CHARACTERISTICS OF THE NORSE LANGUAGES. 175

2nd. The pronouns of the third person in -n, as ha-n= he, ho-n she. I see in this an accusative like the A. S. hine in the place of a nominative; the result being a sigu of anything but freedom from foreign influences.

3rd and 4th. The existence of a Passive Voice, and the post-position of the article. A Dane says kalla = call = vocare, but kalla-s = be called = vocari. He also says en sol = a sun, and ett bord — a table; but sol-en = the sun, and bord-et the table. It is scarcely possible to imagine two forms more distinctive of a language of great prominence and apparent importance than these. Let the Englishman, whose ideas have always run in the sequence the man, be told to reverse the order, to place the after man, and after he has done this, incorporate the two words so as to make one, and he feels like one who is told to put a cart before a horse. In reading, too, he has to acquire the habit of looking at the end of a word first. In metre the result is still more striking. A substantive of one syllable, with its corresponding definite article, gives us, in English, the measure x a, and helps in the construction of such lines as

The way was lóng, the wind was cold.

In the Norse the result is a x, and the way becomes Veien; the wind, Vinden. Thus the English:

The spring comes, the bird twitters, the wood becomes leafy, the sun laughs

is in Swedish

Váren kommen, fúglen qvittrar, skógen löfvas, sólen ler—

and a whole series of so-called trochees is called into existence.

The Passive forms are, perhaps, less striking. They rarely, however, fail to command attention; reminding the classical scholar of such words as vocor and TÚTτoμaι in Latin and Greek. But a characteristic may be ex

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tremely prominent without being of any high historical value as a sign of either the antiquity or the independence of the language in which it occurs. And this is, pre-eminently, the case with the two under notice. They are just the two forms of which we know that the origin is recent, and the growth rapid. We know this in the case of the post-position of the article from the Rumanyo of Wallachia and Moldavia; where omul the man, the -ul being the definite article postponed. And so it is throughout the language. Yet before A.D. 200, or the time when the Trajan conquered Dacia, there was no such form possible; inasmuch as om = hom =man, and -ul = ille = the, the il and el of the Italian and Spanish, the le in French—a demonstrative pronoun which in Rumanyo is post-positive, but which in both the original Latin and all the derived languages is prefixed. Judging, then, from this analogy, the Norse dialects, though they exhibited the postpositive in the eleventh and tenth centuries, may easily have been without it in the 5th, 4th, 3rd, or 2nd. At present it is common. In the Edda, however, it is rare : in the metrical portion of it (I believe) wanting altogether. Again, it is wanting in the dialect of the Duchy of Sleswick, where they say a man, instead of manden. Such are the chief reasons against overvaluing the post-position of the article in the Scandinavian dialects as a characteristic. With the Passive Voice the criticism is much the same. We know how it grew, what it grew out of, and when it grew. The -es in the Danish kalles vocari, is, in Swedish, -as. In ordinary Icelandic it is -ast, and in the older Icelandic -asc; which, earlier still, is -a+sik, i. e. the verb the reflective pronoun. Hence, a Passive has grown out of a Middle, a Middle out of a Reflective, a Reflective out of a Verb + Pronoun-all (so to say) under our eyes and in the memory of man. Subtract, then, the post-position of the article and the so-called

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Passive Voice from the Norse, or Scandinavian languages, and the result is little more than an extreme form of the Frisian.

§ 181. Both these forms, then, are new; and it may now be added that they are both Lithuanic-Lithuanic being, by hypothesis, Gothic. In the Lithuanic, what is called the Declension of the Definite Adjective consists in the addition of the Demonstrative Pronoun jis, or ji hic, or hæc. Thus geras, zalias good, green; but geras-is, zalias-is=the good, the green. As for the Middle Voice it is formed throughout by the addition of si or -s (Lat. se, German sik, sick, sig) to the Active.

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§ 182. Early Danes.-The statement of the AngloSaxon Chronicle that, A.D. 793, certain Danes invaded England, is, doubtless, true. The statement that they were the first who did so is one of those negative assertions which are quite as likely to be wrong as right. It has been said by many to be wrong; in other words, the date of the first Danish invasion is uncertain. If, however, one name be more Danish than another, it is the name of the town of Grimsby; which is not only treated as Danish by the modern philologue, but is one of the names especially claimed for Scandinavia by so old and so native a writer as Snorro, in whose work a well-known passage runs thus:

Northumberland is called the fifth part of England. Eric had his residence in York, where Lodbrok's sons, it is said, had formerly been; and Northumberland was principally inhabited by Northmen. Since Lodbrok's sons had taken the country, Danes and Northmen often plundered there, when the power of the land was out of their hands. Many names of places in the country are Norwegian; as Grimsby, Haukfliot, and many others.—Laing's Translation, vol. i. pp. 316, 317.

In local legends of this ancient town the name of Havelok, the Dane, is conspicuous. I am not prepared to say that the connection is real. Still, as it exists, it commands notice. I have given reasons for believing

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that, word for word, Havelok is Higelac, the name of an Angle hero in Beowulf-an Angle hero who has a great deal to do with certain Danes. In Norse, the name is Hugleikr and Huhlek; in Latin ChocilaichusChocilaichus being a real historical character, a Scandinavian who, according to Gregory of Tours, descended on the coast of Holland, and was killed in the parts along the river Niers, A. D. 515. That, so far as the Angle Higilac has a basis in real history, he is the Norse Chocilaichus, has been long and generally admitted. The present writer, who (carrying the identification further) sees in his name the word Havelok as well, finds, in him, a Scandinavian corsair, the historical part of whose actions find their venue in Holland, whilst the legendary portion of them appertains to Grimsby on the opposite coast. The date of his death, be it remembered, is both historical and early, i. e. A. D. 515, long anterior to the date of the Danish invasions as given in the Saxon Chronicle.

'PART II.

CHAPTER I.

SOUNDS-SPEAKING AND SPELLING.

§ 183. IN speaking, we represent our ideas and thoughts by means of words, which words are composed of certain elementary sounds. In the word go there are two such;

in the word got, three; and so on. As long as we limit ourselves to speaking, these elementary sounds are all that require notice. They address themselves to the ear. They are capable, however, of being represented by certain signs called letters, by which we are enabled not only to speak but to write. Letters address themselves to the eye. In the word go the letter g is the sign of its first, the letter o the sign of its second, sound. But all languages were spoken long before they were written ; and, at the present moment, there are numerous forms of speech which have never been reduced to writing at all. Hence, letters come later than the sounds they express. But as a picture never exactly represents the object from which it is taken, so the spelling of a language never exactly represents the speaking; in other words, there is always some difference between language as it is sounded and language as it is written. Sometimes there are more sounds than letters. Sometimes words change their pronunciation as they pass from one people