Worcester daily spy. [volume] (Worcester [Mass.]) 1850-1888, 1862-12-06

there, it is true but hardly in different sense
than some future ship of the line may be said
to exist in the uncut timber and the yet I'M
mined ore from which she is to be construct
ed. The English language, indeed, rs COM
pared with the Italian, the German, and even
the French, is of still more modern origin,
since--incredible as it may seem - our
mother tongue, now so rich in the vast
and varied fields of its unrivaled lit
erature, the common heritage of more than
seventy million frecmen whose settlements
belt the globe, was, five centuries ago, but the
miserable and barren iargon of about two mil
lor semi-civilized people confined within the
limits of an island having only three fourths
of the area of the state of Virginia. This
confused medley-the hybrid offspring of the
Anglo-Saxon and Norman-French, themselves
both excessively composite contained less
than ten thousand words, as unsettled in or
biography and as varied in pronunciation as
the ingenuity of caprice and the blunders of
ignorance could make them.
The written language of these times was Of
ten a strange tumble of the two parent lam
guages, which, for long time, like oil and
water, obstinately refused to combine their
widely differing elements. The following
stanza of poem written in the year 1911, will
serve as an illustration.
"Nostre prince de Engletere
Par lie consail de sa gent
AT Westminster alter the fere
Made greet parlement.S
There is another specimen, in different
style, but of about the same period which has
been termed ''the Dark Age of English liter
ature.'
''Yiss Doc ISIS nemmned Ormulum,
Forryi yatt Orrm lit wrohhte."
Whichis, being interpreted,
This book is named Ormulum,
For this that Orm it wrote.
The explanation Of the use of the letter, Y,
in the word, ''Yiss," above,-as well as in
such expressions as eye General Court" &c.
of our old records-is that the Y, so employed
is corruption of the Anglo Saxon character
which stood for tn, but had very nearly the
70, m of Y.
What this irregular gibberish, serving as
the medium of intercourse among our rude
ancestors, came to be a century later, may be
| judged by the following version of the Lords
Prayer, taken from Wickliffe's Bible. The
date is about the year 1880, and the specimen,
| Of course, is Of the best class of the English
| literature of the fourteenth century.
| "Oure fadir that art in heuenes. halwid be
/ fhj thI lyvOulpO, Io a.;
willie don as in heuen and in earthe; gif to VS.
| this day cure breed ouer other Substance
| and forgeue to VS. cure detts, as we forgeue
| to cure dettours; and leede VS. nat in to
temptacioun, but delyuere VS. fro yuel.
| Amen"
The apparently confused usage of the let
tiers and in the above prayer, arises from
the fact that one and the same character,
Z, was formerly employed to represent both
these letters which-as and the more modern
] were down to a still later period-were con-
sidered as one character. 1t was not until
the beginning Of the 10th century that the Pc
culiarities of the two letters began to be ac-
| curately observed. The use of the consonant
| j, is of still more recent date.
What English literature may attain to, five
centuries hence, and by how many millions
our noble tongue will then be spoken, is Il
field of speculation where the imagination
may easily lose itself in roaming One fact,
at least, is already matter of history: no
speech of man, since Noah left the seas, has
ever made such rapid and extensive progress
over the face of the earth as the English has
accomplished during the past three hundred
years. Will it ever become the universal
language of the human race! Echo answers
| -"Will it,"