Page:The Sources of Standard English.djvu/247

218 by boisterous wassailers around the camp fires on the eve of Hastings; sixty years later, England's Queen was taught natural history in French verse, and was complimented therein as being ‘mult bele femme, Aliz numée.’ About a hundred years after the battle of Hastings, an English writer gave the names of the wise English teachers of old, Bede, Cuthbert, Aidan, Dunstan, and others; he then complained how woefully times were changed — new lords, new lore:

The speech of the upper and lower classes in Eng&shy;land, for two hundred years after 1066, was almost as distinct as the Arve and the Rhone are when they first meet. We see, however, that a few French words very early found their way into English. A shrewd observer long ago told us how ox, sheep, and swine came to be called beef, mutton, and pork, when smoking on the board. Treading in his steps, I venture to guess how our bluff forefathers began their studies in the French tongue. We may imagine a cavalcade of the new aristocracy of England, ladies and knights, men who perhaps fought at Hastings in their youth; these alight from their steeds at the door of one of the churches,