Bewildering Stories introduces and welcomes...

Wade R. DeYoung

Wade R. DeYoung has retired as captain in the U.S. Army after a number of different assignments. He has degrees in English, Medical Zoology, and Zoology. He has published poems in various places online and in print.

“Facets of the Tongue” celebrates the medieval warrorship and weaponry of the Angles and Saxons who crushed the Scottish Gaelic language out of existence. It also pays obeisance to the Normans, who were originally Scandinavians and may be thanked or blamed for forcibly instilling French as a large portion of the vocabulary of the English language.

The tribes of ancient Britain had their own languages, which were related to one another because the speakers were descendants of families emigrating westward from the Indo-European homeland in central Asia and, perhaps, northward from Homo sapiens tribes that mingled with and superseded the earlier Neanderthal inhabitants of western Europe.

Gaelic was originally brought to Scotland by settlers speaking Old Irish. It eventually replaced Pictish, a language spoken by people known for their tattoos. Over centuries, Gaelic was gradually replaced by English mainly on account of commerce and politics.

King Arthur — be he historical or mythical — was credited in the later Middle Ages for defending Celtic-speaking western Britain from Anglo-Saxons. Some of the legend may be true, but the Anglo-Saxons were primarily settlers, and they would have enough to do to defend themselves against Vikings until they all found that commerce proved more rewarding than war.

Wade R. DeYoung’s bio sketch can be found here.

Welcome to Bewildering Stories, Wade. We’re glad to have you with us.