Note 2 — Chapter I · : The Sources of Spanish Romance

In this age-long contest she was undoubtedly inspired by that subtle sense of nationhood and the possession of a common tongue which have proved the salvation of many races no less desperately situated, and perhaps her determination to redeem the lost Eden of the South is the best measure of the theory that, prior to the era of Saracen conquest, the Castilian tongue was a mere jargon, composed of the elements of the Roman lingua rustica and the rude Gothic, and, according to some authorities, still lacking in grammatical arrangement and fixity of idiom.2 It is certainly clear that the final phases in the evolution of Castilian took place subsequently to the Arabic invasion, but it is a straining of such scanty evidence as we possess to impute to the form of Castilian speech current immediately before that time the character of an undisciplined patois.