South. It was the necessary undoing of the Danish conquest; more still,
it was an inevitable step in the process whereby England itself was to
begin its unified existence by the final breaking down of the barriers
which divided Wessex from Mercia, and Mercia from Northumbria.




CHAPTER XVIII.

THE ANGLO-SAXON LANGUAGE.


A description of Anglo-Saxon Britain, however brief, would not be
complete without some account of the English language in its earliest
and purest form. But it would be impossible within reasonable limits to
give anything more than a short general statement of the relation which
the old English tongue bears to the kindred Teutonic dialects, and of
the main differences which mark it off from our modern simplified and
modified speech. All that can be attempted here is such a broad outline
as may enable the general reader to grasp the true connexion between
modern English and so-called Anglo-Saxon, on the one hand, as well as
between Anglo-Saxon itself and the parent Teutonic language on the
other. Any full investigation of grammatical or etymological details
would be beyond the scope of this little volume.

The tongue spoken by the English and Saxons at the period of their
invasion of Britain was an almost unmixed Low Dutch dialect. Originally
derived, of course, from the primitive Aryan language, it had already
undergone those changes which are summed up in what is known as Grimm's