56 



obvious common-sense course we are often compelled to call in the 

 lawyer and the Appeal Court to construe even the meaning of an 

 Act of Parliament. 



Our language, as we use it now, is in its prime. It was in its 

 manhood in the reign of Queen Elizabeth. It was in its infancy at 

 the time of the Norman Conquest. But what of its birth and 

 parentage ? 



Aided by a series of excellent lantern pictures, many of which 

 were prepared by his own hand, the lecturer now conducted his 

 audience along the line of language development, commencing 7,000 

 years ago with Babylonia. Here was a people highly civilized who 

 had their legal documents, foreign correspondence, title deeds, sales 

 of slaves, marriage settlements, historical records, money-lenders' 

 bonds at 25 per cent. (!), leases, private letters, and what not, all 

 impressed indelibly on tablets of baked clay. In fact we are now 

 digging up their thoughts put into writing ages ago. Then we pass 

 to the Phoenicians, and then to the hordes of fierce Scythian horse- 

 men from Asiatic Tartary, who over-ran Europe in the early ages. 

 Then to the Gomerians, the Celts and Gaels, and so to the first 

 landing of the Roman Legions in Britain. Father Time eventually 

 swept the Romans away, and the Britons were left, struggling 

 against Picts and Saxons. They were supplanted by a new nation 

 and a new language — a people of Teutonic race whose tutelary 

 deity was Odin. So we of the present day are the result of a long 

 train of ebbings and flowings of the tide of human life, and these 

 are most certainly reflected in our language. 



All the words in all the Indo-European languages can be traced 

 to some 800 roots, or elements. As an example, the root Pas was 

 dealt with, meaning in primitive days the act of tethering or making 

 fast. So we have Sanskrit pasu, and Latin pecus, meaning cattle. 

 Now cattle signify one's private property, and we pass on to peculiar 

 and pecuniary. The Greeks used the root in the idea of "standing 

 fast," so extending to solid, curdled, and to any raised surface, in 

 fact pagos, a mound, as in Areopagus, the mound or hill of Ares. 

 The root blossoms out into the Latin forms pacare to pay, pignus a 

 pledge, pagina a page, propago a layer, etc., etc., etc. In German 

 we come to fah or fang. Thus fahen is. to catch, but also fangen, 

 from which gefangen, captured, and gefangniss, prison. Thus we 

 see the variety of branches into which the primeval root may and 

 does develop. 



Again the lecturer made quite a history from Max Miiller's 

 account of that useful word " respectable." It is of Latin origin. 

 Striking off the preposition we get spectare, or spicere, meaning to 

 look. In Sanskrit we have spasa, a spy ; old German spehon, to 

 look, a spy. In Greek the root spek is changed to skep as in 

 skeptomai, I look, examine, skeptikos an examiner, a skeptic, 

 episkopos, an overseer, a bishop. 



Respectable originally meant a person who deserves respect, who 

 deserves a look back after we have passed. In Norman times a 

 criminal received so many days ad respectum, to re-examine the case. 



