この5ヶ月ほど，Baugh and Cable の英語史の古典的名著 A History of the English Language （第6版）を原書で精読する Voicy 「英語の語源が身につくラジオ」 (heldio) でのシリーズ企画（有料配信）を進めています．週に1，2回のペースで，1回1セクションを精読しながら，私が英文や内容について英語史の観点から自由にコメントしていくオンライン読書会というスタイルで続けています．一緒に読んでいく仲間も少しずつ増えてきています．バックナンバーは「#5291. heldio の「英語史の古典的名著 Baugh and Cable を読む」シリーズが順調に進んでいます」 ([2023-10-22-1])）にまとめてありますので，そちらからアクセスしてください．
普段は有料配信（ただし第1チャプターのみ試聴可）でお届けしているのですが，ときどきシリーズを紹介するという趣旨もあり無料公開しています．とりわけゲスト講師をお招きして一緒に対談精読実況生中継する特別回は，多くの方々に聴いていただきたいこともあり，長尺配信の少なくとも一部は無料公開しています．次のそのような機会は，来たる12月8日（金）の午後6時です．金田拓さん（帝京科学大学）とともに，本書の第32節となる "The Germanic Conquest" を実況生中継でお届けします．前半の通常配信と後半プレミアム限定配信を組み合わせ，計2時間弱の長尺配信となる見込みです．生配信しますのでできればライヴでお聴きいただき，コメントや質問なども投げていただければと思いますが，都合がつかない方のために後日アーカイヴとしても配信する予定です．
今回精読対象となる第32節 "The Germanic Conquest" 「ゲルマン征服」は，英語史上きわめて重要なセクションです．以下2ページ弱のテキストを掲載しておきます（できれば本書を入手していただくのがベストです）．
32. The Germanic Conquest. About the year 449, an event occurred that profoundly affected the course of history. In that year, as traditionally stated, began the invasion of Britain by certain Germanic tribes, the founders of the English nation. For more than a hundred years, bands of conquerors and settlers migrated from their continental homes in the region of Denmark and the Low Countries and established themselves in the south and east of the island, gradually extending the area they occupied until it included all but the highlands in the west and north. The events of these years are wrapped in much obscurity. Although we can form a general idea of their course, we are still in doubt about some of the tribes that took part in the movement, their exact location on the continent, and the dates of their respective migrations.
The traditional account of the Germanic invasions goes back to Bede and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. Bede in his Ecclesiastical History of the English People, completed in 731, tells us that the Germanic tribes that conquered England were the Jutes, Saxons, and Angles. From what he says and from other indications, it seems possible that the Jutes and the Angles had their home in the Danish peninsula, the Jutes in the northern half (hence the name Jutland) and the Angles in the south, in Schleswig-Holstein, and perhaps in a small area at the base. The Saxons were settled to the south and west of the Angles, roughly between the Elbe and the Ems, possibly as far as the Rhine. A fourth tribe, the Frisians, some of whom almost certainly came to England, occupied a narrow strip along the coast from the Weser to the Rhine, together with the islands opposite. But by the time of the invasions, the Jutes had apparently moved down to the coastal area near the mouth of the Weser and possibly also around the Zuyder Zee and the lower Rhine, thus being in contact with both the Frisians and Saxons.
Britain had been exposed to attacks by the Saxons from as early as the fourth century. Even while the island was under Roman rule, these attacks had become sufficiently serious to necessitate the appointment of an officer known as the Count of the Saxon Shore, whose duty it was to police the southeastern coast. At the same time, the unconquered Picts and Scots in the north were kept out only at the price of constant vigilance. Against both of these sources of attack the Roman organization seems to have proved adequate. But the Celts had come to depend on Roman arms for this protection. They had, moreover, under Roman influence, settled down to a more peaceful mode of life, and their military traditions had lapsed. Consequently, when the Romans withdrew in 410, the Celts found themselves at a disadvantage. They were no longer able to keep out the warlike Picts and Scots. Several times they called upon Rome for aid, but finally the Romans, fully occupied in defending their own territory at home, were forced to refuse assistance. It was on this occasion that Vortigern, one of the Celtic leaders, is reported to have entered into an agreement with the Jutes whereby they were to assist the Celts in driving out the Picts and Scots and to receive as their reward the Isle of Thanet on the northeastern tip of Kent.
The Jutes, who had not been softened by contact with Roman civilization, were fully a match for the Picts and Scots. But Vortigern and the Celts soon found that they had in these temporary allies something more serious to reckon with than their northern enemies. The Jutes, having recognized the weakness of the Britons, decided to stay in the island and began making a forcible settlement in the southeast, in Kent. The settlement of the Jutes was a very different thing from the conquest of the island by the Romans. The Romans had come to rule the Celtic population, not to dispossess it. The Jutes came in numbers and settled on the lands of the Celts. They met the resistance of the Celts by driving them out. Moreover, the example of the Jutes was soon followed by the migration of other continental tribes. According to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, some of the Saxons came in 477, landed on the south coast, and established themselves in Sussex. In 495, further bands of Saxons settled a little to the west, in Wessex. Finally, in the middle of the next century, the Angles occupied the east coast and in 547 established an Anglian kingdom north of the Humber. Too much credence, of course, cannot be put in these statements or dates. There were Saxons north of the Thames, as the names Essex and Middlesex (the districts of the East Saxons and Middle Saxons) indicate, and the Angles had already begun to settle in East Anglia by the end of the fifth century. But the entries in the Chronicle may be taken as indicating in a general way a succession of settlements extending over more than a century, which completely changed the character of the island of Britain.
・ Baugh, Albert C. and Thomas Cable. A History of the English Language. 6th ed. London: Routledge, 2013.
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