Norman language

If any excuse is needed for recasting the ancient legend of Grim the Fisher and his foster son Havelock the Dane, it may be found in the fascination of the story itself, which made it one of the most popular legends in England from the time of the Norman Conquest at least to that of Elizabeth.

From the 11th to the 13th centuries it seems to have been almost classic, and during that period two full metrical versions, one in Norman French and the other in English, were written, besides many other short versions and abridgements, which still exist.

These are given exhaustively by Professor Skeat in his edition of the English poem for the Early English Text Society, and it is needless to do more than refer to them here as the sources from which this story is gathered.

These versions differ most materially from one another in names and incidents, while yet preserving the main outlines of the whole history.

The later English account is rounded off with the disgrace and burning alive of the false guardian, but for many reasons the earlier seems to be the more correct account.

Certainly the mounds of some great forgotten fight remain in the Tetford valley, and Havelock is said to have come to Carlflour, which, being near Saltfleet and on the road to Tetford, may be Carlton, where there is a strong camp of what is apparently Danish type.

Those who can read with any comfort the crabbed Norman French and early English poetic versions will see at once where I have added incidents that may bring the story into a connected whole, as nearly as possible on the old saga lines, and those readers to whom the old romance is new will hardly wish that I should pull the story to pieces again, to no purpose so far as they are concerned.

And, at least, for a fairly free treatment of the subject, I have the authority of those previous authors whom I have mentioned.

The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle calls it the Battle at the Hoary Apple Tree.

Within 40 years of it occurring, it was described by the Anglo-Norman chronicler Oderic Vitalis as the Battle of Senlac, a Norman-French adaptation of the Old English word sandlaku, meaning sandy water.

This may have been the name for a stream that crossed the battlefield.

The battle was already being referred to as the Battle of Hastings, though, by 1086 in the Doomsday Book.

If any excuse is needed for recasting the ancient legend of Grim the Fisher and his foster son Havelok the Dane, it may be found in the fascination of the story itself, which made it one of the most popular legends in England from the time of the Norman Conquest at least to that of Elizabeth.

From the eleventh to the thirteenth centuries it seems to have been almost classic, and during that period two full metrical versions, one in Norman French and the other in English, were written, besides many other short versions and abridgments, which still exist.

These are given exhaustively by Professor Skeat in his edition of the English poem for the Early English Text Society, and it is needless to do more than refer to them here as the sources from which this story is gathered.

These versions differ most materially from one another in names and incidents, while yet preserving the main outlines of the whole history.

The later English account is rounded off with the disgrace and burning alive of the false guardian, but for many reasons the earlier seems to be the more correct account.

Certainly the mounds of some great forgotten fight remain in the Tetford valley, and Havelock is said to have come to Carlfleur, which, being near Saltfleet and on the road to Tetford, may be Carlton, where there is a strong camp of what is apparently Danish type.

Those who can read with any comfort the crabbed Norman French and early English poetic versions will see at once where I have added incidents that may bring the story into a connected whole, as nearly as possible on the old saga lines, and those readers to whom the old romance is new will hardly wish that I should pull the story to pieces again, to no purpose so far as they are concerned.

And, at least, for a fairly free treatment of the subject, I have the authority of those previous authors whom I have mentioned.

Thank you for joining me today and to talk about this very fascinating project that you've been working on.

Now, when we think about the Battle of Hastings in 1066, it's very easy to assume that it was a simple case of Anglo-Saxon English fighting against the Norman French.

But how does Conquest Man illustrate that it's not quite as simple as that?

It's not quite as binary as that, is it? I think about it in that 50 years before some chap called William sails across with his flotilla of boats and lands on the south coast of England, a chap called King Canute does the same thing.

Then, taking from the bag a small offering of the consecrated flower, he breathed upon it and cast it toward the east.

Cushing, who became a Zuni Indian that he might learn their lore, tells us that this sunrise ritual contains archaic words of which few modern Zunis know the meaning, words related to the modern Zuni tongue as Norman French to modern English, and showing that the Zuni sun-worship began in remote times, far beyond the possibility of historical determination.

The Zuni's reverence for the sun god is shared by many savage tribes and belongs to the early history of many civilized peoples.

in later stages of culture it is succeeded by the worship of animals or the personified powers of nature and of personified mental power so that with civilized man the old sunworship has disappeared but there is a new sunworship introduced and fostered by science for science has discovered in the sun a creator of wonderful versatility and power geographers worship also another nature god the inner earth or the underground a creator also and co-worker with the sun these two gods of physical geography were known to the greeks as helios and hades to the romans as apollo and pluto in later centuries apollo as the stimulator of life developed into the god of culture but to early tradition he is the sun a nature god coordinate with pluto the underground Geology has long recognized Pluto, but has made him coordinate with the sea-god Neptune, naming her rocks in two great groups, the Plutonic and Neptunian.

Preface.

If any excuse is needed for recasting the ancient legend of Grim the Fisher and his foster son Havelok the Dane, it may be found in the fascination of the story itself, which made it one of the most popular legends in England from the time of the Norman Conquest at least to that of Elizabeth.

From the eleventh to the thirteenth centuries, it seems to have been almost classic, and during that period two full metrical versions, one in Norman French and the other in English, were written, besides many other short versions and abridgments which still exist.

These are given exhaustively by Professor Skeat in his edition of the English poem for the Early English Text Society, and it is needless to do more than refer to them here as the sources from which this story is gathered.

These versions differ most materially from one another in names and incidents, while yet preserving the main outlines of the whole history.

It is evident that there has been a far more ancient, orally preserved tradition, which has been the original of the freely treated poems and concise prose statements of the legend which we have.

And it seems possible, from among the many variations and from under the disguise of the medieval forms in which it has been hidden, to piece together what this original may have been, at least with some probability.

We have one clue to the age of the legend of Havelok in the statement by the eleventh-century Norman poet that his tale comes from a British source, which at least gives a very early date for the happenings related, while another version tells us that the King of Lindsey was a Briton.

The balance of continuity and change extended to local administration as well.

The system of shires remained, but the names of officials often switched from Old English to Norman French in charters.

That linguistic shift can be traced by looking at royal writs.

Early 1070s documents are still written in Latin and sometimes use Old English phrasing.