The Adventure of English (6 page)

It is easy with hindsight to say that “obviously” English has survived. But hindsight is the bane of history. It is corrupting and distorting and pays no respect to the way life is really lived — forwards, generally blindly, full of accidents, fortunes and misfortunes, patternless and often adrift. Easy with hindsight to say we would beat Napoleon at Waterloo: only by a whisker, according to the honest general who did it. Easy to say we would win the Second World War: ask those who watched the dogfights of the Battle of Britain in Kent in 1940. Easy to say the Berlin Wall was bound to fall. Which influential commentator or body of opinion said so in the 1980s? Hindsight is the easy way to mop up the mess which we call history; it is too often the refuge of the tidy-minded, making neat patterns when the dust has settled. As often as not, when the dust was flying, no one at the time knew what the outcome might be.

In that spirit, I would suggest that for many English people, certainly the educated, it must have seemed the end of their authority in the land and the end of their language as any sort of authority. Just as some Celts had become Romanised, so some English became Normanised. It was the only way up, the only way out. The effects on English were severe for at least a hundred fifty years and for another hundred fifty the language had to continue to struggle, not so much for survival this time, as with the Danes, but somehow to swallow, digest and absorb this monstrous regiment of foreign words. They were pile-driven into the vocabulary and needed to be denied, defeated or somehow to become “our” “English” words, otherwise French would certainly depress, effectively eliminate English and overrule any claim it had to primacy.

When, three hundred years later, English did finally emerge, it had changed dramatically. But first it had to take on its conqueror and somehow reconquer it. The language had to do what Harold Godwineson's army had failed to do in 1066.

Harold, King Harold, would be the last English-speaking king, the last king to take his oath in English, for three hundred years.

U
nder William the state of England became an estate of Normandy. When the new king ordered the construction of the White Tower by the Thames in London in 1077, he declared his hand. It was to be part palace, part treasury, part prison and part fortress. Even today it stands splendid and formidable, the sleek and fierce ravens which appear to guard it seeming to contain still the savage powers of the last invader of England who brought with him such a cargo of Norman French that not only the territory but the tongue of the land was threatened.

William's successors continued his simple policy of brutal appropriation. Across the land William's men took over every position of power in the state and in the Church. Within sixty years of the Battle of Hastings, the monk and historian William of Malmesbury wrote: “No Englishman today is an Earl or Bishop or Abbot. The newcomers gnaw at the wealth and guts of England, nor is there any hope of ending the misery.” Those who, armed with much later evidence, speak of the inevitability of the survival of English might do well to imagine a conversation in the early twelfth century with that level-headed historian. His view, a view from the battlefront, would have been far less confident. He wrote in Latin. Written English, which had established itself so magnificently before the Conquest, was being rapidly sidelined.

One of its proudest functions had been as a language of record in the
Anglo-Saxon Chronicles,
which had recorded the great events of the past six hundred years. In Peterborough Abbey, in the mid twelfth century, that prime function of English, that unique tradition, breathed its last. These
Chronicles
had been written in the language of the people; there was nothing like them anywhere in mainland Europe. England was already a place with a long history written in its own language.

The
Chronicles
were kept at several monastic institutions. After the Conquest, one by one they were abandoned. The Peterborough Chronicle was the last survivor. In 1154 a monk at Peterborough Abbey recorded that the abbey had a new abbot with the French name of William de Waterville.

“He has made a good beginning,” the monk writes. “Christ grant that he may end as well.” With this last entry in English, more than six centuries of written history came to an end. Old English ceased to be the recognised and respected language of record in its own land. History was no longer with the Anglo-Saxons: and their language was of no consequence to those who saw the past in their own image. One way to destroy a personality is to cut out memory: one way to destroy a state is to cut out its history. Especially when that history comes out of the native language. Status is gone; continuity is disconnected; all that went into the making of the people the
Anglo-Saxon Chronicles
had recorded so carefully was of no account. The written language which bound it together guttered out.

Yet just as Celtic in the fifth and sixth centuries was certainly the language spoken by the overwhelming majority of those who lived in “England” (then a loose aggregation of often warring kingdoms), so now English after 1066 was still the language of the people. It has been estimated that in the beginning the Norman French accounted for no more than three or five percent of the population. The Romans had proved that an even smaller percentage could subdue great tracts of land, and the force of arms in many empires has been minute in number, disproportionate it would seem: the British in India for example, the French in Central Africa, Islam around the Mediterranean and the East. A conquering military elite can build up an astonishing momentum and the Norman French are among those who proved that. It helped that the English were virtually leaderless, their finest warriors slaughtered or captured or fled, their final northern power base no match alone for the invaders. And the invaders gave no quarter: misery, waste, pillaging, ravaging, these are the words that describe their Genghis Khan–like progress through a fatally weakened land.

The language of the occupied no longer counted. But, as if language itself were a resistance movement, it continued not only to be spoken but to evolve, despite the heavy hand of Norman French which pressed it down, pushed it under the controlling conversations of society, its laws, its court talk, its churchmen. It may seem curious to bring grammar to bear on evidence here but grammar — rarely a word that strikes a welcoming note — is useful evidence. For if the grammar is changing, setting itself and meeting new challenges, if the internal engine of the language is still geared for change and adaptability in its own terms regardless of the new dominating tongue, that is good proof that a language is alive even if it is under siege.

Dr. Katie Lowe has pointed out that when the Danes and the Wessexled English began to trade across the Danelaw in the tenth century, the rub between the two not dissimilar languages led to changes which profoundly affected the way they talked then and we talk now. She took the sentence “The King gave horses to his men,” and used that as an example. In English that would be “Se cyning geaf blancan his gumum.”

There is no preposition, no “to” in that sentence: it's all done by the endings of the words. The “um” at the end of “gumum” tells you that the noun (“guma” — man) is plural and that it's the indirect object of the sentence: as such in this sentence “um” equals “to.” Now the plural for horse is formed by putting an “an” on it, so “blancan” means horses. The problem was that the “ums” and “ans” became less distinct as these languages attempted to meld together. So instead of “gumum” (to his men), we could get “guman” (men, identical with the simple plural). Instead of “his blancan” (horses) we could get “his blancum” (to his horses). Even this straightforward sentence, therefore, could end up as “The King gave men [guman] to his horses [blancum].” And of course the more complicated the sense, the more scope for misunderstanding. The word “to” solved that and many more prepositions came into play around that time.

It is significant that this is still going on in the twelfth century. Especially in the north, this seeking for clarification had not ceased. In Old English, plurals could be signalled in a variety of ways. About this time it is noticeable that more plurals were being formed by adding an “s” — as many Old English nouns did. “Naman,” for example, the Old English plural of “names,” became “nam-es,” which became “names.” Prepositions like “to,” “by” and “from” were performing more of the functions of the old word endings and word order itself was becoming more fixed. “The” becomes used instead of the Old English bewildering range of different words used for the definite article.

So despite being the officially ignored language, despite being driven out of much of its written inheritance, English continued to change, to endure, both resisting and absorbing the invader's language, selecting, nursing itself like an exiled and wounded animal, hoping for the opportunity to re-emerge.

In 1154, it did not seem remotely possible. That fateful Peterborough Chronicle of 1154 also recorded that in that year the people of England acquired a new king, Count Henry of Anjou, grandson of William the Conqueror and the first of the Plantagenets. He was a lover of learning who spoke fluent Latin as well as French: but no English. His queen was Eleanor of Aquitaine, the daughter of William X of Aquitaine.

Henry II was crowned in Westminster in a lavish ceremony which announced and displayed a new force of Frenchness on the English scene. The clergy wore silk vestments more costly than anything ever seen before in England. The king and queen and the greater barons wore silk and brocade robes — such luxury was fitting, it was thought, for an occasion that solemnised the bringing together of so much land and wealth. So much, indeed, that in its own way, it threatened English every bit as much as the heavy horsemen who had benefited so greedily from the victory in 1066.

Henry II brought his inheritance of William the Conqueror's land in England and northern France. Eleanor, the greatest heiress in the western world, brought with her a great swathe of what is now France, from the Loire to the Pyrenees, from the Rhône to the Atlantic. This was a huge kingdom, the greater part of it made up of French-speaking lands across the Channel. As it grew, the English lands and the English language became an ever less significant part of it. French and Latin were even more firmly entrenched as the language of government, of the court, of the new culture.

Yet even on this great occasion, when England seemed to be reduced even further, there was still life and even hope in the language. As Henry and Eleanor processed up the Strand in London, it is reported that the people shouted “Wes hal!” and “Vivat Rex” — wishing them long life in Old English and in Latin. The language was alive on the streets.

Henry and Eleanor brought yet more new words. In the first century after the Conquest, most imported words came from Normandy and Picardy. But in Henry II's reign (1154–89), other dialects, especially Central French or Francien, contributed to the speech of the country. So “catch,” “real,” “reward,” “wage,” “warden” and “warrant” from Norman French sat alongside “chase,” “royal,” “regard,” “gauge,” “guardian” and “guarantee” from Francien (all given Modern English spelling).

Perhaps more important than the vocabulary were the ideas which winged in beside them. This is a clear example of what happened time and again: new words seeded new ideas. In the palace, new ideas from across the Channel were now in the air. The new words that expressed them included “courtesy” (cortesie), “honour” (honor), “damsels” (damesieles), “tournament” (torneiement). The vocabulary of “romance” and “chivalry” brought the biggest culture shock to England since Alfred set out to re-educate the people: but where Alfred did this for God and for unity, the court of Henry and Eleanor did it for culture and pleasure. Eleanor was considered the most cultured woman in Europe. She attempted to change the sensibility of this doom-struck, crushed, occupied outpost of an island and it was she more than anyone else who patronised poets and troubadours whose verses and songs created the Romantic image of the Middle Ages as the Age of Chivalry — a glorious vision, little, if at all, realised outside the beautifully illustrated and ornamented pages of medieval literature.

But the new ideas came in and they bedded themselves in England and worked their way through the culture for at least seven centuries to come, as the gentle knight became the gentleman. Before Eleanor arrived in England the word “chevalerie,” formed around the word for horse, had simply meant cavalry. It was the fierceness of the mounted warriors that had carried the day at Hastings and since then many of the English knew the Norman chevalerie as little more than mounted thugs and bullies.

Now, under the influence of Eleanor, mounted horsemen began their transformation into knights. The word “chivalry” came to mean a raft of ideas and behaviour, infused with honour and altruism. Words that prescribed how to act towards one's liege-lord, friends, enemies and, most of all, towards fair, cruel ladies. This, the preserve of the court, took the preoccupations of the state even further away from English, which had no place in the throne room. The way the society regarded itself had been pointed in a dramatically different direction, and initially it was nothing to do with Old England or Old English. Neither was needed.

It was in Eleanor's reign that poets brought the stories of Arthur and his Knights out of history or legend into poetry and a strengthening of the legend. There was a growing poetic tradition in this newly enriched language. The twelfth century saw the flourishing of the great Arthurian Romance poet Chrétien de Troyes and the poetess of magical fables Marie de France. Both were writing courtly verse in French; Marie by her own account was writing it in England.

Interestingly there is some evidence that both these writers plundered the riches of the locals as all colonisers do. Chrétien derived his material from England — possibly through Wace's French translation of Geoffrey of Monmouth's
Historia Regum Brittaniae.
Marie de France tells us that she translated some of her stories from English into French (“de l'engleis en romang”).

The language was cultivated for itself and became far richer than that of the first Norman settlers. The poets rhapsodised about Eleanor, celebrating her as the most beautiful woman in the world, pouring out the impossible longing for the perfect woman that was at the heart of courtly love. That too had and still has a tremendous influence on poetry and songs of affairs of the heart, of the joy and pain of love. It propelled forward a line in literature that ran through Shakespeare's sonnets to Romantic love poetry, to the popular song lyrics of today. It is impossible to weigh, to quantify the effects of such ideas at the time. It is indisputable, though, that those imported, French, courtly ideas sank deep wells into our ways of thinking how we ought to and could behave and be in and out of love.

Eleanor's favourite troubadour was Bertrand de Born and his most famous work is “Rassa tan cries e monte e poia.” The poet sings about the physical attractions of his noble lady (body as white as hawthorn flower, breasts firm, back like a young rabbit's — admittedly the last may have lost some of its erotic power in the last seven hundred fifty years) and ends by singing: