AFTER THE BATTLE OF HASTINGS, 1066, NORMAN FRENCH ENTERS THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE
"A circumstance which greatly tended to enhance the tyranny of the nobility and the sufferings of the inferior classes arose from the consequences of the Conquest by Duke William of Normandy. Four generations had not suffered to blend the hostile blood of the Normans and Anglo-Saxons, or to unite, by common language and mutual interests, two hostile races. The power had been completely placed in the hands of the Norman nobility by the event of the battle of Hastings. The whole race of Saxon princes and nobles had been extirpated or disinherited. At court and in the castles of the great nobles, Norman-Frennch was the only language employed.(...) ...the structure of our present English language, in which the speech of the victors and the vanquished hbave been so happily blended together..." (p.2, 3).
"And swine is good Saxon, said the Jester; but how call you the sow when she is flayed and drawn and quartered and hung up by the heels, like a traitor ? Pork, answered the swineherd.
Nay, I can tell you more : there is old Alderman Ox continues to hold his Saxon epithet while he is under the charge of serfs and bondsmen such as thou, but becomes Beef, a fiery French gallant, when he arrives before the worshipful jaws that are destined to consume him. Mynherr Calf, too, becomes Monsieur de Veau in the like manner..." (p.8,9)