The Life of Thomas Hardy
"I had some German prisoners working for me out here in the garden during the early days of the war. Nice fellows. The villagers used to gather around late in the day and talk to them, although it wasn't officially permitted. They got on together very well. The Germans happened to speak some particular variety of Saxon dialect; our people spoke their own country-tongue, a direct descendant of King Alfred's Anglo-Saxon, as William Barnes pointed out.
"Now a remarkable thing happened. The Wessex Old English and this Low German were so similar that there was almost perfect understanding between the two groups.
"When I noticed this, I went inside and composed a sonnet. It was printed in the newspapers shortly afterwards, and created something of a storm. Patriotic people didn't like it. But the facts of philology and the real bonds between people of the same race are stronger than a temporary war-fever. I daresay few people remember the sonnet now, or consider it an amazing thing if they do."
You happen to remember it. It is called The Pity Of It:
From rail-track and from highway, and I heard
In field and farmstead many an ancient word
Of local lineage like "Thu hist," "Er war,"
Even as they speak who in this month's moon gird
At England's very loins, thereunto spurred
By gangs whose glory threats and slaughters are.
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