After having such a good response recently with my post on the medieval town of Nottingham, I have decided to continue with a similar theme. But this time it is inspired by a fantastic series called ‘The Norman’s’ by Professor Robert Bartlett. In my post last week we saw how the town of Nottingham was originally divided into two boroughs, one Saxon and one Norman. Each grew up alongside each other and eventually developed into the city we know today. This reflects how the English language first evolved, from its Saxon and Norman roots, to become one of the most influential languages in the world.
The Norman Conquest in 1066 brought a small mainly male group to power in England, a ruling elite of perhaps no more than 10,000 men. Intermarriage was common and the children of these Anglo-Norman marriages spoke ‘English’ because their mothers or wet-nurses were ‘English’ and the French and English languages are still playing out that dance that they began in 1066.
In the three centuries that followed the Conquest, thousands of French words entered the English language. First they were the words of power, politics and law (empire, govern, authority). But soon the language reflected Norman influence in every aspect of life.
Some of the new words were very important like, ‘war’, ‘peace’, ‘justice’ and ‘court’ and the reason the modern English language has so many different words for the same thing, is that the Normans introduced French alternatives. So ‘Royal’ derived from the French-‘kingly’ or ‘queenly’ from the ‘old English’ and the same with ‘country’ (French), land (English), ‘amorous’ (French), loving (English).
One of the things that make Anglo Saxon history seem strange or distant to us is the unfamiliarity of the names........ the Ethelbert’s’ and Egbert’s’. The Norman names, William, Henry, Richard and Robert caught on amongst the conquered and endure to this day. The ruling elite set the fashion; soon William was the most common male name in England even amongst the peasantry. Surnames that begin with ‘Fitz’ go back to the Norman practice of using ‘Fils’, meaning ‘son of’ as part of the name, giving us ‘Fitzsimons’ as ‘son of Simon’ or ‘Fitzgerald’, ‘son of Gerald.’
The languages were blending together, but French remained the tongue of the ruling class and nowhere are the class divisions clearer than with meat and drink. ‘Pig ’is English, ‘pork’ is French, ‘sheep’ is English, ‘mutton’ is French. So when it’s in a cold field covered in dung, its name is in English. When it has been cooked, carved and put on the table with a glass of wine, its referred to in French!
The association with ‘Frenchness’ with the English upper classes and the Saxon with the coarseness and vulgarity is one of the Norman’s enduring legacies. But over the decades the cultural distinction between Norman and Saxon gradually evolved and prospered to become one of the most influential languages in the world.
About a hundred years after the Battle of Hastings, the king’s treasurer Richard Fitz Neal wrote that ‘with the Normans and English living side by side and intermarrying the peoples have become so mingled that nowadays it is impossible to tell who is of Norman descent.’ And French the ‘language of power’ of the Norman’s, was by the 1500’s just a foreign tongue to be learned at school.
This is part 35 and we are now reaching the climax of Laurence’s fabulous picture strip of Walt Disney’s Story of Robin Hood and his Merrie Men (1952).
If you want to learn more about the making of this wonderful film or the legend that inspired it, please click on the relevant subjects in the sidebar.
Please click here to see previous pages of Laurence's picture strip.
Above is an excellent map of the medieval layout of the medieval town of Nottingham, showing the original French and English boroughs. Robin Hood would have been familiar with this!
After the Norman Conquest, King William ordered a castle to be built on the huge rocky red sandstone, on the site of the original Danish tower, to the south-west of the settlement. It was originally made of wood and later re-built in stone in the twelfth century. Nottingham Castle remained outside the towns boundaries until the nineteenth century.
So a Norman settlement grew up around the shelter of the new wooden castle, leaving the Saxons largely undisturbed in their area around St. Mary’s Hill. For administrative purposes, two boroughs were set up, one French and one English; each had its own language and customs with a boundary wall running through the market place. To this day two maces are borne before the Sheriff of Nottingham, representing these two boroughs. The church of St. Peter was founded alongside St. Nicholas, both were in the French borough, whilst the pre-conquest church of St. Mary’s , visited by Robin Hood in the medieval ballad ‘Robin Hood and the Monk’, was in the English.
Under this Norman protection in 1086 the two boroughs had between 600-800 people. The first of the Plantagenet king’s, Henry II commenced to re-build the castle and its fortifications around the town in stone. He also gave Nottingham its first Royal Charter in 1154 allowing the Burgesses (leading citizens) to try thieves, levy tolls on visiting traders and hold markets on Fridays and Saturdays. This charter also gave them the monopoly in the working of dyed cloth within a radius of ten miles.
The Market Square (the largest in England) quickly became a focal point of the town, it also had an annual fair and from 1284 Edward I permitted extra fair days and one of these days became what we now know as Goose Fair, when people from as far away as Yorkshire would come for the two day event.
During the medieval period, Nottingham’s main industry was wool manufacture. But there were many craftsmen in the town and some of those occupations can be identified by the remains of its old street names, such as Wheelwright Street, Pilcher Gate, Boot Lane, Bridlesmith Gate, Blow Bladder Street, Gridlesmith Gate, and Fletcher Gate.
To read more about Nottingham please click here.
Albie has very kindly allowed me to post his video clip of this year's Robin Hood Festival in Sherwood Forest. This annual event is always very popular and I can guarantee it is well worth a visit. To see other clips from Albie’s You Tube site, including ‘Sherwood Heath,’ and ‘Edwin’s Chapel and Hermitage’ please click here.
This is part 34 of Laurence’s fabulous picture strip of Walt Disney’s Story of Robin Hood and his Merrie Men (1952).
If you want to learn more about the making of this wonderful film or the legend that inspired it, please click on the relevant subjects in the sidebar.
Please click here to see previous pages of the picture strip.
