347 



vocubulary. In short, when the Bar- 

 barians established themselves in 

 Gaul, all the inhabitants, except a few 

 country-people, had for centuries used 

 a bastard liityit Itonxuitt. These Bar- 

 barians imported new idiomatic ele- 

 ments into this hybrid language, as 

 modified by the Gauls, but they could 

 not destroy it, and Latin remained the 

 foundation or root of French. 



Moreover, the Gauls had no written 

 history or literature, with the excep- 

 tion of a few war songs and religious 

 hymns, which stood then in room of 

 national archives, and which were pre- 

 served in the memory of the Druids 

 and the heads of families. The Celtic 

 language, not having received the 

 consecration of literary works which 

 would have insured its perpetuation, 

 tended inevitably to dissolution and 

 disuse. This law of dissolution had 



Fiir. 294. Construction of the Tower of 

 Babel, in the Valley of Senaar, by 

 the Descendants of Noah. Miniature 

 from a Manuscript of the Fifteenth 

 Century. National Library, Paris. 



probably taken effect by the time that the Franks, after their repeated 



