6 G. Stephens, 



As I have said again and again, so far from one »Grammar» or 

 »Wordbook» in one great land-group for 1000 winters, every indepen- 

 dent document or monument from the old uncentralized times has in a 

 certain sense and to a certain degree in every country its oion Grammar 

 and its own Wordbook, with endless transitional forms and meanings and 

 pronominal twists or survivals in the changing local dialects; — for no 

 caprice is so capricious as the caprice of language, as long as it lives^ 

 is not bound down by central violence, or has not become a venerable 

 mummy ^). 



The tirst printed Swedish book therefore, seen in this light, cannot 

 but be most instructive. Written by a learned ecclesiastic under Archi- 

 épiscopal protection, — does it give us »fixt forms», uniform spellings, 

 »orthodox» grammar, regular syntax, and all such things? — Nothing of 

 the sort. Viewed with pedantical eyes, it is »confusion worse confounded». 

 But taken practically it is exactly what we should expect, an edifying- 

 treatise well given in the Book-Swedish of the day, with archaisms and 



') England, America and France have never bowed their necks; and even in 

 Germany, the home of the arrogance and »iron laws» and »national unity of language», 

 which have hampered and damaged so greatly what is called »Modern Philology» — 

 a great reaction has set in, and this in many directions. It took a long time to get 

 rid of the slavery under »Mœso-Gothic», as if the bits in the Wulfila-scriptorium (and 

 even they show various grammatical variations, some of them Mllegah) exhausted all 

 the scattered Gothic dialects. People at last now also rebel against being shut up in 

 the copper box called »Sanscrit». The claim of the local folk-talk is now beinw 

 distinctly acknowledged. I will give one of the latest examples : 



»Der Schreiber der Leidener handschrift von Willirams paraphrase des Hohen 

 liedes ist so zu sagen ein Berliner. Er verwechselt in seiner spräche mir und mih und 

 fühlt sich darin so sicher dass er die falschen formen gegen die richtigen seiner vorläge 



einsetzt Der Schreiber der Leidener hs. gehörte demnach einer gegend 



an, in welcher dat. und acc. der personalpronomina in den formen m'i xmd th't zusam- 

 men fielen». — ScJierer, Schrißsp räche des elften Jalirlmnderts ; Zcitschr. f. deutsches 

 AUcrtlmm. Bd. 22, 8vo. Berlin 1878, p. 321. 



Ten or twenty years ago, all this common sense and matter-of-fact would have 

 been impossible. Hence all such linguistic illegalities were »corrected» and »normal- 

 ized», and therefore are most German editions of olden writers • — wastepaper. And 

 even later and the latest foreign and Scandinavian editions of Icelandic Poems and 

 Sagas are commonly more or less tvastepaper, as far as philology is concerned. They 

 are usually careless and incorrect; exceptional words and forms are often destroyed, 

 or put into an illegible small-type note; and frequently the whole text is »normal- 

 ized», or else it is screwed hacJc to »the correct Saga-style», so that every trace of 

 each century on the language altogether disappears, and we thus get the boasted 

 »unchanging Icelandic». But the world is governed by humbug. 



