I am anxious to put a question as to the communication that may have
taken place between the English and German tongues previous to the
sixteenth century. Possibly the materials for answering it may not
exist; but it appears to me that it is of great importance, in an
etymological point of view, that the extent of such communication, and
the influence it has had upon our language, should be ascertained. In
turning over the leaves of the _Shakspeare Society's Papers_, vol. i.,
some time ago, my attention was attracted by a "Song in praise of his
Mistress," by John Heywood, the dramatist. I was immediately struck by
the great resemblance it presented to another poem on the same subject
by a German writer, whose real or assumed name, I do not know which, was
"Muscanblüt," and which poem is to be found in _Der Clara Hätzlerin
Liederbuch_, a collection made by a nun of Augsburg in 1471. The
following are passages for comparison:--
"Fyrst was her skyn,
Whith, smoth, and thyn,
And every vayne
So blewe sene playne;
Her golden heare
To see her weare,
Her werying gere,
Alas! I fere
To tell all to you
I shall undo you.
"Her eye so rollyng,
Ech harte conterollyng;
Her nose not long,
Nor stode not wrong;
Her finger typs
So clene she clyps;
Her rosy lyps,
Her chekes gossyps,"
&c. &c.
_S.S. Papers_, vol. i. p. 72
"Ir mündlin rott
Uss senender nott
Mir helffen kan,
Das mir kain man
Mit nichten kan püssen.
O liechte kel,
Wie vein, wie gel
Ist dir dein har,
Dein äuglin clar,
Zartt fraw, lass mich an sehen.
Und tu mir kund
Uss rottem mund, &c.
Dein ärmlin weisz
Mit gantzem fleisz
Geschnitzet sein,
Die hennde dein
Gar hofelich gezieret,
Dem leib ist ran,
Gar wolgetan
Sind dir dein prust,"
&c. &c.
_Clara Hätzlerin Liederbuch_, p. 111.
In all this there is certainly nothing to warrant the conclusion that
the German poem was the original of Heywood's song; but, considering
that the latter was produced so near to the same age as the former, that
is, at the beginning of the sixteenth century, and considering that the
older German poetical literature had already passed its culminating
point, while ours was upon the ascending scale, there is likeness
enough, both in manner and measure, to excite the suspicion of direct or
indirect communication.
The etymology of the word "news," on which you have recently had some
notes, is a case in illustration of the importance of this point. I have
never had the least doubt that this word is derived immediately from the
German. It is, in fact, "das Neue" in the genitive case; the German
phrase "Was giebt's Neues?" giving the exact sense of our "What is the
news?" This will appear {429} even stronger if we go back to the date of
the first use of the word in England. Possibly about the same time, or
not much earlier, we find in his same collection of Clara Hätzlerin, the
word spelt "new" and rhyming to "triu."
"Empfach mich uff das New
In deines hertzen triu."
The genitive of this would be "newes," thus spelt and probably
pronounced the same as in England. That the word is not derived from the
English adjective "new"--that it is not of English manufacture at all--I
feel well assured: in that case the "_s_" would be the sign of the
plural: and we should have, as the Germans have, either extant or
obsolete, also "the new." The English language, however, has never dealt
in these abstractions, except in its higher poetry; though some recent
translators from the German have disregarded the difference in this
respect between the powers of the two languages. "News" is a noun
singular, and as such must have been adopted bodily into the language;
the form of the genitive case, commonly used in conversation, not being
understood, but being taken for an integral part of the word, as
formerly the Koran was called "_The Alcoran_."
"Noise," again, is evidently of the same derivation, though from a
dialect from which the modern German pronunciation of the diphthong is
derived. Richardson, in his _English Dictionary_, assumes it to be of
the same derivation as "noxious" and "noisome;" but there is no process
known to the English language by which it could be manufactured without
making a plural noun of it. In short, the two words are identical;
"news" retaining its primitive, and "noise" adopting a consequential
meaning.