[9.] THE FIRST ENGLISH BOOK AFTER THE NORMAN CONQUEST.—Normandy was lost to England in the reign of King John, in the year 1204. From that date, as we have seen, there was a compulsion on the Norman-French to forget their foreign origin, and to look upon themselves as genuine Englishmen. A year after, in the year 1205, ten years before the winning of the Magna Charta, appeared the first work—it was a poem—that was written in English after the Conquest. It is a translation by a Somersetshire priest called Layamon or Laweman, from a French poem. Brut is the French form of the name Brutus, who was said to be a son of Æneas, and to be the founder of the British nation. In those rude times, when history was quite unknown, the origin of every nation was traced up to Troy, and the persons of the Iliad of Homer. The Brut is a poem written chiefly in head-rhymes, and consists of about thirty thousand lines. But though it is translated from a French poem, there are not fifty French words in the whole—that is, there is not one French word in every six hundred lines.
[10.] ORM’S ORMULUM, 1215.—The Ormulum was a poem written by an Augustine monk, called Orm or Ormin, and called after his own name. It is a poem of nearly twenty thousand short lines, without rhyme of any kind—but with a regular number of accents. There are not five French words in the whole poem. Orm was extremely particular about his spelling; and, when an accent struck a consonant after a short vowel, he insisted on doubling the consonant.
[11.] LANGLAND AND CHAUCER.—William Langland represents the part of the nation that spoke pure English; Geoffrey Chaucer, that part which spoke English with a large admixture of Norman-French. In fact, Chaucer’s poems show the high-water mark of the French saturation of our English vocabulary. Langland—a west-countryman, a monk, a man of the people, and of intensely radical sympathies—was born in 1332; Chaucer, a Londoner, in the very centre of English society, page to the Duchess of Clarence at sixteen years of age, and afterwards for great part of his life in court employment, was born in 1340. Both died in the year 1400. Langland’s most important poem is the Vision of (concerning) Piers Plowman. It is written in pure English, and in head-rhyme. It is the last English poem that was written in this kind of alliterative verse. The following lines are taken from the introduction:
| In a somer seasun when softe was the sonnë, I shop me into a schroud a scheep as I werë, in habite of an hermite unholy of werkes, wende I wydene in this world wondrës to here. | In a summer season when soft was the sun, I shape me into (dressed) shrouds (clothes) shepherd as I was, in habit as a hermit, unholy in works, went (far and) wide in this world, wonders to hear. |
Chaucer’s great work is his Canterbury Tales, a series of tales supposed to be told by a company of pilgrims to beguile their journey to the shrine of St Thomas of Canterbury. The company represented men and women of almost every class in England; and their manners and character are painted with wonderful truth and beauty. The following is a passage from the Prologue to the Canterbury Tales; and the French words are in italics. It is from the character of the Knight:
And evermore he had a sovereyn prys,[16]
And, though that he was worthy, he was wys,
And of his port[17] as meke as is a mayde.
He nevere yit no vileinye[18] ne sayde
In al his lyf, unto no maner[19] wight.
He was a verray perfight gentil[20] knight.
But, for to tellen you of his array,[21]
His hors was good, but he ne was nought gay.[22]
[12.] ALLITERATION OR HEAD-RHYME.—Alliteration is the correspondence of the first letter of several words in the same line. It is like the well-known: ‘Peter Piper picked a peck of pepper off a pewter plate.’
Round the rugged rocks the ragged rascals ran.
In Old English or Anglo-Saxon poetry it was the only kind of rhyme used. The rhyme which is called end-rhyme was not known to the Saxons, and was imported into England by the Normans. In the ordinary Old English verse, the lines are written in pairs, and in each pair there are usually three alliterations, two in the first line and one in the second. Even as late as the fourteenth century we find such verses as the following, written by Langland:
I shop me into a schroud,
A scheep as I werë.