hese last, the Normans proper were the most noted, and they have the
first place of all their race in the world's annals. They changed in
everything, from soul to skin. They became Christians, and they took new
names. Their original language was soon displaced by the French, and
became so utterly lost that hardly more is known of it than we know of
the Etruscan tongue. "The Danish language," says Sir Francis Palgrave,
"was never prevalent or strong in Normandy. The Northmen had long been
talking themselves into Frenchmen; and in the second generation, the
half-caste Northmen, the sons of French wives and French concubines,
spoke the Romane-French as their mothers' tongue." The same great
authority says: "In the cities, Bayeux only excepted, hardly any
language but French was spoken. Forty years after Rollo's establishment,
the Danish language struggled for existence. It was in Normandy that the
_Langue d'oil_ acquired its greatest polish and regularity. The earliest
specimens of the French language, in the proper sense of the term, are
now surrendered by the French philologists to the Normans. The
phenomenon of the organs of speech yielding to social or moral
influences, and losing the power of repeating certain sounds, was
prominently observable amongst the Normans. No modern French
gazette-writer could disfigure English names more whimsically than the
Domesday Commissioners. To the last, the Normans never could learn to
say 'Lincoln,'--they never could get nearer than 'Nincol,' or 'Nicole.'"
The "chivalry" of Virginia and the Carolinas--our Southern
Northmen--might cite this last fact in evidence of their tongues having
a Norman twang. They never have been able to say "Lincoln," though they
make a nearer approach to proper pronunciation of the word than was
vouchsafed to the genuine Normans when they say "Abe Linkin." That the
Normans cherished the thought of their Northern origin is a modern
error. Sir F. Palgrave, with literal accuracy, assures us that they
"dismissed all practical recollection in their families of their
original Scandinavian ancestry. Not one of their nobles ever thought of
deducing his lineage from the Hersers or Jarls or Vikings who occupy so
conspicuous a place in Norwegian history, not even through the medium of
any traditional fable. Roger de Montgomery designated himself as
'Northmannus Northmannorum'; but, for all practical purposes, Roger was
a Frenchman of the Frenchmen, though he might not