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reaching down to the Norman conquest, comes the period 
of Anglo-Saxon with its gradually fusing Angle and Saxon 
dialects, its Celtic sprinkling of words, and its slowly dying 
inflections. It has been said that the notion of the Celtic 
infusion is a mistake, that the savage German swept all 
before him, killed all he could in battle, and murdered all 
the conquered after; nay, that his glut for blood was such 
that he was not content till his vengeance had exterminated 
the very cows. But our language disproves this. Whence 
came the Celtic terms of servility and abuse, if not from the 
Celtic bondsman ? Whence are the Celtic names for hill 
and valley and stream, if the name givers had no opportu- 
nity of teaching their conquerors their rude geography ? 
Besides, it is forgotten that when the fighting ceased all 
Cornwall, all Cumbria, and much of the Penine hills were 
still Celtic. When the fighting ceased, fusion began. 
It has also been said that because English speech is a lineal 
descendant of Anglo-Saxon, that should be called English 
too. Do we call Latin Italian, or Greek Bomaic ? And 
why should we style a language English which is as hard 
for us to learn or to understand as is modern German ? 
Following the Anglo-Saxon period, that from the Con- 
quest to Henry III. is known as Semi-Saxon. The English 
period commences with the celebrated proclamation of this 
king, and is divided into Old English, Middle English, and 
Modern English, the latter period dating from the Beforma- 
tion. Meanwhile a complete change had taken place in the 
old Anglo-Saxon. Not of course that there had been actual 
amalgamation with Norman French or any other tongue. 
The grammar remained and still remains Anglo-Saxon. A 
syntactical combination of two languages is almost an im- 
