The relative what, as compared with the masculine who, is a specimen of gender.
The forms it (for hit) and he are as much genders as hic and hæc, and the forms hic and hæc are as much genders as dominus and domina.
[§ 277]. The formation of the neuter gender by the addition of -t, in words like wha-t, i-t, and tha-t, occurs in other Indo-European languages. The -t in tha-t is the -d in istu-d, Latin, and the -t in ta-t, Sanskrit. Except, however, in the Gothic tongues, the inflection -t is confined to the pronouns. In the Gothic this is not the case. Throughout all those languages where there is a neuter form for adjectives at all, that form is either -t, or a sound derived from it:—Mœso-Gothic, blind-ata; Old High German, plint-ez; Icelandic, blind-t; German, blind-es=blind, cæc-um.—See Bopp's Comparative Grammar, Eastwick and Wilson's translation, p. 171.
Which, as seen below, is not the neuter of who.
[§ 278]. Just as there are in English fragments of a gender modifying the declension, so are there, also, fragments of the second element of gender; viz., the attribution of sex to objects naturally destitute of it. The sun in his glory, the moon in her wane, are examples of this. A sailor calls his ship she. A husbandman, according to Mr. Cobbett, does the same with his plough and working implements:—"In speaking of a ship we say she and her. And you know that our country-folks in Hampshire call almost everything he or she. It is curious to observe that country labourers give the feminine appellation to those things only which are more closely identified with themselves, and by the qualities or conditions of which their own efforts, and their character as workmen, are affected. The mower calls his scythe a she, the ploughman calls his plough a she; but a prong, or a shovel, or a harrow, which passes promiscuously from hand to hand, and which is appropriated to no particular labourer, is called a he."—English Grammar, Letter V.
Now, although Mr. Cobbett's statements may account for a sailor calling his ship she, they will not account for the custom of giving to the sun a masculine, and to the moon a
feminine, pronoun, as is done in the expressions quoted at the head of this section; still less will it account for the circumstance of the Germans reversing the gender, and making the sun feminine, and the moon masculine.
Let there be a period in the history of a nation wherein the sun and moon are dealt with, not as inanimate masses of matter, but as animated divinities. Let there, in other words, be a period in the history of a nation wherein dead things are personified, and wherein there is a mythology. Let an object like the sun be deemed a male, and an object like the moon a female, deity.
The Germans say the sun in her glory; the moon in his wane. This difference between the usage of the two languages, like so many others, is explained by the influence of the classical languages upon the English.—"Mundilfori had two children; a son, Mâni (Moon), and a daughter, Sôl (Sun)."—Such is an extract (taken second-hand from Grimm, vol. iii. p. 349) out of an Icelandic mythological work, viz., the prose Edda. In the classical languages, however, Phœbus and Sol are masculine, and Luna and Diana feminine. Hence it is that, although in Anglo-Saxon and Old-Saxon the sun is feminine, it is in English masculine.