ON THE LANGUAGE OF LANCASHIRE, UNDER THE ROMANS.
READ
BEFORE THE HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF LANCASHIRE AND CHESHIRE.
8TH JANUARY, 1857.
In the present paper, advantage is taken of the local character of the Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire, to make the name of the county serve as a special text for a general subject. What applies to Lancashire applies to any county in Roman England.
The doctrine is as follows—that in Lancashire particularly, and in England in general, the predominant language for the first five centuries of our era was not Latin but British.
The writer is so far from laying this down as a novelty, that he is by no means certain, that it may not be almost a truism. He is by no means certain, that there is a single one of those to whom he addresses himself, who may now hold, or even have held, the opposite opinion. He is fully aware that excellent authorities have maintained both sides of the question. He is only doubtful as to the extent to which the one doctrine may preponderate over the other.
If the question were to be settled by an appeal to the history of the more influential opinions concerning it, we should find that, in a reference to the earliest and the latest of our recent investigators, Dr. Prichard would maintain one side of the question, Mr. Wright another. The paper of the latter, having been printed in the Transactions of the Society, is only alluded to. The opinion of Dr. Prichard is conveyed in the following extract—"The use of languages really cognate must be allowed to furnish a proof, or at least a strong presumption, of kindred race. Exceptions may indeed, under very peculiar circumstances, occur to the inference founded on this ground. For example, the French language is likely to be the permanent idiom of the negro people of St. Domingo, though the latter are principally of African descent. Slaves imported from various districts in Africa, having no common idiom, have adopted that of their masters. But conquest, or even captivity, under different circumstances, has scarcely ever exterminated the native idiom of any people, unless after many ages of subjection; and even then, vestiges have perhaps always remained of its existence. In Britain, the native idiom was nowhere superseded by the Roman, though the island was held in subjection upwards of three centuries. In Spain and in Gaul, several centuries of Latin domination, and fifteen under German and other modern dynasties, have proved insufficient entirely to obliterate the ancient dialects, which were spoken by the native people before the Roman conquest. Even the Gypsies, who have wandered in small companies over Europe for some ages, still preserve their original language in a form that can be everywhere recognised."[13]
Upon the whole, I think that the current opinion is in favour of the language of Roman Britain having been Latin; at any rate I am sure that, before I went very closely into the subject, my own views were, at least, in that direction. "What the present language of England would have been, had the Norman conquest never taken place, the analogy of Holland, Denmark, and many other countries enables us to determine. It would have been as it is at present. What it would have been had the Saxon conquest never taken place, is a question wherein there is far more speculation. Of France, of Italy, of Wallachia, and of the Spanish Peninsula, the analogies all point the same way. They indicate that the original Celtic would have been superseded by the Latin of the Conquerors, and consequently that our language, in its later stages, would have been neither British nor Gaelic, but Roman. Upon these analogies, however, we may refine. Italy was from the beginning, Roman; the Spanish Peninsula was invaded full early; no ocean divided Gaul from Rome; and the war against the ancestors of the Wallachians was a war of extermination."[14]
In these preliminary remarks we find a sufficient reason for going specially into the question; not, however, as discoverers of any new truth, nor as those who would correct some general error, but rather, in a judicial frame of mind, and with the intention of asking, first, how far the actual evidence is (either way) conclusive; next, which way (supposing it to be inconclusive) the presumption lies; and thirdly, what follows in the way of inference from each of the opposing views.
What are the statements of the classical writers, subsequent to the reduction of Britain, to the effect that the Romans, when they conquered a Province, established their language? I know of none. I know of none, indeed, anterior to the Britannic conquest. I insert, however, the limitation, because in case such exist, it is necessary to remember that they would not be conclusive. The practice may have changed in the interval.
Is there anything approaching such a statement? There is a passage in Seneca to the effect "that where the Roman conquers there he settles."