imperfectly known, it changed somewhat more rapidly than the dialects of the Continent. This was due, in some measure at least, to the constant contact with another language. Increasing numbers of Englishmen learnt to speak it. 'Uplondisshe men wil likne thymself to gentil men and fondeth with greet besynesse for to speke Frensce, for to be i-tolde of', says Trevisa[1], and some of them, like Thomas Becket, rose to the highest dignities in Church and State. On the other hand, the Normans who at first despised the language of the vanquished, and compared it to the bark of dogs,[2] began from necessity or through mere curiosity to familiarize themselves with it, and even with the literature. Marie de France and Denis Piramus both assure us that they used English models, the one for her Fables,[3] the other for his Vie Seint Edmund le Rei:[4] and Geffrei Gaimar, in his Estorie des Engleis, borrowed several points from the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.[5] By the thirteenth century most of the Norman English and many of the Saxon English were bilingual, but the contention ot Schreibner[6] that 'to both classes of the population French was now an acquired language', is not supported by facts. It is based largely on a mistaken interpretation of the antiforeign feeling which manifested itself in the reign of Henry III. The movement was directed, not against the French language, but against the king's policy which
- ↑ Trevisa's translation of Higden's Polychronicon, lib. i, cap. 59.
- ↑ Wace, Roman de Rou, iii. 8094-5.
- ↑ The English original has left unmistakable marks on the work of Marie de France. Cf. Die Fabeln der Marie de France, ed. Warnke, p. xliv.
- ↑ Cf. 'Translaté l'ai desqu'a la fin E de l'engleis e del latin' 3267-8, Corolla Sancti Eadmundi, ed. Lord Francis Hervey, London, 1907.
- ↑ Cf. M. Gross, 'Geffrei Gaimar, die Komposition seiner Reimchronik und sein Verhältnis zu den Quellen,' Roman. Forschungen, xvi (1904), i.
- ↑ O. Schreibner, Über die Herrschaft d. franz. Sprache in England, Annaberg, 1880, p. 28.
