of the latter term, which| was applied by the English, is thus of considerable importance in estimating the linguistic situation of the early period.
It seems clear that the word walh, wealh which the English brought with them was a common Germanic name for a man of what we should call Celtic speech. [17] But in all the recorded Germanic languages in which it appears it was also applied to the speakers of Latin. That may be due, as is usually assumed, to the fact that Latin eventually occupied most of the areas of Celtic speech within the knowledge of Germanic peoples. But it is, I think, also in part a linguistic judgement, reflecting that very similarity in style of Latin and Gallo-Brittonic that I have already mentioned. It did not occur to anyone to call a Goth a walh even if he was long settled in Italy or in Gaul. Though 'foreigner' is often given as the first gloss on wealh in Anglo-Saxon dictionaries this is misleading. The word was not applied to foreigners of Germanic speech, nor to those of alien tongues, Lapps, Finns, Esthonians, Lithuanians, Slavs, or Huns, with whom the Germanic-speaking peoples came into contact in early times. (But borrowed in Old Slavonic in the form ulachu it was applied to the Roumanians.) It was, therefore, basically a word of linguistic import; and in itself implied in its users more linguistic curiosity and discrimination than the simple stupidity of the Greek barbaros.
Its special association by the English with the Britons was a product of their invasion of Britain. It contained a linguistic judgement, but it did not discriminate between the speakers of Latin and the speakers of British. But with the perishing of the spoken Latin of the island, and the concentration of English interests in Britain, walh and its derivatives became synonymous with Brett and brittisc, and in the event replaced them. [18]
In the same way the use of wealh for slave is also due solely to the situation in Britain. But again the gloss 'slave' is probably misleading. Though the word slave itself shows that a national name can become generalized in this sense, I doubt if this was true of wealh. The Old English word for 'slave' in general remained theow, which was used of slaves in other countries or of other origin. The use of wealh, apart from the legal status to which surviving elements of the conquered population were no doubt often reduced, must always have implied recognition of British origin. Such elements, though incorporated in the domain of an English or Saxon lord, must long have remained 'not English', and with this difference preservation in a measure of their British speech may have endured longer than is supposed.
This is a controversial point, and I do not deal with the question of place-names, such as Walton, Walcot, and Walworth, that may be supposed to contain this old word walh, [19] But the incorporation in the domains conquered by the English-speaking invaders of relatively large numbers of the previous inhabitants is not denied; and their linguistic absorption must have steadily proceeded, except in special circumstances.
What effect would that have, did that have, on English? It had none that is visible for a long time. Not that we should expect it. The records of Old English are mainly learned or aristocratic; we have no transcripts of village-talk. For any glimpse of what was going on beneath the cultivated surface we must wait until the Old English period of letters is over.
Unheeded language without pride or sense of ancestry may change quickly in new circumstances. But the English did not know that they were 'barbarians', and the language that they brought with them had an ancient cultivation, at any rate in its tradition of verse. It is thus to the appearance of linguistic class distinctions that we should look for evidence of the effects of conquest and the linguistic absorption of people of other language, largely into the lowest social strata.
I know of only one passage that seems to hint at something of the kind. It refers to a surprisingly early date, a.d. 679. In that year the Battle of the Trent was fought between the Mercians and Northumbrians. Bede relates how a Northumbrian noble called Imma was captured by the Mercians and pretended to be a man of poor or servile class. But he was eventually recognized as a noble by his captors, as Bede reports, not only by his bearing but by his speech.
The question of the survival in 'England' of British population and still more of British forms of speech is, of course, a matter of debate, differing in the evidence and the terms of the debate from region to region. For instance, Devonshire, in spite of its British name, has been said on the evidence collected by the Place-names Survey to appear as one of the most English of the counties (onomastically). But William of Malmesbury in his Gesta Regum says that Exeter was divided between the English and the Welsh as late as the reign of Athelstan.
Well known, and much used in debate and in the dating of sound-changes, are the Welsh place-names given in Asser's Life of Alfred: such as Guilou and Uisc for the rivers Wiley and Exe, or Cairuuis for Exeter. Since Asser was a native of South Wales (as we should now call it), Welsh was presumably his native language, though he may eventually have learned as much English, shall we say, as his friend the king learned of Latin. These names in Asser have been used (e.g. by Stevenson) as evidence for the survival of Welsh speech even as far east as Wiltshire as late as the end of the ninth century.
With the mention of Asser I will return, before I close, to the point that I mentioned when I began: the interests and uses of Welsh and its philology to students of English. I do not enter into the controversy concerning the genuineness of Asser's Life of Alfred, whether it is a document belonging approximately to a.d. 900, as it purports to be, or is in fact a composition of a much later date. But it is clear that in this debate we have a prime example of the contact of the two schools of learning: Welsh historical and philological scholarship and English. Arguments for and against the genuineness of this document arc based on the forms of the Welsh names in it, and an estimate of their cogency requires at least some acquaintance with the problems attending the history of Welsh. Yet the document is a life of one of the most remarkable and interesting Englishmen, and no English scholar can be indifferent to the debate.
To many, perhaps to most people outside the small company of the great scholars, past and present, 'Celtic' of any sort is, nonetheless, a magic bag, into which anything may be put, and out of which almost anything may come. Thus I read recently a review of a book by Sir Gavin de Beer, and, in what appeared to be a citation from the original,[20] I noted the following opinion on the river-name Arar (Livy) and Araros (Polybius): 'Now Arar derives from the Celtic root meaning running water which occurs also in many English river-names like Avon/ It is a strange world in which Avon and Araros can have the same 'root' (a vegetable analogy still much loved by the non-philological when being wise about words). Catching the lunatic infection, one's mind runs on to the River Arrow, and even to arrowroot, to Ararat, and the descent into Avernus. Anything is possible in the fabulous Celtic twilight, which is not so much a twilight of the gods as of the reason.
That was perhaps, in this time
and place, an unnecessary aside. I am addressing those of rational mind and philological learning; but especially those who in spite of these qualifications have not yet for themselves discovered the interests and the uses of Welsh and its philology.
I have already glanced at the interest of this study to Romance philology, or the later history of spoken Latin, and of the special importance that it has for Anglo-Saxon. But the student of English as a Germanic tongue will find many things that throw new light on his familiar material; and some curious similarities interesting to note, even if they are dismissed as parallels produced by chance.
It would not be my place to treat them extensively, even if I had the time. I will only refer to two points in illustration. A traveller should at least produce some samples.
As an example of a curious parallelism I will mention a peculiar feature of the Old English substantive verb, the modern be'. This had two distinct forms of the 'present': A, used only of the actual present, and B, used only as a future or consuetudinal. The В functions were expressed by forms beginning with b-, which did not appear in the true present: thus, bīo, bist, bið pl. bīoð. The meaning of bið was 'is (naturally, always, or habitually)' or 'will be'.
Now this system is peculiar to Old English. It is not found in any other Germanic language, not even in those mot closely related to English. The association with the b-forms of two different functions that have no necessary logical connexion is also notable. But I mention this feature of Old English morphology here only because the same distinction of functions is associated with similar phonetic forms in Welsh.
In Welsh one finds a true present without b-forms, and a tense with a b-stem used both as a future and a consuetudinal. [21] The 3 sg. of the latter tense is bydd from earlier *bið. [22] The resemblance between this and the OE form is perhaps made more remarkable if we observe that the short vowel of OE is difficult to explain and cannot be a regular development from earlier Germanic, whereas in Welsh it is regularly derived.
English and Welsh Page 3
