Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume I.djvu/533

 ANGLO-SAXONS (LANGUAGE AND LITEBATUBE) 501 conqueror caused a compilation of them to be made ; but it contained little of importance, or that would be likely to be thought important by the people beyond a recognition of their right to assemble in full folcmote to elect their sheriff and discuss public affairs. The meagre character of the Saxon compilations is accounted for by the fact that the great body of their law, like that of the English law to this day, consisted of unwritten customs and usages with which the people were familiar, and which the conqueror did not attempt to act aside. Many of these customs, as well as the divisions of the country for administrative and judicial purposes,, were of Koman origin. Justice was administered in local .courts, of which the ohief were the hundredgemote or wapentake, held by the sheriff and bishop for the trial of criminal causes in every hundred the sheriff presiding assisted by the bishop on the trial of offences in general, and the bishop with the assistance of the sheriff when offend- ers against the church were to be dealt with ; and the scyregemote or county court, which was the principal court of civil jurisdiction, and whose judges were the freemen and land- holders of the county, presided over by the earl or sheriff, assisted by the bishop. The Saxons appear to have accepted the idea that the king was the fountain of justice, but his intervention was not often invoked except to set the courts in motion when justice was delayed or refused. From the rude trials by witnesses in their popular tribunals was developed at length the orderly system of trial by jury. The "Mirror of Justice" enumerates several judges who were hanged in Alfred's reign for causing prisoners to be executed who were not convicted by the unanimous verdict of twelve sworn men. The most remarkable feature of Anglo-Saxon criminal law was the scale of compensation prescribed for the com- mission of homicide and other crimes. Even the life of the king was rated at a money value, which under the laws of Athelstan was 30,000 thrymsse, each thrymsa being worth four pence ; while that of an earl was 15,000, and BO on down to a common person, rated at only 267. The ears, the teeth, the limbs had each their separate value, and the place where an offence was committed was sometimes an ag- gravation requiring an additional penalty. The compensation or were was payable to the in- jured person, or, in cases of homicide, to the immediate family of the deceased, or, if he had none, to his other relations. If the offender was unable to pay, he was liable to death, but was allowed to cubmit to the loss of limb or other corporal i_fliction instead. Torture to extract evidence was unknown among the Anglo-Saxons. Immunity seems to have been extended in some cases to those who in the heat of passion excited by the chase of an of- fender should slay him upon the spot, while the irregular infliction of punishment in cold blood upon a detected criminal was visited with extreme penalties. An offender fleeing to sanctuary was allowed protection during his stay there, whatever his crime might have been. Lands among this people appear to have been held by a species of feudal tenure, and were descendible to all the sons, or, as some writers think, to all the children equally, and they were conveyed either by writing or by ceremonies conducted in the presence of witnesses, designed to give publicity to the transfer. A collection of the laws of the Saxon kings was made by Lambard in the time of Queen Elizabeth, under the title of Archaionomia, which was afterward repub- lished by Dr. Wilkins, and also more recently under the title of " Anglo-Saxon Laws and In- stitutes," edited by Benjamin Thorpe (London, 1840). ANGLO-SAXONS, Language and Literature of the. The language of the German tribes who con- quered and peopled Britain in the 5th and 6th centuries was by them called Anglisc, Englisc (English); but since English has become so widely different from its mother speech, the name Anglo-Saxon has come into use for the old language. This language was a growth on the island of Britain from the collision of many dialects spoken by the invading tribes. The Celts used a very different kind of speech, so that the Celtic affected the Anglo-Saxon as the tongues of the aborigines of America have affected our English ; it gave a good many geographical names, and but few other words. The new language was shaped to literary use by ecclesiastics who wrote and spoke Latin, and a large part of the literature is translated or imitated from Latin works. Hence it con- tains many words from Latin and frequent im- itations of Latin idiom, and it attained the power to render Latin with more accuracy and ease than any other Germanic tongue of its time. The Danes also contributed something to it, especially to the Northumbrian dialect. But it is after all a true Low German speech, closely akin to Frisic, Old Saxon, Dutch, and Platt-Deutsch. The talk in the harbors of Antwerp, Bremen, and Hamburg is said to be often mistaken by English sailors for corrupt English. These Low German tongues are akin to the High German on one side and to the Scandinavian on the other, and these all with the Moeso-Gothic constitute the Teutonic class of languages, which belongs, with the Latin, Greek, Slavic, Sanskrit, and the like, to the Indo-European. The invading tribes had writing of their own in characters called runes, but the literary remains are almost all in an alphabet known as the Anglo-Saxon, the let- ters of which, except three, are Roman charac- ters, with some fanciful variations. Thorn (]>) and wen (p) are runes, and edh (ft) a crossed d. Occasionally k, q, v, z get into the manuscripts, mostly in foreign words, and uu or u for p. The Semi-Saxon has a peculiar character for j (3). The vowels were pronounced nearly as they now are in German: a as in far ; d as in fall j