Norway, combined against Harold, and, just before the landing of Duke
William at Pevensey, on the coast of Sussex, Harold was obliged to march
rapidly northward to Stanford bridge, to defeat Tostig and the Norwegians,
and then to return with a tired army of uncertain _morale_, to encounter
the invading Normans. Thus it appears that William conquered the land,
which would have been invincible had the leaders and the people been
united in its defence.

As the Saxons, Danes, and Normans were of the same great Teutonic family,
however modified by the different circumstances of movement and residence,
there was no new ethnic element introduced; and, paradoxical as it may
seem, the fusion of these peoples was of great benefit, in the end, to
England. Though the Saxons at first suffered from Norman oppression, the
kingdom was brought into large inter-European relations, and a far better
literary culture was introduced, more varied in subject, more developed in
point of language, and more artistic.

Thus much, in a brief historical summary, is necessary as an introduction
to our subject. From all these contests and conquests there were wrought
in the language of the country important changes, which are to be studied
in the standard works of its literature.


CHANGES IN LANGUAGE.--The changes and transformations of language may be
thus briefly stated:--In the Celtic period, before the arrival of the
Romans, the people spoke different dialects of the Celtic and Gadhelic
languages, all cognate and radically similar.

These were not much affected by the occupancy of the Romans for about four
hundred and fifty years, although, doubtless, Latin words, expressive of