other, the Loire may be considered as a line of demarcation between two languages; the term language being employed because, in the Middle Ages, whatever may be their real difference, their northern tongue and the southern tongue were dealt with not as separate dialects, but as distinct languages—the southern being called Provençal, the northern Norman-French.
Of these two languages (for so they will in the following pages be called, for the sake of convenience) the southern, or Provençal, approaches the dialects of Spain; the Valencian of Spain and the Catalonian of Spain being Provençal rather than standard Spanish or Castilian.
The southern French is sometimes called the Langue d'Oc, and sometimes the Limousin.
[§ 68]. The Norman-French, spoken from the Loire to the confines of Flanders, and called also the Langue d'Oyl, differed from the Provençal in (amongst others) the following circumstances.
1. It was of later origin; the southern parts of Gaul having been colonized at an early period by the Romans.
2. It was in geographical contact, not with the allied languages of Spain, but with the Gothic tongues of Germany and Holland.
[§ 69]. It is the Norman-French that most especially bears upon the history of the English language.
Specimen from the Anglo-Norman poem of Charlemagne.
Un jur fu Karléun al Seint-Denis muster,
Reout prise sa corune, en croiz seignat sun chef;