The Sources of Standard English/Chapter II - The Old and Middle English
CHAPTER II.
the old english, 680-1120.
the middle english, 1120-1300.
The examples given in the last few pages have been mostly taken from Wessex writers; but Cadmon's name reminds us that in the Seventh and Eighth Centuries there was no Teutonic land that could match Northumbria in learning or civilisation. Thither had come earnest missionaries from Italy and Ireland. There Christianity had taken fast root, and had bred such men as Cadmon and Bede. Charlemagne himself, the foremost of all Teutons, was glad to welcome to his Court Alcuin, who came from beyond the Humber. It was the dialect of Northumbria, settled as that land was by Angles, that first sprang into notice, and was so much in favour, that even the West Saxons on the Thames called their speech English.
This English of the North, or Northumbrian, has bequeathed to us but few monuments, owing to the havock wrought by the Danes in the Northern libraries. We have, however, enough of it left to see that in some points it kept far closer to the old Aryan Mother Speech than the classical writers of Wessex did; thus, it boasts the remnants of four verbs in mi — am, beôm (sum), geseôm (video), gedôm (facio). In other points it foreshadows the language to be spoken in Queen Victoria's day more clearly than these same writers of Wessex did.
In tracing the history of Standard English, it is mainly on Northumbria that we must keep our eyes. About the year 680, a stone cross was set up at Ruthwell, not far from Dumfries; and the Runes graven upon it enshrine an English poem written by no mean hand. Cadmon, the great Northumbrian bard, had compiled a noble lay on the Crucifixion, a lay which may still be read at full length in its Southern English dress of the Tenth Century. Forty lines or so of the earlier poem of the Seventh Century were engraven upon the Ruthwell Cross; these I give in my Appendix, as the lay is the earliest English that we possess just as it was written.[1] It has old forms of English nowhere else found; and it clearly appeals to the feelings of a warlike race, hardly yet out of the bonds of heathenism; the old tales of Balder are applied to Christ, who is here called ‘the young hero.’
Mr. Kemble in 1840 translated the Ruthwell Runes, which up to that time had never unlocked their secret; not long afterwards, he had the delight of seeing them in their later Southern dress, on their being published from an old English skinbook at Vercelli. He found that he had only three letters of his translation to correct. Seldom has there been such a hit and such a confirmation of a hit.[2]
These Ruthwell Runes are in close agreement with the dying words of Bede, the few English lines embedded in the Latin text.[3] The letter k is here found, which did not appear in Southern English until many centuries later. The word ungcet, the Dual Accusative, betokens the hoariest antiquity. The Infinitive ends, not in the Southern an, but in a, like the old Norse and Friesic.
The speech of the men who conquered Northumbria in the Sixth Century must have been influenced by their Danish neighbours of the mainland. I give a few words from the Ruthwell Cross, compared with King Alfred's Southern English: —
| Southern. | Ruthwell. |
| Heofenas | Heafunæs |
| Stigan | Stiga |
| Gewundod | Giwundæd |
| Eal | Al[4] |
| On gealgan | On galgu |
The next specimen, given by me in my Appendix, is about sixty years later than the Ruthwell Runes. It is another fragment of Cadmon's, which was modernised two hundred years after his time by King Alfred. The text from which I quote is referred by Wanley, a good judge, to the year A.D. 737. I set down here those words which are nearer to the language spoken in our days than Alfred's version is.
| Southern. | Northern. | Modern. |
| Fæder | Fadur | Father |
| Swa | Sue | So |
| Gescéop | Scop | Shaped |
| Bearnum | Barnum | Bairns |
| Þa | Tha | The |
| Weard | Uard | Ward |
The word ‘til’ (to), unknown in Southern speech, is found in this old manuscript, and is translated ‘to’ by Alfred. The modern Th here first appears for the good old character that our unwisdom has allowed to drop. The whole of the manuscript is in Northern English, such as it was spoken before the Danes overran the North.[5]
The next earliest Northumbrian monument that we have is a Psalter, which Garnett dates about the year A.D. 800. It is thought to have been translated in one of the shires just south of the Humber.[6] This Psalter, like the former specimen, employs a instead of the Southern ea, even as we ourselves do.
There are many other respects in which the Psalter differs from Southern English of the Ninth Century; the chief is that the first Person Singular of the verb ends, like the Latin, in o or u: as sitto, I sit; ondredu, I fear. The second Person ends in s, not st; as neosas, thou visitest. It is, therefore, less corrupt than King Alfred's form. The Lowland Scotch to this day say, thou knows. The prefix ge in Past Participles is often dropped, as bledsad, blessed, instead of gebletsod. Old Anglian was nearer than any other Low German speech to Danish, and ge is not found in the Danish Participle. We also remark the Norse earun for sumus, estis, sunt; this in Southern speech is nearly always syndon.[7] I give a few words from this Psalter, to show that our modern English in many things follows the Northern rather than the Southern form.[8]
| Southern English. | Northern English. | Modern. |
| Bën | Boen | Boon (prayer) |
| Béc | Boec | Books |
| Célan | Coelan | Cool |
| Déman | Doeman | Doom[9] |
| Hréðe | Roeð[10] | Rough |
| Leoht | Leht | Light |
| Fram | From | From |
| Wæron | Werun | Were |
| Nawiht | Nowihte | Nought[9] |
| Feldas | Feldes | Fields |
| Twa | Tu | Two |
| Dést | Gedoest | Doest |
| Eage | Ege | Eye |
| Tyn | Ten | Ten |
| Geoguð | Iuguðe | Youth |
The Northern men of the year 800 said, ‘doema strong and longmod,’ where the Southerners would have put ‘déma strang and langmod.’ We find no used just as the Scotch now use it, ‘gif ic no fore-settu,’ where na would have been used in the South. One of the most remarkable things in this Psalter is the first appearance of our them, used as a Pronoun, not as an Article. See Psalm cxlv. 6: ‘All ða in ðœm sind.’ This is found but seldom; the settlers soon to come from Denmark would recognise it as a form akin to their own.[11]
Much about the time that the Northumbrian Psalter was compiled, the Norsemen began to harry unhappy England. The feuds of near kinsmen are always the bitterest; and this we found true in the Ninth Century. Soon the object of the heathen became settlement in the land, and not plunder. The whole of England would have fallen under their yoke, had not a hero come forth from the Somersetshire marshes.
In A.D. 876, we read in the Saxon Chronicle that the Danish king, ‘Norðhymbra land gedælde, and hergende weron and heora tiligende wæron.’[12] In the next year, the outlandish host ‘gefor on Myrcena land, and hit gedældon sum.’ In 880, ‘for se here on Eastængle and geset þat land and gedælde.’ Here we find many English shires, once thriving and civilised, parcelled out within four years among the Norsemen. The Angles were now under the yoke of those who four hundred years earlier had been their neighbours on the mainland. Essex seems to have been the only Saxon shire that Alfred had to yield to the foreigner. Now it was that the Orms, Grims, Spils, Osgods, and Thors, who have left such abiding traces of themselves in Eastern Mercia and Northumbrian settled among us. They gave their own names of Whitby and Derby to older English towns, and changed the name of Roman Eboracum from Eoforwic to Iorvik or York.
The endings by, thwaite, ness, drop, haugh, and garth, are the sure tokens of the great Danish settlement in England; fifteen hundred of such names are still to be found in our North Eastern shires. The six counties to the North of Mercia have among them 246 places that end in by; Lincolnshire, the great Norse stronghold, has 212; Leicestershire has 66; Northamptonshire 26; Norfolk and Notts have rather fewer.
The Danes were even strong enough to force their preposition amell (inter) upon Northumberland, where it still lingers. Our verbs bask and busk are Middle verbs, compounded of the Icelandic baka and bua with the ending sik (self).[13] York and Lincoln were the great seats of Norse influence, as we see by the numbers of Norse money-coiners who are known to have there plied their trade. English freedom was in the end the gainer by the fresh blood that now flowed in. When Doomsday book was compiled, no shire could vie with that of Lincoln in the thousands of its freeholders; East Anglia was not far behind.[14] Danish surnames like Anderson, Paterson, and, greater than all, Nelson, show the good blood that our Northern and Eastern shires can boast. Thor's day was in the end to replace Thunresday. Another Norse God, he of the sea, bearing the name of Egir, still rushes up English rivers like the Trent and the Witham, the water rising many feet: the eagre is a word well known in Lincolnshire. The Norse felagi is a compound from fee and lay, a man who puts down his money, like the member of a club. This, became in England felaʓe, felawe, fellow. So early as 1525 it had become a term of scorn; but the fellows of our Colleges will always keep alive the more honourable meaning of the word.
The next specimen in my Appendix is the book called the Rushworth Gospels, the English version of which Wanley dates at the year A.D. 900, or thereabouts; one of the translators was a priest at Harewood, in Yorkshire. I give a few words to show how much nearer it is to our speech than the West Saxon is: —
| Southern | Northern | Modern. |
| Se, seo | The, thio | The |
| Ic, Heo | Ih, Sio | I, She |
| Þeah | Theh | Though |
| Hi | Ða | They |
| Hyra | Ðara | Their |
| Eower | Ewer | Your |
| Feawa | Feawe | Few |
| Ðreora gewittnesse | Ðreo gewitnesse | Witness of three |
| Eom | Am | Am |
| Eart | Arth | Art |
| For | Foerde[15] | Fared |
| Drincan | Drinca, drince | To drink |
| Sealde | Salde | Sold |
| Gescy | Scoas | Shoes |
| Stanas | Stanes | Stones |
| Eac | Ek | Eke |
| Fynd | Fiondas | Fiends |
| Ælmessan | Ælmisse | Alms |
| Blawe | Blau | Blow |
| Fêt | Foedeþ | Feedeth |
| Byreð | Bereþ | Beareth |
| Slep | Slepte | Slept |
| Sceap | Scep | Sheep |
| Tó cumenne eart | Cwome scalt | Shalt come |
| Ealle gearwe | All iara[16] | All yare (ready) |
| Cuppa | Copp | Cup |
| Þridda | Ðirda | Third |
| Dóm | Doom | Doom |
| Geoc | Ioc | Yoke |
| Oð þone seofoðan | Oð to þæm siofund | Unto the seventh |
In the last example we see the Norse n making its way into the Old English numeral. There are other remarkable changes. In Matthew ii. 4 we find heom employed for hig, just as we say in talking, ‘I asked 'em.’ The Norse Active Participle is often used instead of the Old English, as gangande for gangende: and this lingered on in Scotland to a very late date. The Norsemen, in this instance, brought English speech nearer to Sanscrit than it was before. The Infinitive, as will be seen in the above table, has already been clipped.
The Southern geworden became in Yorkshire awarð; where in England the old prefix ge lingers in our days, it commonly takes the form of a. The cases of Substantives and Adjectives, so carefully handled in the South, are now confused in the North; the Dative Plural in um often vanishes altogether. The letter h is sometimes put in or dropped, the most hideous of all our corruptions; k and ch are found instead of c. Sio (our she) for heo and ih for ic are most remarkable; in the latter form we go nearer to the Sanscrit aham than to the Latin ego.
Few of England's children, have done her better service than Alfred's son and daughter, whose deeds are written in the Saxon Chronicle. King Edward's reign was one steady war against the Danish lords of Mercia and East Anglia; the strife raged all along the line between London and Chester, the King's men throwing up works to guard the shires they were winning back foot by foot. Essex seems to have been mastered in 913, Staffordshire and Warwickshire within the next few years. In 915, the Danish rulers of Bedford and Northampton gave their allegiance to the great King of Wessex; Derby and Leicester fell before his sister. The Norsemen struggled hard against Edward's iron bit; but the whole of East Anglia and Cambridge yielded to him in 921. By the end of the following year, he was master of Stamford and Nottingham; Lincolnshire seems to have been the last of his conquests. In 924, all the English, Danes, and Celts in our island chose Edward, the champion of Christianity against heathenism, for their Father and Lord. England, as we see, was speedily becoming something more than a geographical name.
Alfred had been King of the South; Alfred's son had won the Midland; Alfred's grandsons were now to bring the North under their yoke. The Danes drove the many quarrelsome English kingdoms into unity in sheer self-defence; much as in our own time the Austrians helped Italy to become one nation. The Saxon Chronicle in 941 names the Five Danish Burghs which overawed Mercia, and which have had so great an influence on the tongue now spoken by us.
| Burga fife | And Snotingahâm |
| Ligoraceaster | Swylce Stanford eác. |
| And Lincolne | And Deoraby. |
Long had these been in Danish thraldom; they were now, as the old English ballad of the day says, loosed by Edward's son. Northumberland, under her Danish kings, was still holding out against the Southern Overlord. At length, in 954, the last of these kings dropped out of history; and Eadred, the son of Edward and the grandson of Alfred, became the one King of all England, swaying the land from the Frith of Forth to the English Channel.[17]
Wessex, it is easy to see, was to our island much what Piedmont long afterwards became to Italy, and Brandenburg to Germany. It is not wonderful then that in the Tenth Century the literature of Wessex was looked upon as the best of models, and took the place of the Northumbrian literature of Bede's time. Good English prose-writers must have formed themselves upon King Alfred; English ‘shapers’ or ‘makers’ must have imitated the lofty lay, which tells how Alfred's grandsons smote Celt and Norseman alike on the great day of Brunanburgh. The Court of Winchester must in those days have been to England, what Paris has nearly always been to France: no such pattern of elegance could elsewhere have been found. For all that, were I to be given my choice as to what buried specimen of English writing should be brought to light, I should ask for a sample of the Rutland peasantry's common talk, about the year that Eadred was calling himself Kaiser of all Britain.[18] Such a sample would be as precious as the bad Latin, the parent of the New Italian, which may be read on the walls of Pompeii. By Eadred's time, two or three generations of Norsemen and Angles must have been mingled together; the uncouth dialect, woefully shorn of inflections, spoken in the markets of Leicester and Stamford, would be found to foreshadow the corruptions of the Peterborough Chronicle after 1120.
The country, falling within a radius of twenty miles drawn from the centre of Rutland, would be acknowledged, I think, as the cradle of the New English that we now speak. To go farther afield; all the land enclosed within a line drawn round from the Humber through Doncaster, Derby, Ashby, Rugby, Northampton, Bedford, and Ipswich (this may be called the Mercian Danelagh) helped mightily in forming the new literature: within this boundary were the Five Burghs, and the other Danish strongholds already named. Just outside this boundary were Southern Yorkshire and Northern Essex, which have also had their influence upon our tongue. Alfred's grandsons, on their way home to Winchester from their Northern fields, would have been much astonished, could it have been foretold to them that the Five Burghs, so lately held by the heathen, were to have the shaping of England's future speech. This New English, hundreds of years later, was to be handled by men, who would throw into the far background even such masterpieces of the Old English as the Beowulf and the Judith.
Some writers, I see, upbraid the French conquerors of England for bereaving us of our old inflections; it would be more to the purpose to inveigh against the great Norse settlement two hundred years before William's landing. What happened in Northumbria and Eastern Mercia will always take place when two kindred tribes are thrown together. An intermingling either of Irish with Welsh, or of French with Spaniards, or of Poles with Bohemians, would break up the old inflections and grammar of each nation, if there were no acknowledged standard of national speech whereby the tide of corruptions might be stemmed.
When such an intermingling takes place, the endings of the verb and the substantive are not always caught, and therefore speedily drop out of the mouths of the peasantry. In our own day this process may be seen going on in the United States. Thousands of Germans settle there, mingle with English-speakers, and thus corrupt their native German. They keep their own words indeed, but they clip the heads and tails of these words, as the Dano-Anglians did many hundred years ago.
About the year 970, another work was compiled in Northern English, the Lindisfarne Gospels.[19] I give a specimen of words, taken from these, side by side with the corresponding West Saxon. A great many of the corruptions of the Old English, already found in the Psalter and Rushworth Gospels, are here repeated. Two or three of the forms, given in the second column, are not peculiar to the North.
| Southern English. | Northern English. | Modern English. |
| Gemang | Himong | Among |
| Na mara | Noht mara | Not more
|
| Cildru | Cildes | Children |
| Steorra | Sterra | Star |
| Burgwaru | Burguaras | Burghers |
| Bréost | Brest | Breast |
| Axode | Ascade | Asked |
| Hi | Ða | They |
| Sunu | Sona | Son |
| Synd | Arun | Are |
| Eow | Iuh | You |
| Endlufon | Ællefoo | Eleven |
| Leofath | Hlifes | Lives (vivit) |
| Bóhton | Bochton | Bought |
| Begeondan | Bihionda | Beyond |
| Betweonan | Bituien | Between |
| Clæn-heortan | Claene of hearte | Clean of heart |
| Eorthan sealt | Eorthes salt | Earth's salt |
| Swa hwylc swa | Sua hua | Whoso |
| Ge gehyrdon | Herde ge | Heard ye |
| Gewefen | Gewoefen | Woven |
| Ic secge eow | Ic cueðo iuh to | Quoth I to you |
| Hwitne gedón | Huit geuirce | To make white |
| Ge biddað | Gie bidde | Ye bid |
| Magon gé | Maga gie | May ye |
| Eorþ, þær rust is | Eorð, huer rust is | Earth, where rust is |
| Beforan | Before | Before |
| Geat[20] | Gæt | Gate |
| Treow | Tré | Tree |
| Fæder willan | Faderes willo | Father's will |
| Getimbrode | Getimberde | Timbered (built) |
| Lið | Liges | Lies (jacet) |
| Swa hwæder | Sua huider | Whitherso |
| Heofenan scyp | Heofnes scipp | Heaven's ship |
| Eaþelicre | Eaður | Easier |
| Dohtor | Dohter | Daughter |
| Slæpð | Slepes | Sleeps |
| Wyrhta | Wercmonn | Workman |
| Swurd[21] | Suord | Sword |
| Gæð | Gaað | Goeth |
| Drige | Dryia | Dry |
| Wolde ofslean | Walde ofslae | Would slay |
| Leógeras | Legeras | Liars |
| Hund | Hundrað | Hundred |
| Muð twegra oððeþreora | Muð tuoe oððe ðrea | Mouth of two orthree |
| Ðrittig | Ðrittih | Thirty |
| On þysum | In ðisum | In these |
| Heonon | Hena | Hence |
| Ðriwa | Ðriga | Thrice |
The Norsemen, breathing fire and slaughter, have for ever branded, as we see, their mark upon England's tongue. Northern English had become very corrupt since the year 800; as I before said, the intermingling of two kindred tribes, like the Angles and Norsemen, must tend to shear away the endings of substantives and verbs. The third Persons, both Singular and Plural, of the Present tense now often end in s instead of th, as he onsœces; we follow the North in daily life, but we listen to the Southern form when we go to Church. The ð of the Imperative also becomes s, as wyrcas instead of wyrcað; the Scotch still say, gies me, instead of give me. New idioms crop up, which would have astonished Alfred or Ælfric: we find full of fiscum for plenus piscium.
The Old English Plural of nouns in an is now changed, and hearta replaces heartan; sad havock is made in all the other cases. The Genitive Singular and Nominative Plural in es swallow up the other forms. Thus we came back to the old Aryan pattern, in all but a few plurals like oxen.[22] Such new-fangled Genitives Singular as sterres, brydgumes, heartes, tunges, fadores, and such Nominative Plurals as stearras, burgas, and culfras, are now found. There is a tendency to confound Definite with Indefinite Adjectives. The Dative Plural in um is sometimes dropped.
In short, we see the foreshadowing of the New English forms. The South, where the Norsemen could never gain a foothold, held fast to the old speech; and many forms of King Alfred's time, now rather corrupted, linger on to this day in Dorset and Somerset; though these shires are not so rich in old words as Lothian is. The North, overrun by the Danes, was losing its inflections not long after King Alfred's death. Even in the South, Norse words were taking root; some are found in Canute's day; and William I., addressing his Londoners in their own tongue, says that he will not allow ‘þæt ænig man eow ænig wrang beode.’ This wrang (malum) comes from the Scandinavian rangr (obliquus); it drove out the Old English woh.
I shall consider elsewhere the effect of the Norman Conquest upon England's speech. I give in my Appendix a specimen of the East Anglian dialect, much akin to the Northumbrian, written not long after the battle of Hastings.[23] In the Legend of St. Edmund, the holy man of Suffolk, we see the forms þe, ðe, and the, all replacing the old se; the cases of the substantive and the endings of the verb are clipped; the prefix ge is seldom found, and iset stands for the old Participle geset. As to the Infinitive, the old dœlfan becomes dœlfe; the Dative heom replaces the old Accusative hî, as heom wat gehwa, each knows them. The adjective does not agree in case with the substantive; as mid œþele ðeawum. An heora is turned into án mon of him; a corruption that soon spread over the South. The preposition is uncoupled from the verb in our bad modern fashion; as slogon of þœt hœfod, smote off the head.[24] Rather later, this preposition of, when used as an adverb, was to have a form of its own. The first letter is pared away from hlaford; the Anglian alle replaces the Southern ealle. Eode is making way for wende (ivit); and we find such forms as child, nefre, healed, fologede, instead of cild, nœfre, hœlod, fyligde. Hál (sanus) gets the new meaning of integer at p. 88: from it comes both our hale and our whole.
But other parts of England besides Suffolk were corrupting the old speech. In the years set down in the different Chronicles, after the Norman Conquest, we see new forms; as in the account of Stamford Bridge fight, in 1066, þa com an oþer (here the an has no business), ‘then came another;’ œfre þe oðer man, ‘every other man’ (year 1087). Moreover, we begin to light on expressions such as sume of þam cnihtan (year 1083); toscyfton to his mannon (year 1085); yrfenuma of eallon (year 1091). Wifman (mulier) is cut down to wimman in 1087; the process of casting out a consonant (coming in the middle of a word) went on for two hundred years and more. The Latin amavisse had become amâsse centuries earlier. We see that wiðutan, which of old meant no more than extra, has gained the new sense of sine in 1087, as we now mostly use it. The great William, we hear, would have won Ireland wiðutan œlcon wœpnon.[25] Still, the monks did their best to write classic English, down to about the year 1120.
England has been happy, beyond her Teutonic sisters, in the many and various stores of her oldest literature that have floated down the stream of Time. Poems scriptural and profane, epics, war-songs, riddles, translations of the Bible, homilies, prayers, treatises on science and grammar, codes of law, wills, charters, chronicles set down year by year, tales, and dialogues — all these (would that we took more interest in them!) are our rich inheritance. In spite of the havock wrought at the Reformation, no land in Europe can show such monuments of national speech for the 400 years after A.D. 680 as England boasts. And nowhere else can we so clearly mark the national speech slowly swinging round from the Old to the New.
Take the opposite case of Italy. In 1190 we find Falcandus holding in scorn the everyday speech of his countrymen, and compiling a work in the Old Italian (that is, Latin), such as would have been easily read by Cæsar or Cicero. Falcandus trod in the path that had been followed by all good Italian writers for 1200 years; but two or three years after his book had been written, we find his countryman, Ciullo d'Alcamo, all of a sudden putting forth the first known poem in the New Italian, a poem that would now be readily understood by an unlettered soldier like Garibaldi.
In Italy, there is a sudden spring from the Old to the New, at least in written literature; but in England the change is most slow. I have already traced the corruption shown in the Northumbrian writings. In the Peterborough Chronicle of 1120, we see an evident effort to keep as near as may be to the old Winchester standard of English. Some of the inflections indeed are gone, but the writer puts eall for the all that came into his everyday speech, and looks back for his pattern to King Alfred's writings. In 1303, we find a poem, written by a man born within fifteen miles of Peterborough: the diction of this Midland bard differs hardly at all from what we speak under Queen Victoria. Nothing in philology can be more interesting than these 180 years, answering roughly to the lives of our first Angevin King, of his son, grandson, and great-grandson.
The plan I follow is this. I shall first give specimens of prose and poetry written within the Mercian Danelagh and East Anglia, where our classic New English was born.
To each specimen I shall add a contrast, being some poem or treatise, written outside the aforesaid district, either in the South, the West, or the North. The samples from within the Danelagh, and from its Essex and Yorkshire border, will be seen boldly to foreshadow what is to come; the samples from shires lying to the South and West of the Danelagh will show tokens of a fond lingering love for what is byegone. In the Midland district I have named, there was the same mingling of Angles and Danes that we find in the shires where the Northumbrian Gospels were translated.
THE EAST MIDLAND DIALECT.
(About 1120.)
Of all cities, none has better earned the homage of the English patriot, the English scholar, and the English architect, than Peterborough. Her Abbot was brought home, sick unto death, from the field of Hastings; her monks were among the first Englishmen who came under the Conqueror's frown. Her Minster suffered more from Hereward and his Norse friends than from her new French Abbot, Turold. At Peterborough our history was compiled, not in Latin but in English; the English that had grown up from the union of many generations of Danes and Angles, dwelling not far from Rutland. Without the Peterborough Chronicle, we should be groping in the dark for many years, in striving to understand the history of our tongue.
This Chronicle bears the mark of many hands. It is likely that various passages in it were copied from older chronicles, or were set down by old men many years after the events recorded had taken place. A fire, whereby the old Abbey and town of Peterborough were burnt to the ground in 1116, marks a date both in English Architecture and in English Philology. After that year arose the noble choir, which has happily escaped the doom of Glastonbury and Walsingham. After that year, monks were sent out to copy the English chronicles of other Abbeys, and thus to replace the old Peterborough annals, which must have been burnt in the fire.[26] The copyists thus handed down to us a mass of good English prose, a great contrast to the forged charters, drawn up in the Midland speech of 1120, which were newly inserted in the Chronicle. It is with these last that my business lies, as also with the local annals of Peterborough, taken down from the mouths of old men who could remember the doughty deeds of Hereward and his gang fifty years earlier, when men of Danish blood in the East and North were still hoping to shake off William's yoke. I now show how the Old English had changed in the Danelagh before the year 1131, at which date the first Peterborough compilers seem to have laid aside their pens. This reign of King Henry I. is the most interesting of all reigns to a student of English.
As to letter changes, the old h sometimes becomes ch, as burch for burh; this prevailed over the Eastern side of England, from London to York; though gh came to be more used than ch. We see that the diphthong, which our fathers loved, was to drop; for efre (semper) sometimes replaces œfre. These two changes appeared long before in the Lindisfarne Gospels. The Old English Article, se, seo, þœt, becomes hopelessly confused in its cases and genders; we are not far from the adoption of the, to do duty for them all. Our old ð was often laid aside for th, the latter being better known to the Normans. There is a tendency to get rid of the letter g in every part of a word; thus we find
| Dæg | becomes | dæi (day) |
| Geátweard | " | iateward (porter)[27] |
| Cæg | " | keie (key)[28] |
| Þægnâs | " | ðæines (thanes) |
| Ealmihtig | " | ælmihti |
| Sárig | " | sari |
| Agen | " | an (proprius) |
| Ænig | " | ani |
| Legdon | becomes | leidon |
| Sægde | " | seide |
| Læg | " | læi |
| Mæg | " | mæi |
| Geornden | " | iornden (yearned) |
F in the middle of a word was often replaced by v; thus
we geafon becomes we gaven, and lufe becomes luve; this
change was still more marked in the South. The Old
English heorâ and him (in Latin, eorum and eis) now
change into here and hem. This last we still use in
phrases like, give it 'em well; and this Dative Plural
drove out the old Accusative hî. In the same way the
Dative Singular him at this time drove out the Accusative
hine; the latter is now only found in the
mouths of peasants, as ‘hit un hard.’ Squire Western,
who was above a peasant (at least in rank), loved
this old phrase. The Article seo replaces the Old English
heô (in Latin, ea); and the accusative of heô,
which of old was hî, is now seen as hire in the account
of the year 1127. Eôwer becomes iure (your). The
relative Neuter pronoun þœt is now no longer confined to
the Neuter Singular antecedent, but follows Plurals, just
as we use it; thus, in the forged Charter of the year 656,
we find, ealle þa þing Þ. ic wat. It soon came to follow
Masculines and Feminines, much as we employ it now.
The nominative Who did not come in as a Relative till
the next Century. Many short English words now
approached their modern form; what we found long
ago in the Northumbrian Gospels is now repeated at
Peterborough.
| Old English. | Peterborough Chronicle. |
| Ðreô | ðre |
| Æne | ænes (once) |
| Twîwa | twiges (twice) |
| Feôwer | fower (four) |
| Feawa | feuna (few) |
| Oðer | an oþre (another) |
| Swâ hwâ swâ | hwa swa (whoso) |
| Hund | hundred |
| Nán | nun |
| Seofoða | seoueþende (seventh) |
| Þanon | thenen (thence) |
| Þisne | this |
| Betweox | Betwix |
| Onmang | Amang |
| Forþi | þærfore |
| Sóna | son (soon) |
In Nouns the Dative Plural in um has long vanished; there is a general break-up of case-endings; and the Nominative Plural in as (now es) is swallowing up all the other Declensions. The Definite and Indefinite forms of Adjectives were jumbled together, and the agreement of their cases with those of Substantives was no longer heeded.
| Seolfer | becomes | siluer |
| Suná | " | sunes (sons) |
| Naman | " | nam (name) |
| Hlaford[29] | " | lauerd (lord) |
| Leoht | " | liht |
| Heáfod | " | heafed (head) |
| Munecan | " | muneces (monks) |
| Hus | " | huses (houses) |
A good English writer of the Eleventh Century would have been shocked at the corrupt replacing of the old Genitive by such a phrase as this, in the account of the great Peterborough fire in 1116: ‘bœrnde eall þa mœste dœl of þa tuna;’ ‘ic am witnesse of þas Gewrite.’ Henceforward, of was used most freely, at least in the Danelagh. Prepositions were disjoined from the verbs; in the forged Charter of 963 we find he draf út instead of the old he utdráf. These changes we saw earlier in St. Edmund's Legend. We find al used instead of the old Genitive ealra; the latter form still lingers in Shakspere, as alderliefest. The helpful word man shrinks into me; as in the phrase of the year 1124, him me hit berœfode, ‘one bereaved him of it,’ or as we say now, ‘he was bereaved of it.’ This idiom lasted for 160 years more in the Danelagh, and much longer in the South.
We see for to employed in a new sense in the year 1127, like the kindred French pour; se kyng hit dide for to hauene sibbe, the king did it to have peace. Hence the well-known question, ‘what went ye out for to see?’ We suppress the for in modern speech.
The old œlc now becomes ilca, and still lingers in Scotland; in the South we say, each. The phrase, ne belœf þœr noht an (there remained not one), in the account of the year 1131, shows how noht was by degrees replacing the ancient ne. The old swithre now gives way to right (dextera), just as the still older teso (in Gothic, taihswo) long before made room for swithre.
In the year 1124, heftning appears; and some old monk, who aimed at correctness, has put the u, the proper letter to be used, above the i in the manuscript. The Verb, as written at Peterborough in Henry the First's day, is wonderfully changed from what it was in the Confessor's time.
| Old English. | Peterborough. |
| Lufige | Lufe (love) |
| Lufôde | luuede (loved) |
| Sceolde | scolde (should) |
| Eom | Am |
| Beô | be (sit) |
| Beoð | be (sunt) |
| Wæs | was |
| Geræden | geredd (read) |
| Hyded | hidde (hidden) |
| Yrnð | renneth (currit) |
| Ge-coren | cosen (chosen) |
| Bleowon | blewen (blew) |
| Heald | held |
| Meahte | mihte |
| Habban | hafen (have) |
| Gesewon | gesene (seen) |
| Bearn | bærnde (burnt) |
The Infinitive now drops the n, as in the Northumbrian
Gospels. In Pope Agatho's forged charter of 675, we
find ‘ic wille segge,’ I will say: this should have been
seggan. The ge, prefixed to the Past Participle, now
drops altogether in the Danelagh; the Norsemen, having
nothing of the kind, forced their maimed Participle upon
us. The ge, slightly altered, is found to this day in shires
where the Norsemen never settled. Thus, in Dorset
and Somerset they say, ‘I have a-heard,’ the old gehyrde.
One Past Participle, gehaten, still lingered on in the
Midland for fourscore years after the paring down of all
its brethren. No Teutonic country was fonder of this
ge in old times than Southern England.
The ge in nouns is also dropped. Scír-gerefa turns into scirreve, which is not far from sherriff.
But we now come to the great change of all in Verbs,
the Shibboleth which is the sure mark of a Midland
dialect, and which we should be using at this moment,
had the printing-press only come to England thirty
years earlier than it did. The Old English Present
Plural of verbs ended in að, as wê hŷrað, gê hŷrað, hî
hŷrað. It has been thought that, after the common
English fashion, an n has been here cast out, which
used to follow the a. But the peasants in some of our
shires may have kept the older form hŷranð; as we
find the peasants on the Rhine using three different
forms of the Present Plural; to wit, liebent, liebet, and
lieben.[30] Bearing this parallel case in mind, we can understand
how the Present Plural of the Mercian Danelagh
came to end in en and not in að. The Peterborough
Chronicle, in Henry the First's reign, uses liggen, haven,
for the Plural of the Present of Verbs; we even find lin
for liggen. This is the Midland form. The Southern
form would be liggeth, habbeth, a slight alteration of
the Old English. The Northern form, spoken beyond
the Humber, would be ligges, haves, as we saw in the
Northumbrian Gospels. Another Shibboleth of English
dialects is the Active Participle. In the North this
ended in ande, the Norse form. In the Midland it
became ende, the Old English form, though in Lincolnshire
and East Anglia this was often supplanted by the
Danish ande. In the South, it ended in inde, as we
shall soon see. To take an example, we stand singing.
North. — We standes singande.
Midland. — We standen singende.
South. — We standeth singinde.
This Midland form of the Present Plural is still alive in Lancashire. The Southern form is kept in the famous Winchester motto, ‘Manners maketh Man.’
Much shocked would an English scholar, sixty years earlier, have been at such a sentence as this, the last but one of the Chronicle for the year 1127: ne cunne we iett noht seggon, we can say nought yet. It is curious to mark the slow corruption of the old tongue: on þyssum geare, on þis gœr, þis gear.
Many words, common to us and to our brethren on the mainland, live on in the mouths of the common folk for hundreds of years ere they can win their way into books. Thus Mr. Tennyson puts into the mouth of his Lincolnshire farmer the word buzzard-clock for a certain insect. No such word as clock can be found in the Anglo-Saxon dictionaries, though it is tacked on by our peasantry to many other substantives, to stand for various insects. But, on turning to an Old German gloss of wondrous age, we find ‘chuleich, scarabæus.’[31] We shall meet many other English words, akin to the Dutch and High German, which were not set down in writing until the Twelfth, Thirteenth, and Fourteenth Centuries, when these words replaced others that are found in the Anglo-Saxon Dictionary. Some of the strangers are also used by Norse writers; it is thus often hard to tell whether a Teutonic word came to England with Hengist in the Fifth Century or with Hubba in the Ninth Century. Perhaps the safest distinction is to draw a line through Ipswich, Northampton, and Shrewsbury: in the case of strange Teutonic words that crop up to the North of this line, we should lean to Scandinavia; in the opposite case, to Friesland. Thus, in the account of the year 1118, we find wyrre, our war; this reminds us of the Old Dutch werren; in Latin, militare. In 1124, the new form bœrlic, our barley, replaces the old bere, which still lingers in Scotland. Cnawlece (acknowledge) is seen for the first time in a forgery inserted in the account of the year 963. As might be expected, Scandinavian words, long used by the Dano-Anglian peasantry, were creeping into written English prose. The Norse bathe (ambo) drove out the Old English ba and butu. In the forged charter inserted in the annals of 656, we read of the hamlet Grætecros; the last syllable of this comes from the Norse kross, and it was this word, not the French croix, that supplanted our Old English ród (rood). In 1128, we find the phrase, ‘þurh his micele wiles;’ this new word, which is still in our mouths, comes from the Scandinavian vaela (decipere). In 1131, we see ‘þa wæs tenn ploges;’ the substantive is from the Scandinavian plôgr; English is the only Teutonic tongue that of old lacked this synonym for aratrum. The Scandinavian fra replaces the Old English fram; and we still say, ‘to and fro.’ Where an older writer would have written ‘on ðe norð half,’ the Peterborough Chronicler for 1131 changes on into o; from this new form, which soon spread into the South, we get our aloft, aright, and such like. We may still write
either ashore or on shore.
EAST MIDLAND DIALECT OF 1120.
Extracts from a forged Peterborough Charter (inserted in the year 656):
Ða seonde se kyning æffter þone abbode þet he æues-
Then
sent
the
king
after
the
abbot
that
he speedily
telice scolde to him cumon. and he swa dyde. Ða cwæd
should
come
so
did
quoth
se kyning to þan abbode. La leof Sæxulf. ic haue geseond
Lo, loved
I
have
sent
æfter þe for mine saule þurfe. and ic hit wile þe wæl
thee
soul's
need
it will
well
secgon for hwi. Min broðor Peada and min leoue freond
say
why
brother
loved
friend
Oswi ongunnen an mynstre Criste to loue and Sancte
began
minster
to
Christ's glory
Petre. Oc min broþer is faren of þisse liue, swa swa Crist
But
gone from
life
as
wolde. Oc ic wile þe gebidden. la leoue freond. þat hii
pray to
they
wirce æuostlice on þere werce. and ic þe wile finden
may work diligently
the
þærto gold and siluer. land and ahte. and al þæt þærto
goods
behofeð. Ða feorde se abbot ham. and ongan to wircene.
behoves
went
home
began
Swa he spedde swa him Crist huðe. swa þet in feuna
So
as
granted
few
geare wæs þat mynstre gare. Ða þa kyning heorda þæt
years
ready. When
heard
gesecgon. þa wærd se swiðe glæd. heot seonden geond
said
was
he
right
glad
he bade
through
al hi þeode æfter alle his þægne. æfter ærcebiscop. and
his
people
thanes
æfter biscopes. and æfter his eorles. and æfter alle þa
those
þe Gode luuedon. þat hi scoldon to him cumene. and
that
come
seotte þa dæi hwonne man scolde þat mynstre gehalegon.
set
day
when
hallow
. . . . . .
And ic bidde ealle þa þa æfter me cumen. beon hi mine
all those that
be
they
sunes. beon hi mine breðre. ouþer kyningas þa æfter me
or
kings
cumen. þat ure gyfe mote standen. swa swa hi willen
our
gift
may
beon delnimende on þa ece lif. and swa swa hi wilen
partakers in the eternal
ætbeorstan þet ece wite. Swa hwa swa ure gife ouþer
escape
punishment. Whosoever
oþre godene manne gyfe wansiað. wansie him seo
of other
good
men
lessens
the
heofenlice iateward on heofenrice. And swa hwa swa
heavenly
gate-ward
heaven-kingdom
hit eceð. ece him seo heofenlice iateward on heofenrice.
increases
Ðas sindon þa witnes þe þær wæron. and þa þat gewriten
These
are
wrote
mid here fingre on Cristes mele. and ietten mid here
with
their
cross
agreed
tunge. . . . Ðes writ wæs gewriton æfter ure.
Drihtnes acennednesse DCLXIIII. þes kyningas
Lord's
birth
Wulhferes seoueþende gear. þes ærcebiscopes Deusdedit
seventh
IX gear. Leidon þa Godes curs. and ealre halgane curs.
They laid then
saints'
and al cristene folces. þe ani þing undyde þat þær wæs
gedon. swa beo hit seið alle. Amen.
done
so
be
it
say
THE CONTRAST TO THE EAST MIDLAND.
(About A.D. 1120.)
Ure hlaford almihtiʓ God wile and us hot þat we hine lufie. and of him smaʓe and spece. naht him to mede ac hus to freme and to fultume. for him seiʓe alle hiscefte. . . . Gif non man ne þoht of Gode. non ne spece of him. Gif non of him ne spece. non hine ne lufede. Gif non hine ne lufede. non to him ne come. ne delende. nere of his eadinesse. nof his merhðe. Hit is wel swete of him to specene. þenche ʓie ælc word of him swete. al swa an huni tiar felle upe ʓiure hierte. Heo is hefone liht and eorðe brihtnesse. loftes leom. and all hiscefte ʓimston. anglene blisse. and mancenne hiht and hope, richtwisen strenhcþe. and niedfulle frouer.[32]
| Page | 219. | Seraphim birninde oðer anhelend. |
| God lét hi habben áʓen chíre, to chíesen. | ||
| " | 221. | Forgáng þu ones treówes westm. |
| " | 235. | He cweð a wunder worder. |
| " | 223. | Þa weran boðe deadlice. |
| " | 225. | Ic wille halden þe and tí wif. |
| Ic wille settan mi wed (covenant), | ||
| " | 233. | He us forðteh alse is cyldren. |
| Feder, of wam we sielþe habbeð. | ||
| " | 235. | Bárn of hire ogen innoð. |
| Gif ic fader ham. | ||
| Wer laðieres móche. | ||
| " | 239. | Wic ʓéie, wic dredness wurð. |
| Birne alse longe as ic lefie. |
This Southern English, as anyone may see, is far more archaic than the English of Peterborough. After the year 1000, Ælfric wrote many homilies in the English of his day, and these were popular in our land long after his death. A clean sweep, it is true, was made of a Latin sentence of his, wherein he upholds the old Teutonic idea of the Eucharist, and overturns the new-fangled Transubstantiation, a doctrine of which Lanfranc, seventy years later, was the great champion in England.[33] But otherwise Ælfric's teaching was thought sound, and his homilies were more than once turned into the corrupt English of succeeding centuries. We have one of these versions, drawn up about the time of the forged Peterborough charters; this is headed by the extract given above. The East Midland, with its stern contractions, is like the Attic of Thucydides; the Southern English, with its love of vowels and dislike of the clipping process, resembles the Ionic of Herodotus. The work we have now in hand, being written far to the South of the Mercian Danelagh, holds fairly well by the Old English forms; thus, instead of the Peterborough ðe, we find the older se, si, þat; and we sometimes meet with the old Dative Plural in um, though the old Genitive is often replaced by the form with of, and the endings of Verbs are often clipped. A guess may be given as to the place where these Homilies were adapted to the common speech. Forms like fer (ignis) and gelt (scelus) point to some shire near Kent. The combination ie, used by King Alfred, is here found, and does not appear later except in Kent and Essex. The letter o in this work begins to supplant the old a, though not often. This corruption is found in full vigour a hundred years later both in Suffolk and Dorset. Some town lying nearly half-way between the two shires, may have given birth to the new form. We now find mor, long, non, ogen (own), and haligost, for the old már, lang, nán, ágen, and hálig gást. Moreover, as we learn from the Conqueror's English charter to London, the great city was the abode of a large French-speaking population. From these men (Becket's father was one of them), it seems likely that their English fellow-subjects learned to turn the hard c into the soft ch; ceósan and ríce into chiésen and riche. Long before this time, the French castel had become chastel.[34] The changes of the a and the c, most sparingly found as yet, are the two main corruptions that our Standard English has borrowed from the South. Yet the old sounds are apt to linger in proper names; as in Aldgate and Peakirk — a village not far from Rutland. The letter h is now often found wrongly used, or is dropped at the beginning of words. We find the true Southern shibboleth, the Active Participle ending in inde, as birnind instead of the old birnende. Fourscore years later, this was to be still further corrupted. In page 235, we find þes wer isent. This of old would have been wôeron gesended. The old English ân is now pared down into a, and is sometimes also seen as one; so nân þing become na þing. What was bathe at Peterborough is found in the Homilies as bothe, the Gothic bayoths and the Sanscrit ubhau. Danish influence was making itself felt on the Thames. The form abec (aback, in Gothic ibukai) is seen, like the Midland o þe half; in þe is shortened into i ðe. Ealswa is cut down into alse and then into as, the most rapid of all our changes; thus we have formed two new words, also and as, out of one old word. Mîn and þîn are shortened into mi and ti.
We now find the first use of our New English Relative Pronoun. Hwâ and hwylc were never so employed of yore; the former answered to the Latin quis, not to qui; but our tongue was now subject to French influence. As yet, the Genitive and Dative alone of hwa, not the Nominative, are used to express the Relative. Teonðe and sefentiʓe are found instead of teoða and hundseofontig. Swylc, hwylc, and mycel now become swice, wice, and moche; farther changes are to come forty years later. Cildru turns into cyldren, for the South of England, unlike the North, always loved the Plural in en, of which the Germans are so fond. Ége becomes aʓéie, not far from our modern awe; the g is softened into y or i, especially at the beginning of Past Participles. The new letter ʓ now appears to replace the old hard g; it lasted for nearly 350 years. Thanks to it, we wrote citeien, the old French word, as citeʓen in 1340, and in 1380 pronounced it citisen. Thus the Scottish Dalyell and Mackenyie have become Dalziel and Mackenzie.[35] The former hê hafað gewesen is now seen as he hað íbí (he hath been), a wondrous change; hœfde becomes had, and we wôeren is shortened into we wer. Agên, ’œfre, þâs, neah, genoh, yfel, bydel, are replaced by aʓénes, efer, þes, nieh, innoh, euyl, bedele (against, ever, these, nigh, enough, evil, beadle). For is now found for the first time, answering to the Latin enim; and bread (panis) replaces the old hlaf. This reign of Henry the First is indeed an age of change, both in the Midland and in the South. Old English words were becoming strange to English ears. Thus the adapter of the Homilies in this reign has to add the word laga to explain ’œ, the Latin lex (p. 227). A verb sometimes gets a new sense; thus the old ágan, which of old meant nothing more than possidere, comes now to stand for debere; he is ofer us and ah to bienne (ought to be), p. 233; there is also þu ahst (debes). Burch is found instead of burh, as we saw it at Peterborough; and ch often replaces the old h, as richtwis, michti, nachte (nihil); in the word ʓeworhcte we see a mixture of both the forms. We now find a budding corruption that is for ages the sure mark of a Southern dialect; namely, the turning of the old i or y into u. Thus swipen here becomes swupen (p. 239),[36] and the old mycele is sometimes seen as mucele. This particular change has not greatly affected our Standard English, except that we use the Southern much and such instead of the old mycel and swylc. We once see the w thrown out of swa, for we read sa ful (p. 233). Hatrede is found for the first time as well as hate.
A few lines on The Grave, printed by Mr. Thorpe in his Analecta Anglo-Saxonica (p. 142), seem to belong to this time. In this piece we find for the first time in English the word lah or lage (humilis): ‘Hit bið unheh and lah; ðe hele-wages beoð lage.’ The Scandinavian and Frisian have words akin to this. Fourscore years later, we find the verb to laʓhenn (to lower); and almost two hundred years further on, we light on bi loogh (below). We thus in Chaucer's time compounded a new preposition out of an adjective.
THE EAST MIDLAND DIALECT.
(About 1160.)
We now skip thirty years, and once more return to the neighbourhood of Rutland. The Peterborough Chronicle seems to have been laid aside for many years after 1131. England was at this time groaning under some of the worst sorrows she has ever known; we have come to the nineteen winters when Stephen was King. As soon as these evil days were over, and England had begun her happy course (this has lasted, with but few checks, for more than seven hundred years[37]), the Peterborough monks went on with their Chronicle. Their language was becoming more and more corrupt; but the picture they set before us of King Stephen's days is a marvel of power, and shows the sterling stuff that a Monastic writer often had in him.
The English, which we are now to weigh, dates from about the year 1160. More Norse forms crop up; we find cyrceiœrd (kirkyard) formed on the Norse pattern, instead of the Old English cirictune. When King Stephen lays hold of Earl Randolph, he is said to act through ‘wicci rede.’ This is the first appearance in our island of the common word wicked, a word which Mr. Wedgwood derives from Lapland or Esthonia. There is a change in the meaning of words; thus w’œr of old meant cautus, but it now gets the new sense of sciens; as in the account of the year 1140, ‘he wart it war,’ he became aware of it. By this time many of the Southern corruptions had made their way to Rutland and its neighbourhood: thus o was beginning to replace a; mor and oune are used instead of már and ân. We see here œie, agenes, alsuic, alse, for, onoh, a, just as we saw them in the Homilies; and ahte stands for debuit, following the Southern fashion. What was hwa swa thirty years earlier is now wua sua, not for from our whoso. Eall is dropped altogether, in favour of the Anglian all. A form, of old found but seldom, now appears instead of œlc; to this word ever is prefixed, and œric (every) is the result. In this way our fathers afterwards compounded whoever, whatsoever, and other strange forms. Ic makes way for I, the old Anglian ih, found in the Northumbrian Gospels; seo changes into scœ, but we have to wait more than a hundred years for our well-known she; hit becomes it. The Southern ‘heo hefde íbí’ is seen in the Midland as scœ hadde ben. The particle ne of old was always attached to the verb to express negation; but this ne is now replaced by noht, our not; in the account of 1132, we read, was it noht lang. This form was unknown at London for nearly two hundred years afterwards: Peterborough, it is plain, has had more influence upon our speech than London. The Anglian til (usque), a word never found in the South, replaces the Old English oð, which soon vanished altogether. The ending of the Infinitive had already been pared down from an into en and e; it now lost even this; for we find in the account of the year 1135, sculde cumm (should come), durste sei (durst say); this sculde was once sceolde,[38] Other corruptions of the Verb are seen in hi namm for hî nâmen; there is also he spac, he let, he mint; what is now the Scottish form gœde (ivit) is found for the first time instead of the old eôde. Lœde (duxit) now becomes lœd, our led. Nefan becomes neues; the Irish peasantry still keep this old form ‘nevvies,’ rejecting our French-born word ‘nephews.’ Cyse, niwe, treówð, ðúman, nearo, become in 1160 cœse (cheese), neuue (new), treuthe, þumbes, nareu (narrow). On sl’œp becomes an slep, not far from our asleep. We find both nan treuthe and na iustise, the old and the new form for nullus.
Prepositions are not often prefixed to the Verb, but are separated from it; we find such forms as candles to œten bi, he let him ut, he sculde cumm ut. Wile is used no longer exclusively as a noun, but like the Latin dum; an early instance of a conjunction being thus formed. Our modern qu is found instead of the Old English cw, as quarterne; c is giving way to k, for we find smoke and snake. Moreover, we see in the account of the year 1138 the first beginning of a new combination of letters, most common now in our speech; gh supplants g, as sloghen (they slew); we saw something similar in the Homilies. This change soon prevailed all through the East Midland, from Essex to Yorkshire. Burch, not the Old English burh, is the name given to Peterborough by its Chroniclers. The verbs can and cuthe are most freely employed; of old, may and might would have been used. Forms like thereafter and therein come pretty often, and altogœder is seen for the first time. King Stephen, we are told in the account of the year 1137, had treasure, but ‘scatered sotlice;’ that is, ‘dispersed it like a fool.’ This new word scatter is akin to the Dutch schetteren, which has the same meaning.
EAST MIDLAND DIALECT OF 1160.
Extract from the Peterborough Chronicle for the year 1137.
. . . . .
Þa the suikes undergæton þat he milde man was and
When
traitors
understood
softe and god and na iustise ne dide. þa diden hi alle
good
no
then
they
wunder. Hi hadden him manred maked and athes
homage
made
oaths
suoren. ac hi nan treuthe ne heolden. alle hi wæron for-
but
held
sworen. and here treothes forloren. for æuric rice man
forfeited
every mighty
his castles makede and agænes him heolden and fylden
against
þe land ful of castles. Hi suencten suyðe þa uurecce
oppressed
sore
wretched
men of þe land mid castelweorces. Þa þe castles uuaren
castle-works
were
maked. þa fylden hi mid deoules and yvele men. Þa
devils
namen hi þa men þe hi wenden þat ani god hefden. bathe
took
they thought
property had
be nihtes and be dæies. carlmen and wimmen. and diden
men
put
heom in prisun efter gold and sylver. and pined heom
them
for
tortured
untellendlice pining. for ne uuæren næure nan martyrs
unspeakable
torture
no
swa pined alse hi wæron. Me henged up bi the fet and
as they
smoked heom mid ful smoke. me henged bi the thumbes.
foul
other bi the hefed. and hengen bryniges on her fet. Me
or
head
hung
burning things
dide cnotted strenges abuton here hæved. and uurythen
head
twisted
to þat it gæde to þe hærnes. Hi diden heom in quar-
went
brains
prison
terne. þar nadres and snakes and pades wæron inne. and
where adders
toads
drapen heom swa. Sume hi diden in crucet hus. þat is
killed
Some
house
in an ceste þat was scort and nareu and undep. and dide
chest
short
shallow
scærpe stanes þerinne. and þrengde þe man þærinne. þat
sharp
stones
crushed
him bræcon alle þe limes. In mani of þe castles wæron
broke
limbs
lof and grim þat wæron rachenteges. þat twa other thre
neck-bonds
or
men hadden onoh to bæron onne. Þat was sua maced.
enough
one
þat is fæstned to an beom. and diden an scærp iren abuton
þa mannes þrote and his hals. þat he ne myhte nowider-
neck
in any
wardes ne sitten ne lien ne slepen. oc bæron al þat iren.
direction
lie
but
Mani þusen hi drapen mid hungær. I ne canne i ne
thousands
mai tellen alle þe wundes. ne alle þe þines þat hi diden
wrecce men on þis land, and þat lastede þa XIX. wintre
wile Stephne was king. and ævre it was uuerse and
worse
uuerse. . . .
1154. — On þis gær wærd þe king Steph. ded. and be-
was
byried þer his wif and his sune wæron bebyried æt
Fauresfeld. þæt minstre hi makeden. Þa þe king was
ded. ða was þe eorl beionde sæ. and ne durste nan man
don oþer bute god. for þe micel eie of him.
awe
The year 1135. Micel þing sculde cumm.
Æuric man sone rævede. .
Wua sua bare his byrthen. .
THE CONTRAST TO THE EAST MIDLAND.
(About 1160.)[39]
Ure feder þet in heouene is,
þet is al soð ful iwis.
wee moten to þeos weordes iseon.
þet to liue and to saule gode beon.
þet weo beon swa his sunes iborene.
þet he beo feder and we him icorene.
þet we don alle his ibeden.
and his wille for to reden.
Loke weo us wið him misdon
þurh beelzebubes swikedom
he haueð to us muchel nið.
alle þa deies of ure sið.
abuten us he is for to blenchen.
Mid alle his mihte he wule us swenchen.
Gif we leornið godes lare.
þenne ofþuncheð hit him sare.
Bute we bileuen ure ufele iwune.
Ne kepeð he noht þet we beon sune.
Gif we clepieð hine feder þenne.
al þet is us to lutel wunne.
halde we godes laʓe.
þet we habbeð of his saʓe.
. . . . .
Page 75. Ic ileue in god þe fede(r) almihti. scuppende and weldende of heouene and of orðe and of alle iscefte. and ich ileue on þe helende crist. his enlepi sune. ure lauerd. he is ihaten helende for he moncun helede of þan deþliche atter. þet þe aide deouel blou on adam and on eue and on al heore ofsprinke. swa þet heore fif-falde mihte horn wes al binumen. þet is hore lust, hore loking. hore blawing. hore smelling, heore feling wes al iattret.
| Page | 53. | Is afered leste þeo eorðe trukie. |
| " | 63. | For þe saule of him is forloren. |
| " | 73. | Ech mon habbe mot. |
| " | " | Heo sculen heore bileue cunnen . . |
| " | 83. | Ðe sunne schineð þer þurh . . |
| " | " | Ho nimeð al swuch. |
| " | 127. | Muchele mare luue he scawede us. |
| " | 129. | Heo weren ipult ut of paradise.[40] |
| " | 141. | Ðer stod a richt halue and a luft. |
| Page | 145. | Techeð us bi hwiche weie. |
| " | 179. | Were we . . . . swa vuele bicauhte. |
| " | 129. | Him þuhte bicumelic þet we . . . weren alesede. |
The poem, part of which I have set out above, is the earliest long specimen of an English riming metre that is still popular.[41] Having been compiled somewhere about 1160, the work stands about half way between the Beowulf and the last work of Mr. Tennyson. The French riming lays, of which our Norman and Angevin rulers were so fond, must have been the model followed by the English bard, whoever he was. In the same volume are many Homilies, which give us a good idea of the English spoken in the South at this time. The following are the main points of difference between them and the Homilies of Henry the First's time.
A new combination of letters, au (well known in
Gothic), is seen for the first time in English; as blauwen,
naut, bicauhte.
Oh is beginning to change into ou, as nout and inou for noht and inoh.
O replaces a much oftener than before; lore, strong, and nohwer are examples; we find both naþing and noþing (pp. 165 and 181), both na mon and no tunge.
The diphthong œ was losing ground; thus sœ becomes sea, and œgðer becomes eiðer; but the combination ei has never been popular, at least in Teutonic words.
We sometimes find v substituted for f at the beginning of a word, as vette for fette (page 81). It is the influence of the South Western shires that makes us write vixen and vat instead of the old fixen and fœt; it is a wonder that we do not also write vox. G is commonly turned into y, but sometimes into w; thus folegede turns into folewed and laga into law; this is as yet most rare.
France was now dictating much of our pronunciation, and many of the vowels must in this age have been sounded in the same way on either side of the Channel. Ch replaces c in countless instances. Cerran (verti) now becomes cherre; we still say ‘on the jar,’[42] or ajar. We also find chirche, leche, diche, teache, biseche (beseech). The verb seche, which was elsewhere seke, shows whence comes our search; the derivation from chercher, given even in our latest dictionaries, must be wrong, for changer does not become sange in English. Still, the intruding r in search must be due to the French verb. Moreover we see, in page 83, the two forms scine and schine (shine), the last being a new sound now creeping into English. So popular did it become, that we forced French verbs in ir to take the sound, as cherish and flourish. But the French cabus has become cabbage, just as Perusia became Perugia. The corrupt forms of 1120, swice, wice, and moche, now become swulc, swuche, and sulche (such); wilche, and hwiche; muche and muchel. The old gylt becomes gult in the South; our guilt is a combination of the two. We see a new form in hwilke time se eure (which time so ever). Ælc (quisque) takes its modern shape of elche and eche; and an is fastened on to it, though as yet very seldom. Thus, at page 91, we read ‘heo it delden elchun;’ that is, to each one. Latost (ultimus) is cut down to leste at page 143; and þy lœs þe is shortened into leste, which we still keep. If and neor replace the old gif and neah; the first is the Scandinavian ef. Saule of him is put for his soul, simply to eke out a rime; and the of is sometimes used as an adverb, with a new spelling, as at page 29, ‘ʓif þin hefet were offe,’ The word þurhut (throughout) now appears. Oðerlicor now becomes oðer-weis (page 31); at page 165 we see evrema (evermore); at page 139 the œvric (quisque) of Peterborough is found in its new shape, efri: the East Midland corruptions were already beginning to find their way to the South. What was before written on lif (in vita) is now seen as alive (page 161); yet our dictionary-makers, even to this day, will have it that alive is an adjective. We see such new forms as underling and fowertene niht (fortnight). When we find the word knave child applied to the infant Saviour at page 77, we get some idea of the degradation undergone by the word knave since the Twelfth century. Bicumelic now first appears for decorus, shortened by us into comely; bicuman is used for both decere and fieri (pages 45 and 47). Lot also gets a wholly new meaning; at page 31 we read of a ‘þridde lot’ (tertia pars). Geleafa now takes its modern form bileue, belief; just as gelitlian was to become to belittle.[43] H’œs, geong, betst, sorh, deaw, þeau, gescy, légere, and Sunnandœg, now become heste, yung, best, sorewe, deu, þewe, sceos (shoes), lihʓare (liar), and Sunnedei (Sunday). The old hwilke had not yet come to stand for the Neuter Relative, for we find ‘ʓeten þurh hwam’ (gates through which), page 153. We see a new use of hwat in the sentence (page 145), ‘we beoð in wawe, hwat for ure eldere werkes, hwat for ure aʓene gultes.’ We still keep this idiom, but we should now employ with instead of for. At page 53, we see in two lines both the new alse feire alse and the old swa sone se. At page 33 we find a form, well known to English witnesses, ‘swa me helpe Drihten.’ Our forefathers used to express the Latin sinister by wynstre, something that was wanting in full strength. In these Homilies we find wynstre changed into luft (left), to which we still cling. There is a kindred word to this in Holland.
As to Verbs; the Participle iturned becomes iturnd at
page 157, with the clipped pronunciation we still use, except
at church. We sometimes find the Midland beon
instead of the Southern beoth. At page 21, we scolden is
used for we sculen, and the corruption still holds its ground. Another form for debemus, we agon, now becomes
we achten (we ought), page 167. The old geworht
is turned into iwrat (wrought). In page 173, we find
hi walkeð eure. This is our modern sense of the old
verb wealcan, which before meant nothing but to roll.
The old scéadan (separare) now gets the sense of fundere
(page 157); the former meaning still lingers in watershed.
Stœlwyrð used to mean ‘worth stealing;’ at page 25 it
gets its new sense, validus: perhaps it was confounded
with staðelferhð, The verb sceáwian loses its old meaning
spectare, and gets its new sense monstrare, though we still
call spectaculum a show. We know that the word afford
has puzzled our antiquarians; we find it employed in these
Homilies, page 37: ‘do þine elmesse of þon þet þu maht
iforðien.’ Bishop Pecock uses avorthi in this sense
three hundred years later. The old geforðian only
meant ‘to further or help.’ Here, at least, we need not
seek for help from France.[44] The substantive cachepol may
be seen, in page 97, applied to St. Matthew's old trade.
The verb catch is found for the first time with its Past
Participle cauhte; this Mr. Wedgwood derives from the
Picard cacher, meaning the same as chasser. There is
hardly another instance of an English Verb, coming from
the French, not ending with ed in the Past Participle.[45]
To put or pult, another dark word, is also met with;
there is a Danish putten, but some point us to the
French bouter, and to Celtic roots. It was long before
put meant ponere as well as trudere.
The Norse skil (discretion) is first found at page 61; and the Norse cast (torquere) at page 47. At page 131 may be found our verb thrust, coming from the Norse þrŷsta: ‘he to-þruste þa stelene gate.’ At page 43, we see our smother (there called smorðer), which is nearer related to the Low German of the mainland than to the Old English smorian. Siker, akin to securus, now first appears.
We may often find an old pedigree for a word that is now reckoned slangy. We are told at page 15 that we ought to restrain the evil done by thieves; the verb used is wiðstewen, afterwards repeated in the Legend of St. Margaret. Hence comes the phrase, ‘stow that nonsense;’ this may be found in Scott and Dickens.[46] Our verb lick, as used in polite society, can boast of the best of Teutonic pedigrees; as commonly used by schoolboys, it is but a corruption of the Welsh llachiaw (ferire). From this last may also come our flog, even as Lloyd and Floyd are due to one and the same source.
We may compare the Moral Ode of the date of these Homilies with its transcript a few years later. In this latter, W is much oftener employed for the old g or y in the middle of a word; as drawen, owen. Thanks to the corruption found in this last verb, we have two distinct forms for debeo: I owe money, and I ought to pay. The encroachment of w upon g or y may be remarked in another Southern work of about the same date, the Poem on the Soul and Body, printed from a Worcester manuscript by Sir Thomas Phillipps. In pages 2 and 6 of this work, we see fugelas turned into fuweles (fowls), sugu into suwa (sow), and elboga into elbowe. An attempt is even made to change our word days into dawes, a corruption that lasted long in the South. The old þurh (per) now becomes þuruh, pointing to our later thorough and through. In page 7 of this work, we find a Weak Verb turned into a Strong one, which seldom happens in English; þeo bellen rungen, where the last word should be ringoden. The old eahte and feower now become eihte and four. We find bokes, so, dayes, þih, eiʓe, hei, chiken, neih,[47] heihnesse, instead of the older béc, swa, dagas, þeoh, eáge, hég, cicen, neah, heáhnes. We were beginning to couple together the Southern c and the Northern k, as in crock and þicke. Another budding change may be seen in spindel, which is turned into spindle. The new form ou was beginning to replace the older o, for souhte and inouh are found instead of sohte and genoh: the letter u is not yet changed into ou. Some new phrases appear, such as alto longe, the all being often prefixed, as it was later in our although, albeit, &c. The new Preposition besiden, formed from side, is now first found;[48] also wome (væ mihi), which was long afterwards lengthened into woe is me. Cantwaraburh is now changed into Cantoreburi; and thus the French way of spelling (did they ever yet spell a Teutonic word right?) influenced us. Bæda becomes Beda; and we see the Old and the New in the short sentence, ‘Ælfric abbod þe we Alquin hoteþ.’ It is hopeless, after seven hundred years of wrong spelling, to talk now of King Ælfred. Ortgeard is softened into orchard. Rá-deor (capreolus) is changed into roa-deor, and shows us the steps by which the old a became the new o; we still write broad and goad, a compromise between the North and the South. The sound o in English can be expressed by about ten different combinations of letters; the student of our tongue must here long for the simplicity of the Italian.
About this time, the reign of Henry II., the Old Southern English Gospels of King Ethelred's time were fitted for more modern use. These, known in their new form as the Hatton Gospels, are now accessible to all; St. Matthew's Gospel was published in 1858.[49] The main corruption, wrought by two hundred years or less, is the change of c into ch, as mycel into mychel and œlc into elch. The endings are clipped as usual; thus sunu becomes sune. These Gospels were the last version of Scripture, so far as is known, put forth in England until Wickliffe's day; free paraphrases and riming translations of the Psalms might indeed be compiled; but the next Century, with its Albigensian wars and its Lateran Councils, frowned upon literal versions of the Bible in any vulgar tongue. Even the stout Teutons of England had in this to give way to Roman behests. We are still two hundred years from the Lollard outbreak.
We must now for the third time cast an eye upon the Homilies, which throw such a flood of light upon Twelfth Century English.[50] Those to which I now refer date from about 1180, and seem to have been written in Essex, according to evidence brought forward by Dr. Morris; for some of their forms are akin to the Danelagh, others to the South. They have peculiarities, found also in Kent; such as the change of i into e, manken for mankin, sennen for sinnen; also, the combination of ie to express the sound of e, as in lief, bitwien, gier, þief, fiend, friend; lie (page 229) for the older leoʓen; glie for gleo; fieble (page 191) for what we call feeble. This combination is found in King Alfred's translation of Pope Gregory's Pastoral Care, and after 1120 was preserved nowhere else but in Kent and in the shire where the present Homilies were written. Another combination of vowels, common enough in Gothic but hitherto almost unknown in England, is that of ai.[51] We find in these Homilies the new forms maiden, nail, slaine, nai: here the i represents an older g; the ancient diphthong œ, beloved of old, was soon to vanish from England. There is here also a combination of consonants much used in the Eastern half of England, that of gh replacing the old h; we now find þoghte and aghte (debuit); this was as yet strange to the shires South of Thames. Another mark of the North and of the Eastern coast, the use of sal instead of shall, is also found. The hard g sound was henceforth peculiar to East Anglia and Northern Essex; we here find folegen, burg, gure (vester), beger (emptor), gier (annus); also the corrupt gede (ivit). The new sound sh instead of sc, seldom found hitherto, is now established in the South; as shown in bisshup, shipe, shufe (our shove), shrifte, fishes. The w, which replaced g in so many words, is creeping up from the South; we see owen, bruw buw, for agen, breg, and boga. Such forms occur as sined (peccavit), gres (gramen), eke (etiam), fewe, sori, breðren, reu (pœnitet). In this last word we now transpose the vowels. We here see the old Frigedœg, geoguð, genemned, pyndan, cneowian, ceaca, gedriged, draf, brœc, leger, turned into Fridai, ʓieuð, nemmed, pen, cnewl, cheke, dride, drof, brac, leire (lair). The prefix to the Past Participle often disappears, a sure token of Norse influence; as is also the aren (sunt) and heðen (hinc), found in these Homilies. At page 25, we get a bit of Old English philology: God is called Father, we are there told, for two things; ‘on his for þo þe he . . . feide (joined) þe lemes to ure licame . . . oðer is þat he fet (feeds) alle þing.’ The fact that a new French sound ch often replaced the old hard English sound c, has enriched our tongue with two sets of words; thus we have the two distinct verbs, wake and watch, both springing from the old wœcan. But in 1180 their use was most unsettled; at page 161 we hear that the Devil weccheð (awaketh) evil.
There are many new expressions in these Homilies; such as anon,[52] welnehg (wellnigh), for þe nones (instead of for þan ænes, page 87), raþer (in the sense of potius, not citius, page 213), a Godes name, alse þeih (quasi); mast mannen (maxima pars hominum); shewe em, page 57. At page 175 we hear of two brethren, ‘þat on is Seint Peter and þat oðer Seint Andreu:’ this is a great change from the se an . . . se oðer used of the two men who strove for the Papacy in 1129, as recorded in the Peterborough Chronicle of that year. In Scotch law papers the tan and the tother may be remarked down to very modern times;[53] the confusion between letters is like that seen in the nonce. The Masculine and Neuter of the Article were no longer to be distinguished; at least, in Danish shires. The o, which has so often replaced the old a, has added to our stock of synonyms for unus; we now employ one and an in distinct ways, but this had not been settled in 1180: at page 125 we read of ‘on old man,’ and two lines lower down of ‘an holie child.’
Many English words were now getting new meanings. Among the works of darkness mentioned at page 13 are ‘chest and chew,’ translated by Dr. Morris ‘contention and jaw,’ a new sense of the old ceówan, our chew.[54] There is a famous Mediæval phrase in page 113; Christ, it is there said, ‘herede helle;’ the Harrowing of Hell plays a leading part in our old literature from first to last. We know our phrase, ‘to take to his bed;’ we read in page 29, ‘þu takest to huse,’ that, is, ‘thou keepest at home.’ At page 39, we hear of ‘a man þe was of his wit;’ hence comes our, ‘off his feed.’ At page 201 we see a broad line drawn between napping and sleeping. At page 151, wlache, the old wlœc, is the adjective applied to snow melted by the sun; this is seen in our luke-warm. The old tilian (colore) remains to this day as till; but it had another sense laborare: this last is expressed in page 155 by changing tilian into tulien. England was losing many of her old words; but she made the most of those that were left to her by giving double meanings to certain terms.
We find new forms like ‘to croke’ or ‘make crooked,’ page 61; and swoldren, our swelter, page 7; snevi and snuve (sniff and snuff, pages 37 and 191). Trustliche (trustfully) appears, akin to the Frisian trâst.
There are many Norse words, which we have followed, rather than the kindred old English forms.
| Heve, heave | from | hefia |
| Holsum, wholesome | " | heilsamr |
| Mece, meek | " | miúkr |
| Redie, ready | " | rede |
| Rote, root | " | róte |
| Shurte, shirt | " | skyrta |
| Shrike, shriek | " | skrika |
| Shere, sheer[55] | " | skærr |
| Smoc, smock | " | smokkr |
| Tiðing, tidings | " | tiðindi |
| Toten, spectare[56] | " | titte (Danish) |
There are here also a few words common to England and Holland, such as twist, wimple, and shiver (findere). To scorn is here seen for the first time; some have derived it from the French escornir, to deprive of horns. But it is used a few years later by Orrmin, the last of all men to use a French word: scœrn (stercus) is the more likely parent of the word. The old wœr (cautus) now becomes warre (page 193), our wary.
We have a collection of King Alfred's saws, dating from about the year 1200.[57] It seems, like the Homilies just discussed, to have been compiled somewhere in the North of Essex; for we find the thorough East Anglian forms, such as gung, sal, wu, arren (young, shall, how, are), and also Norse words, such as plough. On the other hand, we find the Active Participle ending in both the Midland end and the Southern ind, and the prefix i or y in constant use in all parts of the Verb; the Southern o moreover has driven out the older a, as no þing for na þing, swo for swa. But there is a further change in the sound and spelling of vowels. Bóc is turned into booc, and gód into goed. The old sound of o was being replaced by u in many parts of England; about this time Orrmin far away was writing bule (taurus) and funnt instead of boli and font. Moreover, in the poem before us, u is replaced by oo; wood is written for the old wude (silva). The combination ai was in full force; before it the Old English diphthong œ was to vanish. We here find again, fair, maist (potes). This last word is a corruption of þu meaht. Ne leve þu is now turned into leve þe nout (ne crede). Wela becomes welð; hwilis þat stands for the Latin dum. For soþe (forsooth) is seen for the first time. A new adjective is formed from lang; the poet mentions at the end of his piece þe lonke mon, the lanky man. It is said of a saucy fellow, that ‘he wole grennen, cocken, and chiden;’ here we have the first hint as to our adjective cocky. The whole poem is most Teutonic; but at the end of the two last stanzas, the bard, perhaps wishing to show off, brings in a few French words most needlessly: —
Ac nim þe to þe a stable mon
þat word and dede bisette con,
and multeplien heure god,
a sug fere þe his help in mod.
. . . . .
Hie ne sige nout bi þan,
þat moni ne ben gentile man;
þuru þis lore and genteleri
he amendit huge companie.[58]
This is the first instance of our word gentleman. We find for the first time the Frisian haste, and also dote (dolt), akin to a Dutch term; besides a few Scandinavian words. Huge, from the Norse ugga, to frighten. Scold, from the Swedish skalla. We have also added to our well-known word ban the Norse sense maledicere, as seen in this poem. About the year 1200, the Old English Charters of Bury St. Edmunds were turned into the current speech of the shire, and these fill many pages of Kemble's Codex Diplomaticus.
THE EAST MIDLAND DIALECT.
(About 1200.)
I now come to that writer who, more clearly than any other, sets before us the growth of the New English, the great work of the Twelfth Century. The monk Orrmin wrote a metrical paraphrase of the Gospels, with comments of his own, somewhere about the year 1200; at least, he and Layamon employ the same proportion of Teutonic words that are now obsolete, and Layamon is known to have written after 1204. Orrmin, if he were the good fellow that I take him to have been (I judge from his writings), was a man well worthy to have lived in the days that gave us the Great Charter. He is the last of our English Makers who can be said to have drank from the undefiled Teutonic well; no later writers ever use so many Prepositional compounds, and on this account we ought perhaps to fix upon an earlier year than 1200 for his date. In the course of his lengthy poem, he uses only four or five French words; his few Latin words are Church phrases known in our land long before the Norman Conquest.[59] On the other hand, he has scores of Scandinavian words, the result of the Norse settlement in our Eastern shires 300 years before his day. His book is the most thoroughly Danish poem ever written in England, that has come down to us; many of the words now in our mouths are found for the first time in his pages. Had some of our late Lexicographers pored over him more, they would have stumbled into fewer pitfalls.[60]
It is most important to fix the shire in which Orrmin wrote, since no man did more to simplify our English grammar, and to sweep away all nicety as to genders and cases. From his use of the ch instead of c, he cannot well be established to the North of the Humber. From his employment of their, them (though indeed he sometimes uses her, hem, as well), he cannot fairly be brought further South than Lincoln. Had he lived in Lincolnshire, he would have used sal and suld instead of shall and should, and perhaps too, the participle in and, instead of ende. A line drawn between Doncaster and Derby seems to be the Western boundary of the old Danish settlement in Mercia, for few hamlets ending in by are found to the West of this line, and a writer so Scandinavian as Orrmin must have lived to the East of it. On the whole, the North of the county of Notts seems as likely a spot as any for his abode.[61] There are many links between him and the Peterborough Chronicler who wrote forty years earlier. The word gehaten or ʓehatenn is almost the only Past Participle which they leave unclipped of its prefix. They both use the two great Midland shibboleths, the Present Plural in en and the Active Participle in ende. They have the same objection to any ending but es for the Genitive Singular and the Nominative Plural, following in this the old Northumbrian Gospels. They do not inflect the Article, and are thus far ahead of the Kentish writer in 1340. Orrmin uses that as a Demonstrative and not as a Neuter Article; he knows nothing of the old thilk, used in Somersetshire to this day. He has no trace of the Genitive Plural in ene, which lingered on in the South for two hundred and fifty years after his time; he makes no distinction between Definite and Indefinite Adjectives, and their Plurals do not end in es. Writing, as he does, not far from the spot where the Northumbrian Psalter is thought to have been translated, he has a strong dislike to compound vowels. He often writes brest, callf, cnew, darr, dep, ledd, fihhtenn, frend, lernenn, instead of the old breost, cealf, cneow, dear, deop, lœd, feohtan, freond, leornigan. In the pronunciation of these words, as in many other things, we have followed him. By this time, the new sound ch had made its way from the South up to the Trent; we find bennche, lœche, macche, spœche, instead of the old benc, l’œce, maca, spœce.[62] Orrmin was the second English writer, so far as is known, who pretty regularly used sh instead of the former sc; he wrote shœfess, shœþe, shœwenn, shall, and shame: this change began in the South, and the older form had not altogether gone out in the North, for he uses both biskop and bishop. Nowhere more clearly than in the Ormulum can we see the struggle between the Old and the New. He continues the custom of softening g into y; eage with him is eʓhe, not far from our eye; geong becomes ʓung. We have happily not followed him in softening the g in words like give, get, and gate; or in corrupting deor (in Latin, ferœ) into deoress, deers. He was the first to place ʓ at the end of a word, after a vowel; as þeʓʓ (they). He gave us lay instead of the Peterborough lai. Orrmin, being a true Northerner, dislikes the old fashion of setting a at the beginning of a verb: he will not write arise or awake. The Northern men, who settled our speech, clipped everything that they could.
In his Pronouns, he shows that he is a near neighbour to Northumbria. He uses I and icc; þeʓʓ, þeʓʓre, þeʓʓm; but sometimes replaces the two last by heore, hemm. It was two hundred and sixty years before their and them came into Standard English; they are true Scandinavian forms. Unlike the Peterborough Chronicler, Orrmin sticks to the Old English heo (in Latin, ea), which he writes ʓho. This is another reason for settling him as far to the West in the Danelagh as we can; his ʓho still survives in Lancashire as hoo, as we know from Mrs. Gaskell's works.
It would be endless to point out all Orrmin's Scandinavian leanings. In our word for the Latin stella, he prefers the Danish stierne to the Old English steorra, writing it sterrne. He even uses og, the Danish word for ‘et’ in a phrase like aʓʓ occ aʓʓ. He employs the Norse ending leʓʓc as well as the English ness in his substantives, as modiʓleʓʓc, modiʓnesse. In tende, his word for decimus, he follows the Danish tiende rather than the Old English teoða; our tenth seems to be a compound of the two. The English Church talks of tithes, the Scotch Kirk of teinds. He uses a crowd of Norse words which I do not notice, since they have dropped out of use. Like the Peterborough Chronicler, Orrmin has fra, wicke, wrang, wiless, ploh, kirrkegœrd. While weighing the mighty changes that were clearly at work in his day, we get some idea of the influence that the Norse settlement of 870 has had upon our tongue. I give a list of those Scandinavian words, used by him, which have kept their place in our speech.[63]
| Old English. | Scandinavian. | Orrmin. |
| Tynan | Angra | Anngrenn, to anger |
| Unscearp | Blunda, dormire | Blunnt |
| Ceapsetl | Bûdh | Boþe, booth |
| Fear | Boli | Bule, bull |
| Hræd | Buinn | Bun, ready[64] |
| Sniðan | Klippa | Clip, tondere |
| Searu | Krokr, uncus | Croc, a device |
| Sweltan | Deyja | Deʓe, die |
| Wunian | Dvelia, delay | Dwelle[65] |
| Afaran | Flytta | Flitte, remove |
| Paþ | Gata | Gate, path |
| Freme | Gagn, commodum | Gaʓhenn, gain |
| Gescrepelice | Gegnilega, conveniently | Geʓʓnlike[66] |
| Cræft | Ginna, seducere | Ginn, a contrivance |
| Ceápman | Okr, usury | Huccster[67] |
| Yfel | Illa | Ille, ill |
| Ticcen | Kid | Kide, capreolus |
| Tendan | Kinda | Kindle |
| Up-heah | á Lopti | o Lofft, aloft |
| Neát | Naut | Nowwt, nolt in Scotch |
| Sige | Overhaand | Oferrhannd, upper hand |
| Eax | Palöxi | Bulaxe, poll-axe |
| Arasian | Reisa | Reʓʓsenn, to raise |
| Scop | Skálld | Scald, minstrel |
| Forbtian | Skierra | Skerre, scare |
| Cræftig | Slægr | Sleh, sly |
| Spor | Slódi | Sloþ, track |
| Fægr | Smuk[68] | Smikerr, beautiful |
| Þeon | Þrífask | Þrife, thrive |
| Fultume | Upphelldi | Upphald, an upholding |
| Rod | Vöndr | Wand, rod |
| Wansian | Vanta | Wantenn, carere |
| Fyðer | Vængr | Weng, wing |
| Wyrse | Vaerre | Werre, waur in Scotch |
| Geol | Iól | Yol, Yule |
Orrmin's work proves that England had not yet lost the power of compounding words with Prepositions and such words as even, full, orr, un, and wan. This gives wonderful strength and pith to his verse. We degenerate writers of later days use few compounds but those with out, over, under, and fore; and in this respect England falls woefully short of India, Greece, and Germany. Orrmin, like the Peterborough Chronicler, separates the Verb and the Preposition; he says, ‘to standenn inn’ (instare), ‘he strac inn,’ from the old strican, to pass.[69] Inn is by him often pared down to i, as in the Southern Homilies; Shakespere has ‘digged i the dark.’ The letter n often vanishes before a dental, as in the case of tonth, tooth.
The old bufan now becomes abufenn (above); bifóran
changes to biforr (ante).
The Scotch forbye (præter) here appears as forrþbi; so forthward became forward.
Orrmin often writes uppo for upon. This is one of the Derbyshire peculiarities, which have lately been brought home to all lovers of good English by the authoress of Adam Bede. The old uppe preceded the more modern uppan.
Most striking is the number of Orrmin's words beginning with the privative un. We have lost many of them, and have thus sadly weakened our diction; but our best writers are awaking to a sense of our loss, and such words as unwisdom are coming in once more.
The privative or, as orraþ is still found in the Ormulum, but did not last much longer.
The old hwœt litles, which lingered on elsewhere, is here changed into summwhatt, which we have kept: there is a change in the consonants, if we compare the old hwœt with the new what;[70] we also find sum oþerr and summwhœr.
Orrmin employs that for the Latin ille, a sense unknown before the Conquest; while London stuck to the old thilk for two hundred and fifty years longer.
Vol. I. p. 227. Whase itt iss þatt lufeþþ griþþ, þatt mann shall findenn Jesu Crist.
For the Plural of this þatt he employs þa (fifty years
later this þa was to become þas).
II. p. 153, alle þa þatt waterr swalh.
In Vol. I. p. 85, we see our common form theirs for the first time.
‘Till eʓʓþerr þeʓʓress herrte.’ Forms like ours and yours were to come later. This Norse form took long to reach the South.
The old œlc (quisque), as in the South, was now taking an after it; hence comes the Lowland Scotch form ilka, as in I. p. 15.
And off illc an off alle þa
Comm an god flocc off prestess (each one of all those).
We find also swillc an, such a one.
Orrmin is the first English writer to put what before a substantive without regard to gender, as ‘what man?’ ‘what woman?’ The old hwilc was losing its former meaning in England.
In Vol. I. p. 42, there is a new form, ‘þu cwennkesst i þi sellf modiʓnesse.’ This of old would have been þe silf; self now began to be thought a noun, something like person.
Nan (nemo) takes a Plural sense, much as if a barbarous Latin word like nemines were to be formed. At Vol. II. page 92 we see, ‘i nane depe sinness.’
A is used as an Interjection, much like our ah.
Alls iff (in Latin, quasi) replaces the Old English swilc; we find also alls itt wœre, as it were. Our withal is now seen.
The Old aweg is now aweʓʓ (away).
The Old á (semper) is now aʓʓ.
The curious word bidene (in Dutch, by that) is found for the first time; it remained in use for 300 years. It here means ‘at once.’
Forþwiþþ also appears for the first time, but is used only once by Orrmin; the old forrþrihht is commonly employed by him.
Hallflingess, a word still in Scotch use, appears in Orrmin instead of the old healfunga.
The Old English Interjection eala now becomes la, our lo!
Orr (in Latin aut) appears once or twice for the first time, replacing the old oþþe.
Orrmin was the first to use rihht instead of swiþe (the Latin valde), though he does not do it often; thus, in I. page 217, he talks of leading a life rihht wel wiþþ Godess hellpe. We still keep the old adverb, though the foreign very has almost driven it out.
The word ân, when used in the sense of solus, takes all before it (hence comes our alone). We are told that man cannot
Bi bræd all ane libbenn. — II. p. 40.
the new forms although, albeit, &c., were soon to follow.
Orrmin uses, as we do, both awihht and ohht (aught and ought).
The Old English word for the Latin idem was ylc, still kept in Scotland; as Redgauntlet of that Ilk. Instead of this, Orminn, but only once, uses same;
He mihhte makenn cwike menn
þæer off þa same staness. — I. page 345.
This root same is good Sanscrit and Gothic; the Norse sams means ejusdem generis. Nothing in English is more curious than that this Scandinavian word should have driven out the older ylc.
Allderrman here still means a Prince, as in Old English times; Orrmin even uses it for Abbot. He talks also of Eorless, earls, ranking them not much lower than kings.
Líc was the Old English word for corpus, though it is now found only in Lichfield and lych-gate. Bodig usually meant the trunk or chest; but Orrmin uses bodiʓ, far oftener than lic, in our sense of the word. In one line he forms a new substantive out of the two, speaking of bodiʓlich.
He uses chilldre for the Plural of child, and the former still lingers in Lancashire as childer. Our corrupt Plural children came from the South, as also did brethren and kine.
The word drugoð is now turned into druhhþe. The word flail, akin to the flegil of the mainland, now first appears in English.
The old gœrshoppan now becomes gresshoppe, grasshoppers.
The old crœt (currus) now becomes karrte.
The diphthong œ had long been giving way, and it was doubtful whether a or e was to replace it. Orrmin's naʓʓl instead of nœgel has been followed by us rather than the neil of the South.
We now find for the first time such compounds as overking, overlord; words happily revived in our own day.
Our fathers had a rooted objection to beginning their words with the letter p; few such are found in Orrmin, and nearly all of them are Church Latin phrases.
He uses waʓʓn instead of the old wœgen, and we still employ both wain and waggon; both alike are found in English writers before the Norman Conquest.
Weddlac (wedlock) now appears, where of old wiflác would have been used. The former word, before Orrmin's time, meant no more than the Latin pignus.
The Old English woruld stood for sœculum, and nothing more; but it now begins to stand for orbis.[71]
In Orrmin's werrkedaʓh, the new form of weorc-dœg, we see the first germ of Shakespere's ‘this work-a-day world.’
Orrmin sometimes casts a letter out of the middle of a word; thus he has both the old wurrþshipe and the new wurrshipe, worship.
The word daffte still keeps its old sense, humilis; it has been degraded, like silly (beatus).
Adjectives were losing the guttural, with which they formerly ended. We find in Orrmin both erþlic and erþliʓ.
Follhsumm (compliant) has not yet the degrading sense of our fulsome; indeed, the latter is said to be connected with foul. Fresh now replaces the older fersc.
The word fus, ‘eager,’ is here found in its true old sense. This is now degraded, like many another good word. The worthy Nicodemus, as Orrmin says, was fus to lernenn; in our days, a tiresome old woman is fussy.
Nacod now becomes nakedd (nudus).
Orrmin uses sheepish in a sense far removed from ours; he applies the adjective (I. p. 230) to a man who meekly follows Christ's pattern.
We find þurrhutlike, thoroughly, for the first time. Ungelic is now cut down to unnlic (unlike).
We see œþeliʓ, our easily, instead of the older eaðelice.
For the Latin sunt, we find arrn, as well as beon and sinndenn. The first of these was hardly ever used in the South or West of England; it comes from the Angles, as we saw in the Northumbrian Gospels. Hi wœron now sometimes, as in the Southern Homilies, becomes þeʓʓ wœre; but a more wonderful change is þu wœre turned into þu wass, the Norse war (eras); ic sceal becomes I shall. We see the last of the Old English si (in Latin, sit); it survives, somewhat clipped, in our yes, i.e. ge si. Beô is in the Ormulum cut down to be, and beon (esse) to ben. Orrmin uses the old ic mót, þu móst, and also a new Scandinavian auxiliary verb, which is employed even now from Caithness to Derbyshire.[72] Such a phrase as I mun do this is first found in his work; the mun is the Scandinavian muna, but mune in the Ormulum implies futurity more than necessity.
Orrmin uses assken (rogare) instead of the Southern
acsian, and we have followed him; the Irish still use
axe, since the first English colonists came from Bristol
and the South.
We find both bikœchedd and bikahht for caught. This new word, which we saw first in the South, must have spread fast in England.
Another new word is found in the lines: —
þatt . . . þeod
þatt Jacob wass bilenge. — I. page 76
(belonging to Jacob). This word is akin to the Dutch verb belangen (attingere).
Orrmin, like the Peterborough Chronicler of 1120, uses the Passive Participle chosenn for the old gecóren.
He replaces the old cneowian by cnelenn (kneel), which came first in the Essex Homilies.
He sometimes turns a Strong verb into a Weak one, a process begun long before his time. He uses hœfedd (elatum) as well as hofenn; he has sleppte (dormivit) where it ought to be slep; weppten (fleverunt) instead of weópon; trededd (depressus) instead of treden.
One of the peculiar shibboleths, brought hither by the Danes, is the word gar (facere), a word still in the mouths of Scotchmen. Orrmin uses the compounds forrgarrt and oferrgarrt. The verb gar is found neither in High nor in Low German.
The Norse gow is used by him for observare. Hence comes our a-gog, the Icelandic à gœgium, on the watch.
As might be expected, Orrmin follows the Northern hafan rather than the Southern habban (habere). We find a near approach to our modern corruption hast in his line —
Himm haffst tu slaʓenn witerrliʓ. — I. page 154.
Heʓlenn is now first used for ‘to salute.’
The Old English gehyded is now contracted into hidd; hidden is one of the few Weak Participles that we have turned into Strong ones.
Hutenn (vituperare), to hoot, which first appears in Orrmin's work, is a puzzle to lexicographers, and may come either from the Welsh or the Norse.
The old onlihtan becomes lihhtenn in Orrmin's hands; but we have returned to enlighten.
England cleaves to her own old word leap, Scotland to the Norse laupa (loup): they are both found in the Ormulum.
The Old English sœclode now takes its modern form secnedd, sickened; conversely, we shall see later the French train become trail.
Scorcnedd (scorched) appears for the first time in English; Wedgwood quotes the Low Dutch schroggen, which has the same meaning.
Orrmin uses both the Strong and the Weak form for the Past Participle of show; he has both shœwenn and shœwedd. We now prefer the former, though the latter is the true form; just as we mistakenly write strewn for strewed. But in the matter of Strong and Weak verbs, we usually err on the other side.
We derive our modern notion of the word shift (in
Latin, mutare) from the Scandinavian, and not from the
Old English.[73] In the latter, the word means ‘to distribute,’
and nothing more. We see the two senses in
Orrmin's work (I. 13), when he speaks of Zachariah's
service in the Temple.
The old meaning of stintan was ‘to be weary;’ it now has the meaning of ‘to leave off.’ See II. page 92.
We now first find the verb stir with an intransitive sense.
Tœcan, ic tœhte (docere, docui), become in Orrmin's month tœchenn, ic tahhte, not far from our own way of pronouncing it, and feccan becomes fecchenn.
The old geworht is now seen as wrohht, not far from our wrought
We cannot help envying Orrmin his power of making long Teutonic compounds. He has no need to write the Latin immortality, when he has ready to hand such a word as unndœþshildiʓnesse, implying even more than the Latin. But this power was now unhappily on the wane in England.
We have had a great loss in the Old English words mid (cum) and niman (capere).[74] These are, with little change, good Sanscrit; and the Germans have been too wise to part with them. Orrmin but seldom employs them, and they must have been now dying out in the North. He is fonder of the two words which have driven them out, i.e. with and take. Had the banks of Thames been the birthplace of our Standard English, we should have kept all four words alike.
In giving a specimen of Orrmin's verse, I have been careful to take the subject from scenes in Courtly life, where, after his time, numbers of French words must unavoidably have been used by any poet, however much a lover of homespun English. Orrmin's peculiar way of doubling consonants will be remarked. He clings fast to the Infinitive in enn, which had been dropped at Peterborough. If we wish to relish his metre, every syllable must be pronounced; thus, Herode takes an accent on all three vowels alike.
THE EAST MIDLAND DIALECT OF 1200.
ORMULUM, I. — Page 280.
| Herode king maʓʓ swiþe a wel | a right | |
| þe laþe b gast bitacnenn; | b loathsome | |
| forr all hiss werrc and all hiss will | ||
| wass ifell gast full cweme, c | c pleasing to | |
| and onn himm sellfenn wass inoh d | d enow | |
| his aʓhenn e sinne sene; | e own | |
| for well biforenn þatt he swallt f | f died | |
| wass himm þatt wa g bigunnenn | g woe | |
| þatt he shall dreʓhenn h aʓʓ occ aʓʓ | h suffer | |
| inn helle wiþþ þe deofell; | ||
| forr he warrþ i seoc, and he bigann | i became | |
| to rotenn bufenn k eorþe, | k above | |
| and tohh l he toc wiþþ mete swa | l yet | |
| þatt nan ne mihhte himm fillenn, | ||
| and swa he stannc þatt iwhillc m mann | m every | |
| was himm full laþ to nehhʓhenn;n | n approach | |
| and all himm wærenn fet and þeos o | o thighs | |
| tobollenn p and toblawenn. | p swollen | |
| þa læchess þatt himm comenn to | ||
| and himm ne mihhtenn hælenn | ||
| he sloh, and seʓʓde þatt teʓʓ q himm | q they | |
| ne kepptenn r nohht to berrʓhenn. | r heeded not to protect him | |
| and he toe iwhillc hæfedd s mann | s head | |
| off all hiss kineriche,t | t kingdom | |
| and let hemm stekenn u inn an hus, | u had them shut | |
| and haldenn swiþe fasste, | ||
| and badd tatt mann hemm shollde slæn | ||
| son summ x he shollde deʓenn. | x as soon as |
| he þohhte þatt mann munnde y beon | y would | |
| off hiss dæþ swiþe bliþe, | ||
| and wisste þatt mann munnde þa z | z then | |
| for hemm full sare wepenn, | ||
| and wollde swa þatt all þe follc | ||
| þatt time shollde wepenn, | ||
| þatt mann himm shollde findenn dæd | ||
| þohh itt forr himm ne wære. |
Page 283.
| And affterr þatt ta wass he dæd | ||
| In all hiss miccle sinne. | ||
| acc þær wass mikell oferrgarrt a | a haughtiness | |
| and modiʓesse b shæwedd | b pride | |
| abutenn þatt stinnkennde lic c | c body | |
| þær itt wass brohht till eorþe; | ||
| forr all þe bære d wass bileʓʓd | d bier | |
| wiþþ bætenn gold and sillferr, | ||
| and all itt wass eʓʓwhær e bisett | e everywhere | |
| wiþþ deorewurrþe f staness, | f precious | |
| and all þatt wæde g þatt tær wass | g apparel | |
| uppo þe bære fundenn, | ||
| all wass itt off þe bettste pall | ||
| þatt aniʓ mann maʓʓ aʓhenn, h | h own | |
| and all itt wass wmidenn wiþþ gold | ||
| and sett wiþþ deore staness, | ||
| and all he wass wurrþlike shridd i | i honourably clothed | |
| alls iff he wære o life, | ||
| and onn hiss hæfedd wærenn twa | ||
| gildene cruness sette, | ||
| and himm wass sett inn hiss rihht hannd | ||
| an dere kineʓerrde k; | k sceptre | |
| and swa mann barr þatt fule l lic | l foul | |
| till þær he bedenn haffde. m | m had bidden | |
| and hise cnihhtess alle imæn n | n together | |
| forth ʓedenn o wiþþ þe bære, | o went |
| wiþþ heore wæpenn alle bun,p | p ready | |
| swa summ itt birrþ,q wiþþ like, | q it befits | |
| and ec þær ʓedenn wiff þe lic | ||
| full wel fif hunndredd þewwess,r | r servants | |
| to strawwenn gode gresess s þær, | s herbs | |
| þatt stunnkenn swiþe swete, | ||
| biforenn þatt stinnkendde lic | ||
| þær menn itt berenn sholldenn. | ||
| and tuss þeʓʓ alle brohhtenn himm | ||
| wiþþ mikell modiʓnesse | ||
| till þær þær t he þeʓʓm haffde seʓʓd | t where | |
| þat teʓʓ himm brinngenn sholldenn. | ||
| swillc u mann wass þatt Herode king | u such | |
| þatt let te chilldre cwellenn, | ||
| for þatt he wollde cwellenn Crist | ||
| amang hemm, ʓiff he mihhte. |
THE CONTRAST TO THE EAST MIDLAND.
(About A.D. 1205.)
(KING LEAR'S ANGER AT CORDELIA'S SPEECH.)
Þe king Leir iwerðe swa blac,
swilch hit a blac cloð weoren.
iwærð his hude and his heowe,
for he was suþe ihærmed,
mid þære wræððe he wes isweved,
þat he feol iswowen;
late þeo he up fusde,
þat mæiden wes afeared,
þa hit alles up brac,
hit wes vuel þat he spac:
Hærne Cordoille,
ich þe telle wille mine wille;
of mine dohtren þu were me durest,
nu þu eært me alre læðes:
ne scalt þu næver halden
dale of mine lande;
ah mine dohtren
ich wille delen mine riche.
and þu scalt worðen warchen,
and wonien in wansiðe,
for navere ich ne wende
þat þu me woldes þus scanden,
þarfore þa scalt been dæd ic wene:
fliʓ ut of min eæh-sene,
þine sustren sculen habben mi kinelond,
and þis me is iqueme;
þe due of Cornwaile
seal habbe Gornoille,
and þe Scottene king
Regan þat scone;
and ic hem ʓeve all þa winne
þe ich æm waldinge over.
and al þe alde king dude
swa he hafvede idemed.[75]
The above lines are taken from Layamon's Brut, compiled, as it would seem, in Worcestershire about the year 1205. The proportion of Teutonic words, now obsolete, to the whole is the same as in the Ormulum. The poet has both hât and hôt for calidus; but the words lond, hond, are written instead of land, hand, just as we find in the oldest Worcester charters printed by Kemble, Codex Dip. I. page 100. And this is also done by our kinsmen in Friesland.
We sometimes find in Layamon þeo for the Old English hi; a token that he did not live to the South of the Thames. He prefers the old sc to the new sound sh, writing scawian, not shawian. The ch was not fully established in his Western shire, so far from London. We see swilc, such, and other varieties for talis. He, like Orrmin, sometimes gives us the old and the new sound of c (that is, k) in the same word; thus, the old cycene now becomes kuchene, our kitchen.[76] He was the last Englishman who held fast to the old national diphthong œ, which was after his time, and indeed earlier, replaced by many combinations of vowels that still puzzle foreigners.
What Orrmin would have called o lande, Layamon calls a londe.
He has for denique a new phrase, at þan laste, I. page 160. We have already seen in the Homilies our contraction from the old latost. We keep both the forms, latest and last.
The old endlufon (undecim) is turned into œllevene.
Layamon turns ne (the Latin nec) into no; we must wait 140 years for nor.
He has the two phrases þene dœi longe and alle longe niht; whence come our all day long, &c.
He first used the Indefinite Article after many, as mony enne thing (many a thing). The word Hors (equi) is now changed to horses. — II. page 556.
In Verbs, Layamon turns some Strong ones into Weak. He says (I. 57), his scipen runden, where we more correctly say, his ships ran. But the great corruption which England owes to him is the changed state of the Present Participle Active. It of old terminated in ende: this in the South became inde about the year 1100; and now, in 1204, it turns into inge; being doubtless confounded with the verbal nouns that of old ended in ung. We find berninge, fraininge, singinge, and waldinge, Participles all used by Layamon. A hundred years later still, this corruption was unhappily adopted by the man who shaped our modern speech.
The English word for volaverunt used to be flugon, but Layamon changes this into fluwen, our flew. This likeness to flowan (fluere) is rather confusing, to say nothing of fleon (fugere).
The Perfect of þŷden (premere) was once þidde, but it now became þudde; hence our thud.
The old gyrdan (cingere) now gets a new sense (cædere), ‘he gurde Suard on þat hæfd’ (I. page 68); we still talk of girding at a man.
Pliht had hitherto meant periculum; it now takes the meaning of conditio, which we keep.
Swogan had meant sonare; it now got the sense of swoon. — I. page 130.
At I. page 275 we see for the first time the word agaste (terruit), whence comes our aghast. For the origin of this word we must go so far back as the Gothic usgeisjan. Our ghostly and ghastly come from sources that have been long separate.
Instead of the Old English word for insula, Layamon employs œite (ait), a word well known to all Etonians. It is the Danish ey with the Definite Article tacked on to the end in the usual way, ey-it, eyt, as Mr. Dasent tells us. Layamon has mœrcoden in the sense of videre; of old, it had been used for ostendere: this is just the converse of what has happened in the case of the old sceáwian.
The word þeáu had hitherto been applied to the mind only; it is now used of the body; though this new sense did not become common in England until three hundred years later. We still talk of thews and sinews; Spencer used the word in its old sense.
Layamon forms an adjective from the Old English hende, in Latin prope. He says, in Vol. I. page 206:
‘An oðer stret he makede swiðe hendi.’
But he usually employs this adjective in the sense of courteous, and in this sense it was used for hundreds of years.
I give a list of many Norse words used by Layamon, which must have made their way to the Severn from the North and East; we shall find many more in Dorsetshire a few years later.
Club, from the Icelandic klubba
Draht (haustus), from the Icelandic drattr
Hap (fortune), from the Icelandic happ, good luck[77]
Hit, from the Icelandic hitta
Hustinge (house court), from the Norse hus and thing
Raken (rush), from the Swedish raka, to riot about[78]
Riven, from the Icelandic rîfa (rumpere)
Semen (beseem), from the Norse sama, to fit
To-dascte (dash out), from the Danish daske, to slap
Layamon has the word nook (angulus) which may come from hn’œgan (flectere). The poet, speaking of a mere, says, ‘Feower noked he is’ (II. page 500). There are some other common words, which he is the first English writer to use. Thus he has taken gyves (catenæ) from the Welsh gevyn; and cutte (secare) from the Welsh cwtt, a little piece: this has almost driven out the Old English carve. He employs sturte (started), akin to the Old Dutch storten; and has a new verb talk, springing from tale. Bal (our ball), draf, picchen (pangere), and rif (largus) are akin to the Dutch or German words bal, draf, picken, rîf. Rucken is found both in Dutch and in Layamon's work; twenty years after his time it appears as rock (agitare). He has also halede (duxit), the Frisian halia; as often happens in English, the word hale remains, and by its side the corruption haul, which cropped up ninety years after this time. Layamon says, ‘weoðeleden his fluhtes,’ his flights became weak (I. page 122): the verb has a High German brother, and from this may come our verb wobble.
About the year 1200, the Legend of St. Margaret seems to have been compiled.[79] It has forms akin to the Worcester manuscript printed by Sir Thomas Phillipps, and in other particulars it resembles a well-known Dorsetshire work. But it touches the East Midland in its forms beon and aren (sunt); and its Participles end sometimes in ende, sometimes in inde. The Past Participle islein (page 11) resembles what we find in the Peterborough Chronicle. On the whole, Oxford seems to be as likely a spot as any, if we seek to fix upon some city for the authorship of the Legend.
Layamon was fond of the Old English diphthong œ, but in the present work this is often altered to ea, as in the words reach, clean, heal, mean, least. We even find neafre for nunquam. It is to the South Western shires that we owe the preservation of ea, a favourite combination of our forefathers: the word flea has never changed its spelling. We see in this Legend both the old swa and the new so; teeþ replaces teþ; roa comes once more. The wimman of the Midland makes way for wummon; we follow the former sound in the Plural and the latter sound in the Singular; a curious instance of the widely different sources of our Standard English. Fearful (pavidus) is seen for the first time; we grew fond or ful as an adjectival ending, and for it we displaced many older terminations. Lagu, cwœþ, wasc become lake, quoð, and weosch. Such new phrases crop up as hwa so eaver (page 20) and steorcnaket (page 5). Cleane is used for omnino in page 15; cleane overcumen, an idiom kept in our Version of the Bible. Our phrase ‘it is all one to me,’ is seen in its earliest shape at page 5, al me is an.
In this piece, smartly seems to bear a sense half-way between quickly and painfully, Orrmin's gaʓhen is now found in a new compound, ungeinliche (ungainly). At page 16 we see another Norse word, drupest (most drooping), from the Icelandic drûpa. Drivel appears, which is akin to the Dutch drevel (servus). There are a few other new verbs: stutten, akin to a High German word, shows the origin of our stutter, while shudder is akin to a Dutch word. The word schillinde (sonans) at page 19, akin to both the High German and Icelandic, tells whence comes our shrill — one of the many English words into which r has found its way. The verb seem has here a sense unknown to Orrmin and Layamon, that of videri. At page 9 we read, ‘his teeð semden of swart irn.’ On reading at page 13 ‘þu fikest’ (tu fallis), we may perhaps derive from this verb our fib, even as geleaf turns to belief. Toggen (trahere) is seen, more akin in form to the Dutch tocken than to the Old English teogan. We have three corruptions of this verb, with three widely different meanings — to tug, to toy, and to tow.
From the Legend of St. Catherine, compiled not much later, we get the word clatter, found also in Dutch. In another piece, the Hali Meidenhad,[80] which dates from about the year 1220, we find one or two Norse words, such as cake and gealde (from geldr, that is, sterilis); there is also crupel (cripple), akin to the Dutch. The Old English ceówan has the sense of jaw, as in the Homilies of 1180. The maiden is told, in page 31, that the husband ‘chit te and cheoweð þe.’ A little lower down, she is further threatened; for he ‘beateð þe and busteð þe;’ this last verb is the Icelandic beysta, our baste (ferire). Hence also the French baston or bâton. The tiðing of the Essex Homilies now becomes tiding. Our scream is found for the first time, and seems to be a confusion between the Old English hream and the Welsh ysgarm, each meaning the same. The old word grœg has had a curious lot: the North and East of England kept the first letter of the diphthong, the South and West held to the last letter, as we see in the Hali Meidenhad. We may still write either gray or grey: the case is most exceptional.
We now come to that piece which, more than anything else written outside the Danelagh, has influenced our Standard English. About 1220, the Ancren Riwle was written in the Dorsetshire dialect; it became most popular, and copies of it are extant in other dialects. Of these the Salopian variation is the most remarkable.[81] The language is near of kin to that employed in the Legend of St. Margaret; but the Southern o has by this time made further inroads upon the old a. Whoso replaces the word written at Peterborough wua sua; and we find our No, for the first time, in direct denial. The combination ea is most frequent; thus lœne (macer) becomes leane. We find new phrases cropping up, common enough in our mouths now; such as et enes (at once), ase ofte ase, ase muche ase, enes a wike ette leste (once a week at the least, page 344), yung ase he was, hu se ever it beo ischeaped, sumetime (page 92, but sumchere is the favourite form for this), al beo (albeit, page 420), hwerse ever, amidde þe vorhefde, bivorenhond (beforehand). There is a new phrase, never þe later, which was near replacing our nevertheless, since Tyndale sometimes used the former. Both alike occur in the Ancren Riwle. The old gewhœr (ubique) gets the usual prefix ever added to it; and everihwar (page 200), which we now wrongly spell as every where, is the result. This is one of the few words in which we still sound a corruption of the old ge, so beloved of our fathers.[82]
The phrase of feor (procul) was later to be written afar; the old of is seldom found in New English under this form a. We see the first use of a phrase that often replaces the old Preposition for. At page 260 are the words ‘ine stude of in, his cradel herbarued him;’ the cradle supplied the lack of an inn. The new preposition besides had not made its way everywhere, for in page 268 we see wiðuten employed for prœter; ‘wunden, al wiðuten eddren capitalen.’
In the Ancren Riwle one is employed in a new way, standing for man. In page 370 we read, ‘þe one þet was best ilered of Cristes deciples.’ This cannot be translated by the Latin alter, as in the passage of the Peterborough Chronicle referred to at page 89 of the present work. Another new sense of one is found in page 252, ‘ter on geð him one in one sliddrie weie’ (where a man goeth alone by himself in a slippery way).[83] This looks at first sight very like a translation of the French on; sum man would have been used by earlier English writers. However, further on we shall see that the attempt to imitate the kindred unus is the most probable source of our idiomatic one, standing by itself.
After the break-up of our old grammar, it had not as yet been settled how we were to translate the Latin Neuter Relative quod. We saw ‘ʓetes bi wam’ in the Homilies; in the Ancren Riwle, page 382, we see ‘sum þing mid hwat he muhte derven.’ This last is the English form of quod: but we were not to use it. We were to follow the form employed in page 354: ‘þeawes, bi hwuche me climbedð to þe blisse.’ Yet this hwuche is almost always in the present work used in its true old sense (now unhappily lost) of qualis, its kindred word. The new translation of quod was to take root in Yorkshire, as well as in Dorset, thirty years later. The old that was, of course, in full employment as a Relative.
In page 110, we see how the old onefne came to be changed; in the Salopian copy it is found as onevent, in the Dorset copy as onont, not far from our anent In the same page, we see how the old Preposition ʓeond (per) was dropping out of use; it was still employed in Dorset, but was replaced in one shire by over, in another by in. When we find onlich, it does not convey our sense of the word; it as yet means nothing but solitary. What was called leste (solutus) in Dorset, was lowse and lousse in other shires, not far from our loose: this may be seen at page 228. The Southern influence, which changes f into v and g into w, may be seen in page 290, where we hear that the Devil ‘fikeþ mid dogge vawenunge (flatters with doglike fawning): this last word was of old fœgnung. The comparative of late had hitherto only conveyed the sense of serior; but we now find it mean posterior; in page 158, there is mention of the ‘vorme half and þe latere.’ We have since 1220 distinguished the two meanings of the word by doubling the t in later, when it is to mean posterior. In page 176, we find a wholly new idiom, which must have come from France, standing for the old Superlative; ‘þe meste dredful secnesse of alle.’ This new form for the Superlative was hardly ever used in the Thirteenth Century, but became very common in the Fourteenth. The word sona (mox) has new offspring, sonre and sonest. Orrmin's la has become lo. In page 288, we see a mistake repeated long afterwards by Lord Macaulay in his Lays; what should be written iwis (certè) is written as if it were a verb, I wis.
We find mongleð, empti, volewen, lauhweð (ridet), lone (commodatum), owust (debes), sawe (dictum), instead of the old mengeð, œmtig, folgian, hlaheð, lœn, âhst, sagu. The untowen, found here for untrained, was afterwards to become wanton, the un and the wan meaning the same. There are words altogether new: such as backbiter, chaffer, overtake, overturn, withdraw, withhold. We now see the last of the old Wodnes dei; in the Legend of St. Katherine, of the same date, this becomes Wednesdai. Our Ember days appear for the first time in the guise of umbridei; this and umquhile are the sole survivors in English of the many words formed from our lost preposition umbe, the Greek amphi. The word halpenes (page 96) shows a step in the formation of our halfpence. At page 344 drive gets an intransitive sense; I go drivinde upe fole þouhtes.’ At page 426, we see our common expression, ‘þet fur (ignis) go ut.’ At page 46 comes gluffen (to blunder), from the Icelandic glop (incuria); hence perhaps ‘to club a regiment.’ Sorh (dolor) had taken the shape of seoruwe in Dorset, but it remained sorhe in Salop (see page 64). The old rœcende becomes ringinde (page 140), whence our ranging.[84] In page 128, we are told that a false nun ‘chefleð of idel;’ hence have arisen to chatter and to chaff. Torple (cadere) seems to be formed from top (caput). The ending ful is freely used for adjectives, as dredful and pinful; other endings are driven out by it. The old eallunga is now replaced by utterly; and bœlg is turned into bag; beggar is now first found.
In page 398, we see an instance of the revived use of the entreating do, before an Imperative; the writer asks for a reason, adding, ‘do seie hwui.’ In page 64 may be found the first use of our indefinite it, prefixed to was; ‘a meiden hit was . . . eode ut vor to biholden.’ A pithy phrase was once applied to our two last Stuart Kings: it was said of Charles that ‘he could if he would;’ of James, that ‘he would if he could.’ On looking to the Ancren Riwle, p. 338, we read, ‘he ne mei hwon he wule, þe nolde hwule þet he muhte.’ This seems to have been a byword well known in 1220.
The East Midland dialect was pushing its conquests into the South, for many Norse words are found for the first time in this work; as,
| Chough | Kofa, Icelandic |
| Crop, carpere | Kroppa, Icelandic |
| Dog | Doggr, Icelandic |
| Dusk | Dulsk, Danish |
| Groom | Gromr, Icelandic |
| Mased, delirus | Masa, Old Norse, to chatter confusedly |
| Muwlen, grow mouldy | Mygla, Icelandic |
| Shy | Skygg, Swedish |
| Scowl | Skule, Danish |
| Skull | Skal, Danish |
| Scraggy | Skrekka, Norse |
| Skulk | Skjol, Norse |
| Sluggish | Slœki, Norse |
| Smoulder | Smul, Danish, dust |
| Windohe, window | Vindauga, Icelandic |
Many an Old English word has been driven out by these Scandinavian strangers. Moreover, I add a list of many words, which Southern England had in common with our Dutch and Low German kinsmen. England seems now to have rid herself of her old prejudice against beginning words with the letter p.
| Bounce, punch | Bonzen | Puff | Poffen |
| Brink | Brink | Pick | Picken, to use a sharp tool |
| Cackle | Kakelen | ||
| Cleppe, clapper | Klappe | Pack | Pack |
| Costnede, cost | Kosten | Scrape | Schrapen |
| Cur[85] | Korre | Snatch | Snacken |
| Giggle | Giggen | Spat, macula | Spat |
| Hag | Hacke | Squint | Squinte |
| Hurl | Horrelen | Toot | Toeten, blow a horn |
| Pig[86] | Bigge | ||
| Pot | Pot | Tattle | Tatelu |
We find also in this work harlot, a vagabond, from the Welsh herlawd, a youth; the word is used by Chaucer without any bad sense. From the same Celtic source come cudgel and griddle, now first seen in English, Peoddare, a pedlar, is also found for the first time; Forby derives it from ped, which in Norfolk is a covered pannier.[87] There are many words in the Ancren Riwle, which, as Wedgwood thinks, are formed from the sound; such as gewgaw, chatter, flash; scratch arose in Salop; the window of that shire was called þurl in the South.[88] The adjective in Shakespere's ‘little cwifer fellow’ is found in the Ancren Riwle; it seems to come from the old cóf, impiger.
Dr. Morris has added to his Twelfth Century Homilies
(First Series) some other works, which seem to date
from about 1220. The word carp (loqui) is seen for the
first time. Another new word is dingle, applied to a
recess of the sea; it is akin to a German word, as also is
schimmeð or schimereð (fulget), at page 257.
THE EAST MIDLAND DIALECT.
(About A.D. 1230.)
I now bring forward a poem that may perhaps come from Cambridge — the Bestiary — that is printed in Dr. Morris's Old English Miscellany (Early English Text Society). This is very nearly the same in its dialect as the Genesis and Exodus (Early English Text Society), a poem which Dr. Morris refers to Suffolk; but the former piece seems to have been written nearer to Peterborough, since it uses who, where the latter poem has quho. The common marks of the East Midland dialect are found in both: the Present Participle ends in ande in the one case, in both ande and ende in the other; the Plural of the Present Tense ends in en, or is dropped altogether, as have instead of haven; the Prefix to the Past Participle comes most seldom. The Northern prepositions fra and til are found. The Bestiary bears a resemblance to the Proverbs of Alfred; it is a work such as might well have been compiled at Cambridge; being a translation made much about the time that King Henry the Third was beginning to play the part of Rehoboam in England, having got rid of his wise counsellors.
Here we find[89] the Old English sinden (sunt) for almost the last time; on the other hand, what Orrmin wrote all ane (solus) has now become olon; we also see ones, the Latin semel. The Southern o had long driven out the old Northern a in these Eastern shires. We find Orrmin's substitution of o for on always recurring here, as o live. But what he calls bracc (fregit) is seen in the present poem as broke; our version of the Scriptures has adopted the former, our common speech the latter. We also find ut turned into out; we saw something of the kind in the Proverbs of Alfred. The turtle's mate is called in the Bestiary ‘hire olde luve:’ this of yore would have been written leóf. We have unhappily in modern English but one word for the old leóf and lufe, the person and the thing. Fugelas is pared down to fules (fowls). We find here for the first time borlic (burly) applied to elephants; it is akin to the High German purlîh. The word cliver (clever) is applied to the Devil. Mr. Wedgwood says it comes from claw; hence it in this passage has the sense of nimble-fingered, much as rapidus comes from rapio. The adjective fine, the Icelandic finn, is seen here for the first time. The word snute (snout), used of the elephant, is akin to a German word.
The Old English ceafl is now found in the shape of chauel (in the account of the whale): it is not far from our jowl.
The expression ‘fisses to him (the whale) dragen,’ shows that the verb has now got the new sense of venire, as we say, ‘to draw nigh.’
We have seen on used for aliquis; it now comes to mean quidam, and is used without any substantive, as in the Ancren Riwle. We read of the elephant entrapped; ‘ðanne cumeð ðer on gangande.’ This of old would have been sum ylp; in the present poem, the words tunc unus currit had to be Englished.
One of the most startling changes is that of the Second Person Singular of the Perfect of the Strong verb. What in Old English was þu hehte, is turned at page 6 into tu higtest (pollicitus es). Thus one more of the links between Sanscrit and English was to be broken.
In an East Anglian Creed of this time (Reliquiæ Antiquæ, i. 234), we find ure onelic loverd, written where Orrmin would have used the old anlepiʓ (unicus) for the second word. Thus a new form drove out an older one.
In the Genesis and Exodus the first thing that strikes us is the poet's sturdy cleaving to the Old English gutturals g and k. So, in the Bestiary, we find gevenlike, the last appearance of the old uncorrupted prefix. It is East Anglia that has kept these hard letters alive. But for these shires, whose spelling Caxton happily followed, we should be writing to yive (donare), to yet (adipisci), ayain (iterum), and yate (porta). We have unluckily followed Orrmin's corruption in yield, yelp, yearn, and young. These East Anglians talked of a dyke (fossa), when all Southern England spoke of a ditch, Orrmin's druhhþe is now turned into drugte (drought), which we have followed. The most remarkable change is deigen (mori) instead of deye. But even into Suffolk the Southern w was forcing its way. We find owen as well as ogen (proprius), and folwen as well as folgen (sequi). Owing to the changes of letters in different shires, we sometimes have two words where our forefathers had but one, each word with its own shade of meaning. ‘To drag a man out’ is different from the phrase ‘to draw a man out:’ the hard North is here opposed to the softer South West. Moreover, we may speak of a dray horse. Our Standard English is much the richer from having sprung up in shires widely apart.
We have also followed Suffolk in our word for the Latin osculari. A glance at Stratmann's dictionary will show that in the South East of England this was written kesse, in the South West it was cusse, but in East Anglia and farther to the North it was kiss. The same may be remarked as to kin, hill, listen, ridge, and many other words. The Old English o was now getting the modern sound of u, as in the Proverbs of Alfred; we find booc, mood, and wulde, instead of boc, mod, and wolde.[90]
What Orrmin called þatt an and patt oþer is seen in the Genesis and Exodus in a new guise.
Two likenesses . . . he
Gaf hire ðe ton. — Page 77.
Ðis on wulde don ðe toðer wrong. — Page 78.
We see other new forms of old words in cude (potui), eilond (insula), fier (ignis), frigt, hol (sanus), loth, quuen (not cwén), smot, olike (similiter), token, ðret, may, leman, helde, pride, strif, ðralles, wroð, often, eldest, reinbows.
There are other points in which these East Anglian poems of 1230 clearly foreshadow our Standard English. Wiht (pondus) becomes wigte, and teogeða is now tigðe (tithe). The d is sometimes slipped into the middle of a word after n; we find kindred and ðunder. The t or ð is also added to the end of a word: þwyrian becomes ðwert (thwart); stalu (furtum) appears as stalðe, our stealth. Maked (factus) is shortened into made; and when we find such a form as lordehed (dominion), we see that Orrmin's laferrdinngess will soon become lordings. The clipping and paring process is going on apace. Nu is once seen as nou, and tun as town. Orrmin had freely used ne in the old way, prefixing it as a negative to am, will, habbe, with all their tenses and persons; but in the Suffolk poem nothing of the kind is found, except the one verb nill (nolo), and this we have not yet wholly lost. Golden (aureus) is cut down in page 54 of the Genesis and Exodus; we find ‘gol prenes and ringes,’ and in page 95 we see ‘a gold pot.’ The Perfects clad, bad, and fed also meet us. When we see such a verb as semelen instead of the former samnian, we can understand how easily the French word assemble must have made its way in England.
Some of Orrmin's Norse words are here repeated; but his sh is often changed to s, as sal instead of shall, and this is still found in Scotland. What was scœ (illa) at Peterborough, seventy years earlier, is now found as sge, sche, and once as she. Hi (illi) is only once replaced by ðei. Orrmin's new forms, such as above, aʓʓ (semper), or, again appear. We have in the two poems before us other new forms creeping in, such as, to Godeward, moreover, everilc on, bitime (betimes). Whilum and seldum are still found with the old Dative Plural ending; moste becomes the modern muste. The Old English þâs (in Latin hi) is now seen as þese, just as we have it; in the Homilies of 1120, it was only þes.
Ever was often employed in compounding new words, such as quatsoever; ful was becoming a favourite ending for Adjectives, such as dredful, as we saw in the South. H, a fatal letter in English mouths, had been sadly misused in the South a hundred years earlier; the Suffolk poet often makes slips in handling it: he has ard for hard, and hold for old.
One token of the Midland, East and West, is the verb niman used for the Latin ire; it is found in this poem.
Some new formations from old words are now seen; the useful word bearing or carriage first appears in page 62.
For bi gure bering men mai it sen.
A new verb, which we still keep, is seen in page 41. Isaac was mourning for his mother; but Eliezer
Eððede his sorge, brogt him a wif.
This new formation from eaðe (facilis) may have been
confounded with the French aaisier. Long before Chaucer
it was decided that in this verb we should use the
French s and not the Old English ð.
The old Perfect of fleón (fugere) was fleáh; we find our new form in p. 96.
Amaleckes folc fledde for agte of dead.
In page 12, we read that Adam and Eve were ‘don ut of Paradise’ (ejecti sunt). This must be the phrase which suggested our modern phrase for cheating. The verb do has undergone some degradation.
There are many Scandinavian words found here.
| Busk, bush | Buskr, Icelandic |
| Dream, somnium[91] | Draumr, Icelandic |
| Glint | Glânta, Swedish |
| Levin, lightening | Lygne, Norse |
| Muck | Mykr, Icelandic |
| Ransack | Ransaka, Norse |
| Rapen, to hurry, rap out | Rapa, Norse |
| Rospen, rasp | Raspa, Swedish |
| Skie[92] | Sky, cloud, Norse |
| Tidy | Tidig, Swedish |
| Tine, lose | Tína, Norse |
| Ugly | Ugga, frighten, Norse |
We find the word irk for the first time; it is akin to the German erken (fastidire).
Of manna he ben forhirked to eten. — Page 104.
We see in page 35, ‘hem gan ðat water laken’ (the water began to fail them). This new word for deesse is akin to the Dutch laecke (defect). In page 26, we find mention of tol and takel and orf. The second of these substantives comes from the Welsh taclau, accoutrements.
In page 91 we read
‘Gon woren VII. score ger.’
This is the first use of score for twenty. It comes from the old habit of shearing or scoring notches on wood up to twenty. Our word skip comes from the Welsh ysgip (a quick snatch); hence locusts are called skipperes, page 88.
In page 93, is the line —
‘Undrincled in ðat salte spot.’
The last word (locus) here makes its first appearance. Wedgwood derives it from spatter, and calls it the mark upon which something has been splashed. This spot and the French place have between them driven out the Old English stede, which only survives in a prepositional shape. In this poem the old French word fey is seen as our modern feið (faith); the oath par ma fey was well known in England. We also see the French espier become spy; in the Danelagh, French words as well as English were clipped. It is owing to the Southern shires that we say establish as well as stablish.
| Ðo a wex a flod ðis werlde wid-hin | a Then | |
| and ouer-flowged men & deres b kin | b animals |
| wiðuten c Noe and hise ðre sunen, | c except | |
| Sem, Cam, Iaphet, if we rigt munen, d | d consider | |
| and here e foure wifes woren hem wið; | e their | |
| ðise viii hadden in ðe arche grið.f | f peace | |
| Ðat arche was a feteles g good, | g vessel | |
| set and limed agen ðe flood; | ||
| ðre hundred elne was it long, | ||
| nailed and sperd,h ðig and strong, | h closed | |
| and lti elne wid, and xxxti heg i; | i high | |
| ðor buten Noe long swing he dreg k; | k bore toil | |
| an hundred winter, everilc del,l | l bit | |
| welken or m it was ended wel; | m passed ere | |
| of alle der ðe on werlde wunen,n | n dwell | |
| and foueles, weren ðerinne cumen | ||
| bi seven and seven, or bi two & two, | ||
| Almigtin God him bad it so, | ||
| and mete quorbi o ðei migten liven, | o whereby | |
| ðor quiles he p woren on water driven, | p they | |
| sexe hundred ger Noe was hold q | q old | |
| Quan he dede r him in ðe arche-wold. | r put | |
| Two ðusant ger, sex hundred mo, | ||
| and sex and fifti forð to ðo,s | s beside those | |
| weren of werldes elde numen t | t taken | |
| ðan u Noe was in to ðe arche cumen. | u when | |
| Ilc x wateres springe here strengðe undede, | x each | |
| and reyne gette y dun on everilk stede | y poured | |
| fowerti dais and fowerti nigt, | ||
| so wex water wið magti migt. | ||
| so wunderlike it wex and get | ||
| ðat fiftene elne it overflet, | ||
| over ilk dune,z and over ilc hil, | z mountain | |
| ðhurge Godes migt and Godes wil; | ||
| and oðer fowerti ðore-to, | ||
| dais and nigtes stod et so; | ||
| ðo was ilc fleis a on werlde slagen, | a flesh | |
| ðo gunnen b ðe wateres hem wið-dragen. | b began |
| Ðe sevend moned was in cumen, | ||
| and sevene and xxti dais numen, | ||
| in Armenie ðat arche stod, | ||
| ðo was wið-dragen ðat ilc c flod. | c same | |
| Ðo ðe tende moned came in, | ||
| so wurð dragen ðe watres win d; | d force | |
| dunes wexen, ðe flod wið-drog, | ||
| It adde lested long anog.e | e enough | |
| Fowerti dais after ðis, | ||
| arches windoge undon it is, | ||
| ðe raven ut-fleg,f hu so it gan ben, | f flew out | |
| ne g cam he nogt to ðe arche agen. | g nor | |
| ðe duve fond h no clene stede, | h found | |
| and wente agen and wel it dede; | ||
| ðe sevendai eft ut it tog,i | i went | |
| and brogt a grene olives bog;k | k bough | |
| seve nigt siðen l everilc on | l afterward | |
| he is let ut flegen,m crepen, and gon, | m to fly | |
| wiðuten n ilc sevend clene der | n except | |
| ðe he sacrede on an aucter.o | o altar | |
| Sex hundred ger and on dan olde | ||
| Noe sag p ut of ðe arche-wolde; | p looked | |
| ðe first moned and te first dai, | ||
| he sag erðe drie & te water awai; | ||
| get he was wis and nogt to rad;q | q quick | |
| gede r he nogt ut, til God him bad. | r went |
THE CONTRAST TO THE EAST MIDLAND.
(About A.D. 1230.)
Ar ne kuthe ich sorghe non,
Nu ich mot manen nun mon,
Karful wel sore ich syche;
Geltles ihc tholye muchele schame;
Help God for thin swete name,
Kyng of hevene-riche.
Jesu Crist, sod God, sod man,
Loverd, thu rew upon me,
Of prisun thar ich in am
Bring me ut and makye fre.
Ich and mine feren sume,
God wot ich ne lyghe noct,
For othre habbet misnome,
Ben in thys prisun ibroct.
Almicti; that wel licth,
Of bale is hale and bote,
Hevene king, of this woning
Ut us bringe mote.
Foryhef hem, the wykke men,
God, yhef it is thi wille,
For wos gelt we bed ipelt
In thos prisun hille.
Ne hope non to his live,
Her ne mai he belive,
Heghe thegh he stighe,
Ded him felled to grunde.
Nu had man wele and blisce,
Rathe he shal tharof misse,
Worldes wele mid ywise
Ne lasted buten on stunde.
Maiden, that bare the heven king,
Bisech thin sone, that swete thing,
That he habbe of hus rewsing,
And bring us of this woning
For his muchele misse;
He bring hus ut of this wo,
And hus tache werchen swo,
In those live go wu sit go,
That we moten ey and o
Habben the eche blisce.
The above poem is taken from the Liber de Antiquis Legibus (‘Reliquiæ Antiquæ,’ I. 274), in the possession of the Corporation of London; the manuscript has musical notes attached to it. The proportion of obsolete English is much the same as in the Genesis and Exodus. The poem of page 134 seems therefore to represent the London speech of the year 1230, or so. What was g in Suffolk becomes c here, as in the Twelfth Century Homilies; it is broct, not brogt; gelt replaces gilt. The h is sometimes misused, even as Londoners of our day misuse it. The gh sometimes replaces the old h, as we saw in the Essex Homilies: this change was now overspreading the greater part of the Eastern side of England between London and York.
THE EAST MIDLAND DIALECT.
(About A.D. 1240.)
The piece that comes next, a version of the Athanasian Creed, was most likely written in the Northernmost part of Lincolnshire, perhaps not far from Hull; it has corruptions of English that are not often found before Manning wrote in that county sixty years later, such as ‘ne þre no two’ (nec tres nec duo).[94] We see the Northern forms in great abundance; thus whilk is used for the Relative, as in Dorset; als, til, sal, þair, &c., come often: the third Person Singular of the Present tense ends in es, not in eth. But the Southern o was making great inroads on the Northern a, as we saw in East Anglia; in this piece we find so, non, no mo, whos, þow (tamen), who so; in short, the whole poem foreshadows Manning's riming Chronicle. The writer who Englished this Creed has little love for outlandish words; sauf, sengellic, and persones are the only three specimens of French here found: he commonly calls persones by the obsolete name hodes. The deep theological terms of the Creed could still be expressed in sound English; though the writer's mikel does not wholly convey the sense of our incomprehensible. We see our bifore-said for the first time. Bot (sed) and with (cum) are preferred to their other English synonyms, as in Orrmin's writings. Unlike that poet, our present author will seldom use ne for the Latin non; he prefers noht, as in the East Anglian pieces: but he once has nil (nolunt). We see the Participle lastend, which Orrmin would have used.
This Creed, short though it be, shows us two great changes that were taking root in our spelling; h was being turned, as in Essex, into gh, and u into ou.[95] One or two instances of these changes may be seen in the East Midland poems of 1230; but the alteration is now well marked. We see right, noght, and thurght instead of the old riht, noht, and thurh. These words must have been pronounced with a strong guttural sound, which may still be heard in the Scotch Lowlands; there right is sounded much like the German recht. Thoh is in this Creed written þof, and this shows us how cough and rough came to be pronounced as they are now.[96] The letters k and f are akin to each other; the Sanscrit katvar is the Gothic fidvor (four), and the Lithuanian dwy-lika is our twâ-lifa (twelve). With us, Livorno becomes Leghorn; and in Aberdeenshire kwa (the Latin quis) is pronounced fa. No change seems to have been made in the sounds when dun and ur were written as doun and our in the Creed before us. The English word for domus is to this day pronounced in Northumberland as hoose. This, in parts of Yorkshire, is corrupted into ha-oose; if this last be pronounced rapidly, it gives house, as it is sounded by good speakers of English in our day.[97] It is hard to know why us should be spelt now as it was a thousand years ago, and yet why ur should be turned into our.
EAST MIDLAND.
(A.D. 1240.)
| Who þat þen wil berihed a be, | a saved | |
| So of þe þrinnes b leve he, | b Trinity | |
| And nede at hele c þat last ai sal | c salvation | |
| Ðat þe fleshede d ai with al | d incarnation | |
| Of cure louerd Jhu Crist forþi e | e therefore | |
| Dat he trowe it trewli. |
| Ðen ever is trauth f right | f belief | |
| Ðat we leve with alle oure miht | ||
| Ðat oure louerd Jhu Crist in blis | ||
| Godes sone and man he his, | ||
| Gode of kinde of fadir kinned g werid biforn, | g begotten | |
| Man of kinde of moder into werld born, | ||
| Fulli God, fulli man livand | ||
| Of schilful h saule and mannes flesshe beand, | h reasonable | |
| Even to the Fadir þurght godhede, | ||
| Lesse þen Fader þurght manhede, | ||
| Ðat þof he be God and man, | ||
| Noght two þrwæþer i is, bot Crist an, | i still | |
| On, noht þurght wendinge k of Godhed in flesshe, | k changing | |
| Bot þurght takynge of manhede in godnesshe. | ||
| On al, noht be menginge of stayelness,l | l substance | |
| Bot þurht onhede of hode m þat is, | m person | |
| Ðat þoled n for oure hele, doun went til helle, | n suffered | |
| Ðe þred dai ros fro dede so felle, | ||
| Upstegh o til heven, sittes on right hand | o went up | |
| Of God Fadir alle mightand, | ||
| And yhit for to come is he | ||
| To deme þe quik and dede þat be, | ||
| Ate whos come alle men þat are | ||
| Sal rise with þaire bodies þare, | ||
| And yelde sal þai, nil þai ne wil, | ||
| Of þair awen p dedes il, | p own | |
| And þat wel haf doun þat dai | ||
| Sal go to lif þat lastes ai, | ||
| And ivel haf doun sal wende | ||
| In fire lastend withouten ende. | ||
| Ðis is þe trauht þat heli q isse, | q holy | |
| Whilk bot r ilkon with miht hisse | r unless | |
| Trewlic and fastlic trowe he, | ||
| Saufe ne mai he never be.[98] |
THE CONTRAST TO THE EAST MIDLAND DIALECT.
(About A.D. 1240.)
the owl and nightingale. — Line 993.
Yut þu aisheist wi ich ne fare
In to other londe and singe thare.
No! what sholde ich among hom do,
War never blisse ne com to?
That lond nis god, ne hit nis este,
Ac wildernisse hit is and weste,
Knarres and cludes hoventinge,
Snou and haʓel hom is genge;
That lond is grislich and un-vele,
The men both wilde and unisele;
Hi nabbeth nother grith ne sibbe;
Hi ne reccheth hu hi libbe,
Hi eteth fihs an flehs un-sode,
Suich wulves hit hadde to-brode;
Hi drinketh milc, and wei thar-to,
Hi nute elles wat hi do;
Hi nabbeth noth win ne bor,
Ac libbeth al so wilde dor;
Hi goth bi-tiʓt mid ruje velle,
Riʓt svich hi comen ut of helle;
Theʓ eni god man to hom come,
(So wiles dude sum from Rome)
For hom to lere gode thewes.
An for to leten hore unthewes.
He miʓte bet sitte stille,
Vor al his wile he sholde spille;
He miʓte bet teche ane bore
To weʓe bothe sheld and spere,
Than me that wilde folc i-bringe.
That hi me segge wolde i-here singe.
These lines are taken from a most charming Dorsetshire poem, which seems to have been no translation from the French. It was published by the Percy Society, No. 39. Most of the forms found in the Ancren Riwle are here repeated. We see from the present work how warmly King Alfred's name had been taken to England's heart. The proverbs attributed to him come again and again, 340 years after his death. We find also other saws, such as
‘Dahet habbe that ilke best,
That fuleth his owe nest.’[99]
We often say ‘the other day,’ when referring to past time. At page 4 we read
‘That other ʓer a faukun bredde.’
At page 50 occurs
‘Wanne ich iseo the tohte ilete.’
‘The taught (tensus) let out;’ this is formed from the old teohhian (trahere).
In line 507 we read:
‘Wane thi lust is ago.’
We find in the poem the old agon as well as the
Southern ago, the corrupt form of the Participle kept by
us in long ago.[100] In Southern works, one man is often
found as o man, and this corruption lingered in Devonshire
for 200 years longer.
Many changes take place in words. Thus, holh (cavus), hœlfter, morgen, nihtegale, now become holeuh, halter, moreʓeiing (morning), and niʓtingale. The word sprenge (trap) is now first found, coming from the verb spring. There are a few Scandinavian words, such as amiss, cukeweald (cuckold), cogge (of a wheel), falt (falter), and shrew; the last comes from skraa (sloping). There are many words cropping up, akin to the Dutch and German, like clack, clench, clute (gleba), cremp (contrahere), hacch (parere), luring (torvo vultu), mesh, isliked (whence our sleek), stump, twinge, wippen; the last in its intransitive sense.[101]
In page 27, we see the first use of a well-known adjective.
‘Mon deth mid strengthe and mid witte;
That other thing nis non his fitte.’
That is, ‘it is no match for man.’ This is akin to the Dutch vitten (convenire).
THE EAST MIDLAND DIALECT.
(About A.D. 1260.)
I now give the Lord's Prayer, Hail Mary, and Belief, from a manuscript written in the middle of the Thirteenth Century, and printed in the Reliquiæ Antiquæ, I. 22. This must have been used in the Northern part of Mercia, perhaps in Orrmin's shire, for the a is not yet replaced by o, as in East Anglia. We also find such Northern forms as til, until, fra, als, alwandand, But we have here the great Midland shibboleth, the Present Plural of the Verb ending in en. This is sometimes altogether dropped. The Third Person Singular of the Present now ends in s, which is most unlike the Genesis and Exodus. Omnis is translated by hevirilk; this, to the North of the Humber, would have been ilk an. Are is used for the Latin sunt. The Past Participle has no prefix. The letter h is sometimes set at the beginning of words most uncouthly. Acennede (genitus) is now turned into begotten. Heli stands for the old halig, as in the Athanasian Creed given at page 138. We light upon the full forms mankind and kingdom for the first time. Nottingham would be as likely a town as any for the following rimes. We may imagine the great Bishop Robert turning aside from his wrangles with the Roman Court and from the studies that made the name of Lincolniensis known throughout Christendom, and hearing his Mercian flock repeat these same lines.
THE EAST MIDLAND DIALECT.
(About A.D. 1250.)
[I b]idde huve with milde stevene
prayer
raise
voice
til ure fader þe king of hevene,
to
in þe murunge of Cristis pine,
remembrance
for þe laverd of þis hus, and al lele hine,
faithful hinds
for alle cristinfolk that is in gode lif,
that God schilde ham to dai fro sinne and fro siche;
for alle tho men that are in sinne bunden,
those
that Jhesu Crist ham leyse, for is hali wndes;
loose
wounds
for quike and for deade and al mankinde;
and þat ws here. God don in hevene mot þar it finde;
may place in heaven
and for alle þat on herþe us fedin and fostre;
earth
saie we nu alle þe hali pater noster.
――――――――――
Ure fadir þat hart in hevene,
halged be þi name with giftis sevene,
samin cume þi kingdom,
likewise
þi wille in herþe als in hevene be don,
ure bred þat lastes ai
gyve it hus þis hilke dai,
same
and ure misdedis þu forgyve hus,
als we forgyve þam þat misdon hus,
and leod us intol na fandinge,
temptation
bot frels us fra alle ivele þinge. Amen.
――――――――――
Heil Marie, ful of grace,
þe lavird with þe in hevirilk place,
every
blisced be þu mang alle wimmein,
and blisced be þe blosme of þi wambe. Amen.
――――――――――
Maidin and moder þat bar þe hevene king,
wer us fro wre wyþer-wines at ure hending;
defend
enemies
ending
blisced be þe pappis þat Godis sone sauk,
sucked
þat bargh ure kinde þat þe nedre bysuak.
protected
race
serpent
tricked
Moder of milte and maidin Mari,
mercy
help us at ure hending, for þi merci
þat suete Jhesu þat born was of þe,
þu give us in is godhed him to se.
Jhesu for þi moder luve and for þin hali wndis,
þu leise us of þe sinnes þat we are inne bunde.
‘Hi true in God, fader hal-michttende, þat makede heven and herdeþe, and in Jhesu Krist, is anelepi sone, hure laverd, þat was bigotin of þe hali gast, and born of the mainden Marie, pinid under Punce Pilate, festened to the rode, ded and dulvun, licht in til helle, þe þride dai up ras fra dede to live, stegh intil hevenne, sitis on is fadir richt hand, fadir alwaldand, he þen sal cume to deme þe quike an þe dede. Hy troue hy þeli gast, and hely kirke, þe samninge of halghes, forgifnes of sinnes, uprisigen of fleyes, and life with-hutin bend. Amen.’[102]
THE CONTRAST TO THE EAST MIDLAND.
(A.D. 1250.)
psalm viii.
Laverd, oure Laverd, hou selkouth is
Name þine in alle land þis.
For upe-hoven es þi mykelhede
Oyer hevens þat ere brade;
Of mouth of childer and soukand
Made þou lof in ilka land,
For þi faes; þat þou for-do
Þe fai, þe wreker him unto.
For I sal se þine hevenes hegh,
And werkes of þine fingres slegh;[103]
Þe mone and sternes mani ma,
Þat þou grounded to be swa.
What is man, þat þou mines of him?
Or sone of man, for þou sekes him?
Þou liteled him a litel wight
Lesse fra þine aungeles bright;
With blisse and mensk þou crouned him yet,
And over werkes of þi hend him set.
þou under-laide alle þinges
Under his fete þat ought forth-bringes,
Neete and schepe bathe for to welde,
In-over and beestes of þe felde,
Fogheles of heven and fissches of se,
Þat forth-gone stihes of þe se.
Laverd, our Laverd, hou selkouth is
Name þine in alle land þis.
The above Psalm is a specimen of the Northumbrian Psalter (Surtees Society), a translation which, from its large proportion of obsolete words, must have been compiled about 1250, though it has come down to us only in a transcript made sixty years later. This is the earliest well-marked specimen of the Northern Dialect, spoken at York, Durham, and Edinburgh alike; it was now making its way to Ayr and Aberdeen, and driving out the old Celtic dialects before it. This was the speech which long held its own in the Palaces and Law-courts of Scotland, the speech which was embodied in Acts of Parliament down to Queen Anne's time, and which has been handled by world-renowned Makers: may it never die out! It will be found that our classic English owes much to Yorkshire; some of its forms did not make their way to London until 1520. How different would our speech have been, if York had replaced London as our capital!
This Psalter, most likely compiled in Southern Yorkshire,[104] is nearly akin in its spelling to the Lincolnshire Creed in page 139. It has gh for the old h; we find heghest, lagh, sight, fight, neghbur, negh. It substitutes the same gh for g or c; as in sigh, slaghter, sagh. Sometimes the former g gets the sound of y, as in bie (emere); it is thus that we still pronounce the old bycgan, though we spell it with a u in the Southern way. The English word for arcus is written both bough and bow. In Psalm cxxxi. breg is turned into brow; and the consonant is thrown out altogether in slaer (occisor) in Vol. I. page 11; as also in slaine.[105] This last we saw in Essex in 1180. Hég (fœnum) becomes hai, much as it remains. The u and o are often turned into ou, as in the Lincolnshire Creed; we find wound, doun-right, and thought. In Vol. II. page 43, super principes is translated, by our princes; hence our contraction o'er, The English for per is here seen as thrugh, the sound of which we keep. The Northern Poet sometimes leans to the vowel o; we find swore, spoken, rore, and swolyhe (devorare). What was once gebundne his (vinctos suos) now becomes his bonden (Vol. I. p. 221); new words were soon to be formed from this Participle. There are other forms still preserved in our Version of the Bible, such as brake, spake, and gat. The Plural of foot is now written feet instead of fét; we also find beest and neet. Longè is translated by far in Vol. I. p. 59, and this has prevailed over the Southern ferre.
We of course find the Active Participle in and, the old Norse form; sal is used for shall; thai, thair, thaim occur, something like the forms in the Ormulum. We see the correct þou mines, where we should say þou mindest; a twofold corruption. The third Person Singular of the Present ends in s, as gives, does, has; we follow this Northern usage in week-day life, but on Sunday we have recourse in Church to the old Southern forms, giveth, doeth, &c. A remarkable Norse form is seen in Vol. I. page 301; þou is (tu es);[106] þou has, which is also found, is not yet grown into thou hast. The old ending of the Imperative Plural is sometimes clipped, though not often; as understande for intelligite. The Northern form of the Present Plural in es appears, as hates, oderunt; and Shakspere sometimes follows this form.
Many new phrases crop up for the first time; such as for evermare, fra fer (à longe), al at anes, in mides of, four-skore. There are new Relative forms which took a long time to find their way to the South, as nane was wha roned; nane es whilke saufe mas; yhe whilk standes (qui statis), fest, God, þat whilke þou wroght. In the Twelfth Century, these Relatives had only been used in oblique cases; the Nominative who was not used commonly in the South till the Reformation.
Another wholly new form is found in this Psalter. We have seen that Orrmin, first of all our writers, used þat, the old Neuter article, to translate ille; and its plural þâ, to translate illi. This þâ is still to be found in Scotland (Scott talks of thae loons): it held its ground in Southern England as þo down to 1530. The old Dative of this, þâm, is still in use among our lower orders; as, ‘look at them lads.’ But in Yorkshire, about 1250, þas, our those, a confusion with the old Plural of þes (hic), began to be used for þâ.[107]
Vol. I. page 243: ‘Superbia eorum qui te oderunt,’
is translated pride of þas þat þe hates; and many such
instances could be given. The writer has elsewhere
þese, as in the Essex Homilies, to translate the Latin hi.
In this Psalter we see the beginning of the corruptions
embodied in the phrase those who speak; a phrase which
often with us replaces the rightful they that speak, the Old
English þâ þe. The whilke set down a little earlier, answering
to the Latin qui, gives us the earliest glimpse of
the well-known idiom in the first clause of our English
Paternoster.[108]
We now first find the letter d in the middle of words
like wrecchedness and wickedness. What used to be inlihton
(inluxerunt) is now lightned, with a strange n.
Hâs (raucus) becomes haast; hence the Scotch substantive
hoast. We of the South have put an r into the
old adjective, and call it hoarse.
Olera herbarum (Vol. I. page 111) is translated wortes of grenes; hence our name for certain vegetables.
Hors (equi) is corrupted into horses, as in Layamon's poem. In Vol. I. 245, we find þai þat horses stegh up. This word has had a fate exactly the reverse of hâs (raucus), for we too often call equus ‘a hoss.’
We find some new substantives, such as understanding, foundling, yles (insulæ);[109] there is also hand-mayden. English delights in making two nouns into a new compound.[110] Molestus is translated by a new word, hackande (Vol. I. page 105); hence perhaps our ‘hacking cough.’
We see an effort made after a new idiom in Vol. I. page 265. ‘Non erat qui sepeliret’ is there translated was it nane þat walde biri. But this it could never drive out the old there.
In Vol. I. page 61, ‘exaruit velut testa’ is translated by dried als a pot might be. The two last words are a roundabout expression for wœre.
The verbs delve, cleave, swepe, and wepe take Weak perfects. This process has unluckily always been going on in England.
In Vol. I. page 267, a new meaning is given to the verb spill; what of old was blod is agoten (effusus), now becomes blode es spilte. One of the puzzles in our language is, how ever could the Old English geotan be supplanted by the Celtic pour: this took place about 1500. The former word survives in the Lincoln goyts or canals.
It is curious to mark the various compounds of wil, employed at different times to translate voluntariè. This about the year 800 was wilsum-lice (Vol. I. page 171); about 1250 it was willi; in a rather later copy of this Psalter it was wilfulli: we should now say willingly.
A new phrase crops up, used to translate forsitan; this (Vol. II. page 115) is turgh hap: it is the forerunner of our mongrel perhaps.
We now see the first employment of our word gainsay, the only one of all the old compounds of again that is left to us. In Vol. I. page 269 we read, ‘thou set us in gaine-sagh,’ that is, in contradictionem. This is a true Northern form; a Southerner would have written ayensawe.
The English tongue was still able to turn a substantive
into a verb. ‘Qui dominatur’ (Vol. I. page 203)
is translated by ‘þat laverdes.’[111]
We see the sense of shunt given for the first time to scunian. Expulsi sunt (Vol. I. page 291) is translated ere out-schouned.
There are many Scandinavian words now found for the first time; as,
Dreg, from the Icelandic dregg (sediment).
Gnaist (gnash), from the Norse gnista.
Hauk, from the Icelandic haukr.[112]
Lurk, from the Norse lurke.
Molbery, from the Swedish mulbaer.
Slaghter, from the Norse slâtr.
Scalp, from the Norse skal (a shell).
Snub, from the Norse snubba (cut short).
Besides these, we find for the first time our cloud (nubes); in Vol. I. 43, we read in þe kloudes of þe skewe; ‘in nubibus aeris.’ Sky has therefore at last got its modern meaning. We see snere, akin to the Dutch snarren, to grumble; stuble (stipula) related to the Dutch stoppel. In Vol. II. page 53, conquassare is translated in three different manuscripts by squat, squacche, swacche (our squash), all akin to the Dutch quassen.
A few French words appear, such as fruitefull, oile, richesses; the last being the usual translation of divitiœ, and thus the Plural form of our word is accounted for. The older pais is sometimes turned into peas (pax). The word ire is used to translate the Latin ira; our kindred word yrre cannot have died out at this time: the Poet would think the Latin form more dignified than the Old English. So we may hope that our ire is from an English and not from a Latin source. The word majestas (Vol. I. page 233) is tamed into an ingenious compound, mastehede.
What was in the year 800 a-ðeastrade sind (obscurati sunt) is now seen as er sestrede (Vol. I. page 241). This is a good example of the gradual change in the sounds of letters; thus eaðe became easy. The translator of the Psalter was used to write the French word city; he, therefore, sometimes writes cestrede as well as sestrede. Here we have the soft sound of c coming in; before this time it was always sounded hard, except in a French word. In Vol. I. page 243, we see, ‘when time tane haf I;’ the first instance of taken being cut down to tane — a sure mark of the North.
――――――――――
. . . . . .
About the year 1250, Layamon's poem was turned into the English of the day; many old words of 1200 are dropped, being no longer understood; and some new French words are found. The old henan (hinc), already corrupted into henne, now becomes hennes, our hence; and betwyx becomes bitwixte. In this poem we first find our leg (crus); it comes from the Old Norse leggr, a stem; and slehþe (our sleight) comes from the Icelandic slœgð. Cloke (chlamys) is a Celtic word.
――――――――――
. . . . . .
We owe a great deal to the men who, between 1240 and 1440, drew up the many manuscript collections of English poems that still exist, taken from various sources by each compiler. The writer who copied many lays into what is now called The Jesus Manuscript, ranged over at least one hundred and forty years. In one piece of his, professing to give a list of the English Bishopricks, there is no mention of Ely; hence the original must have been set down soon after the year 1100. In another piece in the same collection, mention is made of Saint Edmund, the Archbishop; this fixes the date of the poem as not much earlier than the year 1250. Most of these pieces, printed in An Old English Miscellany (Early English Text Society), seem to me to have been compiled at various dates between 1220 and 1250; for the proportion of obsolete English in them varies much. The Southern Dialect is well marked.
What in Essex had been called þatt an, is now changed into its present shape.
Þe on mis þat ich echal heonne. — Page 101.
At page 164, the old gearwa is cut down to gere, our gear.
The Virgin says, in page 100, ‘ich am Godes wenche’ (ancilla). The word was henceforth only used of women; Orrmin had called Isaac ‘a wennchell.’
We see in page 76, a Celtic word brought into English,
a word which Shakspere was to make immortal. It is
said that greedy monks shall be ‘bitauht þe puke;’ that
is, given over to the Fiend. The Welsh pwcca and bwg
mean ‘an hobgoblin;’ hence come our bugbears and bogies.[113]
At page 43, we see ‘he wes more bold,’ not bolder. This
was put in for the sake of rime.
In Verbs, we find ute, the old Imperative form, used for almost the last time. In page 47 Pilate, speaking of Christ, says, ‘leteþ hyne beo.’ We should now say, ‘let him alone.’
A new word for tremere now appears in English, in page 176:
For ich schal bernen in fur
And chiverin in ise.
There has been so much wrangling as to whether our Indefinite one comes from the French on or from the Old English ân, used for man, that I once more return to the word, which has been seen already in the Ancren Riwle and the Bestiary. At page 40 we read:
‘On me scal bitraye þat nu is ure yvere.’
This on, which before the Thirteenth Century never stood alone, is a translation of the kindred Latin word in the well-known passage of the Vulgate, ‘unus vestrum me traditurus est.’ Latin, as well as French, had great influence upon the changes in English. Fifty years later, the on was to be used indefinitely like the Old English man.
THE EAST MIDLAND DIALECT.
(About A.D. 1270.)
The following specimen must have been written much about the time that King Henry III. ended his worthless life, if we may judge by internal evidence. It was transcribed by a Herefordshire man about forty years later. Of the sixty nouns, verbs, and adverbs contained in it, one alone, pray, is French; and of the other fifty-nine, only three or four have dropped out of our speech. In the poems of 1280 we shall find a larger proportion of French than in this elegant lay, which may be set down to 1270. The writer seems to have dwelt at Huntingdon, or somewhere near, that town being almost equidistant from London and the three other places mentioned in the fifth stanza. The prefix to the Past Participle is not wholly dropped; and this is perhaps a token that the lay was written on the Southern Border of the Mercian Danelagh. The third Person Singular of the Present Tense ends in es, and not in the Southern eth. The Plural of the same Tense ends in the Midland en. We find ourselves speedily drawing near the time, when English verse was written that might readily be understood six hundred years after it was composed.
THE EAST MIDLAND DIALECT.
(A.D. 1270.)
| When the nyhtegale singes, the wodes waxen grene, | ||
| Lef ant gras ant blosme springes in Averyl, y wene, | ||
| Ant love is to myn herte gon with one a spere so kene, | a a | |
| Nyht ant day my blod hit drynkes, myn herte deth me tene.b | b harm | |
| Ich have loved al this ʓer, that y may love na more, | ||
| Ich have siked moni syk,c lemmon, for thin ore;d | c sighd mercy | |
| Me nis love never the ner, ant that me reweth sore, | ||
| Suete lemmon, thench on me, ich have loved the ʓore.e | e long |
| Suete lemmon; y preye the of love one speche, | ||
| Whil y lyve in world so wyde other nulle y f seche; | f I will not | |
| With thy love, my suete leof, mi blis thou mihteseche,g | g increase | |
| A suete cos of thy mouth mihte be my leche. | ||
| Suete lemmon, y preʓe the of a love bene;h | h boon | |
| Yef thou me lovest, ase men says, lemmon, as ywene, | ||
| Ant ʓef hit thi wille be, thou loke that hit be sene, | ||
| So muchel.y thenke upon the, that al y waxegrene. | ||
| Bituene Lyncolne ant Lyndeseye, Norhamptounant Lounde, | ||
| Ne wot y non so fayr a may as y go fore y-bounde; | ||
| Suete lemmon, y preʓe the thou lovie me a stounde,i | i while | |
| Y wole mone my song on wham that hit ys on y-long.[114] |
THE CONTRAST TO THE EAST MIDLAND.
(A.D. 1264.)
Richard of Alemaigne, whil that he wes kyng.
He spende al is tresour opon swyvyng;
Haveth he nout of Walingford ferlyng;
Let him habbe, ase he brew, bale to dryng,
Maugre Wyndesore.
. . . . . . .
Be the luef, be the loht, sire Edward,
Thou shalt ride sporeles o thy lyard
Al the ryhte way to Dovere ward;
Shalt thou never more breke foreward,
Ant that reweth sore;
Edward, thou dudest ase a shreward,
Forsoke thyn emes lore.
These stanzas are from the famous ballad on the battle of Lewes, in 1264, and come from the same Herefordshire manuscript: they smack strongly of the South. We have here the first instance of our corrupt Imperative, Let him habbe, instead of the old hœbbe he (habeat).[115] We also find the word bost (our boast) for the first time; this is Celtic. In another Southern poem of this date, the Proverbs of Hending, we see that ue replaced e or eo; as bue for be, hue for heo. I give some of the homely bywords of the time, when Englishmen were drawing their swords upon each other at Lewes and Evesham.[116]
God biginning makeþ god endyng.
Wyt ant wysdom is god warysoun.
Betere is eyesor þen al blynd.
Wel fyþt þat wel flyþ.
Sottes bolt is sone shote.
Tel þou never þy fo þat þy fot akeþ.
Betere is appel y-ʓeve þen y-ete.
Gredy is þe godles.
When þe coppe is follest, þenne ber hire feyrest
Under boske (bush) shal men weder abide.
When þe bale is hest, þenne is þe bote nest.
highest
remedy nighest
Brend child fur dredeþ.
Fer from eʓe, fer from herte.
Of unboht hude men kerveþ brod þong.
hide
Dere is boht þe hony þat is licked of þe þorne.
Ofte raþ reweþ.
haste
Ever out comeþ evel sponne web.
Hope of long lyf gyleþ mony god wyf.
The well-known phrase ‘all and some’ is first found in this Manuscript. The old sum is here equivalent to one.
Meanwhile, beyond the Humber, the French Romance
of Sir Tristrem was being translated. The proportion
of obsolete English words is rather greater than in the
Havelok, and the former poem may therefore be dated
about 1270. We unluckily have it only in a Southern
transcript made sixty years later. The rimes give some
clue to the true old readings; and when we see such a
phrase as ich a side, we may be sure that the old
Northern bard wrote ilka side. We find such new forms
as fer and wide, and furthermore.[117]
We now find for the first time ye (vos) used instead of thou. French, influence must have been at work here.
‘Fader, no wretthe the nought,
Ful welcome er ye.’ — Page 41.
Some new substantives are found. In page 25 a castle is called a hold. In page 32 the old bonda (colonus) is turned into husbondman.[118] The poet elsewhere has a new sense for bond, which of old meant nothing more than a tiller of the ground: it now gets the sense of servus, as at page 184:
‘Tho folwed bond and fre.’
――――――――――
Tristrem faught as a knight,
And Urgan al in tene
Yaf him a strok unlight;
His scheld he clef bituene
Atuo.
Tristrem, withouten wene,
Nas never are so wo.
Eft Urgan smot with main,
And of that strok he miste;
Tristrem smot ogayn,
And thurch his body he threste;
Urgan lepe unfain,
Over the bregge he deste:
Tristrem hath Urgan slain,
That al the cuntre wist
With wille.
The king tho Tristrem kist,
And Wales tho yeld him tille.
It is strange that this change should be for the first time found in the Norse part of England. We shall soon see a new word with a French ending formed from this bond. Already, in the Northern Psalter, bunden (vinctus) had been changed into bonden.
To dash (intransitive) may be found in the lines quoted at page 160 of my work. In Layamon the word was transitive.
Ich aught (debeo), a word which was always undergoing change, is first found at page 44.
A new sense of the word smart, used in the Northern Psalter, is seen in page 171:
‘The levedi lough ful smare.’
That is, ‘quickly, briskly.’ Americans well know what they mean by ‘a smart man.’
In page 17, we find the use of the phrase ‘fair and free,’ so common in English ballads down to the latest times:
‘Thai fair folk and thi fre.’[119]
Some Scandinavian words appear; such as busk (parare), from the Norse bua sig, to betake himself; stilt, from the Swedish stylta, a support. To hobble, which is here found, is akin to a Dutch word meaning ‘to jog up and down.’
The Northern men seem to have clipped the prefixes
of French words as well as of their own. We find the
beginning vowel gone in the verbs scape and stable.
Corona now first stands for the top of the head, as in page 51:
‘Crounes thai gun crake.’
THE EAST MIDLAND DIALECT.
(About A.D. 1280.)
King Edward was now fastening his yoke upon Wales. The first Mercian poem of this time that I shall notice is the piece called The Harrowing of Hell, the earliest specimen of anything like an English dramatic work. It may have been written at Northampton or Bedford. The text has been settled (why did no Englishman take it in hand, and go the right way to work?) by Dr. Mall of Breslau. With true German insight into philology, he has compared three different English transcripts: a Warwickshire (?) one of 1290; a Herefordshire one of 1313; and a Northern one of 1330.[120] Again we see the Midland tokens; the Present Plural in en, the almost invariable disuse of the prefix to the Past Participle, the substitution of noht for ne, have I for habbe ich. The author wrote kin and man, not the Southern kun and mon, since the words are made to rime with him and Abraham. The old a is sometimes, but not always, replaced by o; the poet's rimes prove him to have written strong, not strang; he had both ygan and ygon, riming respectively with Sathan and martirdom. The plural form honden, found in all the three manuscripts, and the absence of are (sunt), point to the Southern border of the Danelagh; at the same time, the Northern wiþ (cum) has driven out the Southern mid. Thei (illi) sometimes replaces hi; both Ich and I are found. The Midland form þrist (sitis) has been altered by all the three transcribers; the two Southern ones use þurst, something like our sound of the word: Dr. Mall, by the help of the rime, has here restored the true reading. Ch had replaced c, for michel, not mikel, is found in the Northern manuscript. The dialogue is most curious; Satan swears, par ma fei, like the soundest of Christians; and our Lord uses a metaphor taken from a game of hazard. The comic business, as in the Antigone of Sophocles, falls to a warder. The oath God wot comes once more; and also the Danish word gate (via), which never made its way into the South.[121]
A sad corruption, which first appeared in the Bestiary, is now once more seen: it is one of the few things that has escaped Dr. Mall's eye. The second person of the Perfect of the Strong verb is brought down to the level of the more modern Weak verb.
In line 77, we see in the transcript of 1290,
Sunne ne foundest þou never non.
In line 189, the transcriber of 1313 writes,
Do nou þat þou byhihtest me.
It was many years before this corruption could take root; it is seldom found in Wickliffe, who tries to avoid translating dedisti by either the old gave or the new gavest, and commonly writes didest give.
In the transcript of 1290, lording is seen instead of loverding, and this is found in Kent and Lincolnshire much about the same time. la the lines of page 28,
I shal go fro man to man
And reve þe of mani an —
the last two words give us the same phrase found in the Yorkshire poems already quoted.
At page 32, we find a line thus written in the transcript of 1290, ‘we þi comaundement forleten;’ in the transcript of 1313, this is ‘we þin heste dude forleten.’ If this latter represent the original of 1280 best, it is the first instance of a revived auxiliary verb, of which I shall give instances in the next Chapter.
Much ink has lately been spent upon Byron's expression, ‘there let him lay’ (jaceat). The bard might have appealed to the transcript of 1313:
Sathanas, y bynde þe, her shalt þou lay
O þat come domesdai — Page 30.
But the greatest Midland work of 1280 is the Lay of Havelok, edited by Mr. Skeat for the Early English Text Society. This is one of the many poems translated from the French about this time, when King Edward the First was welding his French-speaking nobles and his English yeomen into one redoubtable body, ready for any undertaking either at home or abroad. The poem, which belongs to the Mercian Danelagh, has come down to us in the hand of a Southern writer, transcribed within a few years of its compilation. This renowned Lincolnshire tale was most likely given to the world not far from that part of England where Orrmin wrote eighty years earlier: it is certainly of near kin to another Lincolnshire poem, compiled in 1303. Mr. Garnett, in page 75 of his essays, has suggested Derbyshire or Leicestershire as the birth-place of the author: Dr. Morris is in favour of a more Southern shire. We find the common East Midland marks: the Present Plural ending in en; the Past Participle oftenest without a prefix; are for the Latin sunt; niman for the Latin ire; and the oath Goddot, which is said to be of Danish birth. But there is also a dash of the Northern dialect; the second person singular of the Present tense, and the second person plural of the Imperative, both end in es now and then; a fashion that lingers in Scotland to this day. The Norse Active Participle in ande is also found, and Norse phrases like thusgate, hethen, gar. Orrmin's munnde has now become mone, which is almost the Scotch maun, as in line 840.
‘I wene that we deye (die) mone.’
Orrmin's ʓho (the old heo) is now changed into she and sho; his they and their are sometimes seen, but have been often altered by the Southern transcriber into hi and hir. The Southern thilk (ille) is not found once in the whole poem. We now for the last time see the Old English Dual (this we must have brought from the Oxus) in the line 1882:
‘Gripeth eþer unker a god tre.’
Grip
each of you two a good tree.
This was of old written incer. Strange tricks are played with the letter h. The letter d is dropped after liquids, for we find here shel, hel, bihel; and the Danes to this day have the same pronunciation. We may remark the Westward march, up from East Anglia, of the letter o, replacing the older a: swa has become so, and is made to rime with Domino; on the other hand, wa (dolor) still rimes with stra, our straw. But such words as ilc, swilk, mikel, hwilgate, prove that our modern corruptions of these words had not as yet made their way to the Humber; the Havelok shows us our Standard English, almost formed, but something is still wanting.
There are Northern forms, which could never have been used in the South in Edwardian days; such as sternes, intil, tinte, coupe, loupe, carle. The Plurals of Substantives end in es, not en; and to this there are hardly any exceptions.
The old seofoþa (septimus) now first becomes sevenþe,
owing the intrusive n to Norse influence; many others of
our Ordinals are formed in the same way.[122]
Other English words, common in our mouths, are found in their new form in the Havelok for the first time, such as yonder, thoruthlike: overthwart has been pared down to athwart since that age.
The French use vous, when addressing the Almighty. This took root in England; and we find of you, a word unmusical in Quaker's ear, employed for the Latin tuus:
‘For the holi milce of you
mercy
Have merci of me, louerd, nou!’ — Line 1361.
lord
I give the earliest instance of a well-known vulgarism:
‘Hwan Godard herds þat þer þrette.’ — 2404.
In substantives, we find the Plural shon (our shoon), one of the few corrupt Plurals in n that we keep, and which will never die out, thanks to a famous old ballad in Hamlet. What Orrmin called laf (panis) is now seen as lôf: we have not changed the sound of this word in the last six hundred years.
The Old English cwiðe is now seen as quiste (our bequest).
We see two lines in page 55 which explain why the Irish to this day sound the r so strongly:
‘And he haves on þoru his arum (arm),
Þerof is ful mikel harum (harm).’
So the Irish sound the English boren (natus) in the true old way. We see the Old English word for a well-known bird, in line 1241:
‘Ne þe hende, ne þe drake.’
The former substantive, akin to the Latin anas, anatis, was still to last two hundred years, before it was supplanted by the word duck. As to drake, this poem first shows us that the word had lost its old form end-rake, that is, anat-rex. There is hardly a word in English that has been so corrupted; one letter, d, alone remains now to show the old root, and this letter is prefixed to a word akin to the rajah of Hindostan.
In line 968, we find a new phrase:
‘And bouthe him cloþes, al span-newe.’
Span, the old spón, means a chip.
In line 27, we see an idiom well known to ballad-makers, when it becomes something like an indeterminate pronoun: this first appeared in the Ancren Riwle.
It was a king bi are dawes
That in his time were gode lawes, &c.
In line 1815, a man slaughtered is said to be stan-ded. The word smerte (painful) keeps its old English sense, though we saw other meanings of the word farther to the North.
The verb leyke (ludere) is sounded in this poem, just as the Northern shires still pronounce it; we of the South call it lark, following the Old English lácan.[123]
To fare of old meant only to journey: we see in the line 2411 a derivative from another old verb, ferian:
‘Hwou Robert with here loverd ferde’ (egit).
To prick is used in the sense that Macaulay loved, and that Croker blamed:
‘An erl, þat he saw priken þore,
Ful noblelike upon a stede.’ — Line 2639.
As might be expected, there are many Norse words in the Havelok. I give those which England has kept, together with one or two to be found in Lowland Scotch.
Beyte (bait), from the Icelandic beita (incitare).
Big, from the Icelandic bolga (tumere).
Bleak, from the Icelandic bleikr (pallidus).
Blink, from the Danish blinke.
Boulder (a rock), from the Icelandic ballaðr.
Coupe, as in horse-couper, from the Icelandic kaupa (emere).
Crus (Scotch crouse), from the Swedish krus (excitable).
Ding, from the Icelandic dengia, to hammer.
Dirt, from the Icelandic drit (excrementa).
Goul (to yowl, ululare), from the Icelandic gaula.
Grime, from the Norse grima (a spot).
Hemp, from the Icelandic hampr, not from the Old English hanep.
Put[124] (to throw), from the Icelandic potta.
Sprawl, from the Danish sprœlle.
Stack, from the Danish stak.
Teyte (tight, active), from the Norse teitr (lively).
Besides these Scandinavian words, we find in the Havelok other words now for the first time employed. Such are lad (puer), from the Welsh llawd;[125] stroute, our strut (contendere), a High German word; boy (puer), akin to the Suabian buah; to butt, akin to the Dutch botten; but (a bout at wrestling), which Mr. Wedgwood derives from bugan (flectere), and bought, a word applied to the coils of a rope, and so to the turns of things that succeed each other. File, akin to the Dutch vuil, means a worthless person; we may still often hear a man called ‘a cunning old file.’ In 2499 of the Havelok, we read,
‘Here him rore, þat fule file.’
foul
We see the origin of the word deuce in the line —
‘Deus! lemman, hwat may þis be?’
Storie appears clipped of the vowel that once began it; and Justice is used for a man in office, as well as for a virtue.
It is curious to see in this Lay two forms of the same word that has come to England by different channels; we have gete (custodire) from the Icelandic gœta; and also wayte, which means the same, coming from the French guaiter, a corruption of the wahten brought into Gaul by her German conquerors. Sad havock must have been wrought with English prepositional compounds in the eighty years that separated the Havelok from the Ormulum. In compound words, umbe, the Greek amphi, comes only three times throughout the long poem before us; for only five times; with only once; of not at all. The English tongue had been losing some of its best appliances. The preposition to, answering to the German zer and the Latin dis, is still often found in composition,
and did not altogether drop until the days of James I.
| On þe nith, als Goldeborw lay, | ||
| Soiy and sorwful was she ay, | ||
| For she wende she were biswike,a | a tricked | |
| Þat sh[e w]ere yeven unkyndelike.b | b unnaturally | |
| O nith saw she þer-inne a lith, | ||
| A swiþe c fayr, a swiþe bryth, | c very | |
| Al so brith, al so shir,d | d clear | |
| So it were a blase of fir. | ||
| She lokede no(r)þ, and ek south, | ||
| And saw it comen ut of his mouth, | ||
| Þat lay bi hire in þe bed: | ||
| No ferlike e þou she were adred. | e wonder | |
| Þouthe she, ‘wat may this bimene? | ||
| He beth f heyman yet, als y wene. | f will be | |
| He beth heyman g er he be ded.’ | g nobleman | |
| On hise shuldre, of gold red | ||
| She saw a swiþe noble croiz, | ||
| Of an angel she herde a voyz, | ||
| ‘Goldeborw, lat þi sorwe be. | ||
| For Havelok, þat haveþ spuset þe, | ||
| He [is] kinges sone, and kinges eyr, | ||
| Þat bikenneth h þat croiz so fayr. | h betokens | |
| It bikenneth more, þat he shal | ||
| Denemark haven, and Englond al. | ||
| He shal ben king strong and stark | ||
| Of Engelond and Denemark.[127] | ||
| Þat shal þu wit þin eyne sen,i | i see | |
| And þo shalt quen and levedi ben.’ |
| Þanne she havede herd the stevene k | k voice | |
| Of þe angel uth of hevene. | ||
| She was so fele siþes l blithe, | l many times | |
| Þat she ne mithe hire joie my the.m | m moderate | |
| But Havelok sone anon she kiste, | ||
| And he slep and nouth ne wiste. | ||
| Hwan þat aungel havede seyd, | ||
| Of his slep anon he brayd,n | n started | |
| And seide, ‘lemman, slepes þou? | ||
| A selkuth o drem dremede me nou. | o wondrous | |
| Herkne nou hwat me haveth met,p | p I dreamt | |
| Me þouthe y was in Denemark set, | ||
| But on on þe moste q hil | q greatest | |
| Þat evere yete kam i til. | ||
| It was so hey, þat y wel mouthe | ||
| Al þe werd r se, als me þouthe. | r world | |
| Als i sat upon þat lowe,s | s hill | |
| I bigan Denemark for to awe, | ||
| Þe borwes t and þe castles stronge; | t boroughs | |
| And mine armes weren so longe, | ||
| That i fadmede, al at ones, | ||
| Denemark, with mine longe bones. | ||
| And þanne u y wolde mine armes drawe | u when | |
| Til me, and hom for to have, | ||
| Al that evere in Denemark liveden | ||
| On mine armes faste clyveden.x | x clave | |
| And þe stronge castles alle | ||
| On knes bigunnen for to falle, | ||
| Þe keyes fellen at mine fet. | ||
| Anoþer drem dremede me ek, | ||
| Þat ich fley y over þe salte se | y flew | |
| Til Engeland, and al with me | ||
| Þat evere was in Denemark lyves,z | z alive | |
| But a bondemen, and here wives. | a except | |
| And þat ich kom til Engelond, | ||
| Al closede it intil mine hond. | ||
| And, Goldeborw, y gaf [it] þe. | ||
| Deus! lemman, hwat may þis be?’ |
| Sho answerede and seyde sone: | ||
| ‘Jhesu Crist, þat made mone, | ||
| Þine dremes turne to joye; | ||
| Þat wite b þw that sittes in trone. | b decree | |
| Ne non strong king, ne caysere, | ||
| So þou shalt be, fo[r] þou shalt bere | ||
| In Engelond corune yet; | ||
| Denemark shal knele to þi fet. | ||
| Alle þe castles þat aren þer-inne, | ||
| Shal-tow, lemman, ful wel winne.’ |
1THE CONTRAST TO THE EAST MIDLAND.
(About A.D. 1280.)
Whan Jhesu Crist was don on rode
And þolede deþ for ure gode,
He clepede to hym seint Johan,
Þat was his oʓe qenes man,
And his oʓene moder also,
Ne clepede he hym feren no mo.
And sede, ‘wif, lo her þi child
Þat on þe rode is ispild:
Nu ihc am honged on þis tre
Wel sore ihc wot hit rewep þe.
Mine fet and honden of blod . . .
Biþute gult ihc þolie þis ded.
Mine men þat aʓte me to love,
For whan ihc com from hevene abuve,
Me haveþ idon þis ilke schame.
Ihc nave no gult, hi buþ to blame.
To mi fader ihc bidde mi bone,
Þat he forʓive hit hem wel sone.’
Marie stod and sore weop,
Þe teres feolle to hire fet.
No wunder nas þeʓ heo wepe sore,
Of soreʓe ne miʓte heo wite no more,
Whenne he þat of hire nam blod and fless,
Also his suete wille was,
Heng inayled on þe treo.
‘Alas, my sone,’ seide heo,
‘Hu may ihc live, hu may þis beo?’
The above is taken from the Assumption of the Virgin, printed by the Early English Text Society, along with the King Horn and another poem, all written about 1280 or rather later. In them we find that the Active Participle in inge, first used by Layamon, has almost driven out the older inde. The King Horn was written in some part of England (Oxfordshire?), upon which the East Midland dialect had begun to act, grafting its Plural form of the Present tense upon the older form in eth. Here hwanon (unde) is replaced by whannes, our whence. In page 8 there is a curious instance of the Old English idiom, which piles up negatives upon each other: this survives in the mouths of the common folk.
‘Heo ne miʓte . . . speke . . . noʓt in þe halle,
ne nowhar in non oþere stede.
We now light on scrip (pera), which comes from the Norse skreppa, and pore (spectare), akin to the Swedish pala.[128] There are also three words akin to the Dutch or German, clink, flutter, and guess. Chivalrous ideas were now being widely spread under the sway of the great Edward, and we find that a verb has been formed from the substantive knight.
‘For to kniʓti child horn.’ — Line 480.
The verb ‘to squire’ came a hundred years later, in
Chaucer's time.
There are some Kentish Sermons printed at page 26 of An Old English Miscellany (Early English Text Society). These seem to have been translated from the French about 1290: it was in Kent and Essex, as we can plainly see, that the old forms of King Alfred's day made their last stand against Northern changes. Forms like liesed (amisit), niede (necessitas), show us how a word such as belefe got turned into belief, the corrupt form which we still keep. Never did any tongue employ so many variations of vowels as the English, to represent the sound e: here is one more puzzle for the foreigner.[129] Our word glare, first found here, is akin to the Low German. We light on goodman (paterfamilias) at page 32. An idiomatic repetition, well known to our lower orders, now appears: as at page 31, ‘a sik man seyde, Lord, lord,’ ‘ha seide,’ &c. The swiche (talis) is sometimes shortened into the siche, still often heard.
Robert of Gloucester wrote his Chronicle about 1300, or not much earlier, since he speaks of St. Louis as canonised. He shows us a few new idioms, especially as regards the word an, our one.[130]
Þe more þat a man con, þe more worþ he ys. — I. page 364.
Þe castel of Cary held one Wyllam Lovel. — II. page 448.
Ac me ne miʓte vor no þing in þe toune finde on. — II. p. 556.
Heo maden certeyne covenaunt þat heo were al at on. — I. page 113.
The first phrase in Italics answers to quisque, the second to quidam, the third to unus. From the fourth, often repeated in this piece, comes ‘to set them at one again,’ and our word atonement. The Old English gleow had been hitherto seen as glew, gleu, and glie; it now approached its more long-lived form in gle. Makes (socii) is now seen as mates, II. 536. Formerly sceoppa had stood for a treasury; it was now degraded in meaning, and became our shop: it occurs in Robert's account of the riot at Oxford (he may have been an eye-witness), not long before the battle of Lewes.[131] It was a bowyer's shop that suffered; and this word is spelt bowiar: lawyer, collier, and such like forms were to follow.[132] The adjective bad (malus) is now first found; it has much puzzled the brains of antiquaries, for there seems to be no kindred word nearer to it than the Persian bud. Different explanations have also been given of Robert's new word, balledness (baldness); Mr. Dasent (Jest and Earnest, II. 70) talks of the God Baldr, who had a glorious whiteness of face.
Our poet uses the Norse word tome for otium; and this
lasted down to the Fifteenth Century, when it was confused
with time. We still say, ‘I have time’ (vacat mihi);
the Scotch toom (vacuus) is well known. John Balliol
was nicknamed Toom-tabard, which well hits off his
gaudy emptiness; Robert talks of ‘5,000 poundes of
sterlinges:’ this last word we owe to Germany.
When Richard I. came home from his German prison (II. page 490), ‘he pleyede nywe king at ome.’ This new idiom seems French; we now put a the after the verb. The poet is fond of using body for person, as ‘mani god bodi, that ne com’ (II. page 546). We are told, in the famous ballad on Lewes fight, that the King's brother ‘saisede the mulne for a castel.’ Thirty-five years later, the Gloucestershire bard tells us that the aforesaid Prince ‘was in a windmulle inome.’ The old n at the end of the word, clipped in England, is still kept by the Scotch Lowlanders.
Robert wrote, besides his Chronicle, a great number of Lives of Saints. Of these, that of Becket has been published by the Percy Society, Vol. XIX. At page 92, we see a new adverb compounded from an adjective, ‘to do the sentence al abrod,’ We still keep this counterpart to the Latin latè in ‘to noise abroad;’ but the Norse abroad (foris) is of much later introduction. There are such new phrases as forasmoche as (page 28); þu miʓt as wel beo stille (page 49); the kinges men were at him (page 63); hi dude here best (did their best), page 3. The old berewe now becomes barewe, our barrow.
A new adjective is found; Becket's mother, wandering about London unable to speak English, is called ‘a mopisch best’ (page 5). This is akin to the Dutch moppen, to sulk. Buttock reminds us of the Dutch bout; and stout, which is pure Dutch, now first appears in England.
We have seen in Sir Tristrem that bond came to mean servus; we find, at page 27 of the Becket, the word bonde man, with the same meaning. In other shires, such as near Rutland, bonde man still bore the old sense of colonus and nothing more. In the former case, the word came from the English bindan; in the latter, from the Norse bua.
At page 126, we see both the old form Tywesdai and the new form Tuesdai. Two foreign words were pronounced in 1300 just as we wrongly pronounce them now: Stevene (Stephanus), page 124, and yused (solebam), page 23.[133] We find simple opposed to gentle (page 124), as in Scott's writings.
Another of these Saint's Lives is the Voyage of St. Brandan (Percy Society, Vol. XIV.). In this we first see her and thar, at page 26; the preposition bi is used by sailors in a new sense, for we read at page 28, ‘hi seʓe an yle al bi southe.’
A line in page 30 is remarkable; speaking of an otter,
‘Mid his forthere fet he brouʓte a fur-ire and a ston.’
We did not use the word forefeet in 1300; fire-iron is an old compound.
An idiom, already known, is seen at page 3; we are there told that if men had not sinned, ‘herinne hi hadde ʓut ilyved’ (vixissent).
We now see a new word which was to degrade the Old English smirk. At page 4, we read, ‘bi the suete smyl of ʓou.’ This word has kinsmen both in Norway and Germany.
. . . . . .
Much about the year 1300, the great Romance of Alexander was Englished; perhaps in Warwickshire.[134] Here we find als fer as, aloud, and aside for the first time; the noun side had a hundred years earlier been used to compound beside. At page 192, we see the origin of our ‘to ride the high horse;’ Alexander says of his friends, ‘Y wolde sette heom on hyghe hors.’ There are such new words and forms as bestir, drawbridge, fotman, notemugge (nutmeg), brother-in-lawe, overthrow, pecock, upper, kuin (kine), bewray, anhungred. Hnœgan becomes neigh; the old geolo (flavus) is seen as yelow (page 191); and the old adjective cyse now takes the form of chis, our choice, as in the line,
‘The lady is of lemon chis.’ — Page 137.
The old ruh (hispidus) and hlihan are turned into rowgh (page 253), and laugh (page 296). Schill at length becomes shrill.
There are many words, akin to terms found in German dialects, now cropping up; such as cower, curl, to dab, to duck, girl,[135] mane, pin, to plump, poll, scoff, scour, scrub, shingle, stamp, top (turbo); also hedlinge (præceps).
A few Scandinavian words are found, such as fling, ragged, tumble. The Celtic words, seen here in greater numbers than usual, may betoken that the Alexander was compiled not very far from the Welsh March; these words are bicker, wail, hog, and gun. This last is most likely some engine for darting Greek fire; the siege of Macedoyne, supposed by the poet to be a city, is thus described in page 135:
The kyng sygh, of that cité,
That they no myghte duyré:
They dasscheth heom in at the gate,
And doth hit schutte in hast.
The tayl they kyt of hundrodis fyve,
To wedde heo lette heore lyve.
Theo othre into the wallis stygh,
And the kynges men with gonnes sleygh.[136]
As to French words, bonny is seen for the first time in page 161, where bonie londis are promised. The word defyghe, riming with spie (page 288), shows that the guttural was not sounded in Southern Mercia in 1300; dereworth is now making way for precious, when jewels are mentioned. In the line at page 316, ‘theo wayte gan a pipe blawe;’ the French substantive shows how the watchman was to become a musician.
. . . . . .
――――――――――
The above specimens will give some idea of the sources whence mainly comes our Standard English. A line drawn between Chelmsford and York will traverse the shires, where the new form of England's speech was for the most part compounded by the old Angles and the later Norse comers. Almost half-way between these two towns lived the man, whose writings are of such first-rate importance that they are worthy of having a Chapter to themselves.[137] After his time there came in but few new Teutonic changes in spelling and idiom, such as those that had been constantly sliding into our written speech between 1120 and 1300.
- ↑ ‘Cadmon mœ fauæþo’ (not Cœdmon) is the inscription lately discovered on the cross; and this confirms a guess made long ago by Mr. Haigh. Mr. Stephens assigns the noble fragment of the Judith to the great bard of the North.
- ↑ Archæologia for 1843, page 31.
- ↑ See the Runes in my Appendix, Chapter VII.
- ↑ We follow the North, which is more primitive than the South,in pronouncing this word. But in Dorset they still sound the ebefore a, as in yacre, yale, yarm, and others. See Mr. Barnes' poems.
- ↑ Bosworth, Origin of the Germanic Languages, pp. 56-60.
- ↑ Rushworth Gospels, iv. (Surtees Society), Prolegomena, cix.
- ↑ We find, however, aran in Kentish charters (Kemble, i. 234), and the form ic biddo in the oldest charters of Kent and Worcestershire.
- ↑ See an extract from the Psalter in my Appendix.
- ↑ 9.0 9.1 We still have both the Northern and Southern forms of thisword.
- ↑ Here the old h at the beginning of a word is cast out; a processoften repeated.
- ↑ I will point out an odd mistake of the Translator's. He found the Low Latin substantive singularis (whence the French sanglier and the Italian cinghiale) in Psalm lxxix. 14. This he took for an adjective, and translated syndrig, making great nonsense.
- ↑ At the head of the Yarrow is a mountain, called of old by the Celtic name Ben Yair. To this the Romans prefixed their Mont, and the Danes long afterwards added their word Law. The hill is now called Mountbenjerlaw; in it hill comes three times over. — Garnett's Essays, p. 70.
- ↑ Dr. Morris was the first to point this out.
- ↑ Worsaae, The Danes and Northmen, pp. 71, 119, 170.
- ↑ Here we have a Strong Verb turned into a Weak form, a corruptionwhich has been going on ever since. Thus crope, used byTyndale, after his time became crept.
- ↑ We see the hard g already softened into y, both here, and in theearlier Psalter.
- ↑ Eadred was like King Victor Emmanuel, who has no underkings below him; Eadred's father was like Kaiser William.
- ↑ Kemble's Charters, ii. 304.
- ↑ See a specimen of these in my Appendix, Chapter VII.
- ↑ A Gloucestershire drill-sergeant will to this day tell his yeomanryto ‘dra swurds, and come round like a gee-ut,’ when they wheel. Our classic modern English comes from shires far to the East of Gloucester.
- ↑ See note on p. 49.
- ↑ There is a wrong notion abroad that the German Plural in ens is more venerable than the English Plural in es.
- ↑ Mr. Thorpe, in his Analecta Anglo-Saxonica, looks upon the Legend, which he prints, as an East Anglian work.
- ↑ This uncoupling sometimes adds to our stores of expression; to throw over is different from to overthrow.
- ↑ This of old would have been bûtan. Our but still expresses nisi, prœter, quin, sed, verum; in Scotland, I believe, it may still stand for extra and sine. Our fathers must have thought that too great a load was thrown upon one word.
- ↑ I here follow Mr. Earle in his account of the Saxon Chronicles. The cock and bull tales in the forged Charters of the Abbey are most amusing to any one who knows the true history of England in the Seventh Century.
- ↑ G sometimes changed to y, and then centuries later, in StandardEnglish, changed back to g again; as we see in this word gate, stillcalled by the Scotch yett.
- ↑ Here the Northern k begins to replace the Old Southern c.
- ↑ The h before another consonant now begins to drop, in theapproved Anglian fashion.
- ↑ Garnett's Essays, p. 142.
- ↑ See Garnett's Essays, p. 68.
- ↑ Old English Homilies, edited by Dr. Morris (Early English Text Society), p. 217. These go to p. 245. The passage I give above is an original one of the transcriber's, written long after Ælfric's time.
- ↑ See Faber's Difficulties of Romanism (Third Edition, p. 260) as to erasures made in Ælfric's text by theologians of a later age.
- ↑ The French escole (schola) appears in these Homilies (p. 243) as iscole.
- ↑ About 1340, cnokeʓ was written for knocks. See the Lancashire specimen, given in Chapter III.
- ↑ This old word only survives among cricketers, who make good swipes.
- ↑ Even our few civil wars have commonly in the end furthered the good estate of the realm.
- ↑ But the Infinitive in en lasted in the South down to the Reformation. Surrey writes, ‘I dare well sayen.’
- ↑ Old English Homilies, First Series (Early English Text Society), p. 55.
- ↑ Hence our ‘put him out.’
- ↑ The English rimes, written before the Norman Conquest, must
have been nothing but an exercise of ingenuity: —
Flah mah fliteð,
Flan man hwiteð,
Burg sorg biteð,
Bald aid ðwiteð,
Wræc-fæc wriðað.This is a long poem, printed by Conybeare, Anglo-Saxon Poetry, p. xxiii. Mr. Morris, in his Second Series of Homilies, contends that the Moral Ode there printed is a transcript of some long English riming poem of the year 1000, or thereabouts. If so, the transcriber must have taken great liberties, in writing words like bikeihte and serveden (pp. 239 and 230), Second Series. If the original ever turns up, it will be the first of long-lined riming poems in English.
- ↑ Pickwick will keep this alive for ever. Mr. Justice Stareleigh can have been no student of Anglo-Saxon.
- ↑ Even so the Sanscrit gigâmi is the same word as the Greek β/ιβημι.
- ↑ This was first pointed out by Dr. Morris in the Athenæum.
- ↑ Can cacher have got confounded with the Old English gelœccan, gelœht, meaning the same?
- ↑ In Hard Times comes the phrase, ‘Kidderminster, stow that;’ i.e. ‘be quiet.’
- ↑ We thus have nigh as well as the near (neor) seen at page 81, both alike coming from the old neah. The combination ei was never much liked for our Teutonic words.
- ↑ Wickliffe wrote ‘bisydis the desert,’ for what was 400 years earlier ‘wið ðæt wêsten.’
- ↑ Anglo-Saxon and Northumbrian Versions of St. Matthew's Gospel, by Hardwick.
- ↑ Old English Homilies, Second Series (Early English Text Society), published by Dr. Morris. These did not come out before the end of May, 1873. I delayed publishing my own book until their appearance.
- ↑ It is found, but most seldom, in the last part of the Peterborough Chronicle, as in mai and lai; the i representing the old g.
- ↑ The old on án only meant continuously.
- ↑ So in the poem on the Chameleon: —
‘Sirs,’ cried the umpire, ‘cease your pother;
The creature's neither one nor tother.’ - ↑ Sir Charles Napier, when finding comfort, as he said, in ‘jawing away’ at the powers that were, little suspected the good authority he had for his verb.
- ↑ This is nearer to the Norse than to the Old English scir.
- ↑ Hence comes our tout, well known to sporting men.
- ↑ Anglo-Saxon Dialogues, by J. Kemble (Ælfric Society), Part. III. p. 226. A revised edition has been published by Dr. Morris in his Old English Miscellany.
- ↑ The h is sadly misused in this piece, as we see.
- ↑ When we find so thorough a Teuton using words like ginn and scorn, we should pause before we derive these from France.
- ↑ Mr. White has given us a capital edition of Orrmin's poem, the Ormulum. Dr. Stratmann has made good use of it.
- ↑ Mr. Garnett wishes to settle him within fifty miles of Northampton, and therefore would not object to Nottingham. I should like to place him thirty miles still further North.
- ↑ Our tongue is much enriched by having different forms of the same word; such as dike, ditch, shriek, screech, drink, drench, egg, edge, &c., owing to this intrusive ch.
- ↑ I give in my list the origin of a few Scottish phrases, and the reason why Yorkshiremen talk of the gainest way to a place.
- ↑ A ship is outward bound.
- ↑ We still have the old sense, ‘to dwell long upon a thought.’The sense of habitare has not quite driven out the sense of morari.
- ↑ Hence comes our ungainly. But the verb ‘to gain’ is from theFrench gagner.
- ↑ Ster was the sign of the feminine for hundreds of years afterthis time, at least in the South; we see a change at work whenOrrmin applies the ending ster to a man.
- ↑ Every one remembers Cowper's ‘Sir Smug.’ The old Danishword has been sadly degraded.
- ↑ Sir Roger de Coverley at the theatre ‘struck in,’ hearing some people talk near him. Addison would have been puzzled to give the derivation of this verb.
- ↑ If we had kept the h in its proper place, at the beginning of the word, we should have full in our view the link between hwœt and the Latin cwid (quid). The interchange between h and c has not yet died out in our island. I have heard Scotch peasants talk of a cwirlwind instead of a hwirlwind.
- ↑ This word is still rightly pronounced as a dissyllable in Scotland;
so in Lady Nairne's Mitherless Lammie: —
‘But it wad gae witless the warald to see.’
- ↑ Four years ago I heard an old Derbyshire gamekeeper use the verb in question.
- ↑ Our word shift (chemise) means a change of linen.
- ↑ The last survives in numb, and in Corporal Nym.
- ↑ Sir F. Madden's Layamon, i. 130. Layamon has added much of his own to the original in this story of King Lear; and the additions have been copied by later writers, Shakespere among them.
- ↑ The old cicen is turned into chicken in the Worcester manuscript, quoted at page 85.
- ↑ Hence happen, happy, came into England and supplanted older words.
- ↑ Hence the Rake's Progress.
- ↑ Early English Text Society.
- ↑ Early English Text Society.
- ↑ It is most curious to compare the Salopian version (Reliquiœ Antiquœ, ii. 4) with the Dorsetshire version (Camden Society).
- ↑ This was pointed out by Dr. Morris some time ago in Notes and Queries.
- ↑ This Reflexive Dative, standing for solus, is still used in Scotland.
‘Oh! wha will dry the dreeping tear
She sheds her lane, she sheds her lane?’— Lady Nairne's Poems, p. 211.
- ↑ So in the Latin, jungo is formed from jugo, and lingo from lico.
- ↑ This, as now, might express a poltroon.
- ↑ In Salop, the old Scandinavian gris (the Sanscrit ghrishti) isused instead of pig; hence our griskin: some curious English rimesin the Lanercost Chronicle turn on the former word.
- ↑ This proves that we ought not to write pedler, but pedlar; the word is sometimes given as a puzzle in spelling.
- ↑ In Salop, forms which were used in Lothian and Yorkshire seem to have clashed with forms employed in Gloucestershire and Dorset; something resembling the Ormulum was the upshot. In each succeeding century Salop comes to the front. ‘The Wohunge of ure Lauerd’ seems to have been written here about 1210 (Morris' Old English Homilies, First Series, p. 269). In 1340, or so, the Romance of William of Palerne was compiled here. In 1420, John Audlay wrote his poems in the same dialect (Percy Society, No. 47). In 1580, Churchyard had not dropped all his old Salopian forms. Baxter, who came from Salop, appeared about 1650 as one of the first heralds of the change that was then passing over Standard English prose, and that was substituting Dryden's style for that of Milton. Soon after 1700, Farquhar, in his Recruiting Officer, gives us much of the Salopian brogue. This intermingling of Northern and Southern forms in Salop produced something not unlike Standard English.
- ↑ Now we have for the first time a new English metre, with the
alternate lines riming: —
His muð is get wel unkuð
wið pater noster and crede;
fare he norð, er fare he suð,
leren he sal his nede;bidden bone to Gode,
and tus his muð rigten,
tilen him so ðe sowles fode,
ðurg grace off ure drigtin. - ↑ Rather further to the North, as we shall see, the old o was turned into ou. A foreigner may well despair of pronouncing English vowels, when he finds that the words rune, wound, and mood are all sounded in the same way. This comes from Standard English being the product of many different shires.
- ↑ The Old English dream only meant sonus or gaudium, and is soused in the Bestiary.
- ↑ This as yet only means in English a cloud, and this sense of the word lasted till Chaucer's time. Til skyia in Norse means ‘upin the sky.’ Twenty years after the present poem's date sky stoodfor aer in Yorkshire.
- ↑ Genesis and Exodus, p. 16 (Early English Text Society).
- ↑ No for nec is found in Layamon.
- ↑ In the piece referred to at p. 85, we saw the first instance of o being changed into ou.
- ↑ The pronunciation of a word like Loughborough is the despair of foreigners. Why should cough be sounded differently from plough? ‘I have a cow in my box,’ said a Frenchman, meaning a cough in his chest. Bunyan, who came from the East Midland, pronounced daughter as dafter; so we see by his rimes, quoted by Mr. Earle (Philology of the English Tongue), p. 127.
- ↑ It is pronounced in South Lancashire in a way quod literis dicere non est, but something like heawse (Garnett's Essays, p. 77). Coude (our could), wound, and bound have three different sounds in modern English.
- ↑ Hickes has mangled some of the words in this piece, which I leave as he printed it. It is in his Thesaurus, i. 233.
- ↑ The French imprecation dahet shows whence comes our ‘dash it!’
- ↑ We keep the older form in woe begone; the verb here is a corrupt Participle from begangan (circumdare).
- ↑ As we say, ‘he whipped into his desk.’
- ↑ We find the old genitive still uncorrupted, as hevene king, fadir hand. We still say hell fire, Lady day. It is most strange that such words as fanding, stegh, and samninge should ever have dropped out of our speech, since they must have been in the mouths of all Englishmen who knew the simplest truths of religion.
- ↑ Sly (sapiens) has here a most exalted sense; it has been sadly degraded. ‘Nasty sly girl!’ says one of Mr. Trollope's matrons, speaking of her son's enchantress.
- ↑ The Midland Present Plural ending in en is sometimes found, as wirken (laborant). Ninety years later, Higden said that this Yorkshire speech was so harsh and rough that it could be hardly understood in the South.
- ↑ It is well known how the Scotch love vowels and get rid of consonants; with them all wool becomes a oo.
- ↑ This lingers in Scotland, as in the Jacobite ballad: —
‘Cogie, an the King come,
I'se be fou and thou's be toom.’This Norse is answers alike to sum, es, and est.
- ↑ Hampole, ninety years later, has the same corruption, þas for þâ.
- ↑ Addison, in his Humble Petition of ‘Who’ and ‘Which,’ makes these Relatives complain of the Jack Sprat That, their supplanter. He is wrong: That is the true Old English Relative, representing þe; the others are Thirteenth Century upstarts. It is curious that Yorkshire had far more influence than Kent upon the language of the capital in 1520. If we wish to be correct, we should translate ‘qui amant’ by they that love: those who love can date no higher than 1250.
- ↑ Vol. i. p. 323. The Psalter being a most Teutonic work, we may hope that our isle is not derived from the French. The Old High German has isila.
- ↑ We must allow that country-house is far better than the French maison de campagne.
- ↑ In Shakespere's time, substantives and adjectives could be turned into verbs with ease. Dr. Johnson turns a preposition into a verb: ‘I downed him with this.’
- ↑ Our word for accipiter clearly comes from the Norse, and not from the Old English heafoc. So we have preferred the Norse form slâtr to the Old English slœge. A glance at Stratmann's Dictionary will show, that the South held to the Old English forms long after the Norse forms, now used by us, had appeared in the North.
- ↑ Good Bishop Bedell, in a letter to Usher, brands an oppressor named Cooke: ‘he is the most cryed out upon. Insomuch as he hath found from the Irish the nickname of Pouc.’ — Page 105 of Bedell's Life, printed in 1685.
- ↑ Percy Society, vol. iv. p. 92. This is a transcript made by aHerefordshire man, who must have altered and into ant, nill intonulle, kis into cos, &c.
- ↑ But we still sometimes use the older form: ‘Come weal, come woe, we'll gather and go.’ ‘Be Thine the glory, and be mine the shame.’ How much more pith is there in these phrases, than in the cumbrous compound with let, as in the Lewes Ballad! This I have taken from the Camden Society's Edition of the Political Songs of England, p. 69.
- ↑ The Proverbs of Hending may be found in Kemble's Anglo-Saxon Dialogues (Ælfric Society), No. 14, p. 270.
- ↑ P. 169 of Scott's edition, in the year 1811. I give a stanza or
two from p. 149.
Strokes of michel might,
Thai delten hem bituene;
That thurch hir brinies bright,
Her brother blode was sene; - ↑ Husbonde of old meant only paterfamilias. The confusion of the derivative of bua with the derivative of bindan sometimes puzzles the modern reader.
- ↑ It even comes in Billy Taylor, ‘to a maiden fair and free.’
- ↑ The Latin donec is rendered in the Herefordshire manuscript by o þat, a relic of the old Southern English form; in the other two manuscripts it is the Danish til þat.
- ↑ I give a specimen from page 33 of Dr. Mall's work. Abraham
speaks: —
Louerd, Crist, ich it am,
Þat þou calledest Abraham;
Þou me seidest, þat of me
Shulde a god child boren be,
Þat ous shulde bringe of pine,
Me and wiþ me alle mine,
Þou art þe child, þou art þe man,
Þat wes boren of Abraham;
Do nou þat þou bihete me,
Bring me to hevene up wiþ þe.The New English, as we see, is all but formed.
- ↑ We saw it as seoueþende at Peterborough in 1120.
- ↑ One of the earliest instances I remember of the modern use of this good old word, which is thought to be slangy, occurs in Miss Eden's Letters from India, about 1839. She calls one of the Hindoo gods, ‘a kind of larking Apollo.’
- ↑ Hence comes the phrase, putting the stone, first found in this poem.
- ↑ Lodes, the Welsh female of this word, has become our lass.
- ↑ In this poem nith stands for night, and other words in the same way.
- ↑ This way of pronouncing all the three vowels alike of the word Engelond had not died out in Shakespere's time.
- ↑ Pala i en bok is to pore on a book. — Wedgwood.
- ↑ This comes of our tongue being compounded in different shires; the form ie came from the South East, the form ea from the South West, the form e, and also ee, from the North.
- ↑ I quote from Hearne's edition.
- ↑ This I take from Dr. Stratmann.
- ↑ The ending in ier is French; yet there must have been some Old English word like bog-er; the trade was so common. There may here be a confusion between the two endings.
- ↑ One of our peculiarities now is, that we may say used for solebam, but may not say use for soleo. The latter remained in our mouths down to 1611, when it began to drop.
- ↑ Weber's Metrical Romances, vol. i. It has new words in common with the Gloucester poems, such as bicker.
- ↑ For this Dr. Stratmann refers to the Low German gör; this was in time to prevail over maiden and damsel alike.
- ↑ Contrast these obsolete-looking lines with those given at page 163 of my work; the latter are the product of the Danelagh.
- ↑ The Mercian Danelagh has claims upon architects as well as upon philologers. A great treat awaits the traveller who shall go from Northampton to Peterborough and Stamford, and so to Hull, turning now and then to the right and left. Most of the noble churches he will see, in his journey of 120 miles, date from the time between 1250 and 1350.