ss with
which the Scandinavian immigrants acquire the English language. A little
study of philology will readily account for it. If we take, for
instance, the names of household goods, domestic animals, and other
things appertaining to the common incidents of plain every-day life, we
find the English words almost identical with the Scandinavian terms,
only varying in the form of spelling or perhaps pronunciation, as those
are apt to change with time and locality. For example: English--ox, cow,
swine, cat, hound, rat, mouse, hen, goose, chicken; Swedish--oxe, ko,
svin, katt, hund, rotta, mus, hoena, gas, kyckling. Of implements:
English--wagon, plow, harrow, spade, axe, knife, kettle, pot, pan, cup;
Swedish--wagn, plog, harf, spada, yxa, knif, kittel, potta, panna, kopp.
Or the part of our own bodies, such as: English--hair, skin, eyes, nose,
ears, mouth, lips, teeth, shoulders, arm, hand, finger, nail, foot, toe,
etc.; Swedish--har, skinn, oegon, naesa, oeron, mun, laepp, tand, skuldra,
arm, hand, finger, nagel, fot, and ta. Or of the occupations of the
common people, such as: English--spin, weave, cook, sow, sew;
Swedish--spinna, vaefva, koka, sa, sy, etc. In this connection it may not
be out of place to quote one of England's most eminent authors and
scholars, Edward Bulwer Lytton, who says:

"A magnificent race of men were those war sons of the old North, whom
our popular histories, so superficial in their accounts of this age,
include in the common name of the 'Danes.'

"They replunged into barbarism the nations over which they swept; but
from the barbarism they reproduced the noblest element of
civilization. Swede, Norwegian and Dane, differing in some minor
points, when closely examined, had yet one common character viewed at
a distance. They had the same prodigious energy, the same passion for
freedom, individual and civil, the same splendid errors in the thirst
for fame and the point of honor, and above all, as a main cause of
civilization, they were wonderfully pliant and malleable in their
adventures with the people they overran.

"At that time, A.D. 1055, these Northmen, under the common name of
Danes, were peaceably settled in no less than fifteen counties in
England; their nobles abounded in towns and cities beyond the
boundaries of those counties, which bore the distinct appellation of
Danelagh. They were numerous in London, in the precincts of which they
had their ow