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SECTION XXXIX.

THE EARLY ALPHABETS OF THE GERMAN THE MESO-GOTHIC

ALPHABЕТ.

We now turn from the early alphabets of the British Isles to those of Germany; where we shall find a noble landmark in our chronology-the Ulphiline Gospels. Ulphilas was born between A.D. 325, the year of the Council of Nice, and A.D. 348; and he died at Constantinople A. D. 388. He was a bishop of the Goths. These Germans were the Germans of the districts on each side of the Lower Danube. They had cut their way thus far eastward. They had firmly fixed themselves in parts of Moldavia and Wallachia, and had founded a kingdom, or, at least, under Hermanrik had become a formidable and independent nation. But they were pressed upon by the Huns, and in the reign of Valens, A.D. 376, were, either wholly or to a great extent, constrained to cross the Danube. Here they spread themselves over the province of Mœsia, from which they afterwards extended themselves, either as Visigoths, or as Ostrogoths, to Italy, to Gaul, and to Spain; in all three of which countries they founded kingdoms.

Of these Goths, Ulphilas was the bishop; and to some extent he was their missionary as well; thongh the details of their conversion as a nation, are obscure. They were Arians.

Of the languages of Germany the first that was reduced to writing was that of these Goths-the Goths of Mœsia as they are often called; their language being called the Meso-gothic. And the one great Meso-gothic writer is Ulphilas. Of a translation, by him, of the whole or a large part of the Bible, though much is lost, the Gospels, in an incomplete state, have come down to us. There are other portions of the Scripture as well; but these are mere fragments. Over and above these there are a few other fragments; chiefly referrable to the times of the Ostrogothic rule in Italy. The language and the alphabet are the same throughout: and, upon the latter, there is much to be said. The manuscripts which contain the Uphiline gospels, the pride and glory of the library of the University of Upsala, is one of the most famous in the world. It is entirely rely in capitals-large, bold, and standing apart from each other like those of a well-cut inscription. So marvelously regular is the writing that it has been supposed that each letter was separately stamped; and, although the evidence of those who are familiar with printing has set aside this doctrine, it required more than ordinary care to discover any difference between them. The manuscript itself is a tinted vellum-of a purple or mulberry colour. The letters themselves are silvered, and at the beginning of sections, gilded over with great care and regularity. Such is the famous Codex Argenteus, which contains the Ulphiline translations of the Gospels in the language of the Goths of Mœsia.

The language itself is old not only in respect to the age of the writing by which it is illustrated, but old in respect to its structure; though the statement that it stands to the modern German and Dutch in the same relation as the Latin to the Italian and Spanish is an exaggeration. It ceased, however, to be cultivated, and, possibly to be spoken, after the middle of the seventh century; and, as we know it only as the language of certain districts conquered by the Goths, we are unable to say, to a certainty, from what part of Germany it was derived. The dialects which come nearest to it are held to be those of Thuringia; but there are none which stand to it in a direct and undoubted line of descent.

Neither Mœsia, then, nor the country beyond the Danube (Moldavia and Bessarabia) was the native country of its German occupant; and as both lay within the limits of the Eastern Empire, and were governed from Constantinople rather than from Rome, the Meso-gothic alphabet is of Greek origin. The Goths, however, who adopted it on the Danube might easily have carried it with them westwards, even to the Rhine: for we know that in Italy, Spain and Gaul, there were Gothic kingdoms. Now the recognition of the k in the Frank alphabet as opposed to its exclusion from the AngloSaxon, I mainly refer to the existence of the Mæso-gothic literature, (scanty as it was,) and the connection between the histories of France and the districts on the Lower Danube in which the first Gothic converts to Christianity were settled.

Not much later than the Goths of Mœsia, the Burgundians received Christianity; and, then, the Franks. The Burgundians were Arian; the Franks orthodox. Of the Burgundian alphabet we know nothing; indeed we only infer its existence from the fact of Burgundy being Christian. It is possible, then, that the Franks may have learned the art of writing from the tribe which, though Arian, had an earlier orthography than their own. But it is also possible that they may have taken it direct from the Latin; ignoring their brethren as heretics. This question, will repeat itself in Britain.

We thus see that the Christianization of Germany and that of Britain, must have run nearly parallel in time: and this, with the alphabet which is assumed to be concurrent with it, would give us an incipient British literature, as early as the fifth century.

The names of the Meso-gothic letters are unknown. Their order is that of the Greek; and, as dependent upon this, their value as numerals. The Greek Digamma was represented by a letter of which the sound was that of q; the Greek Eta by H-a Latinism. Theta, o, was written w, and Psi, or the letter that stood in its place, as; a pair of forms which suggest a transposition. In the place of xi, -60 as a number, -stood a letter with the shape of the cursive capital G; and the sound of either that letter or of y. Omicron, with a change of form, had the power of u-so that we now see that between this letter and H for Eta, the Greek distinction between the long and short vowels has disappeared. For q

stood a letter, like the Russian Y, of uncertain import. We know, however, its position by its numerical power-90. Sigma was written S as in Latin. Hypsilon, with its pointed base, was more like a V than a U, and, is considered to have been so sounded; or, if not as v, as w. S has the form of the Latin letter.

Now Ulphilas, to whom these Goths owed their alphabet, died during the fourth century; and within the first ten years of the fifth, the Visigoths had founded their kingdoms in the south of Gaul and in Spain. The conquerors of Italy about fifty years later were the Ostrogoths, and it is universally admitted that the language of this division was that of the Ulphiline Gospels. The evidence that the language of the Visigoths, in Gaul and Spain was the same is less conclusive. There is no reason, however, to doubt the fact of its having been so. The conversion of the Anglo-Saxon population of Britain is referred to the last year of the fifth century, and to the influence of Frank teachers. But before this there was, in Britain considered as a country, the Christianity of the British Church. Now in connecting this old British alphabet-Welsh and Irish-with the Anglo-Saxon, I do not do so as against the Latin. The Anglo-Saxon might, doubtless, have been founded exclusively on the Latin. It might, also, have been founded on the British; but subjected to modifications from the Latin. This implies a second influence; and, in respect to this, I merely urge that this second influence, if it existed, was not Frank, but British. I hold that the early alphabets of Germany, of which the Frank must have been the most important, had Greek elements which the British and Anglo-Saxon had not.

SECTION XL.

THE ANGLO-SAXON ALPHАВЕТ.

There are two ways by which an alphabet may make its way into a country. It may, like the Meso-gothic or Armenian, be introduced as a systematic whole; or it may grow up imperceptibly, without any definite system, and with no particular constructor. In our own time this latter mode of development is scarcely possible, because it is the practice of missionaries to address their hearers, as much as possible, in the language of the country to which they belong. Neither do they press upon them their books in English, so much as tracts and translations in their own vernacular. The missionary system of Rome was different. Such reading as was taught was in Latin; and the reading of anything other than Latin was exceptional. This practice was unfavorable to the composition of purely native works. There was a way, however, by which Latin composition could be partially popularized: and this was by something partaking of the nature of a translation, but yet falling short of one; -a system of interlining, in which there was every degree of closeness or laxity. Sometimes there was a full translation of a sentence: sometimes the mere interspersion of an occasional Gloss. A very little system would suffice for an alphabet of this kind. The form and power of a certain number of letters might be picked out of the Latin text: and used just as the occasion presented them. The commonest would be most in use; and rarer ones wholly unrecognized. In this way a systematic alphabet would be a long time in growing; and, so doing, exist in its rudiments long before it came to be recognized in its integrity.

Between A.D. 400, when the Meso-gothic alphabet may have been known in Gaul, and A.D. 600, when the Frank missionaries preached to the Anglo-Saxons, there was room for the gradual formation of more alphabets than one; though of none is the exact origin known: the Meso-gothic of which alone this can be predicated being of Greek origin. The earliest specimens of both the Irish and the British vernaculars are in the form of Glosses; and very nearly the same may be said of those of the German and Anglo-Saxon.

The following table enables us to compare the four alphabets :

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27.

28.

29.

The sufficiency, or insufficiency, of the Anglo-Saxon alphabet must be measured by the number and nature of the sounds which it had to represent. This is scarcely to be done without a certain amount of hypothesis and speculation. The opinion of the present writer who, unwillingly, differs from many of his predecessors, is that the proportion of letters to the sounds is not below that of the average alphabets; certainly above that of Irish; and, perhaps, comparable with that of the Meso-gothic. But this view implies that about the seventh century the sounds which we now represent by j and z, were, then, either non-existent or rare: in other words that they have been developed in the interval. With the sound of tsh the same is held to have been the case; and, unless several of the preceding sections have been written in vain, the process by which a word spelt Ceaster has now become Chester has been foreshadowed. But this is not even now spelt with a single letter. J and z at the beginning of words, are now confined to those of foreign origin: and z, which is only a common sound as the sign of number in the plurals like stagz, and the existence of which is ignored in the present spelling, has been accounted for. Y, probably, existed in the oldest forms of our language; but the difference between such a combination as ee-o and yo is of the slightest. Besides this, y grows out of g. So much for the sibilants, both simple and compound.

The guttural sounds of kh and gh, have, probably, been lost: at least, in the literary English.

So

Yas a semi-vowel seems to have been unknown. As a vowel it appears interchangeable in spelling with i and e, as in gyt yet, gehyrsam and gehirsam (in German gehorsam) = obedient. Whether it had the sound of the French u, German ü, and Scandinavian y is doubtful. The analogy of the allied languages is more in favor of this than the orthographical conditions under which it occurs. far as it is a semi-vowel it seems to have been represented by eeow=you, eorl=earl=Danish jarl, where the jy. This is a point upon which I unwillingly differ from Mr Ellis. He argues against the semi-vowel power of e from its interchangeability with ea. But this assumes that it had only one power. He also argues against it from the small number of words beginning with e, followed by a vowel, where the sound is now that of y. This is true. But it is not from e as an initial that the point is to be determined. It is rather from the combination of e with s, c, and sc preceding it-as in seo=she; sceat = shot, (as in pay your shot; in scot and lot, the k sound is preserved,) and Ceaster Chester. It is on this that the present writer mainly insists. Mr Ellis, however, is so far consistent that he thinks that the change to sh and tsh can be accounted for differently; by what he calls palatisation. This is the point upon which we are at issue. Q was expressed by cw; and k, in the original alphabet, was nowhere. The difference between fand v was not represented. Though q was ejected as super

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