Again, the ‘morris’ or ‘morrice-dance’, which is alluded to so often by our early poets, as it is now spelt informs us nothing about itself; but read ‘moriske dance’, as it is generally spelt by Holland and his cotemporaries, and you will scarcely fail to perceive that of which indeed there is no manner of doubt; namely, that it was so called either because it was really, or was supposed to be, a dance in use among the moriscoes of Spain, and from thence introduced into England[282].
Again, philologers tell us, and no doubt rightly, that our ‘cray-fish’, or ‘craw-fish’, is the French ‘écrevisse’. This is true, but certainly it is not self-evident. Trace however the word through these successive spellings, ‘krevys’ (Lydgate), ‘crevish’ (Gascoigne), ‘craifish’ (Holland), and the chasm between ‘cray-fish’ or ‘craw-fish’ and ‘écrevisse’ is by aid of these three intermediate spellings bridged over at once; and in the fact of our Gothic ‘fish’ finding its way into this French word we see only another example of a law, which has been already abundantly illustrated in this lecture[283].
‘Emmet’, ‘Ant’
In other ways also an accurate taking note of the spelling of words, and of the successive changes which it has undergone, will often throw light upon them. Thus we may know, others having assured us of the fact, that ‘ant’ and ‘emmet’ were originally only two different spellings of one and the same word; but we may be perplexed to understand how two forms of a word, now so different, could ever have diverged from a single root. When however we find the different spellings, ‘emmet’, ‘emet’, ‘amet’, ‘amt’, ‘ant’, the gulf which appeared to separate ‘emmet’ from ‘ant’ is bridged over at once, and we do not merely know on the assurance of others that these two are in fact identical, their differences being only superficial, but we perceive clearly in what manner they are so[284].
Even before any close examination of the matter, it is hard not to suspect that ‘runagate’ is in fact another form of ‘renegade’, slightly transformed, as so many words, to put an English signification into its first syllable; and then the meaning gradually modified in obedience to the new derivation which was assumed to be its original and true one. Our suspicion of this is very greatly strengthened (for we see how very closely the words approach one another), by the fact that ‘renegade’ is constantly spelt ‘renegate’ in our old authors, while at the same time the denial of faith, which is now a necessary element in ‘renegade’, and one differencing it inwardly from ‘runagate’, is altogether wanting in early use—the denial of country and of the duties thereto owing being all that is implied in it. Thus it is constantly employed in Holland’s Livy as a rendering of ‘perfuga’[285]; while in the one passage where ‘runagate’ occurs in the Prayer Book Version of the Psalms (Ps. lxviii. 6), a reference to the original will show that the translators could only have employed it there on the ground that it also expressed rebel, revolter, and not runaway merely[286].
Assimilating Power of English
I might easily occupy your attention much longer, so little barren or unfruitful does this subject of spelling appear likely to prove; but all things must have an end; and as I concluded my first lecture with a remarkable testimony borne by an illustrious German scholar to the merits of our English tongue, I will conclude my last with the words of another, not indeed a German, but still of the great Germanic stock; words resuming in themselves much of which we have been speaking upon this and upon former occasions: “As our bodies”, he says, “have hidden resources and expedients, to remove the obstacles which the very art of the physician puts in its way, so language, ruled by an indomitable inward principle, triumphs in some degree over the folly of grammarians. Look at the English, polluted by Danish and Norman conquests, distorted in its genuine and noble features by old and recent endeavours to mould it after the French fashion, invaded by a hostile entrance of Greek and Latin words, threatening by increasing hosts to overwhelm the indigenous terms. In these long contests against the combined power of so many forcible enemies, the language, it is true, has lost some of its power of inversion in the structure of sentences, the means of denoting the difference of gender, and the nice distinctions by inflection and termination—almost every word is attacked by the spasm of the accent and the drawing of consonants to wrong positions; yet the old English principle is not overpowered. Trampled down by the ignoble feet of strangers, its springs still retain force enough to restore itself. It lives and plays through all the veins of the language; it impregnates the innumerable strangers entering its dominions with its temper, and stains them with its colour, not unlike the Greek which in taking up oriental words, stripped them of their foreign costume, and bid them to appear as native Greeks”[287].
FOOTNOTES
[228] In proof that it need not be so, I would only refer to a paper, On Orthographical Expedients, by Edwin Guest, Esq., in the Transactions of the Philological Society, vol. iii. p. 1.
[229] [The scientific treatises on Phonetics of Mr. Alexander J. Ellis and Dr. Henry Sweet have surmounted the difficulty of registering sounds with great accuracy.]