it has come down to us, there are as many as ten words, more or less synonymous, for the word man, and as many for woman.[1] The language abounds in synonymous words, thus showing a commingling of elements from many sources. Its obscure etymology, its confused and imperfect inflections, and its anomalous and irregular syntax, point to the same conclusion, and indicate a diversity of origin.
It does not appear that the Old English, as the speech of a nation, existed until towards the later Anglo-Saxon period. ‘We are all weary,’ says the distinguished author of the great work on the Old Northern Runic Monuments, ‘of an Anglo-Saxon language that never existed. The Old English in its many dialects we know, and if we know anything we are aware that it is of a distinctly Northern character, whenever Northern writings as old as the Old English can be found to be compared with it.’[2] The oldest remains of Old Saxon, says Marsh, ‘are not Anglo-Saxon, and I think it must be regarded, not as a language which the colonists or any of them brought with them from the Continent, but as a new speech resulting from the fusion of many separate elements.’[3] There is, says the same American philologist, ‘linguistic evidence of a great commingling of nations in the body of the intruders.’
All the available evidence, the dialects of the period, the surviving customs, or those known to have existed, and the comparison of place-names with those of ancient Germany and Scandinavia, point to the same conclusion, that the English race had its origin in many parent sources, and arose on English soil, not from some great national immigration, but from the commingling here of settlers from many tribes.
The many traces that remain of the mythology of the
