by boisterous wassailers around the camp fires on the eve of Hastings; sixty years later, England's Queen was taught natural history in French verse, and was complimented therein as being ‘mult bele femme, Aliz numée.’[1] About a hundred years after the battle of Hastings, an English writer gave the names of the wise English teachers of old, Bede, Cuthbert, Aidan, Dunstan, and others; he then complained how woefully times were changed — new lords, new lore:
[Nu is] þeo leore forleten.
and þet folc is forloren.
nu beoþ oþre leoden.
þeo læ[reþ] ure folc.
and feole of þen lorþeines losiæþ.
and þat folc forþ mid.[2]
The speech of the upper and lower classes in England, for two hundred years after 1066, was almost as distinct as the Arve and the Rhone are when they first meet. We see, however, that a few French words very early found their way into English. A shrewd observer long ago told us how ox, sheep, and swine came to be called beef, mutton, and pork, when smoking on the board. Treading in his steps, I venture to guess how our bluff forefathers began their studies in the French tongue. We may imagine a cavalcade of the new aristocracy of England, ladies and knights, men who perhaps fought at Hastings in their youth; these alight from their steeds at the door of one of the churches,
