Page:The Sources of Standard English.djvu/71

42 it still lingers. Our verbs bask and busk are Middle verbs, compounded of the Icelandic baka and bua with the ending sik (self). York and Lincoln were the great seats of Norse influence, as we see by the numbers of Norse money-coiners who are known to have there plied their trade. English freedom was in the end the gainer by the fresh blood that now flowed in. When Doomsday book was compiled, no shire could vie with that of Lincoln in the thousands of its freeholders; East Anglia was not far behind. Danish surnames like Anderson, Paterson, and, greater than all, Nelson, show the good blood that our Northern and Eastern shires can boast. Thor's day was in the end to replace Thunresday. An&shy;other Norse God, he of the sea, bearing the name of Egir, still rushes up English rivers like the Trent and the Witham, the water rising many feet: the eagre is a word well known in Lincolnshire. The Norse felagi is a com&shy;pound from fee and lay, a man who puts down his money, like the member of a club. This, became in England fela&#x0293;e, felawe, fellow. So early as 1525 it had become a term of scorn; but the fellows of our Colleges will always keep alive the more honourable meaning of the word.

The next specimen in my Appendix is the book called the Rushworth Gospels, the English ver&shy;sion of which Wanley dates at the year A.D. 900, or thereabouts; one of the translators was a priest at Harewood, in Yorkshire. I give a few words to show