revealing, as it must, the points of contact as well as the differences between the two nations, will lead to surer knowledge and greater mutual appreciation. Above all it will throw much light on English history, social and constitutional, on Middle-English, one might even say pre-Shakespearian literature, and particularly on the growth and evolution of the English language.
I ought at the outset to explain why I have retained the old-fashioned name of 'Anglo-Norman' in preference to that of 'Anglo-French', which has been proposed by many scholars. My first consideration has been one of expediency. 'Anglo-French' has a distinctly modern flavour; at all events it is ambiguous, and cannot be used without further qualification. The term 'Anglo-Norman' is, however, quite definite. It is universally applied to the period which extends from the Conquest to the time when the two races, with their respective languages and characteristics, blended into one homogeneous nation. I do not think that it has ever been challenged by historians, although some philologists have taken exception to its use. They urge that the French introduced by William the Conqueror was 'in its origin a mixture of various Norman and other Northern French dialects'[1] or 'that the characteristics of all the Northern French dialects were reflected in various regions of England'[2]. In short, that among the invaders and their descendants there prevailed a confusion of tongues, a very Tower of Babel, which might be labelled 'French' but could not be called 'Norman'. Such a conclusion is, however, contrary to facts. Indeed there is considerable evidence to show that at no period before the close of the fourteenth
- ↑ J. A. H. Murray, New Engl. Dict., general explanation, p. x.
- ↑ H. A. Sturmfels, Anglia, viii (1885), p. 212. A similar view has been expressed by Miss Pope in her Étude sur la langue de Frere Angier, Paris, 1903, pp. 4-5.
