Note 83 — Chapter I

A popular and pleasing writer has drawn a little upon his imagination in the following account of the language of our forefathers after the Conquest:—The language of the church was Latin; that of the king and nobles, Norman; that of the people, Anglo-Saxon; the Anglo-Norman jargon was only employed in the commercial intercourse between the conquerors and the conquered. Ellis’s Specimens of Early English Poets, vol. i. p. 17. What was this jargon? and where do we find a proof of its existence? and what was the commercial intercourse hinted at? I suspect Ellis only meant, what has often been remarked, that the animals which bear a Saxon name in the fields acquire a French one in the shambles. But even this is more ingenious than just; for muttons, beeves, and porkers are good old words for the living quadrupeds.