Читать книгу History of the Fylde of Lancashire онлайн

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Lever à cinque, dîner à neuf,

Souper à cinque, coucher à neuf,

Fait vivre d’ans nonante et neuf.[24]

Eventually his evil actions and foolish threats so incensed the nation, that the barons, headed by William, earl of Pembroke, compelled him, in 1215, to sign the Magna Charta, a code of laws embodying two important principles—the general rights of the freemen, and the limitation of the powers of both king and pope.

About that time it would have been almost, if not quite, impossible to have decided or described what was the national language of the country. The services at the churches were read in Latin, the aristocracy indulged only in Norman-French, whilst the great mass of the people spoke a language, usually denominated Saxon or English, but which had been so mutilated and altered by additions from various sources that the ancient “Settlers on the shores of the German Ocean” would scarcely have recognized it as their native tongue. Each division of the kingdom had its peculiar dialect, very much as now, and from the remarks of a southern writer, named Trevisa, it must be inferred that the patois of our own district, which he would include in the old province of Northumbria,[25] was far from either elegant or musical. “Some,” he says, “use strange gibbering, chattering, waffling, and grating; then the Northumbre’s tongue is so sharp, flitting, floyting, and unshape, that we Southron men may not understand that language.” Such a list of curious and uncomplimentary epithets inclines us at first sight to doubt the strict impartiality of their author, but when it is remembered that, in spite of the greatly increased opportunities for education and facilities for intercommunion amongst the different classes, the provincialisms of some of our own peasantry would be utterly unintelligible to many of us at the present day, we are constrained to admit that Trevisa may have had just reason for his remarks.