The English language has existed for about fifteen hundred years, though a modern speaker will find Old English, which developed and was extant from about the sixth to eleventh centuries, as intelligible as any other they do not read or speak. This original expression of the English language developed from the tongues of those who settled in Britain, especially the eastern and southern areas of the island, and arrived from what we today would identify as parts of Denmark, Netherlands, Germany, and Belgium.
Over centuries English morphed from Old to Middle English. While the changes were already underway by the time of the Norman Invasion in 1066, the changes Old French introduced supercharged the modifications, and many remain today. Old French grew mainly as an offshoot of Latin.
As with Old English, Middle English remains mostly unreadable to a modern English reader, though it is easier to parse than it’s predecessor. Still, most readers would rely on translations to enjoy Chaucer’s Canterbury tales, or Malory’s Mort d’Arthur.
As Early Modern English came to the fore from the mid-fifteenth century we begin to find the language becoming more comprehensible to our modern eye, though still a little strange until you learn how some letters were used then. We can also probably think of lines in Shakespeare which have always confused us, but not to the point where we decide to find out what they mean. That doesn’t mean Early Modern English is easy. The King James translation of the bible was produced during this time. While some linguists and scholars wax lyrical about the beauty of the language therein, anyone who wishes to read the bible to understand it reaches for a modern translation, or learns the original languages the sixty-six biblical books were written in.
When Britain rose to world dominance it acquired words and expressions from other tongues with the same casual disregard displayed to peoples, lands, and possessions. Modern English folded these all together, and continues to incorporate new words whether constructed anew, lifted from other languages, or any and many strange combination of such.
A function of the development of the English language having so many headwaters and tributaries is that there are words in common English usage which have a lineage stretching back two thousand thousand years. Words themselves have heritage. And we can illustrate that with the word ‘heritage’ itself.
Chambers Online Dictionary defines heritage in three parts:
1 something that is inherited;
2 the characteristics, qualities, property, etc that one inherits at birth;
3 a nation's mark of history, such as stately buildings, countryside, cultural traditions, etc seen as the nation's wealth to be inherited by future generations.
The word comes to our modern usage from Middle English, somewhere around the thirteenth century. It’s early meaning is of ‘things transmitted from ancestors’, and comes to English from Old French. It is related to the word ‘heriter’ which means to inherit. In turn, heriter arrives in Old French from Latin.
As a word heritage is used sparsely across its history. From when usage trackers pick up their searches - around 1500 - there is hardly any use, until a spike from about 1535, before a seven to ten year slump in the mid-1560’s to early 1570’s, then climb back up, before gently declining to a usage level which remains consistent from 1650 to 1900 or so. Since then usage of heritage has climbed to a level where it is nearly twice as popular as its mid-sixteenth century heyday (and heyday is another Middle English word, though nearer the point where it was transitioning to Early Modern English).
What is the reason for this steady increase in usage? I’d say popularity but, even with the doubling of incidence, it remains a rarely used word.
It’s possible that, as people had an increasing awareness of how things can swiftly change, of the ways the past can be swept away with too little thought given as to the value of things being lost, then a cultural awareness of heritage with relation to understanding our past became important.
Such a shift can be conceived when we look at the way communication became more rapid, accessible, and affordable from the early twentieth century. Things which happened thousands of miles away used to take weeks or months to be reported, now the information could be transmitted within days, or even hours.
There were also events which changed things rapidly. Two world wars saw a wanton destruction of life which sundered many ties between past and future, fraying to oblivion innumerable threads which would have stitched the two together more harmoniously. There is little surprise that the couple of decades following each of these mass conflagrations saw social upheaval and unrest which overturned society in ways not seen before.
With so much lost, and not just lost but destroyed, and a pace of change which was rapid, there is a case for understanding why people would develop a hankering for things which are gone, disappeared, even within their own lifetime.
It used to be that a building was constructed with a view to it being a permanent feature in the landscape, disasters excepted. Throughout the world there are such structures and, less than a century ago, it was not a shocking thing to build a factory and expect it to be there for hundreds of years. Now buildings are constructed with an expected lifespan measured in decades, and not necessarily more than two or three of them. It is assumed that they will outlive their usefulness and be replaced.
Work is another area where short term change is now the expected. The idea of a ‘job for life’ has gone the same way as any expectation a child will follow their parents line of work.
When things change so swiftly the notion of looking at a fixed point, one where things appeared stable and better than now, can be appealing. Some people may enjoy a fairground ride that throws them around, but only for short period of time. What we prefer over a longer term is some kind of stability, and connection. In a fast moving world heritage can provide that connection, can say ‘here are the way things were, have been, and you and your ancestors are part of it’.
The dangers are a tendency to cling on to things that have moved far past their usefulness as a reminder of some important person or thing. Britain is riddled with statues of people no-one knows about or who, on sober reflection, should be more commemorated for their inhumane activities. There are buildings labeled as National Heritage, but which the owners are unable to maintain and so once fine castles, or houses, or even sports centers are succumbing to decay and vandalism which does nothing to create a reminder of fine achievements, but rather leave eyesores which blot the local landscape.
Here’s the thing, taking account of what has gone before is important. It should allow us to work out how we got here, and provide future routes to be avoided or followed. As with language it is beneficial to grow, change, and adapt. However, as there are things which we should carry with us, there are things which need left behind, sometimes actively removed.
There are words which my parents or grandparents used which would not pass my lips, because of how language has changed. There are words I will reach for which are not the most common, but have a historical meaning which perfectly encapsulates the thought I want to make.
The things we inherit, our heritage needs to be like this. Keep and use the useful; dispose of the tawdry and unpleasant; retain the redundant, stored safely against a time it develops a new use, or becomes surprisingly necessary again.
Jesus saids ‘No man who puts his hand to the plough and looks behind is well-suited for the Kingdom of God’ (Luke 9:62). Whether your hope is in such or not, the idea contained that constantly looking behind is not the way to prepare for the future is one we do well to take heed of.
Original writing and graphics by Stuart C Turnbull. Header produced in Canva Pro.