Let us take Mr. Morris’s story—the Fable of ‘The Bear and the Bees’—in two forms. Here is one of them:—
‘A bear happened to be stung by a bee, and the pain was so acute that in the madness of revenge he ran into the garden and overturned the hive. This outrage provoked their anger to a high degree, and brought the fury of the whole swarm upon him. They attacked him with such violence that his life was in danger, and it was with the utmost difficulty that he made his escape, wounded from head to tail.
‘In this desperate condition, lamenting his misfortunes and licking his sores, he could not forbear reflecting how much more advisable it had been to have acquiesced patiently under one injury than thus by an unprofitable resentment to have provoked a thousand.’
Now this version of the fable contains just over eighty different words; and, if we turn over the pages of a French dictionary, we shall find that twenty-one of the twenty-five words printed in italics were not originally English words at all, but are words introduced into our language from the French. Some of them ‘came over with the Conqueror’ undoubtedly. Others were introduced in more recent times. The remaining four words—acute, desperate, reflecting, and acquiesced—are purely Latin words.
Let us now take the East Yorkshireman’s account of what happened:—
‘Yah daay yan o’ them girt beears gat hissen sadly tenged wi’ a bee. He wer seea despe’tly ho’tten was t’ beear at he wer wahld ommeeast. Noo, they’re a varry lungeous thing is a beear, an’ seea ti mak ’em think on t’ next tahm, he maks nowt ti deea bud he off ti t’ gardin an’ clicks t’ beeskep ower wi sikan a bat. Noo, by that, mun, ther was a bonny ti-deea; t’ bees was sairly putten aboot, an’ seea they all com at t’ beear, an’ leeted on him; an’ he wer that tenged all ower, whahl it leeaked agin they wer boun ti rahve him i’ bits; an’ he wer hard set ti ger awaay frev ’em wick.
‘Varry seean he was swidgin’ an’ warkin’ awhahl he could hardlins bahd; bud, hooivver, he set hissen doon upo’ t’ grund an’ started ti beeal, an’ he shakk’d his heead an’ scratted his lugs an’ sike leyke. Eftther he’d gotten sattled doon a bit, thinks he tiv hissen, ah mebbe mud as weel ae tae’n neea noatis eftther t’ fo’st bee tenged ma, as ti a’e meead sikan a durdam amang t’ others, awhahl they were fit ti modther ma; an’ it wer all ti neea use at t’ finish.’
All the long French words have disappeared, and in the whole account only five French words and one Latin word are used. The difference is striking, and the reason for the difference is not far to seek.
The language of the former version is that which has come down to us from the Court, and the Court language was for centuries Norman-French. The words used by the East Yorkshire farm-labourer are those of his humble forefathers who knew no bewk-larning, and who learned their English tongue by word of mouth, picking up here and there only an occasional French word.
In other words, the language of the farm-labourer is almost exactly the same as that used by his ancestors four or five centuries ago. In fact, as Mr. Morris puts it, ‘if old Tommy Smith who died in 1500, aged 80, and old Willie Ward who died in 1900, aged 80, could come to life again and hold converse with one another, they would understand each other perfectly.’