Conceptualizing Multilingualism in England, c.800-c.1250 edited by Elizabeth Tyler (review)

Elizabeth Tyler, the editor of this rich and stimulating collection, notes that “England, on both sides of the Conquest, emerges as not uniquely multilingual within a European perspective but intensively and distinctively so” (p. 11). Multilingualism has become a very popular area of research for medievalists in recent years, but the emphasis has mainly been on post-Conquest England and the relative status of Latin, French, and English. Tyler’s introduction to this volume, and the seventeen fascinating essays that follow, remind us how multilingual pre-Conquest England and Wales were too, and how many languages were in use at this time.

In Anglo-Saxon England, with its precocious development of a written vernacular for theological, legal, and literary purposes, inscriptions could be multilingual, and several scripts were available, as well as several languages. As Thomas A. Bredehoft points out in an essay on inscriptions, not only are runes and Roman script found side by side, but runes are used for Latin, for instance the short texts (including names) on St. Cuthbert’s coffin in Durham Cathedral, and a single Latin word on the Franks Casket. Some readers were evidently literate in both scripts. Bruce O’Brien comments that as a result of the many invasions and various national borders, “the English were always translating” (p. 58), both orally and in writing. Discussing legal texts, he argues that “[t]echnical terms are a conservative part of a language. … Where poets lead, courts have to be dragged” (p. 60). He points out that many English legal terms were retained, sometimes in Latinized form, in Anglo-Norman translations of legal texts, and concludes that “[t]he sound of English, it appears, was not particularly painful to French ears in court,” pace William of Malmesbury (p. 72). On the contrary, in O’Brien’s view, “It is likely … that the Normans were eagerly learning their Old English paradigms. … It was in their interests to learn the sound of that barbaric tongue because it was by its sounds that they gained their wealth” (p. 73). Another aspect of this process is discussed by Stephen Baxter in his essay on Domesday Book, an English name for a Latin book made for the Norman elite. He opens his essay with the claim that it is “the most remarkable multilingual event in the history of the British state” (p. 271), and imagines that “the public sessions of the Domesday inquest must have been busy, loud and intensely dramatic multilingual occasions” (p. 287).

It was not only in England that multilingualism was in evidence, of course, and several contributors look further afield. In “Negotiating Welshness,” Helen Fulton notes that “Welsh coexisted at various times with Latin, English, Irish, French and Flemish” (p. 146). The status of a language is closely linked to power: Welsh had high status in Wales, but not in England. On the other hand, after the Conquest, Welsh continued to be used for “a rich and vigorous courtly literature,” whereas “If any language in Britain was suppressed or marginalized by the Normans, it was English, not Welsh” (p. 148). Fulton notes the existence of a number of multilingual manuscripts; in a late ninth-century copy of a Latin epic poem by Juvencus, the marginal glosses are in Welsh as well as Latin and Irish. It was not until late in the Middle Ages that the English language acquired significant status in Wales. Julia Crick, discussing contact with Ireland, comments that “Wales acted as a linguistic clearing house, with French-, Norse-, and Irish-speakers present alongside Welsh and English” (p. 233). She notes that “men from Ireland turn up unexpectedly and repeatedly in English records” (p. 227): Irish traders sold clothes in Cambridge and slaves in Bristol, and there is considerable evidence for the veneration of Irish saints in England. She concludes that “Britain, a much-invaded island, for the same reasons was also much visited...