The old British bard, Llywarch Hên, had in mind the same token of pride:—
—gnawd dyn
Bronrain balch
(It is common for a proud (or boasting) man to be bow- or bulge-breasted); and in the Holderness (Yorkshire) folkspeech they say ‘as bug (proud) as a dog wi’ two tails,’ and yet, to show that bug means a bow or bowedness, they say ‘as bug as a cheese.’
The Goodness of a Speech.
The goodness of a speech should be sought in its clearness to the hearing and mind, clearness of its breath-sounds, and clearness of meaning in its words; in its fulness of words for all the things and time-takings which come, with all their sundrinesses, under the minds of men of the speech, in their common life; in sound-sweetness to the ear, and glibness to the tongue. As to fulness, the speech of men who know thoroughly the making of its words may be fullened from its own roots and stems, quite as far as has been fullened Greek or German, so that they would seldom feel a stronger want of a foreign word than was felt by those men who, having the words rail and way, made the word railway instead of calling it chemin de fer, or, going to the Latin, via ferrea, or than Englishmen felt with steam and boat, to go to the Greeks for the name of the steamboat, for which Greek had no name at all. The fulness of English has not risen at the rate of the inbringing of words from other tongues, since many new words have only put out as many old ones, as:—
| immediately, | anon, |
(no saving of time here),
| ignite, | kindle, |
| annual, | yearly, |
| machine, | jinny. |
I have before me more than one hundred and fifty so taken English law-words which were brought into the English courts with the Norman French tongue; but English speech did not therefore become richer by so many words, because most of them thrust aside English ones. Judge took the stead of dema; cause of sác; bail of borh; and the lawyers said arson for forburning; burglary, for housebreach; and carrucate, for ploughland; and King Alfred gave to English minds the matter of Gregory’s Pastoral with a greater share (nearly all) of pure English words, than most English scholars could now find for it.