Celtic influence

[JoatSimeon at aol.com]

In other words, French has about 200 words borrowed from Gaulish -- including
many very common items of everyday speech -- while OE has 12 from Brythonic.

Furthermore, the emergence of a standardized written form of OE (based on the
Wessex dialect) took place centuries _after_ the Anglo-Saxon settlements in
Britain.  For the first 200 years and more, the Saxons were illiterate.