Page:The study of the Anglo-Norman.djvu/18

Gast^[1] and the anonymous author of the Poème sur l'Antéchrist^[2] blushed to confess, like Madame Eglentyne, that 'Frensh of Paris was to hem unknowe'. But the majority of their countrymen were quite content with the knowledge of what was still a fashionable and aristocratic language. John Peckham (†1292), a distinguished Oxford teacher, afterwards archbishop of Canterbury, continued to write his letters in Anglo-Norman, although he had studied and taught many years in the University of Paris.^[3] Even in the fourteenth century, when Parisian French had long outdistanced other dialects as a literary medium, the French language spoken in England was still fairly uniform. The testimony of Higden [c. 1350) has often been cited, but has hardly been sufficiently appreciated. In his Polycronicon (lib. i, cap. 59) he says: 'Ubi nempe mirandum videtur, quomodo nativa et propria Anglorum lingua, in unica insula coartata, pronunciatione ipsa sit tam diversa; cum tamen Normannica lingua, quae adventitia est, univoca maneat penes cunctos.' Which John of Trevisa quaintly renders (after 1385): 'Hit semeth a greet wonder how Englische, that is the burthe tonge of Englisshemen and her owne langage and tonge, is so dyverse of sown in this oon ilond, and the langage of Normandie is comlynge (imported) of another londe, and hath oon manere soun among alle men that speketh hit aright in Engelond.' And he further adds: 'Nevertheless there is as many dyvers manere Frensche in the reem of Fraunce as is dyvers manere Englische in the reem of Engelond.' Which shows that he was well able to tell one dialect from another. He was an educated man and remarkably well informed. Above all he

1. Cf. E. Löseth, Le roman en prose de Tristan, Paris, 1891, p. 2.
2. Mr. A. Rowlands of Jesus College has in preparation an edition of this poem.
3. F. J. Tanquerey, Recueil de lettres anglo-françaises, Paris, 1916, p. xvi.