In modern England the usage has become disastrously confused by the maleficent interference of the Government with the usual object of governments: uniformity. The misuse of British begins after the union of the crowns of England and Scotland, when in a quite unnecessary desire for a common name the English were officially deprived of their Englishry and the Welsh of their claim to be the chief inheritors of the title British.
'Fy fa fum, I smell the blood of an Englishman', wrote Nashe in 1595 (Have with уou to Saffron Walden).
Edgar says, or is made to say, in King Lear (III. iv).
The modern Englishman finds this very confusing. He has long read of British prowess in battle, and especially of British stubbornness in defeat in many imperial wars; so when he hears of Britons stubbornly (as is to be expected) opposing the landing of Julius Caesar or of Aulus Plautius, he is apt to suppose that the English (who meekly put themselves down as British in hotel-registers) were already there, facing the first of their long series of glorious defeats. A supposition far from uncommon even among those who offer themselves for 'honours' in the School of English.
But in early times there was no such confusion. The Brettas and the Walas were the same. The use of the latter term, which| was applied by the English, is thus of considerable importance in estimating the linguistic situation of the early period.
It seems clear that the word walh, wealh which the English brought with them was a common Germanic name for a man of what we should call Celtic speech. [17] But in all the recorded Germanic languages in which it appears it was also applied to the speakers of Latin. That may be due, as is usually assumed, to the fact that Latin eventually occupied most of the areas of Celtic speech within the knowledge of Germanic peoples. But it is, I think, also in part a linguistic judgement, reflecting that very similarity in style of Latin and Gallo-Brittonic that I have already mentioned. It did not occur to anyone to call a Goth a walh even if he was long settled in Italy or in Gaul. Though 'foreigner' is often given as the first gloss on wealh in Anglo-Saxon dictionaries this is misleading. The word was not applied to foreigners of Germanic speech, nor to those of alien tongues, Lapps, Finns, Esthonians, Lithuanians, Slavs, or Huns, with whom the Germanic-speaking peoples came into contact in early times. (But borrowed in Old Slavonic in the form ulachu it was applied to the Roumanians.) It was, therefore, basically a word of linguistic import; and in itself implied in its users more linguistic curiosity and discrimination than the simple stupidity of the Greek barbaros.
Its special association by the English with the Britons was a product of their invasion of Britain. It contained a linguistic judgement, but it did not discriminate between the speakers of Latin and the speakers of British. But with the perishing of the spoken Latin of the island, and the concentration of English interests in Britain, walh and its derivatives became synonymous with Brett and brittisc, and in the event replaced them. [18]
In the same way the use of wealh for slave is also due solely to the situation in Britain. But again the gloss 'slave' is probably misleading. Though the word slave itself shows that a national name can become generalized in this sense, I doubt if this was true of wealh. The Old English word for 'slave' in general remained theow, which was used of slaves in other countries or of other origin. The use of wealh, apart from the legal status to which surviving elements of the conquered population were no doubt often reduced, must always have implied recognition of British origin. Such elements, though incorporated in the domain of an English or Saxon lord, must long have remained 'not English', and with this difference preservation in a measure of their British speech may have endured longer than is supposed.
This is a controversial point, and I do not deal with the question of place-names, such as Walton, Walcot, and Walworth, that may be supposed to contain this old word walh, [19] But the incorporation in the domains conquered by the English-speaking invaders of relatively large numbers of the previous inhabitants is not denied; and their linguistic absorption must have steadily proceeded, except in special circumstances.
What effect would that have, did that have, on English? It had none that is visible for a long time. Not that we should expect it. The records of Old English are mainly learned or aristocratic; we have no transcripts of village-talk. For any glimpse of what was going on beneath the cultivated surface we must wait until the Old English period of letters is over.
Unheeded language without pride or sense of ancestry may change quickly in new circumstances. But the English did not know that they were 'barbarians', and the language that they brought with them had an ancient cultivation, at any rate in its tradition of verse. It is thus to the appearance of linguistic class distinctions that we should look for evidence of the effects of conquest and the linguistic absorption of people of other language, largely into the lowest social strata.
I know of only one passage that seems to hint at something of the kind. It refers to a surprisingly early date, a.d. 679. In that year the Battle of the Trent was fought between the Mercians and Northumbrians. Bede relates how a Northumbrian noble called Imma was captured by the Mercians and pretended to be a man of poor or servile class. But he was eventually recognized as a noble by his captors, as Bede reports, not only by his bearing but by his speech.
The question of the survival in 'England' of British population and still more of British forms of speech is, of course, a matter of debate, differing in the evidence and the terms of the debate from region to region. For instance, Devonshire, in spite of its British name, has been said on the evidence collected by the Place-names Survey to appear as one of the most English of the counties (onomastically). But William of Malmesbury in his Gesta Regum says that Exeter was divided between the English and the Welsh as late as the reign of Athelstan.
Well known, and much used in debate and in the dating of sound-changes, are the Welsh place-names given in Asser's Life of Alfred: such as Guilou and Uisc for the rivers Wiley and Exe, or Cairuuis for Exeter. Since Asser was a native of South Wales (as we should now call it), Welsh was presumably his native language, though he may eventually have learned as much English, shall we say, as his friend the king learned of Latin. These names in Asser have been used (e.g. by Stevenson) as evidence for the survival of Welsh speech even as far east as Wiltshire as late as the end of the ninth century.
With the mention of Asser I will return, before I close, to the point that I mentioned when I began: the interests and uses of Welsh and its philology to students of English. I do not enter into the controversy concerning the genuineness of Asser's Life of Alfred, whether it is a document belonging approximately to a.d. 900, as it purports to be, or is in fact a composition of a much later date. But it is clear that in this debate we have a prime example of the contact of the two schools of learning: Welsh historical and philological scholarship and English. Arguments for and against the genuineness of this document arc based on the forms of the Welsh names in it, and an estimate of their cogency requires at least some acquaintance with the problems attending the history of Welsh. Yet the document is a life of one of the most remarkable and interesting Englishmen, and no English scholar can be indifferent to the debate.
17
Its origin is not of importance in this context. It is commonly supposed to be the same as that of the Celtic tribal name represented in Latin sources as Volcae. that is derived from it at a time sufficiently early to allow it to be germanicized in form. Traces remain of the sense 'Romans'. Widsith, which contains many memories of pre-migration days, has an archaic form mid Rumwalum, and mentions Wala rice as the realm ruled by Court (Caesar); weala sunderriht and reht Romwala are found in two glosses on ius Quintan, But these are not normal uses. Later applications to Gaul (France) are probably not derived from English tradition.
18
The men who established themselves at Richard's castle in Hereford in 1052 were called Normanni and tha Frencyscan, but in the Laud Chronicle tha welisce (waelisce) nun. And when Edward the Confessor returned from abroad the same Chronicle says that he came of Weal-lands, meaning Normandy. But these arc not natural English uses and are in fact simply items of the influence of Norse upon the English of the late period. In Norse valskr and Valland had continued to be applied specifically to Gaul. There is other evidence of the influence of Norse in the same part of the same Chronicle: woldon raedan on hi (always mistranslated ‘ plot against') is an anglicization of Norse ratha a 'to go for, to attack'.
19
They were generally supposed to do so; but it has been shown that in fact many contain either weall 'wall* or weald* forest*. But scepticism has in reaction probably swung too far. In any case a number of these names must still be allowed to contain walk, among them several in the east far from Wales: Surrey, Hertfordshire, Norfolk, and Suffolk. When these names were first made they must have referred to groups of people who were not regarded as English, but were recognized as British; and language must have been the principal characteristic by which this was judged. But how long that situation lasted is another matter.