"There is a sight all hearts beguiling-- A youthful mother to her infant smiling, Who, with spread arms and dancing feet, And cooing voice, returns its answer sweet,"
and mothers alone have understood the first babblings of humanity, they have waited long to be remembered in the worthiest name of the language they have taught their offspring.
The term _mother-tongue_, although Middle English had "birthe-tonge," in the sense of native speech, is not old in our language; the _Century Dictionary_ gives no examples of its early use. Even immortal Shakespeare does not know it, for, in _King Richard II._, he makes Mowbray say:--
"The language I have learned these forty years (My native English) now must I forego."
The German version of the passage has, however, _mein mütterliches Englisch_.
Cowper, in the _Task_, does use "mother-tongue," in the connection following:--
"Praise enough To fill the ambition of a private man, That Chatham's language was his mother-tongue."
_Mother-tongue_ has now become part and parcel of our common speech; a good word, and a noble one.
In Modern High German, the corresponding _Mutterzunge_, found in Sebastian Franck (sixteenth century) has gradually given way to _Muttersprache_, a word whose history is full of interest. In Germany, as in Europe generally, the esteem in which Latin was held in the Middle Ages and the centuries immediately following them, forbade almost entirely the birth or extension of praiseworthy and endearing names for the speech of the common people of the country. So long as men spoke of "hiding the beauties of Latin in homely German words," and a Bacon could think of writing his chief work in Latin, in order that he might be remembered after his death, it were vain to expect aught else.
Hence, it does not surprise us to learn that the word _Muttersprache_ is not many centuries old in German. Dr. Lübben, who has studied its history, says it is not to be found in Old High German or Middle High German (or Middle Low German), and does not appear even in Luther's works, though, judging from a certain passage in his _Table Talk_, it was perhaps known to him. It was only in the seventeenth century that the word became quite common. Weigand states that it was already in the _Dictionarium latino-germanicum_ (Zurich, 1556), and in Maaler's _Die Teutsch Spraach_ (Zurich, 1561), in which latter work (S. 262 a) we meet with the expressions _vernacula lingua_, _patrius sermo_, _landspraach_, _muoterliche spraach_, and _muoterspraach_ (S. 295 c). Opitz (1624) uses the word, and it is found in Schottel's _Teutsche Haupt-Sprache_ (Braunschweig, 1663). Apparently the earliest known citation is the Low German _modersprake_, found in the introduction of Dietrich Engelhus' (of Einbeck) _Deutsche Chronik_ (1424).