Page:A Complete Etymology of the English Language.djvu/10

iv. , but touch the affections, should adopt Anglo-Saxon expressions, which from early use, and the dearest associations, excite emotion, and affect the heart.

Saxon is a name first used by the geographer Ptolemy, to indicate a branch of the German or Teutonic race, whose descendants now occupy the Kingdom of Saxony, the Lusatian districts of Prussia, the Circle of Wittenberg, the old Circle of Westphalia, the British Islands and Colonies, and the United States of America.

The Saxons mentioned by Ptolemy were a small tribe, who, in A. D. 141, dwelt on the north bank of the Elbe, and upon several small islands in the vicinity of the mouth of that river and of the Eider. From their geographical position as far west as the Atlantic coast, it seems probable that they were among the first of the Teutonic tribes which passed across from Asia into Europe.

Very trivial and uncertain are the accounts left us of the conquest of Great Britain by the Jutes, Saxons, and Angles.

It is certain that the invaders came over in small bodies each with a captain at its head, who became the petty king or chief of the new settlement in Britain, by which the Celtic population was either expelled or enslaved; so that in five or six centuries the eastern half of Britain was ruled by numerous petty kings. In the eighth century these petty kingdoms were consolidated into what is known as the Saxon Heptarchy.

Many hundred words in the language, especially those used as names of places, are Danish, introduced during the incursions into and occupation of England by the Danes.

An analysis of the language shows that the Norman French element enters very largely into its composition. This element, which is composed of the Celtic, Latin, and Scandinavian, was first introduced (1066) by the Normans under William the Conqueror.

The Norman conquest almost abolished the use of the Anglo-Saxon language in writing, and for more than a century the prevalent literature of England was either in Latin, or Anglo-Norman.

Norman French was spoken by the superior classes of society in England from the conquest to the time of Edward the Third (1327).

The laws of the realm, the proceedings of Parliament and the courts of justice were in that language, but the "Saxon Chronicle" had been carried on in obscure monasteries, by various annalists, to the year 1154.

In the thirteenth century during the progressive mixture of the two races, a literature sprang up in which the two languages became more or less intermixed. In the fourteenth century the Anglo-Saxon principle seemed to have gained the upper hand. In the fifteenth century the Anglo-Norman element seemed to be gaining the preponderance, but the proportions still continued to vary until it became fixed in the age of Queen Elizabeth.

The contributions of the Latin Language to the English are next in importance and amount to those of the Anglo-Saxon; these contributions come chiefly through the medium of the French or Norman French, in consequence of the Norman Conquest.

The Latin has served not only to refine and polish the English, but to enrich its vocabulary with many necessary and indispensable words.

To the Greek the English Language is indebted for most of its terms in physical science, and indeed for a great part of the terms employed in all the arts and sciences.

.—The Saxon Chronicle is a series of annals of A.-S. affairs, from the earliest times to 1154, compiled by the Monks.