66 same." If we thoroughly investigate the Anglo-Saxon literature we shall be satisfied that this word never belonged We find it in the Gothic " sa sama,"

to that tongue.

66

66

so samo" and pato samó." Into the Teutonic branches

the word has not thence descended. We meet with it alone in the Scandinavian dialects. It occurs in the Old Norse samt," sama and "som," but seems to have been selected into our tongue from the common and definite form, "sama,” the same. Though thus found in Gothic and Scandinavian literature, no root is therein extant from which it has been derived. Into the Indo-Teutonic tongues it seems to have been introduced from the Sanskrit " sama-s," like.* It agrees with the Greek words "óuós" and "äua;" also with the Latin "similis" and "simul." While, singular enough, in the Lowland Scotch, where we might expect to meet with the word, in consequence of the influence the Norse has had there, the people use the Anglo-Saxon synonym "ilia" or "ylea,” while we, the English, where the influence of the Northmen was much less, have adopted the Norse word, and use it to the entire exclusion of the word we might more legitimately consider our own.

But not herein alone from the Old Norse (by which is meant the language spoken in common by Danes, Swedes and Norwegians, when their mingled tribes as Northmen occupied and settled in many a fair province of our land) have we selected the definite pronoun alluded to. Many a good word we owe them, whatever we may think about their deeds. Our adverb abroad is one of the many words for which we stand to them as debtors. We have derived it from the Norse words "a braut," away. To go abroad is just synonymous with to go away. Generally the old Northmen used the words we have compounded into one for setting out on their roving seafaring expeditions as pirates and sea-kings. We also frequently restrict the word "abroad" to a similar mean• Vide Grimm's Deutsche Grammatik, Dritter Theil, pp. 49, 50.

66

ing, although our voyages are undertaken for profit and not plunder. Though thus synonymous, there is, notwithstanding, nothing similar in the radical meanings of the roots from which the two expressions are derived. The Norse "braut literally means a broken path or way. It comes from their verb "briota," to break. The Anglo-Saxon "veg" implies motion, more than the path moved on. It is an abstract term from the Gothic root vigan," to move or be moved. The same noun is also retained in the Norse under the form of " veyr." Many words owe their origin to this same old root, wagon," what moves on a way; "way," the path moved on; weigh," to move on the balance; wag," to shake or move the head; "wig," the movement in battle &c. &c. The Anglo-Saxon word "veg" and our word " way" transmute with the Latin word "via." The Norse "braut" and the Latin "fractus" stand in the same relation to each other. The Latin tongue has not handed down to us any such terms as "fractus" or fractum" in the sense of a path or way; yet, early on in their

as

some such word.

66

history, the Latins seem to have had in use This is seen in the compounds " anfractus and "anfractum," meaning winding ways, cross and roundabout passages &c.

In researches of this kind it is useless to go abroad in quest of terms we have selected to enrich our mother tongue. Of such a fact, our very houses and homes and our every day's intercourse and transactions supply us with proofs. Not a street scarcely can we walk along in any of our towns but we see stuck up in one or more windows of dwellings, "this house to let" or "be let." Every newspaper we take up abounds with advertisements of eligible mansions and residences to be let, valuable farms, mills, warehouses &c. Yet common as this word "let" is thus among us, there is perhaps not another word in the language so generally puzzling and perplexing to would-be critics as it is. One party tells us that the word is a neuter verb and cannot be made

passive, expressing a mere condition of being; and therefore the phrase "a house to let" is correct and grammatical English. Another party denies this assertion and will have the verb to be active; and therefore " a house to be let," is the proper phraseology Let us see then what light our subject lets in upon this apparent difficulty. The English language contains three "tets," all alike in orthography, but totally distinct in etymology and meaning. One “let," in the sense of allowing, permitting, exhorting &c., is derived from the Anglo-Saxon verb "lætan," which has the same meaning. The second "let" occurs in the sense of to stop, to hinder. It also is of Anglo-Saxon origin, and comes from "lettan," of like import. The other "let" is altogether unknown in the Anglo-Saxon tongue. It has come into our language from the Old Norse "leigja," which means to hire, pay rent for &c. First we have anglicised the verb and formed from it "leyed," and then we have contracted and corrupted it into "let." So have we done with its abstract form "leiga," house rent, which we have modified into our noun "ley," a term we still use for payments of rates, assessments and other burdens on lands and tenements. In the modern tongues this word is still common. In Danish its form is "leia." In Swedish, "leja." In the Teutonic branch it is altogether wanting. It commutes with the Latin word "locare," to pay rent, to farm out &c. ; so invariable is the law of philology in the transition of words from one common source into different languages and tongues.

leja."

The influence of the Norse has likewise been felt in terms connnected with land. "God speed the plough" has been the pledge of many a cup at many a merry meeting, for many a century past within this realm. Yet we seem not generally to know by whom the name of the plough was introduced among us. The Anglo-Saxons knew nothing of such an implement and its uses, ere they settled in the land. This is

apparent from their not having a term for it in their own

tongue. Even when they had accustomed themselves to the use of the so-called plough of the Romans, which they found in the hands of the British at their settlement in the country, they so confounded the terms of husbandry, that by a kind of metonymy, they gave the name of "syl" or "suhl" to the Roman-British implement from the furrow, "sulcus," which it drew, without attending in the least to the RomanBritish name. The work of one such plough during a season they have called a "sullung" or furrowing. This so-called plough, from the figures left of it in the Anglo-Saxon MSS., seems to have been but a sorry kind of an article, not fit to be brought into comparison with the worst form of our plough in the neglected districts of England. We owe both the framework and the origin of the modern plough to the Northmen. We meet with the word in the Old Norse "plôgr." In Swedish it is "plog;" while in Danish it occurs both as "plov" and "ploug," as in English, and was in all probability introduced by that people during the 11th century, at the latter part of their dynasty within the island. About the same period the word was also introduced into the Old High Dutch, Middle High Dutch &c. We know of no root either in the Teutonic or Scandinavian tongues from which it is deducible. Dr. Grimm supposes it was first introduced into Germany by the Sclavonians, inasmuch as the word is found in the several tongues and dialects of that people.* In the Gothic and Old Saxon the word is unknown. The British name for their plough was " aradr," their mode of pronouncing the Latin "aratrum," the word for the Roman plough. The Romans seem to have derived their implement from the Greek colonists among them, the Greek name being doorσOV. What sort of agriculture was known to the Teutons and Scandinavians in early times must have been extremely simple, if we are to judge of it by the terms connected with it that have reached our times. Ulphilas, in his translation of the * Deutsche Grammatik, chap. iii, p. 414.

Greek Testament, construes the word doorσov, or plough, with the Gothic word "hôha," the origin of our modern term "hoe." So that we may hence surmise that in those very primitive times those nations hoed their grounds for their crops for want of better articles to turn up the soil.

While we thus owe the name of the plough to northern introduction, we also are indebted to them for the term husbandry beside. Among the Scandinavians the common name for the peasantry was " bondi," the abstract form of "buondi," dwelling in or inhabiting a country. As intercourse with more civilized nations, in consequence of their numerous marauding expeditions, began to civilize a little the inhabitants of these northern climes, the "frelsi," or manumitted slaves, as well as certain favoured "bondi," had houses assigned them, with plots of ground adjoining for the use of their families. As the culture of such private plots was distinct from the common culture on the grounds of their "yads “hofdingi” &c., the person so favoured, separate from the general herd, obtained the name of "husbondi," and the culture of their grounds "husbondri." When such families obtained settlements in England they brought over with them the habits and names of the North; and from mingling with the Anglo-Saxon natives, with whom adjuncts to introduced terms and titles were common, the suffix of "man was applied to the name of "husbondi," who thus became husbandmen," a term still kept up in the northern counties for labourers on farms, who are styled "husbandmen" to this day.

66

66

It would be tedious to multiply instances of such selections of words made from among the northern settlers, which mingle with our spoken tongue to the present time, and ever will as long as it henceforth continues a living language. We have not merely had this mingling of words, but also of families and family names among us, so that the Northerns have both fixed their own names to many places in the land,