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Updated: June 28, 2025
They suppressed the native polity by overwhelming force, made Norman-French the fashionable speech of the court and the aristocracy, and imposed it on the tribunals.
That the artistic value of a choice and noble diction was quite as well understood in his day as in ours is evident from the praises bestowed by his contemporaries on Drayton, and by the epithet "well-languaged" applied to Daniel, whose poetic style is as modern as that of Tennyson; but the endless absurdities about the comparative merits of Saxon and Norman-French, vented by persons incapable of distinguishing one tongue from the other, were as yet unheard of.
He was a learned man, and, when tried at Bedford assizes for preaching the gospel, he was indicted in the usual Norman-French, or Latin; and pleaded first in Greek, which the prosecutors not understanding, he pleaded in Hebrew, arguing, that as his indictment was in a foreign tongue, he was entitled to plead in any of the learned languages.
But the same motive which prevents my writing the dialogue of the piece in Anglo-Saxon or in Norman-French, and which prohibits my sending forth to the public this essay printed with the types of Caxton or Wynken de Worde, prevents my attempting to confine myself within the limits of the period in which my story is laid.
"I am very glad every fool knows that too," said Wamba, "and pork, I think, is good Norman-French; and so when the brute lives, and is in the charge of a Saxon slave, she goes by her Saxon name; but becomes a Norman, and is called pork, when she is carried to the Castle-hall to feast among the nobles; what dost thou think of this, friend Gurth, ha?"
But the reform was by no means acceptable to the majority of the bar, who did not hesitate to stigmatize the measure as a dangerous innovation which would prove injurious to learned lawyers and peace-loving citizens, although it might possibly serve the purposes of ignorant counsel and litigious 'lay gents. The legal literature of three generations following Charles I.'s execution abounds with contemptuous allusions to the 'English times' of Cromwell; the old-fashioned reporters, hugging their Norman-French and looking with suspicion on popular intelligence, were vehement in expressing their contempt for the prevalent misuse of the mother tongue.
But my mother, catching me at it one day, sharply forbade me meddling with Krok's studies, and showed me the smallness of it, and I never touched one of his stones again. Both my mother and my grandfather could read and speak English, in addition to the Norman-French which was the root of our Island tongue, and that was something of a distinction in those days.
The first was long and very difficult; it was on the origin of the English language, and required a certain knowledge of various Anglo-Saxon roots, a list of words derived from ancient British, and some account of the Norman-French period. The second and shorter question was simply a sentence to be parsed. No one in the class had a good memory for derivations.
LITERATURE IN NORMAN-FRENCH. From the preference of the Norman kings of England for the poets of their own country, the distinguished literary names of the first two centuries after the Conquest are those of Norman poets.
Whether this was some other person who chanced to bear the same name, or that the ballad-maker has in this related what was mere matter of fact, it will become no one to affirm in a tone of authority. I, for my part, believe it is the same person. Mr Hunter then quotes the words of the original record, which is in Norman-French.
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