or perhaps for the purpose of securing himself, by the vicinity of his own subjects in Cumberland, against any attempts that might be made against him, by the partizans of Macbeth in the north. Long after this, Edgar Atheling, together with his mother and sister, and a number of their adherents, having been driven by a storm into the mouth of the Forth, were received with great kindness by Malcolm, who ultimately espoused the princess Margaret, and distributed grants of land amongst the Anglo-Saxon nobles who had accompanied her.

From these premises Mr. Tytler infers, that Malcolm was the first cause of introducing into Scotland the Anglo-Saxon language, which he supposes to have been disseminated over the Lowlands, partly by means of these followers of Edgar Atheling, and partly by means of the intercourse which prevailed, between the inhabitants of Scotland, and those of the four northern counties of England,Cumberland, Northumberland, Westmoreland, and Durham, which were held by the kings of Scotland, as fiefs of the crown of England.

This conjecture, however, does not seem to be perfectly satisfactory; nor are the causes in themselves sufficient, to have wholly changed the language of a country. If, at the present moment, the Celtic language prevailed over the whole of

Scotland, instead of being confined to the Highlands, such a testimony would compel us to admit, either that the Saxons and Danes had been prevented by some unaccountable cause, from attempting to form a settlement on the northern shores of this island; or that their attempts had been rendered abortive by the superior bravery and skill of the inhabitants. But, as the same Teutonic dialects are found to form the basis of the language, both in England and in the Lowlands of Scotland, Mr. Hume has been induced, and apparently with great reason, to infer, from this similarity of speech, a similar series of successful invasions; although this success is not recorded by the historians of Scotland.

If this conclusion be admitted, it is evidently unnecessary to refer us to the much later period of Malcolm's reign; or to seek in his marriage with an English princess, in his distribution of lands among her followers, or in the policy which induced him to change his place of residence, for the establishment of a language, which the Saxons and Danes could not fail of bringing with them; and which, if it had not been thus introduced, the inhabitants of the plains, would probably have rejected as obstinately as those of the mountains. But the principal difficulty is, to account for the introduction into Scotland, not of the Anglo-Saxon, or

Danish, but of the English language; of that compound in which, as Mr. Tyrwhitt has justly observed, though the scheme and formation were in a great measure Saxon, a large proportion of the elements, was French. In the dissemination of this, the followers of Edgar Atheling were not likely to be instrumental, because, even if it had been already formed in England, instead of being the result of their expulsion, they could not have wished to introduce, into the country which afforded them an asylum, a language which they must have considered as a badge of slavery. The phraseology of Barber, of Wyntown, and of James I. though certainly marked by many peculiarities of dialect, is not less Norman than that of their respective English contemporaries, Chaucer, Occleve, and Lydgate. In this case, neither the French schools, nor the French laws, nor any part of the tyrannical policy attributed to William the Conqueror, can have had any influence, because Scotland was never reduced under the Norman dominion.

As the influx of French words, did not begin to produce a sensible change in the language of the English, till the beginning, or perhaps the middle, of the thirteenth century, its importation from thence into Scotland, ought to be capable of being distinctly

proved. We might expect too, that as the successive improvements of the common language, would pass by slow gradations from the original, into the provincial idiom, the compositions of our native bards, would be clearly distinguished by superiority of elegance, and that Barber and Wyntown would, like their successors, avow their obligations to their English models. This, however, is not the case. Wyntown has preserved a short elegiac sonnet on the death of Alexander III. (A. D. 1285) composed, as it should seem, by a contemporary bard, and far superior to any English song of that early date. It is as follows:

When Alexander our king was dead,
That Scotland led in love and lee,1
Away was sons of ale and bread,
Of wine and wax, of game and glee:
Our gold was changed into lead.
Christ! born into virginité,

Lie, liesse; joyous, joy. Old Fr.

Cens. Fr. The gloss. of the Bann. Poems translates it hospitality: cens usually means census, tribute; in some pro. vinces it means a farm, or small domain; here it seems to mean abundance, or perhaps produce.

Succour Scotland and reméde,

That stad is in perplexité.

Neither Barber nor Wyntown make mention of Chaucer, or of any anterior English writer, though both are full of references to French authors, whom they seem to consider as perfectly familiar to their readers; and Barber expressly terms his poem a Romance, a proof that it was written on a French model.

Upon the whole, unless we suppose Scotland to have remained perfectly stationary, during the progress of all their neighbours, in civilization, it is scarcely probable, even if the intercourse with England had never existed, that they could have persevered in retaining, without any change, the very corrupted Anglo-Saxon dialect of the eleventh century, and which, from that very imperfection, was so susceptible of every necessary addition. If they proceeded to enrich it with new terms, it was natural that they, like the English, should borrow these from the Norman romance, the most widely diffused and most cultivated language, excepting the Italian, of civilized Europe. It is also evident, that as the French and Scotch were very early united by interest and alliances, the progress

Placed. The noun (stead) still remains in English.