I told you a little while ago, you know, that our talking is much faster than talking was in Chaucer’s time; it seems very curious that a language can be so changed in a few hundred years, without people really meaning to change it. But it has changed gradually. Little by little new words have come into use, and others have got ‘old-fashioned.’ Even the English of one hundred years ago was very unlike our own. But the English of five hundred years ago was, of course, still more unlike.
XIII.
Now, I have put, as I told you, two versions of Chaucer’s poetry on the page, side by side. First, the lines as Chaucer made them, and then the same lines in English such as we speak. You can thus look at both, and compare them.
I will also read you the verses in the two ways of pronouncing them, Chaucer’s way and our way: but when you have grown a little used to the old-fashioned English, you will soon see how much prettier and more musical it sounds than our modern tongue, and I think you will like it very much. Besides, it is nice to be able to see the words as Chaucer put them, so as to know exactly how he talked.
In Chaucer’s time a great deal of French was spoken in England, and it was mixed up with English more than it is now. The sound of old French and old English were something the same, both spoken very slowly, with a kind of drawl, as much as to say—“I am in no hurry. I have all day before me, and if you want to hear what I have got to say, you must wait till I get my words out.”
So if you wish to hear Chaucer’s stories, you must let him tell them in his own way, and try and understand his funny, pretty language. And if you do not pronounce the words as he meant, you will find the verses will sound quite ugly—some lines being longer than others, and some not even rhyming, and altogether in a jumble.
XIV.
Chaucer himself was very anxious that people should read his words properly, and says in his verses, as if he were speaking to a human being—
And for there is so grete dyversitégreat diversity
In Englissh,[25] and in writynge of our tonge,tongue
So preye I God that non miswrité theepray
Ne thee mys-metere for defaute of tonge. (Troilus.)defect
To mis-metre is to read the metre wrong; and the metre is the length of the line. If you read the length all wrong, it sounds very ugly.