Mark:
<<
Back to Chaucer. In the first 15 lines of the
preface there are 16 naturalized French words.
>>
I've just done a quick comparable check of the first 16 lines of the B-text
of _Piers Plowman_, and (I did this quickly, checking with the OED, so I may
have missed some) there appear to be seven non-Germanic words, *all* taken
from French.
Less than half the proportion of "borrowed" words than in Chaucer (to be
expected) but *all* the borrowed words deriving from either Old French or
Anglo-Norman?
No Latin? Odd, that, but.
Candice, do you have any comment on this?
(Not that Langland elsewhere doesn't draw on French -- Piers Plownman and
associated Plowman texts seem to have a positive obsession with faitors and
roberdsmen!)
Robin
Quadripedal muttons devour verdant herbage
whereas
Sheep eat grass
In a somer seson [OF], whan softe was the sonne,
I shoop me into shroudes as I a sheep were,
In habite [OF] as an heremite [OF] unholy of werkes,
Wente wide in this world wondres to here.
Ac on a May morwenynge on Malverne hilles
Me bifel a ferly, of Fairye [OF] me thoghte.
I was wery forwandred and wente me to reste
Under a brood bank by a bourne syde;
And as I lay and lenede and loked on the watres,
I slombred into a slepyng, it sweyed so murye [OF].
Thanne gan I meten a merveillous [AN] swevene --
That I was in a wildernesse, wiste I nevere where.
A[c] as I biheeld into the eest an heigh to the sonne,
I seigh a tour on a toft trieliche ymaked,
A deep dale bynethe, a dungeon [OF] therinne,
With depe diches and derke and dredfulle of sighte.
