_deer_, and _swine_, but their flesh when it becomes meat is given
French names--_beef_, _mutton_, _venison_, and _pork_. The reason for
this is easy to see: Englishmen worked hard looking after the animals
while they were alive, and the rich Normans ate their flesh when they
were dead.

England never, of course, became really Norman. Although the English
were not so learned or polite or at that time so civilized as the
Normans, there were so many more of them that in time the Normans
became English, and spoke the English language. But when we remember
that for three hundred years French was spoken in the law courts and
by the nobility of England, and all the English kings were really
Frenchmen, it is easy to understand that a great many French words
found their way into the English language.

As it was the Normans who governed England, many of our words about
law and government came from the French. Englishmen are very proud of
the "jury system," by which every British subject is tried by his
equals. It was England who really began this system, but the name
_jury_ is French, as are also _judge_, _court_, _justice_, _prison_,
_gaol_. The English Parliament, too, is called the "Mother of
Parliaments," but _parliament_ is a French word, and means really a
meeting for the purpose of talking.

Nearly all titles, like _duke_, _baron_, _marquis_, are French, for it
was Frenchmen who first got and gave these titles; though _earl_
remains from the Danish _eorl_. It is a rather peculiar thing that
nearly all our names for _relatives_ outside one's own family come
from the French used by the Normans--_uncle_, _aunt_, _nephew_,
_niece_, _cousin_; while _father_, _mother_, _brother_, and _sister_
come from the Old English words.

In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the real "Middle Ages," the
French poets, scholars, and writers were the greatest in Europe. The
greatest doctors, lawyers, and scholars of the western lands of Europe
had often been educated at schools or universities in France. Those
who wrote about medicine and law often used French words to describe
things for which no English word was known. The French writers
borrowed many words from Latin, and the English writers did the same.
Sometimes they took Latin words from the French, but sometimes they
only imitated the French writers, and took a Latin word and changed it
to seem like a French word.

If we were to count the words used by English writers in the