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/4^P?J-
OLD AM) MIDDLE ENGLISH
//
t: L". KDfGTON OLIPHANT, M.A.
%imtinn
MACMILLAN AND CO.
1878
Ali rljhil rtttrttd
THE
OLD AND MIDDLE ENGLISH
i
/4^P^J
THE
OLD AM) MIDDLE ENGLISH
i i
i/
tT L*. KINGTON OLIPHANT, M.A.
OF BALUDL OOLLBQl
MACMILLAN AND CO.
1878
All riphts reserved
PEEFACE.
ENGLAND assuredly is at last waking up to the im-
portance of Btudyiag her old tongue in all its stages.
I cannot otherwise account for the rapid sale of
mv late book on ' Standard English ; ' nearly 2,000
copies of this have gone off within four years or so.
In the present work I have embodied whatever
of the former book was worth preserving ; great
additions have been made, since I take notice of
about .3,000 English words and phrases. I have had
much help from criticism, both in print and by
letter. I cannot understand why an author need
whimper under the rod of Reviewers. If the criti-
cism be sound, he should be thankful for a chance
of improving his book. If the criticism be absurd,
he may amuse his readers by inserting it in the
notes to his next edition. I have freely availed
vi Preface.
myself of this privilege ; no harm is done, if all
names be suppressed.^
I owe much to certain late writers on Philology.
I have always had before me Matzner's English Gram-
mar, which allows hardly one idiom of ours to escape
observation; I have sometimes been able to point
out an earUer date for new English phra^s than is
suggested in the German's noble volumes. I have
paid much attention to the colossal works, which
will make the names of Cleasby and Littre im-
mortal. I have studied our ancient pronunciation
under the guidance of Mr. Ellis ; it is most im-
portant to remark the old sounds of au and oi in
France and England. Dr. Stratmann and Dr^
Morris have proved themselves once more the best
of leaders. Any one who reads my chapter on
French will see the influence that Mr. Freeman
('Norman Conquest,' Vol. V.) has had upon me.
He is good enough to say that my former work was
of some use to him when he wrote his chapter on
^ One would-be philologer wrote to correct my false ideas,
telling me that English was derived from Anglo-Saxon, and Anglo-
Saxon feom Gothic ; I forget if he went on to derive Gothic from
.Sanscrit. This was in the year of grace 1874 !
Preface. vii
the English language ; I am' flure that I have repaid
myself with usury.
I hold to the venerable aaw, ' Old echool, good
school ; ' and I have little love for what is called in
the cant of our day, ' Neoteristic Individualism. ' I
let off no fireworks like ' Asyndetic Co-ordination,*
or ' Sequacious Diathesis.' I should be heartily
ashamed of myself if I thought I had used any word
that a twelve-year-old English schoolboy, a reader
of Casar and Ovid, could not easily understand.
Philology is too noble a goddess to be pent up in a
narrow shrine, begirt by a small circle of worshippers,
who use a Gneco-Latin dialect. She should go forth
into the highways and hedges, and should speak to
man, woman, and child, in a tongue that all can
comprehend.
I take my stand half-way between the Purist and
the Advocate of new-fangled vulgarity. I like to
mark the date of my book, by pointing out the last
sweet thing in Penny-a-lining. We have lately
heard of the fell of Adrianople ; the English
correspondents abroad delight in phrases like ' the
detiandade was averted by a parlementaire ; ' writers
viii Preface,
at home epeak of the geTierale as * the directing
personnel of the army ! ' What would Sir William
Napier, twenty years ago, have said to this new
jargon ?
I advise my readers to mark my list of errata^
at the end of the Contents, hefore studying my
book. Any suggestions or corrections may he for-
warded to me at
Charlton House,
Wimhledon.
1 hope to hring out my work on the New English
three or four years hence.
Rome:
Ftbruary, 1878.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
KHouBH HI rra eakliebt shafx.
The ArTBD iamilj on the Oxiu I
Their TSj of tiring 2
Sanscrit and Engtiah Words compared . . . . 3, 1
The Old SubBtsntires S
The endiDgs of Nonng 6
The Adjectives 7
The Verba S
The Futiciplea 9
The Irregular Verbs 10
Greek and IaUd akin to English II
The Slavonians and Li thaaoiaDS , J 2
The divisions of the Teutonic race . .13
The Teutonic Snltatantive and Verb . . . 14
Teutonic FreGzes and Suffixes U
Eipoltion of the Celta 16
Conflict vith the Somans 17
460. The Beownlf 18
Conqneat of Britain bj the English ., . . .19
600. Christianity brings in new words 20
Snl«t«ntivBB 21, 22
Adjective* 23
Pronouns 24
The Strong Verb 26
The Weak Verb 28
DatPB of Enelinh Works 27
English Vowels, their sound 28
The sound of y 39
The soand in Proper N'imes 30
The inMrcliBcge of CoiisoDBDte 31
Tht interchange of Vowpls 82
Variations ia Old Engtisb 3S
Changea of Letters 34
Alfred's Pastoral Cure 3&
It forestalls onr modern fbrms 3S
Inflnenoe of Latin 37
Corruption of Casss 3ft
The coupling of Nouns 39
A^JBCtives used as Substantives tO
The disuse of uii 41
The Verb 42
The vae o( iholild 43
The Futora Tense 44
The do employed before a Vcrlj 4S
The InfiniliTB and OpUtire 46
The Past Participle 47
Pronouns 48
The Beflexive Dative 49
The Definite Article SO
The Demonstratives 51
The Interrogative vAat G2
The Relatives 53
The Indefinite Article 54
The use of man und tcAo 55
The use of vha/, first 68
The use of <.(*«■, lay 67
Tho points of the compass ; kotB, trhg . . . .68
Adverbs formed by adding lie 69
The htre, there, yts 60
The nay, naitgkt, none 91
The both, tame, or 62
The now, though, at 63
The JW, thai, liiice 64
FrepositiODS ; their nee Sfi
. Thoo/ 6C
The bjh toi/A 67
The/or, fnm, after 6S
The to, at, cm 69
Frepoaitions toropd into Adverbs and Nouns . . 70
. aome of them aesrly obsolete 71
. lotaijectionB 72
Tvofold mcHDiDgof sDEDglieh Word . . . . 73
Cormption of old Woids 7*
Qood pedigMe of slang; Words 7S
Sear, tpcrt, pink, tpirU 76
D^Todation of Words 77
Proper Dames Bud names of trad(>s .... 78
Decay of old Worfa 70
The secondary sense of Words 80
Oiu many looses 81
Our Turied construction of sentences . . .82
A llitemtiie Poetry ■ . . . 83
Inflaence of Poets and Ptieits 84
CODservatiTe effect of the Bible SS
APPENDIX TO CHAPTER I.
Inlenhsago of Consonants 86
The liquid* 87
The softening of Words 88
CHAPTER 11.
HOBTKERji raoLiSH, 680-1000.
UBI.T COBRUPTIOSa, 1000-1120.
The English of Northnmbria 89
C80. ' The Buthvell Cross . - 90
FcculutritisB iJ the Inscription 91
737- Cudmou's Poem
850. The Northotobrian Pealler
Northern and Sontbem forma coDtroaUd
Thr kinsmsDsbip with iMia .
Slrpt, (town, bread
87G. iDToads of the Danes ....
TokeoH of Ihair settlement llero .
913. King Edward's re-oonquMt
9*1. Tbe Five Danish Burghs ....
The Wessaz Literature takes the lead
The Bhirss that formed the New English
950. The Lindjelitrne Guspels ....
Cormptioii of Northam English .
The OeiutiTB Singiolar and Nomin&Uve Plural
New Bounds ofWoriis
Danish influenco is traceable .
The Strong Perfect corrupted
Change of meaning in OIK
Wiitt, inhUom, eort
The Verbal Noun in ing ....
Buiinof, tneer, bundJa ....
971, The Blictling llomilies ....
Clipping of (JonsoDiiuts ....
Still, so, by
1000. The Ruahworth Qosp'-lB ....
The psring of Pretlies ....
New idioms of Relatives ....
The 0/, del, linn
.Slfric'a Orammar
Hail, lata, Lammai
Kemble's Charters. —Treatise on Astronomy
1060. The ApolloniuB
Changes in the Chroniclp ....
The of Bupplanting on . , . .
1090. The Legend of St. Edmund .
Cbsjige of ConsonaDla in Che Chrooicle .
Changes in of, by, without ....
1
The ProDOima and SabitoDtivrg 130
The Adjeclires and Verbs 131
X)omead&7 Book 132
lioa The Peterborough Ohroaicle 13S
The Boimd «*.— The new Relative 134
Confuaion of the Article'fi Co^ea 13fi
1120. ChHnges that irere Co come 136
CHAPTER m.
iHB xiDBLx BiroLias.
PbEUOD I. CtHTTTillUlf.
Contrast between England aod Italy . . . . 137
Threr Penodn of ICddle English . . . .138
The East Midland Dialect 130
The Oreat Sundering Line ..:... 1(0
Where DOC corruptions aroae HI
The Peterborough Chioniele 142
Chaages in Vovels 14:(
And in ComonaDts 144
The break up of Caae endings 145
The ProQOuns and Verbs 146
The great Shibboleth of DialecU 147
The Northern, Midland, and Soathani .... 148
Then/oTt, anon, for lo 149
Wotdi ID common with the Low Qennan . . 150
And with Scandiiutnan . 161
Specimen of East Midlaitd Dialect . 162, 153
The Contrast to the East Midland . . . . 164
The Sonthem Homilies . . . .166
Perhaps compiled in London ISB
Danish influence 1ST
The changes in Vowels 163
The 0 and cA ISO
The letter y for J . 160
The o/is used for the Qenitire 161
New RelativoB appear 163
1160, The Peterborongh Cbroniclt 16X
Fonna Northern and Southern 164
Changes in Vowels and ConBonants .... ISo
. The eon, (vufi ; eivr prefixed 166
The new DaBish WokIb 167
1160. Specimen of the East Midland Dislret . . 168, 169
1160. The ContraBt to the East Midland . . . 170,171
The Southern Homilies 172
The changes in Vowels . . . .■ . .173
Specimen of Words altered 17-i
Thp eneroHchment of M and IT 17S
New Idiom of the Subjunclivi: 176
The ihW as a Relative 177
The change in the meaning of Words . . . . 178
Lot, eilltf. aied, thoie 179
Danish Words 180
The Moral Ode 181
The change in Letters 182
Tbe anffii nw.— Prepositions 183
Change in the meaning of Words <..... 184
Winchester and Eentish Works 183
De Morerille.— Southern Gospels 186
1180. Norfolk Rimes on SL Thomas 187
The Kssei Homilies 188
SpectmeQ or Words altered 189
The^A is much used ISO
"Die new sound tA 191
Th« Subsuntivc 192
The Verbs. 193
The new use of one 194
Compounds with /m-i; tht nonce 19S
, The Preposilions ... .... 196
New meanings of Words 197
Scandinavian Words . , 198
Spedm«B of tha Earn Midland Dialect .... 109
The CoDtrwt to the £a«t Midland 200
Poem on the Soul and Body 201
Changes in Vowela end CousoDanCa . . . . 202
PoemB of Nigal Wireker 203
King Alfred's PrOTerbe 20*
The fondness for the bard y 20{t
Cormptjon of the QsniCiTa 206
Change in the Verb mag 207
Change in lUtt, do, vihiU 208
A litUe French appears 201)
Loss of tho power of Componndidg . . . . 210
Orrmio's Poem 211
The place where be wrote 212
He resembles the Pelerborongh writer . 2)3
The change in Vowels 214
The change in Coosonaots 21S
The (A aad ; 216
The or, nor, vppo, knrcl 217
The old iw tcanaposed 318
The old sense of nUfliniin 219
The change in tni^, booit 2:^0
Adjectires and Pronouns 221
Theiri. that, name 222
Change in Relatives 223
The new lumevihal ; one '21i
Thfaloae, oner, two first 226
Development of the Passive Voice 22S
The new senses of need, deal 227
The meoH, kofp, taJce 22B
Strong Verbs turned into Weak 229
Forthwith, right, already 230
Ho more, alviay, ag \f ^31
The Prepositions 232
The i^wn and mlil 233
The use of iy, a(, o/, (0 234
Ommn's Campounds 23fi
Hii Soandiiiariaii leanings 239
Tb6 wocdi ti\ft, stick, hurt 237
Lilt of ScandioariaD Words . . _ . . . 238
The mid and ntm die out 239
1200. Specimeo of tlie Eaat Midland Dialect . . 210,241
120fi. The Contrast to the Eaet Midland . . .242
Lajamon's Brut 243
Change in VowbIb 244
Change in Consonants 24S
HoTKt, plight, nook 246
CoiTuption of ol— Pronouns 247
The nev Participle in in^ 24S
Gird, •mark, qiiiMy 249
Then/ and ro 260
The by and with 251
New Scandinavian Words 2fi2
1210. The Legend of St. Margaret 263
Thsfii; theending/uf 264
Whoioev/T, seem, dowaright 286
The Legend of St. Eatherine 2S6
The Vowdsand Conaonants 257
&{/; other 2S8
The Infinitivp fbUowa a Preposition . . . 259
The (w.ao.hfi 260
The Legend of St. Juliana 2S1
New phrases 2S2
Wheriifore, hat 263
The Hali Meidenhad 264
The Adjectives and Prepositions 266
The Salopian pioceH 266
Loa, ail, hutband 267
Thefid,one,oice 26S
Influence of Salop 260
The Wobungo of ure LauenI 270
Cheap, aho, tell 271
1220, Tha Ancren Riwle 272
More than one Version of it 273
The dunge in Vovela and Coiuoiuuiti . 371
Ths form k, tile Jul 275
The alrich at a BeUtiTe 27B
Vtterlt/.albeii.ffreaily 277
IniUad of, EnUieT day 278
ScandinaTi&D Words 279
Low Oerman Words 2S0
Warwickshire Version of this piren 281
1320. Changes iay.e,K,a,g 3S2
CHAPTER IV.
TEE ItlDDLE EHeLIfiB— HBSIiBCT.
(USO-USO.)
1230. TheBeatiaiy 283
Changs in Vowels snd ConBoncmU .... 2S4
New Adjectives 285
The Genesis and Exodus 286
Changie in Vowels and Consonants . . . 287
The hud g of East Anglia 288
Faitk, ehe, made 289
Seldom, thunder 200
The tike, great 291
The Numerals ; do reTived 292
Like, beget, take 393
Wakt, mhOoM 294
SiU, of, betide 296
The Scan^navisD Woids . .... 29S **
The German, Celtic, and French Words . . . 297 *•
1230. Spedmeoofthe East Midland Dialect . 208,299
1230. The Contrast to the East Midland . . 300
A London Poem 301
1240. A Lincolosbire Tersion of the Creed . . 302
1240. Spedmen ^ the East Midland Dialect . . 303, 304
1240. The Contrast to the East Midland . . . 306
The OtI and Nightiogsle
Morning, holloa, boadman . ...
The mMl. thoutd
Tlie ScandiaaTJan anii Dutch Words
The Poems in the Cntton Manuscript .
Eye, gear, wench
You, flurtimlhal
Cflttic and French Words
1250. A Nottinghamshire Po«m
1250. Specimen of tile East Midland Dialect . . .3
1250. The Contraatto the East Midland
The Yorkflhipo Psalter
ScandinHTian Forms
The chan^ in Vowels and CoDsonanls .
Morning, not, height
rhe ne» Verbal Nouns
Cloitd and eh/
The PronoQUfl, il, tltotc
The Relatjyes 32.5
The Participles 32fi
The Adverbial Potob
The Scandinarian Words 328
The Low Gorman Words 829
The Latin Forms
1260. Second Edition of Layamon's Poem
The change in Vowels ami Consonants .
£crt", timx, leg
The Poems in the Jems Manuscript
Change in the Names of Counties
The Proclamation of Henry lU
The word ovk discuased
The Frorerbfl of Heading
The use of i««cr, bett, do 339
1264. ThB Ballad 00 Lewes Fight 340
1270. Specimen of tiie East Midlaod Dialect.
Old English Prorerba 842
1270. The Contrast to the East Midland . . . .343
The Foem on the Fox
The you, it, with
The Herefordshira Poems
Brtt, head, one
I2S0. Unhappy chnnicter of the lost Period
CHAPTER V.
MIDDLE EHOLIBH— BBFABATIOH.
The Hanowjng of HeD 349
The curious Dislogne 350
The coRDptJon of the Strong Verb 351
The Terired use of ({o 352
The Chorten of B1117 St. Edmund's . . . 3S3
TheEavelok 36*
It! Northern Fcrms 35S
Much in common with East Anglis .... 356
The change in Vowels sad ConsoDsnts . . . . 357
The confusion of Letters 3AS
The coupling of Nouns 359
The change in SubstantJTea and AcfjectiTeB . . . 360
The Fiuuouns ; useofyni 361
Tovn, a, one 362
The Pluperfect SobjunctiTe 363
Preposition! and InteijectioQB 364
The SeandinsTian Wonls 36S *-
Celtic and Dutch Words 366 *^
. Specimen of the East Midland Dialect . . 3S7, 368
, The Contrast to the East Hidlftod .369
The Horn and Florii
The change in FronuDciation ....
KniglU, hereoAout
The Hertt£oidihiie Poems - > . . >
StU, mrry, dogged
XX Contents.
AJ}. PAGE
The French way of oompounding 875
The Prepoeitions 376
The Dame Siriz 377
Mixture of Northern and Southern 378
The in^fi and 379
The Tristrem . . 380
Marks of transcription 381
The Verbal Nouns 382
The Adjectives 383
The Infinitive en becomes ing 381
Take, stick, trow 385
Scandinavian and Dutch Words 386
1290. The Poem on the Body and Soul 387
The Adjectives and Verbs 388
Discussion upon ing . . . . . . 389
1290. Specimen of the East Midland Dialect . . . 390
1290. The Contrast to the East Midland .391
Change in these Kentish Sermons 392
Eld, goodman 393
The Digby Manuscript .394
The Herefordshire Poems 395
A Hereford Charter 396
The Cursor Mundi 397
The change in Vowels 398
The change in Consonants 399
The nobot, mell, forefather 400
New Substantives 401
NewPhrases . 402
Beggar, holiday, unhappy 403
Kind, ead, mean, ciirst 404
Pronouns; she-beast 405
Which, one 406
Whole, score, mon 407
May be, outtaken, become 408
The Passive Voice developed 409
Scandinavian senses of Verbs 410
The Tr&naitiTe Yeibal Noun 411
Of alt, nnce when, abaft 412
Mighty, trnlff 413
The FrepoaitionB 414
The Inte^ectioDB 415
The DnUh Words 416
The Percival and lannilinkB 417
Swiftlier, ffoodi, folia 41B
Right, evm, yon 119
What manner, get, fait to 420
1295. The lives of the SainU 421
The life of Becket 422
Bo»d,iiily.a» 428
Verbal Phiaaaa 424
The Life of St. BcnnduD 42fi
Names of Counties 426
New Phrases 427
To leek, draw, numb 428
The Life of SL Margarut 429
1300. Bobert of OloncesterB Chianicle 430
The inSnence of French 431
The change in CooeoDntlts 432
Proper NnroeB discuBsed 433
Wattail, $hop, dolf 434
SiUy, tiaric, ionuti;iie 435
New Phrases in Verbs 436
The Adverbs ; as 437
Aiide, up and down 43B
The Aleiamlcp 439
Tho change in Consoniittta '. 440
The Verbal Nouns Id tag 441
The use of the iDfinitive Passive 442
Oemum and Scandinavian Wonls 443
Oar BjnonjniB from vuriouB quarters .... 444
The ilifltrant sources of our Speech 446
1300. No fixed Stamtard of English 44S
CHAPTER VI.
TB£ BIBB Ot IHX NBW BNGLIBH.
(130S-ISIO.)
1303. Bob«rt of Bnmne'B Haadljng SjDDe . . 447
lATgB proportioti of FcBBcb Words .... 448
The Dialects meeting near Butlftud . . . . 449
Much JD cominoD with tlie North 450
Hoch cdippiogand paringr 451
Siffkteota, eouid. mmne 452
Toy, iai, meaning 453
Bench, KOTt, buck 464
Suag, pitiful, right 455
Diatinction between thou BDd yc 496
Between ihaM and iiiU 457
The nnw use of the Inflnitive 4S8
To eon, Kt, vaivt 4S9
Tfim, n™, irolh 460
Well, indcid, everywhere 461
Tbe Int«^ectioiia 462
The ScandiDBTian Woids 463
1310. The MeditaciuDB of the Soper 464
Homely ; in going 465
Melted, bring aboul, wier^ore 466
Tale of Bishop Robert . ' 467
St. Panl'K description of Charity .... 468, 469
DiBCUIBion of Dinners 470
Tale of a Norfolk Bondman 471
Data of the Poem 472
Specimen of the Meditaciuna 473
North Lincolnahire 474
Yorkihire— Durham 475
Lowland Scotch 476
LancaBhire — Salop 477
Herefordahire 478
Warwickahiie — O-lonceateidiira 479
Eoglith Fftle in Inland 4B(>
Somwiet — Wiltshini
Hunpature
OxfoidBhire— KeDt
Middlssex .
Bedfticdsbiiv
Norfolk
Anuchj of speech in Engtand ....
CHAPTER Vn.
IHX INXOAS OP FRKHCH WORDS C(IO BNfiLASII.
Eril done id the Tbirteeoth Centnij
1066. Lou in old English Poetiy . . .
Tho Old Standard diei ont .
French oaed nt Court ....
Change! in the Chronicle
The new Mnutd ui oc oi
1130. Dc Thaun'a French work .
Baa, baplitt, Jaw ....
Distinction betveen the high and low
. Sixty French woida come in early
lieo. The old English HomiUea . .. .
1300. lAyamon and Omnin ....
1210. The Hall Ueidenhad . . . .
1220. The Ancrvn Riwle ....
The aonndB of au and oi .
BmU, capital, antlum ....
Debt, Utrgt, poor
The mingling of Tentonie and Bomaaos
Long list of kindred voids
The endings tcr, w . . . ,
The Norman Kings fovoored En^ish
A biiUJant fntnre seemed to await it .
French became the official langnage
The chase altar foreign ^ahions .
b
XXIV Contents,
kji» PAOB
English wafi cast aside by the noble . . . . 512
Greatness of Fiance at this lime 613
It influenced many countries 514
There was no Standard English 515
Influence of Ladies . 516
Their articles of dress . 517
Influence of Franciscan friars . 518
Their way of life * . 519
They unite various classes 520
They make French words familiar .... 521
The«LuveRon' 522
Two schools of teachers contrasted .... 523
New Christian Names 524
Evil done by the clergy 525
Yillehardouin easier than Layamon 526
Loss of Inflexions . 527
Loss of the power of Compounding 528
Comparison of passages in Writers .... 529
1280. The Period of Reparation 530
Edward the First 581
The great inroad of French Words 532
All men were united 533
Our words for Soldiering 53 i
Chronicles compiled in French 585
English compilations 536
Mixture of languages 537
Feasts described 538
French rimes used 539
Terms of hunting and cookery 540
Terms of law 541
The clergy practise medicine 542
Indelicate words are dropped 548
1290. Herod's diseases described 544
Terms of science 545
Terms of architecture 546
Number of French words in the Tristrem . . . 547
The Kentish Sermons 548
\
The motire of Translators 549
laflni of French Words 650
ForeigD WoMs mnch Tant«d S61
Evil dona in Hem? Ul.'s time 653
A Northern version of a Soatbem poem ■ . , 553
The futnre Staod&id 551
The lose of the guttural accounted for . . . . 655
French vords ia the E&velok G5S
In the Horn and Flonz S6T
In the Ljiic Poems 558
Id the Tristmn 569
Id the Kentish Sennons 960
In the Herefbntsbire Poems 561
In the Cnraor Mundi 562
Safe and amind. Dan, pelf 563
Save, tacTtd, ptrton 564
TVatniV, cotinfry. tiutreh 565
Seriie, pain, raufuj S6S
Longlistsof French Words 661
The Parcival and Isumbras 568
Bobert of Gloucester 56S
Xatmgtr, tie year of grace 570
CUfae, eommrm*, timpU. fad 571
The Liies of tbe Saints . 572
DeUvtT, nee, grape 573
The Alexander 67*
The Handlyng Synne . . . . . .576
List of Prench Words 576
Force, jelly, aingle, aeaze 577
Gate, Sir, clerk, pain 878
The Medytociuns of the Soper 679
Fataing, bondage 580
French endinge 681
French prefixes 682
Words in nett and ctom 583
Comption of the FcaQciscons . . . .* . . 584
Hobert of Bmnno and his transcriber . . . fiSS
XXVI
Contents,
Tricks of Language 586-
Frpportion of Obsolete and French Words . . . 587
Our future speech foreshadowed 588
Discussion of Monosyllables 589
Use of the Teutonic 590
APPENDIX.
CHAPTER Vm.
TETAirPT.Tafl OF ENGLISH.
680. Lilies on the Kuth-well Cross 591
737. lines by Cadmon 592
850. The Northumbrian Psalter 593
950. The Lindis£Btme Oospels . . . . '. . 594
1000. The Rushworth Gospels 595
1090. The Legend of St. Edmund 596,597
1220. The Ancren Biwle 598, 599, 600
IlTDEX 601
»>
Errata,
for Bcethiut read Boethiui.
for Sunnadaeg read Sunnandag,
for tcehea^e read mb heaJfe,
for the A\fre€M read Alfrt^t gh,
strike ont the sentence beginning with So,
strike out /or theftrU time,
tor 188 read 808.
for one read onee,
for $el iaete read seli aue,
for Pout read Pcutive.
586, Notes, last line but one ; transfer (/from the end to the-
beginnlng of this line.
Page 44,
line 6
„ IW.
» 14
.. 130,
„ 19
» IM,
„ 17
„ 1»4,
u 8
„ 2M,
» 8
.. 816,
« 1
„ 837,
.> 6
„ 874,
„ 18
,.^42.
» 12
I
OLD AND MIDDLE ENGLISH.
CHAPTER I.
EKOLISH IN ITS EABLIEST SHAPE.'
Thibe are many places, scattered over the world, that
are hallowed groimd in the ejeB of EDgliahmen ; bat
tiie most sacred of all would be the spot (could we only
know it} where onr forefatbers dwelt in common with
the ancestors of the Hindoos, Persians, Qreeks, Latins,
Slavonians, and Celta — a spot not far &om the Oxas.
By the nnmistakable witness of langnage we can frame
for ourselves a pedigree more trathfnl than any heraldic
tree boasted by Yeres of Montmorencies, by Gnzmans or
Colonnas. Thanks to tbe same evidence, we can gain
some insight into the daily life of the great Aryan fa-
mily, whence spring all the above-nanied nations.
The word Mryu' seems to come from a time-hononred
term for ploughing, traces of which term are foond in
the lAtin arare and the English aw. Some have thought
that Iran in the East and Erin in the West alike take
' Qibbon begios his fiunouB duptsr an Motuunmed b; confeasiDg
l>u ignonnce of Arabic ; evea lO, I miut adnowledge that oil mj
SuKrit comes bom Di. Horns and Hr. Mnii.
2 Old and Middle English.
their names from the old Ajyans, the ' ploughing ' folk,
men more ciyilised than the roving Tartar hordes around
them.
These tillers of the ground ' knew the arts of plough,
ing, of making roads, of bnilding ships, of weaving and
sewing, of erecting honses ; they had counted at least as
far as one hundred. They had domesticated the most
important animals, the cow, the horse, the sheep, the
dog ; they were acquainted with the most usefcil metals,
and armed with hatchets, whether for peaceftd or warlike
purposes. They had recognised the bonds of blood and
the laws of marriage ; they followed their leaders and
kings; and the distinction between right and wrong
was fixed by customs and laws.' ^ As to their Gk>d,
traces of him are found in the Sanscrit Thjaus, in the
Latin lyies-piter, in the Ghreek Zetis, in the English Tiw ;
from this last comes our Tuesday. Moreover, the Aryans
had a settled framework of grammar : theirs was that
Mother Speech, whence nearly all the men dwelling be-
tween the Shannon and the Ganges inherit the words
used in daily life.^
The Sanscrit and the English are two out of the
many channels that have brought the water from the old
Arjran well-head down to our days. The Sanscrit lan-
guage, having been set down in writing two thousand
years before the earliest English, shows us far more of
the great Mother Speech than our own tongue does. I
now print a hundred and thirty words or so, the oldest
' Max Muller, Science ofLangiuige^ I. 273.
^ The Turks and Magyars are the chief exceptions to the rule.
English in its Earliest Shape. 3
used b^ 119, which vary bnt slightly in their Eastern uid
Western shapes. How the one-ey llabled roots first arose,
no niHn CftH BftT<
8<m»erit.
EnglM
(OWondJfiw).
Smmrit.
EngUih
(OldandNtui)
ptsr
father
taM
Btar
^tar
mother
r'^
iliratar
brother
tree
BvMar
mater
madhu
meodu, mead
84nu
dama (hoiue)
tim-ber
duhitor
daughter
dvar
door
ndliBTa
widow
antra
jam (awinon)
cwen, quean
kalama
h^ulm
h^ays
heart
Eir
young man
bght
kapsk
heafod, head
laghiahta
lightest
akdii
eage, eye
mahanOr^ri
mycel, much
mSr, more
m^st, most
bhra
brow
mahiy&n
maffihishtha
dat, dsntatn
(tootha) tooth
mpdu {toft}
mild
Mdu
doe, chin
tonu
thiu
makha
nffigel, nail
rudhim
red
pada
foot
gharma
warm
jinu
cneo, knee
pflrna
full
nibhi
navel
sania {like)
gdhaa
udder
Bthiia (/rm)
etetn
T^
yoke
nava
new
go (or)
eft, cow
madhya
middle
uk»baD
aridu
sweet
rthftra(6aa)
steer
kas (to cough
ha8,hoan>e
satya
sooth, true
sfikara (Aty)
HUgU,BOW
patatri
feathered
Trika
wolf
(mngei)
maeha
mfta, mouse
dvi
two
haSsB iaoou) gander
dviB
twice
makBhika
midge
trayaa
three
difi
bydkj
tritiyaa
third
naktam
by night
tris
thrice
raloA
mouth
chatvSras
fether, four
:*i •
SM
Old and Middle English,
Sanscrit,
panchan
shashthas
saptan
navan
da^an
prathamas
anam
yayam
tvam
ytLyam
kas
kad
kataras
kdtra
tatra
ubha
hhH
asti
dha (place)
dar
stlul
star
bhar
lih
jan (beget)
janus
4anaia(/iKA«-)
jna
naman
ad
vah (carry)
va (blow)
bhuj
dh^ (hl<nv)
dhrifih
Englifh
(Old and New),
(finf ) five
sixth
(seoftan) seven
nine
(tehun) ten
fonna, first
Ih, I
we
thu^ thou
(hwafl) hw&9
who
hiiset, what
whether
whither
thither
both
be
is
do
tear
stand
strew
bear
Hck
cennan, kindle
kin
cyning, king
know
name
eat
weigh (anchor)
wind
bfigan, bow
dust
dare
SoTUcrit.
prl (love)
smi
mikshami
bhid (cleave)
lu
snu (flow)
trish
vaksh
sidami
sadas
dam
plu
man (thmk)
manaa
vam
Bvid
svSda
vart (turn)
hval (shake)
myi
vid
vap
siv
(bhranj) bhanj
(bhruj) bhuj
nul
bandh
bhrdj {shine)
sthag
skhad
pfi (he putrid)
stigh (moumt)
an
apa
aohi
English
((M and New).
M-end
smile
I mix
bite
loose
snivel
thirst
wax
I at
seat
tame
flow
to mind
mind
wamble
to sweat
sweat
weorban *
hweol, wheel
murder
to wit
weave
sew
break
brook
quicken
mete
bind
bright
thatch
shed
fiai,foul
stig-r&p, stirrup
in
off
As in woe worth the day !
English in its Earliest Shape.
ufa, above
fit, out
tliraugh
fore
upan
The great«st of idl mifitakes is, to think that English
is derived from Sanscrit. The absurdity of this notion
may be perceived from the fact, that the most untaught
English ploaghboj of our time in many respecte comes
nearer to the old Mother Speech than the most learned
Brahmin did, who wrote three thousand years ago.
Unhappily, we English have been busy, for the last
four tboasand years, clipping and paring down onr inflec-
tions, nntil very few of them are left to us. Of all
EuropeauB, we have been the greatest sinneTs in this
way. Well said the sage of old, that words are like
regiments : they are apt to lose a few sbragglerB on a
long march. Still, we can trace a few inflections, that
are common to us and to onr kinsmen who compiled the
Tedas.
In Snbstantives, we have the Gemtive Singular and
the Nominative Plural left. It will be seen that Eng-
lish, in respect of the latter case, comes nearer to the
Mother Speech than German does.
SoMcrit. Old En^ith. New E-ngiuh.
Norn. Sing. Vfika-e Wulf Wolf
Oe^. Sniff. V^ikit-flya Wulfes Wolfs
yom. Plur. VpkA^ WuUos
Wolves
' The Engliih bitiop sod tbe French meque, two v«i7 modern
Ibniu of the mna irord, are much wider apart ^m each othei than
the hoaiy ironli in the long list given above.
6 Old and Middle English.
I give a few Suffixes, oommon to Sanscrit and Eng-
lish forms of tlie same root :—
Ma ; as from the root jna, know, we get the Sanscrit
nomam and the English nama, name.
Ba ; as from the root a/, g^, we get the Sanscrit ojra
and the English acre,
Na ; as from the root 9u, bear, we get the Sanscrit
Bwwa, and the English smm^ son.
Der ; as from the root pa, feed, we get the Sanscrit
pi-tar and the English /(B-der,/a^Aer.
IJ; as the Sanscrit modhu (honey) is the English
meodAi (mead). Compare onr scddu (shadow), seovm
(sinew).
Oar word siboem must once have been pronounced as
dlfre-nas^ (the Gk>thic dVubr-ei-n'S)^ having the suffix na
in common with the Sanscrit phaUuna-s.
We may wonder why vixen is the feminine of /oaj,
carline of caa-le. Turning to our Sanscrit and Latin
cousins, we find that their words for qi^een are rdj^ni
and reg-inay coming from the root rdj. Still, in these
last, the n is possessive; the vowel at the end is the
mark of the feminine.
What is the meaning of ward in such a word as
heaA}en'Ward? I answer, to twm is vart in Sanscrit,
veriere in Latin.
There is no ending that seems to us more thoroughly
Teutonic than the like in such words as worhmanLike.
But this is seen under a slightly differing shape in the
Sanscrit ta^drksha^ in the Greek te-lik-os, and the Latin
ia^lis. These words answer to our old p^lic^ which sur-
vives as thick or thtick in the mouths of Somersetshire
i.
English in its Earliest Shape. 7
So in Old English we find no^-lio coirapted
by hb first into noylc, and then into <ue&.
Our privative un is seen in the Sanscrit om, as
an-anta^s, un-end-mg.
The Sanscrit ha-t, kd, ki-t appears in Latin as guis,
qute, quid, and in English as hwd, fund, kieiM (who,
what).
The Knnierals, np to a bnndred, are mnch the same
in Sanscrit, Greek, Latin, and English.
In the Comparison of onr AdjeotiTes, we have much
in common with Sanscrit. There was a ComparatiTe
suffix iyamg, a Superlative iahtha.
Sanacrit. Ettgluh.
Theme Mah (yrraf) Mic-el, much
Compar. mah-i-jaa ma-i^ more
Suptrl. mah-ishtha m£-et, mod
So »vddu (sweet) becomes avddiya, wvddishtha,
(sweeter, sweetest).
The old Comparatives were formed in to, lara, the
Superlatives in mo, tama. We have, as relics of the
Comparative, other, whether, after ; also, ooer, vnder.
Of the old Superlatives we have bat one left :
FogUioe. Ctm^xtrattBe. /Superlative.
foreweaid ^m foivma
Bnt this forma we have degraded into a Gompamtive,
and now call it former. It is, in trath, akin to the
Sanscrit prtt-fAa-iTUt and the lAtinjm-miw. Long before
the Norman Gonqnest, we cormpted our old Aryan
Saperlatives in ma into mest, thinking that they most
have some connection with mdtl, moM, Thns we find
8
Old and Middle English.
both "dtema and tUmest, utmost. Our word aftermosty if
written at fuH length, wonld be q/-^a-ra-ma^a9i5-to, a
heaping np of signs to express Comparison.
In our Pronouns, we had a Dnal as well as a Singular
and Plural ; it lasted down to the year 1280.
In onr Adverbs, we find traces of the Sanscrit «, with
which the old Genitive was formed. Hence comes snch
a form as / he must needs go,' which carries ns back, feur
beyond the age of written English, to the Sanscrit
adverb formed 6x)m the Genitive. Even in the earliest
English, the Genitive of ned was nede, and nothing
more. In later times we say, * of a truth, of course,'
4&C., which are imitations of the old Adverbial Genitive.
We have not many inflections left in the English
Verb. The old form in mi, once common to English,
Sanscrit, and other dialects, has long dropped ; our word
a/m (in Sanscrit asmi) is now its only representative!
It is thought that the old Present ran as shown in the
following specimen : —
Boot nam, take : ^
1. nama-mi
2. nama-si
3. nama-ti
4. nama^maai
5. nama-taai
6. nama-nta
Ist Per, ma, me.
^nd Per, t&, thou.
Srd Per, ta, tMSf he,
Ist Per, ma + ta, 7 + thou.
2nd Per, ta + ta, thou + thou,
Srd Per, an + ta, Ac + he.
The Perfect of this verb must have been ncL-nam-ma
9
in its second syllable lengthening the first vowel of the
Present; in other words, forming what is called in
English a Strong Verb. Sid-dmi in Sanscrit has sa-sdd^a
^ Hence CQxnes ' to numb ' and ' Coiporal Nym.'
English in its Earliest Shape. g
for its Perfect, words of which we have clipped formB in
I mi and I tai. I higH (once hi&\S.i\ from MJtwA, and I
did. (oikce dtde), are the only English Perfects that have
kept anj trace of their rednplication, and the former is
our one relic of the Passive voice. The Imperative in
Sanscrit was, in the Singnlar, luzma, in the Plural,
nomoja, ansn-ering to the Old English rivm, and nvmoth.
One verbal noun, naed as an Infinitive in the Dative
case, was nam-ana (the Greek nem-enai), which we
had pared down into nim-an more than a tbonBand
years ago. The Active Participle was nama-nl, which
runs through most of the daughters of the Aryan
Tongue, and which kept its ground in the Scotch Low-
lands until of late yeara, as 'ridand' instead of our
corrupt word ^riding.' The Sanscrit and English alike
have both Strong and Weak Passive Participles; the
former ending in no, the latter in la, aBsfir-na,etretf-n.'
Sanscrit, yuk-ta
Greek, zeuk-tos
Latin, junc'tut
English, yok-ed (in Lowland Scotch, yok-it).
Those who choose to write J vxu slopt instead of
Hopped, may justify their spelling by a reference to the
firat three forms given above. But this form, though
admissible in the Passive Participle, is clearly wrong in
tiie Active Perfect, I Hopped, as we shall see further on.*
In the Aryan Speech there were a few Verbs which
' Few Sanscrit veibi have this form, bo common in EoglUh.
' Archdeacon Hare alvajB sp«It preached ai preaehl. Still, it it
the EegltBh th, not i, that ihonld answer to the Sanicrit t.
10
Old and Middle English,
had lost their Presents, and which nsed their old Perfects
as Presents, forming for themselves new Weak Perfects.
I give a specimen of one of these old Perfects, found both
in Sanscrit and English.
Sanacrit,
(M English,
New English.
ved-a
w&t
I wot
vet-tha
W&8-t
Thou wettest
yed-a
wat
He wots
vid-ma
wit-o-n
We wot
vid-a
wit-o-n
Ye wot
vid-us
wit-o-n
They wot
It is easy to see that, thousands of years before
Christ's birth, our fore&thers must have used a Present
tense, like wU or vid. Our verbs, ma/y^ ccm^ shaU^ wiU^
musty dare (most of which we use, with their new Per-
fectS) as auxiliary verbs), have been formed like toot, and
are Irregulars.
Our verb to be is most irregular, since its tenses come
from three roots, a«, bhu, and vas. One of the points, in
which English goes nearer than Sanscrit to the Mother
Speech, is the first letter of the Third Person Plural of
this verb. We still say are^ the old ar-anti or as-a^nti ;
in Sanscrit this word appears only as s-cmti. The Gbr«
lans have no form of our am, the Sanscrit asnii.
The old word, which in Sanscrit is da^dhd-mi, with
its Perfect, da^dhdv^ was brought to the Northumbrian
shores by our Pagan forefathers in the shape of ^e-cZd-mi
di'de. Hence our irregular (2o, did, the latter of which
^_j>lays a great part in building Weak Teutonic verbs.
With our verb ga (^o), we may compare the Sanscrit
ji-gd-mi; its Perfect is derived from another verb;
y^^-mi
English in its Earliest Shape. ii
we now say went, iuatead of the old e6de, which Spenser
used ; this came from a root i. The Lowland Scotch
have a corrnpt Perfect, gaed, which has been long in nse.
Some of the compoonde of oar English Terbs cany
ns &r back. Thns, to explain the meaning of the first
syllable in such words aa forlorn, fordone, we mnst look
to the Sanscrit pard.
The Aryan settlement on the banks of the Oxaa
was in the end broken up. First, the Celt marched
towards the setting son, to bold the Western lands of
Enrope, and to root ont the old Tnranian owners of the
ground ; of theae last, the Basques and Lapps alone
remain in being. Handreds of years later the English,
with other tribes (they had not yet learnt to count up
to a thonsand), followed in the Celfs wake, leaving
behind them those of their kinsmen who were after-
wards to oonqner India and Persia, to compile the Yedas,
and to leave their handwriting on the rock of BehistAn.'
Some streams flowed to the West of the great water-
shed, others to the East.
Uany tokens show that the English most hare long
lived in common with the forefathers of Homer and
Nnrins. The ending of the Qreek word paid-ion is the
oonnterpart of that of the English ntatd-en; paid-igk-o»
of eild-ite, childUh.^ lAtin is stiU nearer akin to na, and
Hoswtimes hardly a letter is changed ; as when we com-
pare alias and else. Jkun-wicuius appears in Old English
as hui-inele. The I^tin fer and the Old English hcera,
' The old Penion word j/dn ia the English year.
* Sophoclea' high-soandiDg imkiitattrA mmld be our to /mI-
teflu, if we choiG to compound & word dosel; ■Jcin to OrmL
Li'
12 Old and Middle English,
in truth the same word, are attached to substantives,
which are thus changed into adjectives. YigJil and the
Old English wac-ol (wakeful) are but different forms of
one word ; and wittol still remains. The Latin malva
is our mallow ; and the likeness was still more striking
before we corrupted the old ending u into ow, Aiei and
asvum are the Gothic diw, the English a/ye and ever,
Latin and English alike slipped the letter n into the
middle of a verb before g, as frango or frag, and gang
or gag. The Latin Future tense cannot be explained
by Latin words alone ; but, on turning to English, we at
once see that domor-ho is nothing but our tame-he ; that is,
J he to tame, or I shall tame. So likewise with ara-ho, or
J ear he,^ English sometimes shows itself more primi-
tive than Latin ; thus, our knot has never lost its first
letter, while gnodus was shortened into nodtts thousands
of years ago. It is the same with know and gnosco.
But all the Teutonic tribes have traces left of their
nearness of kin to the Slavonians and Lithuanians, who
seem to have been the last of the Aryan stock from
whom we Teutons separated. We have seen that,
when living in Asia, we were unable to count up to a
thousand. The Sanscrit for this numeral is sahasra,
the Latin mille. The Slavonians made it tusa/ntja, the
Lithuanians tukstanti, and with this the whole Teutonic
kindred closely agrees. Further, it seems strange at
first sight that we have not framed those two of our
numerals that follow ten in some such shape as dn-t'^ne
' The verb ear is happily preserved in Shakespeare, and in the
English Bible. It is one of the first words that ought to be revived
by our best writers, who should remember their Ar-yan blood.
English in its Earliest Shape. \ 3 .
and Iwd-lflne, since we go on to preo-t^ne, thirteen. The
explanation is, that the Lithnanion liha answers to the
Teutonic ftAon, ten ; the ka at the end of the former word
changes to /a; jnst as the FrimitiTeArTaii feasor changes
to the Gothic fidwor (our fvur), and the liatin cado to
onr faU. If li/an then take the place of the common
■ Tentonic tihan, dn-lifan aad twd-lifam (eleven and
twelve) are easily framed. These Eastern kinsmen of
ours had also, like oureelTee and unlike the rest of the
Aryan stock, both a Definite and an Indefinite form of
the Adjective.
But the time came when our fathers left off hnntinjf
the anroch in the forests to the East of the Yistala, bade
farewell to their Lithnanian consins (one of the moat
interesting of all the branches of the Aryan tree), and
marched Westward, as the Celts had done long before.
Up to this time, we may fairly gnesB, we had kept our
verbs in mi. It cannot be known when the great
Tentonic race was split np into High Qermans, Low
Qermans, and Scandinavians. Hard is it to explain
why each of them atnck to peculiar old forms ; why the
High Germans sbonld have kept the Present Plnral of
their Terb (a point in which Old English fails woefnily),
almost as it is in Sanscrit and Latin ; why the Low Ger-
mans (this term inclndee the Goths and English) should
in general have clnng closer to the old inflections than
their brethren did, and should have refused to cormpt
the letter t into « ; ' why the ScandinaTians should have
< Compare the SonKrit tttda, English mtai, High Oennu
iek»au. Engtiah is at once Men to be ftc more primitive than
M
Old and Middle English,
retained to this day a Passive Voice. I can here do no
less than give a substantive and a verb, to show how
onr brethren (I may now at last drop the word ccmsinB)^
formed their inflections.
OdEru^lish.
The SuBSTAimvB Wolf,
Ocfthic, Old High German, Old Norse,
BINGULAB.
Nom,
Wlllf
wolfs
wulf
ulfr
Oen,
wnlfes
wulfis
WUlfiRfl
iilffl
Bat,
wulfo
wulfa
wulfa
ulfi
Ace,
wulf
wulf
PLXJKAL.
wulf
ulf
Norn,
wulfas
wulfos
wulfa
ulfar
Gen,
wiilfa
wulfe
wulfo
ulfa
Bat,
wulfiim
wulfam
wulfum
ulfum
Ace.
wiilfas
wulflEins
wulfa
ulfa
Pbesent Tei^se of the Verb nimanj to take ; whence comes
ova numb.
ad English,
Gothic,
Old Sigh Geitnan.
Old Norsi
Ic Tiime
nima
nimu
nem
]>u nimest
niinis
nimis
nemr
he nimetS
nimif
Tiimit
nemr
we nimafS
nimam
nemames
nemum
ge nimaS
nimi)>
nemat
nemit$
hi mmatS
nimand
nemant
nema
All these Teutonic tribes must have easUy under-
stood each other, about the time of Christ's birth ; since,
hundreds of years after that event, they were using the
English in its Earliest Shape. 15
above-cited inflectionB. They had by tbis time wan-
dered far from the old Aiyan fi^mework of speech.
Thus, to take one instance— the Dative Plural in wn ;
the Suiscrit Nominatiye «unu formed its Dative Floral
in swva-VhJM (compare the Latin •pfd-ihus)^ our English
word hy entering into the third pliable. jSunu&Ajo*
was in time pared down in Teutonic months to wmib,
and this ag^n to ttwn/am. This last cormption of the
dative kept its ground in onr island nntil Becket's
time. The tendency^ of old, when we dwelt on the
Oxns, and long afterwards, was to pack different words
into one ; onr custom, ever since the days of Henry I.,
has been to nntie the words bo packed together ; thns
tWMi^'hjiu has been turned into hy vma? We have two
of these old Datives still lefl, ImH-utfi, whilom, and
«elc£-uni> seldom.
We keep to this day many prefixes to verbs (o, le,for,
fore, gain, mi», un, tmtk), and many endings of snbstan*
tives and a4JectiveB, common to na and to onr brethren
on the mainland ; seen in snch English words as leech-
erafl, man-hind, king-dom, matden-head, gister-fiood, wed-
loek, gar-lick, glee-man, piece-meal, runn-el, Ttind-red,
bighop-rick, friendship, land-sct^e, hom-ei, dar-Ung,
' Pedibtis it bat tha LatiD form of tlie Summit pedihi/at.
* I hope I bsTe been plainer than Uies Cornelia Blimber, who
told her Hmall pupil tluit AnaljWB ia 'the Feeolution of an object,
vbetber of the senses or of the intellect, into its tret eleme nta — bs
opposed to Sjntheaia, yon obeerve. Now jon know wbst Ansljsia
ii, Dombe;.' It is Temarked that Domliey didn't seem to be abso-
Intelj blinded b; tbe light tbus 1ft in upon his intellect. Manj of
our gTamman and acbool-bookx, meant for children, have formed
theii diction apon Miss Blimber'* phiases.
1 6 Old and Middle English.
sing-er, spinster, wam^ing^ good-ness, stead-fast^ manu
fold, stdiuig (stony), a/uj-fid, god^less, toin-some, right-vns
(righteouB). Others, older still, sach as sih'em, vix-en^
workma/ri'like, chiLd^ish, witt^ol, tnalUoWy I have given
before. Many old Teutonio endings have nnliappily
dropped ont of our speech, and have been replaced by
meaner ware.
The Teutons, after turning their backs on the rest of
their Aryan kin, compounded for themselves a new
Perfect of the verb, known as the Weak form. The
older Strong Perfect is formed by changing the vowel
of the Present, as I sit, I sa/t, common to English and
Sanscrit. But the new Perfect of the Teutons is formed
by adding di-de (in Sanscrit, da-dhom) to the stem.
Thus, sealf'ie, I salve, becomes in the Perfect, sealfo-de,
the de being contracted fix)m dide. When we say, I
loved, it is like saying, I love did. This comes out much
plainer in our Gothic sister.*
Another peculiarity of the Teutons was the use of
the dark Runes, still found engraven on stone, both in
our island and on the mainland : these were in later times
proscribed by Christianity as the handmaids of witchcraft.
The Celts were roughly driven out of their old abodes,
on the banks of the Upper Danube and elsewhere, by
the intruding Teutons. The former were far the more
civilised of the two races : they have left in their word
hcdl an abiding trace of their settlement in Bavaria, and
of their management of salt works. The simple word
* The Latins set Frepoeitioiis before dhd and dadhAu, and thus
formed abdOf abdidi; condo, condidi; perdo, perdidi. This last is
nothing but the English Ifor-do (ruin), I forbid.
English in its Earliest Shape. 17
leather ia thoaght by good judges to Iiave been borrowed
from the C«lt« by their Eastern neighbours.'
Others suffered besides the Celts. A hundred years
before Chriat'e birth, the Teatone forced th«ir way into
Italy, but -were overthrown by her mgged champion
Marias. Bather lat«r, they matched themselveB against
Cffisar in Gaol, and felt the heavy band of DroBOS. The
two races, the I^tin and tbe Tentonio, (neither of them
dreamed that they were both spmng from a oommon
Mother), were now brought fairly face to face. Our
foreGtthers, let as hope, bore their share in the great
fight, when the Oennan hero smote Varos and his legions;
we English should think lees of Caractacus and Boadicea,
more of Arminins and Velleda. Hitherto we hare
poauded out onr history from the words used by onreelyes
and oar kin, without help from annaliste ; now at length
the clouds roll away, and Tacitus shows us the Angli,
sheltered by their forests and rivera, the men who wor-
shipped Mother Earth, in her own sea-girt island, not
tar from the Elbe. Little did the great historian gnees
of the future that lay before the barbarians, whom he
held up to his worthless countrymen with bo skilful a
pen. Some of these Tentonio tribes were to take the
place of Bome and become the lords of her Empire, to
bear her Eagle and boast her tdtles ; others of them, later
in the world's history, were to rule more miUions of
Bnbjects thui Bome oould ever claim, and were to found
new empires on shores to her unknown. She had indeed
done great things in law and literature ; but her Senate
might wen have learned a lesson of public spirit from
' OsTiMtt'i Eaas/f, pp. leO, lfl7.
I
1 8 Oid and Middle English.
the assemblies held by these barbarians, assembUes to
which we can trace a likeness in the later oonncils held
in Wessex, Friesland, Uri, Norway. Home's most
renowned poets were to be outdone by Teuton Makers,
men who would soar alofb upon bolder wing into the
Unseen and the Unknown, and who would paint the
passions of mankind in more lifelike hues than any Latin
writer ever essayed.
But among the many good qualities of ourselves and
our kinsmen, tender care for conquered foes has seldom
been reckoned; Western Gelt and Eastern Slavonian
know this full well. Hard times were at hand ; the old
worn-out Empire of Rome was to receive fresh life-blood
from the healthy Teutons. In the Fifth Century, our
brethren overran Spain, Graul, and Italy ; becoming lords
of the soil, and overlaying with their own words the old
Latin dialects spoken in those provinces. To this time
belongs the Beowulf, which is to us English (may I not
say, to all Teutons ?) what the Iliad was to the Greeks.
The old Epic, written on the mainland, sets before us the
doughty deeds of an Englishman, before his tribe had come
to Britain. There is an unmistakable Pagan ring about
the poem ; and a Christian transcriber, hundreds of years
afterwards, has sought to soften down this spirit, which
runs through the recital of the feats of Ecgtheow's bairn.
In the same age as the Beowulf were written the
Battle of Finsborough and the Traveller's Song. In the
latter, Attila, Hermanric, and the wealthy Cassar are all
mentioned. Pity it is that we have not these lays iu
their oldest form, in the English spoken not long after
the first great Teutonic writer had given the Scriptures
to his Gothic countrymen in their own tongue*
English in its Earliest Shape. 19
The island of Britain iraa now do longer to be leil in
the hands of degenerate Celts ; happier than Cret« or
Sicdly, it was to become tbe cradle where a great people
might be compounded of more than one blood. Bede,
uniting many years later, tells ns how the Jates
settled themselTea in Kent and Wight ; how the Saxons
bstened npon Essex, Sassex, and Weasex; how the
Angles, coming from Anglen (the troe Old England),
foonded the three mighty kiogdoms of East Anglia,
Uercia, and N'ortbumbria, holding the whole of the
coast between Stirling and Ipswich. It is with this
last tribe that I am mainly concerned in this work.
Fearfnl most have been the woes nndei^ne by the
Celts at the hands of the mthless English heathen, men
of blood and iron with a vengeance. So thoronghly
was the work of extermination done, that bnt few Celtic
words hare been admitted to the right of English
citizenslup. The few that we have seem to show that
the Celtic women were kept as slaves, while their hoe-
bands, the old owners of the land, were slaughtered in
heaps. Gamett gives a list of nearly two hundred of these
words, many of which belong to household management ;
and others, such as tpree, hain, whop, balderdash, &c, can
scarcely be reckoned classical English.
Old Britain was by degrees swept away, after mnch
liard fighting ; and the history of New England at length
begins ; her birth-tfaroes were lar sharper than anything
known in Spain, Gaol, or Italy.
Amid the shonts of the slayers and the groans of the
slain, let ns keep a steady eye npon the years 671 and
577, as recorded in the Chronicle. We there read of
20 Old and Middle English.
the Wessex Princes winning their way to Bedford and
G-loncester ; they seem to have been the first Teutons
who bore their arms into Salop. This fact must be kept
in mind, when we come afterwards to treat of the limits
of English dialects. The Sonth-West of Merda (to nse
a name that arose rather later) was first settled by
Western Saxons, thongh it was afterwards mastered by
the Angles of the Midland. It is cnrions that the
Danes, coming mnch later, never settled in any of the
shires conquered by the Saxons, with the one exception
of Essex ; the Scandinavian sconrge came down almost
wholly upon the Angles.
Christianity, overspreading the land in the Seventh
Gentnry, did mnch to lighten the woes of the down-
trodden Celts : a wonderi^l difference there was between
the Christian conquest of Somerset and the Pagan con-
quest of Sussex. The new creed brought in its train
scores of Latin words, such as ca'nMe^ altar, bishops Ac^
which have been employed by us ever since the Kentish
King^s baptism. The Church in other lands scorned
the popular speech ; such broken Latin as the Hymn of
St. Eulalie in France (about the year 900), seemed to be
a caricature of the langnage of the ' Te Deum.' Btit
with us the Church made English her handmaid ; our
greatest men translated the Bible or compiled Homilies
in their own tongue.
At this point I halt, finding no better opportunity
for setting forth the grammar employed by our fore-
fathers, traces of which, mangled as it is by the wear
and tear of centuries, may still be found. *
English- in its Earliest ^
SUBSTANTIVES.
DIVISION I
CLASS I.
siHonns.
Mam.
Nam. Steomt
Qen. SteorroD
IM. SteoiTOD
Afx. Steoiran
Fern.
Tunge
Tungan
Tungan
Tuiwan
Eigan
Eagan
E4ge
^r^—
Tungan
E4gan
Qen. SUorrena
Ika. Steoinim
TuDgenn
Tungum
CLASS H.
ESgena
Efigim.
BneiTLAB.
PLVKAI.
Horn. SAwel
<?«». S&wle
ilTom.
Gen.
Do*.
S&wla
Sfinla, sawUm
SSwlum
Siwla
CLASS m.
BDrsTOAB.
PLuaii.
Jfiw.. Dum
6m. DuM
i)n(. Dure
Ace. Dnra
Nam.
Gen.
Dof.
Aec.
Dui»
Dura (duiena)
Duium
Dura
Old and Middle EttglUh.
DIVISION II.
5'r}«
aZ}^
Gm. Hones
Bat. Hotse
Cen. Horse
Dal. Horsum
CLASS IL
BIHflVUit.
PLUKAL.
Oen. Scipee
Bat. Sdpe
r}^p«
Gwi. Scape
2>fli. Scipum
DIVISION III
'""■Id
Oen. Dela
Ztef. DiBluiii
CLASS n.
BnratiLAS.
PLURU-
Cm. Sans
Dot. Sune
0«i. Sntu
Dot. Snnurn
English in its Earliest Shape. 23
We have sfiU a few PlnralB left, formed by vowel-
change from the Singular. These are/eef, feefA, mice,
liee, geese, men. Some Sabstautives, as (ieer,sA««p, tumte,
are the same in both nnmbers. Oawn is our one Ptnral
in en that ha^ come down &om vtirj early times.
ADJECTIVES.
DEFINITE DEOLENSIOK.
Mc»c.
Fmu
JVoxf.
SbM.
G&U
CWda
ChSde
Gm,
Q6dMi
Gddan
Oodan
Dot.
066^
OMan
G<3dan
Aec.
GtSdan
Godiui
Chido
INDEFiraTE DECLENSION.
Mats.
Finn.
Naa.
JVom.
GM
Odd
Gtfd
<?«i.
Gddee
05dTe
GlidM
iM.
G^dom
Godre
Godum
Am.
G<idue
Glide
God
Old and Middle English.
FLDK&L.
MOK. Uld Fern.
Nmii.
2r}««-
GMCu)
Qm. OMra
G<idn
IM. Gddum
O^um
DEMOKSTRATTVES.
anraiiLAB.
PLTOAL.
Mate.
Fern.
yttu.
Bat.
Aee.
AN.
Jam
amaiTLAK.
fun
Dot. l»m
PLCBAI.
iUoic.
&».
A-m<.
AW.
Dot.
Ace.
fun.
In.
Gen. |>iss8
Ihri. jrisnni
PRONOUNS.
BIHOUIAB.
DDAL.
Som.
Gm.
Bat.
mil
yam.
Otn,
IM. 1
wit git
nncer iacer
English in its Earliest Shape.
antouLAB.
Ma^.
JW.
Norn, he
heO
Om. his
hire
DtU. him
hire
Aee. lune
U
jtf«c. and P»m
JVbm.
hw&
Gm.
hwiM
iXH.
hwatu
4«.
hwone
^N.
hwj
hw«t
hwtes
hwy .
THE STRONG VERB.
(InfinitiTe, healdatt.)
INDICATIVE.
Pb&fbct.
Sing. Har. Sing. Plur.
healde liealdaS hedld he^ldoa
hylst bealdaS hedlde hedldon
hylt healdftS he61d bedldon
SCBJUNOnVE.
Phbbkst. Fsefbci.
Old and Middle English.
OxRirni). AonTE Pasticipix. Vurt. PAxaop^a,
To healdaime | healdeDde ] gehealden
THE WEAK VERB.
(InfinitiTe, lu/tim.)
INDICATIVE.
Pkbskht. Pmu^aoc.
Snj. iYw. Sing. Ptw.
ln%e lufia£ lufode lufodon
lubst lufiaS lufodest lufodon
lufaS luHoS lufode lufodon
SUBJUNOTIVR
Pebfeoi.
lufodon
IMPERATIVK
Ossuhd. Acnys PABnoiFiJl Past pAsxioiFUt.
Toluflg«nne | luSgendo | geiufbd
English in its Earliest Skape. 27
In tracing the history of English cormptionB, we
mnst remember that the books npon which we have to
depend were written at very different tunes. When w&
find any construction common to Qothlo and English,
we may feel pretty snre that this form was used 1^
Hengist. There are some Charters, in Kemble's Collec-
tion, of the Eighth Century with very old forms ; thesd
we have in a transcript, made 300 years later. King
Alfred's translation of Pope Gr^^ry's Pastoral Care,
printed for the first time in 1871 just as the great King
wrote it (and not as his later transcribers cormpted it),
teaches ns what were die Sonthem forma of the year
890 or thereabouts. The balk of Old English literatore
belongs to the next centnry. Then come the Sonthem
Oospels, which were translated a little before the year
1000, and are more English in their idioms than Wick-
tifie's later version is.' The Sazon Chronicle carries ns
thence to the great landmark, the year 1066 ; and for
this last period we may also consult the mass of Old
English printed by Mr. Thorpe in his ' Analecta Anglo-
Saxonica,' and by Mr. Sweet in his 'Anglo-Saxon Reader.'
There is, moreover, the Tate of Apollonius and tli&
Legends of the Holy Rood, works that seem rather
late, perhaps about 1050. There are, further, the more
modem English Ghartera printed in Kemble's ' Codex
Diplomations.' I have been careful to qnoto here none
of these last that bear evident marks of later transcrip-
' For siunple ; in St. Jolm zz. 22, ocean inKijfiamt vidi no
pnwoDn following. Tbe Gospeli of 1000 tian^ate, hUovi h» an
U; WicUifiBmcagnlj transUtea, he bUwytHu.
28 Old and Middle English,
No language has changed its vowel sounds so mnch
as English has done. We mnst remember that the old
o^ 6, i, 0, and u^ were pronounced by our fathers much
as the Italians do now; and this lasted in Southern
England down to 1530, as Palsgrave tells us. A remnant
of the old pronunciation is still found in father ^ plega
(now play)i and ri^ere (now reaper). Our yaion is a
clumsy attempt to preserve the sound of the old gdma/n.
Every educated man should sound words like father and
ha£h as broad as he can. The vowel u was sounded in
the broad Italian way, as wtmd, tu, our woundy Udo ; and
ow had much the same sound ; Stow is written Stou in
Doomsday Book ; the Southern eower was iur in North-
umbria, our your ; what we now write new was written
of old both iieowe and niwe, Poitou, Anjou^ and Ponthieu,
Appear in the Saxon Chronicle as PeitowCf Angeow, and
Puntiw. Of all our English sounds ew has been the
most abiding. The eaw seems to have been sounded
like the French iou, as in sceawe and feawe ; the latter
form was written by Tyndale so late as 1525. The ce
and ea seem to have been pronounced much like the old
« ; we see Boems written for Ehevms^ Herhearde for the
Erench Herhert, Our glaze and hair show the old
sounds of ghBsen and hcer ; we pronounce to this day
wea/r and great in the true Old English way ; the Irish
in speaking of tea still keep the right sound which has
been lost in England since Pope's time. The ie also
had the sound of the French e. Our oaa or aw must^
as a general rule, have been sounded like the French
ou ; the Ooths wrote praitoriaun for the Latin jpi^csto^
Hum ; and daur for what in English was written duru
English in its Earliest Shape. ' 29
(ostdam). Our old nSMiiht and mwel were, isther later,
written nwM and soul. What we now call awl (snbnla)
was (eZ from Kent to Dorset, and ouml or ewl froM
Dorset to Salop. The Gothic haa sewhitm. for onr old
getduion (vidimns), and we find in the earliest English
both ttreotcberie and ttrawberie} It seems, howeTer, that
the ou sonnd never came into pSwa (peacock), the
English imitation of tlie Latin pavo ; and King Alfred
writes Aguetinng for AugtutitiKs. When we see the
three Old English forms, t^icr, aiiXer, au^er (ant), it is
hard to say whether the second should be prouonnced
like the first, that is, like the broad Italian a, or whether
it ahonld be sonnded like the Italian u ; we know that
rather later it was spelt aidier. King Alfred oft^i has
0 for a, as in mon and lore', ho has bto we (not beo we) ;
he often has i for y, as in ildc (eetas). When we seo
his hine lytS (Pastoral, 391), we see the old form that
gave birth to the two variations, luteth and huteth ; it
is the same wiih_/W (foul) &Dit filth. We find not only
typan,-}mt two other forma, gip and sup, both of which
we keep. The old y waq most likely pronounced like
the present French u, the sound stUI often heard in
Devonshire. In the Chromcle of 1049, the Flemish
town we call Bruges is written Bryege. Alfred has glii^
(onr glee) iat the more nsnal ghow, and here we have
followed him. We sometimes express two difierent
ideas by varying the sonnd, not the spelling, of a word ;
tkos a man throws a atone, and weighs not more than
so many altme (ettin).
' In OUT New Teat&ment ttrawed itill staodi for what ia oiostlj
vrittan ttrtmd ; this we owe to T^dal«.
30 Old and Middle English.
Proper nameB, more than anything else, keep the old
soand of rowels. Thns, the river Owe has not changed in
soond, thtnigh onr fatiiers wrote it as U»b ; it has never
been sounded like the present Qerman ou. Go-wper shows
how the old ovs, the French (m, was pronounced. Aldgaie
reminds us that old was the old soand of what ia now
called old; Birmingham brings before ub the ham or
home of the Birmings ; and Stavion, in many parts of
the conntiy, bears witness that our stone was once every-
where written ttdn. In Yorkshire, where a first began
to be sounded like the French i, Stanton is now written
Btainion. Langport, in Somerset, still keeps the old
sound in its first syllable, though in common speech long
became long seven hundred years ago in the Sonth.
The Scotch, surnames, U'Lean and Grteme* keep alive
the old sound of ea and m ; Baird remains to show how
heard (barba) was once pronounced. The tme sound of
the old ceasler lives in the East Anglian Gaistor.
There are two marked tendencies in English, shared
by some of the other Teutonic dialects, which should be
observed.
The first is, a liking to cast out the letter n, if it
comes before th, «, or/. We see by the Qerman and
Norse that our other was onca anther or ontlier ; much in
the same way tonth, finf, gons, became /o5, fif, gSs,
lengthening the vowel before n.
The second of oar pccoliaritiea is, a habit of putting
d or t after n, I, r, or «, usually to round off the end of a
word, though it sometimes is inserted in the middle of
a word. Thus the French iyran becomes tyrant, the
Gaelic Vonuil becomes Donald ; the Old English betweox
English in its Earliest Shape. 31
is now (eftrnf { tiioa/al^ (akm to tbe Greek &iid Latm
form) is comipted iaiafailest ; bat the true old fonu of
this la«t still lingers in Scotland. Those who talk
about a govmd or of being dravmd&d mBij plead that
they are only carrying further a corraption that began
long before the Norman Gonqneet, and that has since
that event tamed tkwtor into ikitnder, and dunne into
dwindle.
Many in onr day call a vaup a wa/pee, and axe leave
instead of atHttg it. Both forma alike are good old
English ; 'we also find aide by aide fite and fise, heorht
and bryht, grces ejid gterg, iman and rimuMi, for pieds,
elarus, gramen, and ourrere. When men say, 'they
don't care a cnrae ' (the last word ia commonly some-
thing still stronger), they little tiank that they are
employing the old Engliah cene, best known to as as
The interchange of lettera in English ia most curious.
We may atill say either blench or Jlinch, either bliish or
fiuih. The frith {pax), atill kept in the Prithatool at
Beverley, might be also written grith. Of old we might
write either chirk or ckirp, wealean, wealtian, or wealwian
(all answering to volvere), brekil or britel, feccian or
fMian, ttiS or stif, ufeweardan or upweard, slippery or
ilidd^. The g has long had a tendency to slide into w,
as we see by the Sanscrit gharma and the English warm ;
in onr oldest works we find both ttregdan and strewian
for tpargere, icegtm and sawon for viderunt. Often does
the Gothic g appear as tc in English. Oar slap must be
looked for in the old slcege. The interchange of » and r
dates &om the earliest times, as in the Latin honoa and
32 Old and Middle English.
honm- ; hence came onr J una, we were ; frozen^ froren ;
lots, lorn, Most of OB who have had to do with masonB
know the meamng of toa/mped work : this nnlnck}' verb
may come from ecatit, with two changes of oonsonants
that are pretty common.
The interchfo^e of vowels was frequent. We maj
still translate fagere by either fiy or flee, following the
oldest nsage ; onr week was formerly both wice and vrueo.
This acconnte for onr stiTU and siumt, with different
shades of meaning ; amitan (pollnere) has dropped, bat
etnitt remains. In oar present verb for mentiri, we have
taken onr pattern from tiie Second Person, }>u h/hit,
rather than from the First Person, ic leoge. The old
toajtwn and seeapim (finf^re) ran side by dde. It is a
pity that we have lost our accents: we can now no
longer distingnish between metan (metiri) and mSlan
(oconrrere). We often see oar rowels donbled, to mark
a difference; thoa god (bonos) became good, that it
might not be oonfonnded with oar word for Dans;
goodly and godly have different shades of meaning. It
is the sam.e with tool and toU, cook and eoek, and many
others. Kong Alfred led the way, in doubling Uie
letter o.'
We still keep the old hlendam. (miscere), but we have
changed hhndian (excfficare) into hlivd, thinking it
was too like the former verb. WriUh stood of old for
both ira and iracundna ; we now mark the adjective by
snbstitnting o for a; this is an improvement. 01&
stood for onr eUdh and onr dothet alike.
' A alight Towel chsuga makeB & gnat differeoee in the gaUiUtjf
of proper oanM ; sea Blount and Blititt, Sna/lhi uid Bniih.;
English in its Earliest Shape. 33
We baTe had a 8or» loss, since Spenser's day, in parting
with the e so often sounded at the end of nords. This
began very early, for we find wut^ (dignas) written as
well as wttrfe.
The ohangee in prononncing and spelling are all
bronght aboat by laziness in tbe speakers; hence It
came that even in tbe year 803 onr English tongne was
veiy &r gone from old Aryan pnrity. In a Worcester
Cbarter of that year (Kemble, I. 222), wulde (onr vimild)
replaces wolde ; mtmn and hnde are written for man and
land. Ninety years later. King Al&ed, nnlike the
Qermans, shows a distaste for the bard g in the middle
of a word ; he writes r^ (rain), ienode, getad (said),
nnderled, instead of the right regn, iiegnode, getmgd,
undwJcegd. The English led of the last word is cut
very short, when we compare it with tbe Gothic galagxd.
He aometimes sofliens g at the beginning of a word,
writing ionga (yonng), not geonga ; just as yera (annns)
in Gothic answered to tbe English gear. The ge of the
Past Participle is by bim often clipped, as drifen for
gedrifen} He casts both the ii and d out of tbe old
mdUfta (eleventh), writing kundcelU/Hogoian (Pastoral
Care^ 465). At p^e 307, we see the old sende tnmed L-
into onr sent (misit), and at page 1?0, iegyrde becomes
be^yrd, onr begirt. Tbe n, in which always of old the
Wessex Infinitive ended, is beginning to be lost- Instead
of the old heoH ge, the slovenly beo ge (be ye) is coming
' The gt ia replBced by i, pieflxed to pBrticipIw, so early as Ibo
l«nih ccDtory. See Mr. 3*Mt'» not«, Patlorat Can, *8fl. The co in-
moD torm nolhini: ahowH how hard the g miut have been soud dcd
It tbe end of a vard.
34 Old and Middle English.
in ; it prerailed in most of the mannacnptB of the next
age. The o at the end of the Yerh, as in ic hiddo, was
now about to disappear in the Sonth.
In the year 991 (Kemble'a CharterB, HI. 256), AwWe
is corrcpted into fceAie (habnit). In 995 (HI. 295),
6eie«i (optimos) is changed for the Danigh hett, in a
will ; hnt the % never became very common in onr Teu-
tonic words. We have preferred seol (phoca) to teoXh ;
thongh the Laird of Monkbams, even bo lat« as 1800,
called it sealgh. The h was pronounced as a strong
guttnral, for j^tfeah became the Latin Elphegns.
The letter r must have been socnded strong, as the
Scotch and Irish pronounce it now ; hor&n was written
for bom (natns) even down to the Reformation ; onr
laziness has mauled the fine old sound. The letter n
was often added to roots in English verbs ; thos we have
both to slaiie and to slacken, heark and heaTJcen, liel
and luten, viake and wt^cen ; we blaei boots, bnt we
hlacken a good name. So in Icelandic we find both
blika and blikna. Sometimes I is employed instead of
n ; thus in Old English both nistian and nettlian were
used, each derived from nest, and each having a different
shade of meaning.
There is a tendency in th, the English sound that
answers to the Sanscrit and Latin (, to slide into d ; and
this must have begun very early. In Gothic, both viha,}
and whad are found for whither. In English, we see not
only cwiSe, but ewide (dictnm). There is now a
difference between thrtUmg the soul of a man and
drilling a hole in his body. The tte^ which must have
been our oldest form of the latin laMir, has given way
English in its Earliest SJiape. 35
to emi. Since the Conqnest, rofAer has become rvMer^
'h^'ffien hwAen, and wMriksi murder. As to cjccBpan, we
bare kept nearer to the right spelling in bequeath than
in quoih. We talk of a settle ; bnt in Hardwick'e Saxoa
Gospels (St. Matt. xsv. 31) sell, aeikl, and sedle are
employed by three different writers between 950 and
1000, when EngliBhing.
Christianity enriched onr tongne with many new
foreign words, as we Bee from one short sentence in a
Ch&rter of S31,CBg}iunlcdiaconarede two pastiotte(S.eni\)lo,
I. 292). King Alfred ahowa ns in his Pastoral Care
bow etaij letters and words that came through thti Latin
began to work a change in English. We there find not
only Sadmrias, bnt Zaehariae ; the z and ch were entire
strangers to Pagan England: Bede had most likely
naturalised them long before Alfred's time. We are not
surprised after this to find the King spelling English
words like pohcha, ponch, (343); tiohchode (385), and
hlUhehan, langh (249), thongh in all these the ck must
have been sounded hard. LazaTog tvas spelt Ladzams,
showing the Italian way of pronouncing z ; in the Bush-
worth Gospels (St. Lnkex. 10),inpiateae is Englished by
implcetga (piazza). Alfred was not particular about his
Latin cases ; he talks of SurA Fauhi^ (306), he has the
Genitive Sancte Paules (290), also of Jeremie (441).
So Sadude and ia Farisseos (363)— this last word, here
Dsed as a N ominatiTe, would remind an Englishman of his
national Flaral ending in a*. One of the first instances
of the V, which has driven oat / from the middle of
Qany an English word, is found in Alfred's phrase
on lAvano, in Lebanon. His spelling seems something
36 Old and Middle Engtisk. '
Imm ont of due time ; he is a forestoUer, as it were,
of oar modem ways, for we have followed him. rather
tlian later writers of the Tenth Centniy, eapeciaDjr in
spelling hogh (ramns), not boh (Pastoral, 81) ; bvrg,
not hurk (hence the Borgo at Bome) ; and in words
like friend and _fiend, which rather later were written
fretmd and feond. The old form was Incldlj kept in
Kent and Essex. He has also onr common att m
nauht and auhl, he/on for heof/m, apla for cep^el, aidan
for azian. The new ov was in the end, as a general
form, to supplant u, and Alfred writes nowSer. He ia
fond of donhlisg o, jast as we hBTe done since Chancer's
time : the King writes foot, doo, good. In Pages 28
and 103 he pats gecwwon (knew) and streteede
(strewed) where later writers wonld have written
geoneowoK and etreowode ; ed very early replaced od. Ha
conples c and Ic, the Sonthera and Northern letters, in
fetfl (P. 329) : this was not mnch imitated until 1180.
He often pnts fc for e, and it for w, like the Northnm-
brians. He writes oregeard, onr orchard, in Page 381 ;
showing the close alliance there is between c and t, for
the word was nsnally ortgeard.' In Page 171 we see
rcedinge and lewTVange ; the old ung at the end of a word
was making way for ing, the new form for Verbal
Nonns. Ete is not very fond of the diphthongs, in which
Southern England rejoiced down to 1205 ; he pnts let
for leet, and he writes Atew (color. Page 133), showing
ns that we hare not changed onr pronanciatioo of this
word for the last thoosand years ; if we were to pro-
nonnce it as we spell it now, we should say Jtoo-y. Onr
■ See |Mg» 8S of 107 Book.
English in its Earliest Shape. 37
tm& is more like Alfred's ima (Pastoral, 242) than it is
to the laore oommon ireotoe (coafidence). We know how
many in oiir day soniid n^tov as if it was thmm ; bnt we
have in general &ithfally kept the ew sonnd, unless
when it follows I or r, as ftfew and rew, me.
In writers a little later than Alfred, but living before
the ]Cf orman Conquest, we find imfie for India, /uZiu«es
for the genitive of Julius, and Theodor for Theodorna,
(Thorpe's ' Analecta,' 43-51). The second example fore-
shadows onr eriisisM and eroctues. So early as the time
of the Rnshworth Gospels (St. John xix. 5) purple ^vaa
written instead of the Sonthem purpvr. The Lfttin
auUUa is translated in the Gospels of 1000 by ceastra,
the crumbling cagtert or ehestera still left in onr land to
bear witness bow Rome of yore laid her iron grip upon
Britain.' Sometimes in the Gospels the Latin ctistellum,
meaning a village, is Englished by eaatd, a word
which fifty years later, when French ideas first began
to take root in onr land, was to be applied usually to
a fortress. We of 1877 are sometimes more Tentonio
than onr fathers; thns we say cup, not talic, in the
Eucharist.
Latin was the official language of religion in Western
Christendom ; it early gained a footing among foreign
nations. We can gness how it was pronounced down
to about the year 400, when we see 3akerdo» imitated by
the Irish toggarih, and lukerna by the Gothic liikam.
The Latin sound e was rendered by the Gothic at, as
38 Old and Middle English.
taitrarkes. The infiaence of Latin Boon made itself felt
in England. Time waa oompoted by Kalends, Nonea, and
Ides. The Cbarchmen broaght scores of Latin words
into TOgue, which have kept their ground for the last
twelve huDdred years. Weevenforraed new English verbs
&om the liatin : thus hecJytan, onr enclote, must have
sprang in early days from the noon clysitig, which itself
came from the foreign elav^ia, elwuetrum. One of the
atrangest compoands of Latin and English is the word
tol-iece, the flower that seela the «un ; noontide is some-
thing of the same kind. English sometimes throws
light upon old Latin pronunciation. Thas, in the great
Boman colonies of the Bhine land, the name of the hnge
earth-shaking beast mnst have been sounded elep-has ;
and this onr forefathers called yip, which lasted down to
1230. When we see the Latin pavo Englished as pawa,
we get a hint as to the way the Latin v was prononnced,
at least in some provinces ; the sonnd afterwards
changed on the Continent, for fers and gerJU, not loert and
lerwis, was written by Englishmen before the Norman
Conqnest for versus and gervitium. Grimm's Law tells
US plainly that words like temper and/temne, found in
early English writings, were borrowed irom the Latin,
and that they have not always been in English nse.
We have already seen the careful heed which the
English bestowed npon the cases of their nouns, the in-
flections which they had brought from the Oxus. King
AJ&efl first shows ns how these began to be corrupted in
the South ; the um of the Dative Plural, which appears
in every one of onr old Declensions, seems to have always
been the first inflection to he mauled. In the Pastoral
English in its Earliest Shape. 39
Care, 347, we find Willi 8iBi7ij;8o«; tw 8wm micion «torm«m,
59 ; and many more snch instancea could be given. The
process went on in tlie GoBpels of a century later, and
the utn was all bat gone hj the year 1200.
Our ruieeUneat is very old, for it is found as awetmete.
But aometimes two Sabstantivea are yoked together, as
wadu-hufaig, wood-honey; here the first aubatantive has
the force of an adjective; it is a peculiarly English
idiom. Our country home is sorely much lees cnmbroas
than the French mauon de eatnpagne. The old phrase
' a Parliament man * is better than ' a member of the
Legislature.' Sometimes one of these old eipressions
seems to be wholly gone, and then is revived in very
modem times. Thus onr fathers spoke of a wif-freond ;
this has come to life again in oar ' lady-friend.' ' In St.
Luke zi. 12, we read ecorpioTiem, fat ie dn vryrm oynti.
Here once more two substantives are coupled ; we sboald
now say, *a kind of worm.' The old carl'call has now
become to7n-cat '■ this change cannot well have taken
place until after the death of St. Thomua of the English.
We should carry on the process of conpling noune as
mnch as possible, if we wish to enrich oar tongue, and
oar Poets sboald here take the lead. No laogaago bat
English would now use bo concise apd handy a phrase
as ' The ComzoouB Enclosure Consolidation Act.' * A
Substantive was sometimes dropped to save breath; as in
a sentence from the Chronicle of 982, jS'pelmwre* lie U^
' I haVB heard lady-dog in the moutlu of nice people ever aince
1843. Loid Koinei used to emplc^ a fftr plainer word, u Scott
tallBiw.
' S«B EarU'* W»it%y, p. *71.
40 Old and Middle English.
(here), and Eadwinei (there); He should have been
repeated after the second proper name. Matzner (III.
225) quotes tc wcbs on iHle ^tmm, Jti* wu/rde on mimim ;
here the SHU is not repeated.
I have already remarked npon EngliBh terseness.
This is seen in the phrase Oode Sonc, 'thanks (be
to) God,' which comes like a parenthesis in the middle
<^ a sentence in the Pastoral, p. 26. Again, in .^Ifric's
Homilies (Sweet's ' Anglo-SEUon Beader,' p. 8S), we find
ee apoitol vxei nigon geara \ here old has been dropped.
In p. 57 of the same book we read for Qodat lufan ;
here we shonld now say, 'for love to God.' Hence
comes 'the Eing's trtutor,' and many snch phrases,
which lasted long.
In this work I find it very convenient to talk, like
the Greeks, of the Old and the Hew. In former days an
Adjective was often nsed as a Substantive, as we ieldran
(Pastoral, 5), our elders, forefathers; hence we say,
'yonr betters,' 'your superioi-s.' Thns the Snbatantive
goodg was formed from the Adjective, as in Latin. ' There
is not his liJcB ' is bnt the old hU gelica nis (Thorpe's
'Analecta,' 34). Our on ffte loose is foreshadowed by on Jiom
iJr^^ean(St. Lnkexxiii. 31). In the Pastoral, p. 399, Lot
says, her it an lytele burg . . . heo U an hjtel ; in onr days,
we shonld add one to the last word. In p. 385 comes Cu
gioTiga, thou young un ; this wi or one did not take the
place of the final a until 1290. In this way the old
bedrida became bedridden. Our well-known ' easy does
it ' is a curious substitution of an Adjective for a Sub-
stantive. The deep might stand for the Latin mare, as
it does in our time.
English in its Earliest Shape. 41
We know oar poetic constraction of Adjectives, as Been
in Mr. TennyBon's 'a grey old wolf and a lean.' Some-
thing like this, though not exactly the same, may be
seen in St. Lnke xxiii. 50, where Joseph is described aa
^&Z wer omd. rihiwit.
We sometimes see an English Adjective clipped in a
way that the I^tin would not bear. In the Chronicle
of the year 980, norS scipherige is put for ' the northern
army.'
N'ow and then a word componuded of an Adjective
and a Substantive ia nsed as an Adjective, as barefoot;
barehead lasted down to the Fifteenth Century. We
might say of old both dn-eilge and dn-iged, ouceyed.
We often componnd a Substantive with an Adjective, as
the old hlodread, 'blood-red.'
Oar good, as we know, is sometimes used in a sense
differing from inrttioug. We might justify, from the
Saxon Chronicle, oar phrases ' a good while ^o ' and
'a good deal of work,' liko Horace's bona pars homi-
Onr poets keep alive Old English epithets, dating
from the earliest times ; thus we find in Kemble's
Charters, IV, 292, red gold mentioned.
One of onr heaviest losses is the almost total disase of
the «n, so oft«n prefixed to Adjectives, as in uii-good, un-
mighty, and many others. It was also prefixed to Sub-
stantives as wirJmight, and I rejoice to see that such
words as unjcitdom are once more comieg to life in onr
laud. We also talk of wi'ckurchitig, just as fiomet
wrot« of un^hrining and un-sainting. The Gothic
oppoeea unkabandt (he that hath not) to habands. The
42 Old and Middle English.
freer play that ia given to this good old Teatonio prefix,
the better will it be for our tongae. It is a sbame to use
■aom, as a prefix where un will do ; this is as bad as s\A-
letting insead of widerleUing. The old prefix wan, Bome-
thing like u», now lives only in waiifton.
Of all onr parts of speech the Terb is the most pre-
cious, for in its varied forms we find most traces of hoary
Aryan eld. Wekeepmany old verbal idioms with butlittle
change, snch as ' I am seeking,' ' I am come,' ' they are
gone,' 'he thought toslay,' 'seektocome,' 'enonghtoeat,'
' worthy to bear,' ' this honse to let,' ' fiiir to see,' ' I do
yon to wit,' 'he ia going to read,' he gcB^ rwdan. The
Gerund was mnch used, as, t'c to drincetine hmbbe, ' I have
to drink,' like Cicero's haheo dicere ; wcernn to farenne,
'they were to go.' JfceZts me to fer an, ia like the Gothic
mel du bairan (St. Lnke i. 57). Onr curious idiom of
■ Participles, 'be ceased commanding,' ' they dreaded ask.
ing,' ia fonnd in Old English, as, geendude bebeodende,
ondrSdon daigende. So also, ' I heard him speaking,'
' I saw it bnmfc.' Se hcefde hine geworUne, ' he bad him
wrought,' common enough with us, is not often found
in Greek or Latin. The Present Participle is often used
as a Substantive, as ' the living and the dying.' It baa
always been aUowed to prefix vn, as ' the unbelieving,'
' the unbecoming.' The Past Participle was used in the
same way, as, se aiuyrgda (the accursed).
The Future was expressed by shall and wiU, but
oftener by the Present ; we still say, ' ajiother word, and
I go.' Jc mot, )>w most, expressed permiasion, and wafl
very seldom used in our sense o{must, expressing need;
Ucet, not oporfet, was the idea. The Second Person of the
English in its Earliest Shape. 43
Present BometiiiieB replaced tiie ImperatiTe, as, nz dagae
yv unrest, in the Fonrtli Comntandment. We Rometimes
nse the Fntnre as a mild ImperatiTe ; you viU go there ;
here wiU keeps one of its old senses, (oportet). If
an idea has to be presented both in the Present and
Fntnre tens^ the Verb often standB in the Present, and
is followed by vnll without an infinitive. This is tme
English conciaeneBS. Matzner qnotes from Exodns :
)»w fole unay and ivrdSor wyle, ' this folk waxeth and will
(wax) Airther.' On the other hand, the ekaU is some-
times dropped before a second infinitive; Cadmon's
Satan monms 8(ci Adam sceal we«(m on wynne and we
}olier^.
The should is employed in a most cnrions old idiom,
to he fonnd in King Alfred's tale aboat Orpheus ; ' they
said that the harper's wife sceolde aevrelan ; ' we simply
say ' that the wife died.' Hence comes oar phrase ;
' who should come np bat Thomas,' that is ' who came
up.' The should Js farther need inetead of shaU ; onr
fathers translated the Latin debeo by sceal ; bnt King
Alfred shows ns the idiom that we still keep, ta reaferas
feSeneeaS, . . . . ae hi seeoldon. gehieran, &c, (Pastoral
Care, 343). The seeoldon. in this passage clearly stands
for debenl, not for delnterant. The old meaning of shall
is kept in the bidding prayer before University sermons;
* ye shall pray for all mankind,' &c. ; so too, ' Thou shalt
not steal.' The confusion between ehcdl and wHl is
very old. In St. John vii. 35, the Gothic has, ' whadre sa
ihUigaggan?' the English has, 'Awyifer Miyte tSe»/ora»i"
(whither will this man goP) the Greek word here is
44 Old and Middle English.
There is a curions idiom of will, BtUl often heard in
the North, &n idiom which maj' be foand in the Pastoral
Care, 451 ; fcwai totfe 8ib( nw 6eon iceorca T what work
mu<< this be F Matsner qnot«s other sentences of this
kind from the Bjathins ; it is to be remarked that these
are all questions. I heard an old woman say at the Leeds
Exhibition, as she stood before a portrait : ' That will be
Shakespeare, a'm thinking.'
Since the Norman Conqnest, the bare Fntnre baa
always been expressed, at least in Soathem England, by I
tliall, thou wilt, he icill ; a most carions uiomaly, by which
the Scotch, Irish, Welsh, and some of the American
States, are tboronghly puzzled. Everyone knows the
&mons ' I will be drowned, and no man shall save me.'
Even Thackeray, after travelling in Ireland, confosed the
two verbs, as may be seen in hia ' Irish Sketch-book.' J
wHi should never be nsed unless earnest intention or a
promise is to be expressed ; thou shalt, he shall, should
never be used unless fate, duty, or command, is to be ex-
pressed; sfiaHanswersfairlywell tom?wi, as we now use
the latter. As regards the bare Future, perhaps the reason
for the aforesaid anomaly is, that a m&n has complete
control over himself, and therefore employs the grave
and weighty I shall ; he has no such absolute control
over others, as a general rule, and therefore employs the
lighter tkou unit, he will}
' HerodotnB, &a is -well known, aometimes uses ei\it, like onr
mil, to eipresa the bare Future. We say ' I will gladly do it,' bat
on rb« oUier hand, ' 1 Bball like to do it ;' in the lost instance it is
felt that the will, ezpreasing earceat nieumnce, would be a pleonasm
if nsed with the verb li^.
English in its Earliest Shape. 45
Let SB hope ihat we shall always cleave to the ancient
SnbjimotiTe fonn, ' as it were,' instead of ' aa it might
be.' The old Imperative wmt (esto) is nowhere tonnd
now, except in watsail (wcea b&l).
We have seen how iiBefiil the verb do has alwa^
been in framing onr English speech. A phrase like ke
doth vntkiland (not he viithstandi) seems modem ; but
it is fonnd in King Alfred's writings. Onr emphatic do
was sometimes prefixed to the Imperative. Christ said
to the wemui taken in adnltery, 'Do g&, and ne sjnga
Jifl ctb&e m4' (St. John viii. 11). Bo wit thou turn was
expressed of old as nedop4, pcet pH oneyrre. The verb
do waa also employed, both transitively and otherwise,
to save the repetition of a former verb ; Alfred speaks of
planting an assembly, mia te ceorl de^ his ortgeard
(Pastoral, 293), ' aa the churl doth bis orchard.'
We see an attempt to supply the want of a Middle
Voice in snch phrases as he hepohte hine, ' he bethought
him,' and the later ' I fear me.' ' It rained fire,' is a
true Old English phrase. We have some Impersonal
Verba left, and one that is very precious, since no it
comes before the Verb in qnestion. This is me thinks
(mihi videtnr), which has nothing to do with think
(pntare). We shonld not confound the two, if the second
were written in the right way, tk^ik. The Germans,
wiser than the English, have kept the two verbs distinct.
We sometimes see the prononn thou cast off after the
Verb, especially in a qnestion, Matzner qnotea Eart mt
tjdfara ? Hence comes the later dost hear ? what sayst T
The disgosting vihat toy ? one of our latest itnprove-
inentn, seems to belong here.
46 Old and Middle English.
The Nommative ia dropped before tbe Terb, in sen-
tenoes like do what I can, go where we will. This ie Been,
in the old hyege »wd he wille.
We speak of a horse Bometimes aa gone lame. In
St. John IT. 6, WB Bee lie wceg weng gegdn ; the verb of
motion having taken the sense of Jieri; nther later,
become was to take the aame meaning.
The Infinitive of verbs of motion is often dropped
after thall or tnust. Ic him (sfUr geeal (I shall after him)
Ib an old idiom.
We see oar common Infinitive, irith thould pre-
fixed, very early encroaching npon the rightful Satiijtinc-
tive. In the Faetoral, p. 381, comes 'hear what is
written that the bridegroom scolde sprecan.' These last
two verbs were nsnally expressed b; one word, like the
Latin loqveretur. This iceolde with the Infinitive very
often followed that in a dependent sentence. Now and
then we find tnaij, viight, osed with the Infinitive, where
tlie Snbjnnctive is most nsnal.
We hare always naed I woidd for the Optative, like
the Latin vellem. Matzner qnotea from Boethins ic
wolde pat he tceamode.
The i/ could always be got rid of in English, and a
shorter construction might be nsed ; as, ahte ic geweald,
fonne ie werode ; here the first olanse wonld be in latin,
»i potealatem. kaberem.
The Snbjnnctive nanatly, bnt now and then the In-
dicative, followed that, ere, tJumgh, when, and if.
The Latin nisi was sometimes Englished by nwre feet
(were it not that), followed by the Snbjnnctive.
English in its Earliest Shape. 47
IntraDBitiTe Verba sometimes took an AconsatiTe of
the same Bt«m ; live a life, fight a fight, deem a doom.
Lord Derby imitated this very early idiom in his reraion
of the Iliad ; ' knee me no knees.'
We BometuneB find two Infinitives coupled together,
as, 'Let her go hang.' This dates from the earlieat
times; in the Beowulf is found, we m$ton gangati ....
Hr^igdr geseon. The phrases ' I heard say,' ' he let them
epeak,' &o., are equally old. Bnt where the Gothioand
Latin have the AccaBalive with the Infinitive, English
commonly pat that with a dependent sentence ; as, ' hit
betere wcere fast an viati tumlU.'
The English sometimes put a Past Participle where
the Gothic set an Infinitive ; as in St. Lnke iv. 23, we
gehprdctn gedSne.
The Dative Fast Participle Absolute is f onad early, as
gefyJledum dagum, ' the days having been folfilled.' We
still say tkit done (hoc facto).
Now and then we find a Verbal idiom which is very
old, though it seems modem. Thus in the Pastoral
Care, p. S93, Solomon, when he began to sacrifice to
idols, /ciri^^e hine selfne, ' foi^t himself.' The Latin mwte
ajgicieiit (St. Matt. z. 21) is translated by a sound old
English idiom, to tlea^e fordop (do to death). One
curious fact about English is, that many idioms found in
the oldest books disappear for hondreds of years, and
then crop np again. Such a phrase as ' he doth with-
stand ' seems to be dropped after the Norman Gonqnest,
bnt comes np again fresh as ever two hundred years
later. It is the stune with words. The old teorian
(deficere) disappeared for many centuries; it is not
48 Old and Middle English.
fonnd in the Bible of Tyndale'a time except in the French
sense ot adorn, bnt aboat 1590 it crops up in the shape
ot tire (to weary), and is seen in Shateepeare. What in
the English of 1000 was nd geleorige (St. Lobe zviii, 1)
is in Tyndole not to be wery. So frieian (aaltare) seems
to be the parent of oar modem freak.
In onr days, we pat ' to speak shortly ' in the middle
of a sentence ; this is an abridged form of onr fathers'
hra^it it to oto^Sen/ne, which comes in a catalogne of sins
in p. 110 (Sweet's ' Reader ').
We now come to ProDonns. Sometimes he is need,
as well as a aabstantive, to govern a verb. Thus in
St. Matt, zxvii. Id he tmt Sa Pilatttg ; we now often hear
Bay 'he sat then, did Pilate.' The idiom in 'thy rod
and thy ataff they comfort me' dates from the oldest
times. The Ait in English may stand for any masculine
or feminine object, or for an indefinite snlrject. Thns
in St. Mark x. 47, hit wees se Sdlend replaces the older
Gothic legiu igt. In St. John zviii. 5 I'c hit eom stands
for the Qothic ik im, 1 am he. This it often goes before an
Infinitive, as 'it is good to pradse,' or before a conceBBive
sentence, as 'if m no wOTtder if I fear.' In St, Matt,
xxvii. 6, nil hyt nd dl^fed is snbatitnted for the Go-
thic ni ehuld ist, ' it is not allowed ; ' bnt sometimes we
omit it, as in ' dydon miia hehoden wees,' ' acted as was
ordered.' In the Pastoral, 381, we see the first glimpse
of onr emphatic ' it was then that he did it,' Hest &iS
iowne Scet www gehtere, Sonne, &c. Sometimes, as we have
jnst seen, licet replaces hit, and may be followed by a
Plnral, as in the Pastoral, 409, Sici eindan Ca tSa 8e iw
6eoS hetmitene, ' these are tbey tbat be not defiled ; ' feet
vKBs god eyning, like onr 'that is a good fellow.'
English in its Earliest Shape. 49
Indefinite agency was ezpreBsed of old as mnoli as
DOW ; as )/onne Kig wyrvA eou>, ' when tliej revile yon.'
Personal Prononns are sometimes reflextTes, aa I lay
tne down ; tittaHeow (Pastoral, 385). Tliey are sometimes
even added to an intransitdve Terb, ita gdie on tibbe, ' go
in peace ' (St. Uark t. 34), where Uto Gotluo has gagg,
with no Prononn. Hence comes oar ' get you gone,' and
such like. Phrases like I ihame me, I repent me, are firat
seen in texts like ondrSd he him (St. John zix. 8).
English is nnlncldly without the reflexivfl Gothic nk,
the I^tin se.
The strange Dative reflexive has always been used,
as Filatiu hym tylf durrdt. Indeed, there are old
instanoes of this Dative Prononn being employed as
a Nominative by itself. The »ylf sometimes stands as a
Sobetantive ; for Matzner quotes ' hafdon gemeald heora
dgenet tyl/ei,' ' had power over their own person.' When
we look back upon the aforesaid Dative reflexive, we see
that the Irish are right in saying metelf, not mojaelf; the
former is the old Dative me tylf, broaght to Erin by
Strongbow's men-«t-arms. In St. Mark ix. 2, tylfe
stands for the Gothic aiwmt ; Usdde hi lylfe on mMdron,
' he led them by themselveH apart.'
Before entering on the next subject, it is impossible
to refrain from pointing oat how mnch bad grammar
would now be avoided had we English anything answer-
ing to the Latin distinction between sum* and iUiua,
•e and Ulaim.
The Possessive Pronoun is often used withont any
substantive, ss eaU ISeette hit ne tie, 'all that is not his,'
(Pastoral, 333). It is sometimes tacked on to » Sub-
50 Old and Middle English.
stoiitiTe, for Matxner quotes, £nac his eynr^n (Anak's
Idn), Namben xiii. 2d.
We still use the Definite Article to express high
respect, as The Macnab, The Dvke, The Ohronide, The
Gkarter. In the Pastoral, 301, we find ge vre Alietend,
' our great Bedeemer,' ' that Bedeemer of onra.' What
the Romans called Geesar was known to the English as
te Cater.
The Definite Article is coupled with Participles, jost
as it is with Adjectives ; as the chosen of the Almighty,
On the other hand, the Article is now omitted, just as it
was omitted before the Norman Conqaest, in phrases
like send word, on earth, in hed, at heart, in ha,nd. If wo
read of Sinai munt and Serode eyning, we are not
astonished at our now using London toum. King Serod,
Twelfth Night.
The seo, which nsnally^ stands for the Feminine Defi-
nite Article, sometimes stands by itself, like heo. Hence
comes onr the. In the Gothic version of St. Mark vi. 24, m
^a|>is nsed where we should now say quoth she. Andswarude
(eAim(St.Matt.xxi. 30); here se translates the Latin iUe.
The Dative Singular Feminine, )x^e, has still all the
force of ista in the mouths of the vnigar, as in that thert
woman ; hut they apply it to all genders. In St. Matt. x.
23, we see on pysse hyrig . . . and on ptere.
The them, representing the I«tin illie, thongh found
in Oothic (St. Mark iz. 16), did not make much way in
England until about 1200. We find, however, aktefen
mi tSotm (Pastoral, p. 371).
8e, teo, |xBf, are old Demonstrative Frononns,
which have been used later as Definite Articles. In
English in its Earliest Shape. 51
St. Lake x. 28 we find the Gothic \at(s, tawei, where
Tfndale has this do. In the Pastoral, 48, we see an
idiom still well known to as : iosl Kce* Hieremiae, ' that
was Jeremiah.' In St. Lake i. 39, the Latin in illis
diehut is translated by the Gothic t» )iatm dagavi, and by
the English on Ham dagami oar lower classes in the
Sonth (aa also the Irish) still hold to the right old way
and aay, ' in them days.' Oar cormpt those came from
Torkshire, and was never heard of in written English
nntil 1250.
There was a Gothic jains for iste, and we find its
kindred English form in Alfred's Pastoral, 443, gong to
^eonre byrg, 'go to yonder bni^h.' This word did not
become common in English until 300 years after Alfred's
day. In the Rashworth Gospels illue is translated by
geotid (St, Matt. xsvi. 36), our yonder.
The old JSylro or 9ilc is nsed where the Gothic swaleU,
tveh, came; as in St. Luke iz. 9, httml is Ke«, he Sam ic
aie geh'^e? The aforesaid thilk afterwards became a De-
monstratiTe, and has been naed in the sense of itte in the
Sonth and West ever since 1220. This seems to hare
been foreshadowed so early as 890 ; ^llic is opposed
to 4Su in the Pastoral, 315, where Alfred is translating
Isaiah Iviii. 5, 6 : 'I have not chosen that fast, bat
this last.' In the Liudis&me Gospels, fifty years later
than Alfred's time, eos is translated by 6ai7co (St. Matt,
xirii. 10).
One old English nse of the Pronoan shonld be
specially marked, since some mistakes have been made
abont it in onr day. In tlieir midst is a thoronghly good
52 Old and Middle English,
idiom, for in medio earum (St. Matt, xviii. 2) is Englished
by an hyra midlen,^
The well-known Latin phrase quo plus . . . eo plus^
becomes in English hilS )>j/ heardra, ]>e stoipor bedtab, 'it
becomes the harder, tJie stronger they beat.' This is, in
onr day, the one sole case in which the is not a Definite
Article, but a Demonstrative. Matzner quotes from
Cadmon the sentence few snottor wem^ ]>cet, ^c, and we
still sometimes hear the poor say, * he was tliat clever,
that,' &c.; eo sapienticB ventum est. Self follows the
Definite Article, as we now nse 8a/ine\ don ^Scst selfe
(Pastoral, 327). We still say ' the self-same.'
The Neater Interrogative, what, refers sometimes to
Mascnline and Feminine Substantives, just as that does.
The terse Gothic whas ist ? (in Latin, quia est ?) becomes
the expanded English hwmt ys he? (St. John zii. 25) ;
hwoBt may go before a Plural, as hwcet synd iSa ping ? < what
are these things ? ' (St. John vi. 9) This wlw,t scHnetames
takes a Genitive Singular after it, as hwcet niwes ? what
news ? Most men, I fancy, imagine this news to be a
Plural. The Instrumental case of hwa&t had two forms,
hw]^ and M, still known to us as why and hmo.
The English which (htocL-liCj hwylc) is in truth oui
form of the kindred Latin qualis^ though now most
corrupted in its use ; the earliest sense of all l&sted down
to 1400. King Alfred shows us that in his day the
> Mr. Hall, in Modem English, p. 48, comes down pretty sharply
upon earlier blunderers in this matter ; but he does not go higher
than Wickliffe for his authority. So late as 1792, ' I was delighted
with your sight * might be written ; we should now say ' the sight of
you.*
English in its Earliest Shape. S3
aease of qau waa encroaoMng upon that of q«/jlx» ; for
be writes /iue2e wnndorP where ve pat vihat wonder p
The like change took place in German some ceotarieB
later. IiiBt.Lakex.22, Aw^JcisnaedfortheGothicuiAaf,
where l^dale osee viho. It was veiy eax I7 followed
fcy a Partitive QeDitive, as we say, 'which of them?
There was an old gomkinylo (aliqnis) ; in imitatioii of
this were formed somewhat, tamewhere, and many others,
in later years.
There is sometimes a cnrions interlacing of confltmc-
tiona in oar Bentencea ; aa, ' Whom will ye that I release
onto you?' This comes down from 'early days. We
see in St. Lnke zlii. 18, hwam wene ie \cet hit heo gelic it
The omission of the Relative after a Substantive
dat«s from before the Conquest. In the Chronicle for
907, we read her . . . gefor Mlfred, wax on Bayum geri^a.
Hence our 'the man I saw.'
There has been a wonderful change since 1100 in the
English construction of Relatives. These were of old
commonly expressed by ge, seo, yeet, according to the an>
tecedent's gender, or by the indeclinable fw. We see in
St. Matt. ii. 9pdwcBtgefyltedf(etgecwedenvjcBg(iiqaod),
whence comes our later take that thine it. The Latin
qui* ett qtn, &c. ? becomes in English hwa ii leteT
The old indeclinable noa, our cm, had fdso a Relative
force; the hoary twa hwa twa (quicunqne) means in
tmth thai man who, tueh man a$. We say ' at to this '
{qiwd ad hoc spectat), and the poor still say ' a man ae I
saw,' We find mile man me, ' auoh man as ' (Kemble's
Charters, I. 296). The English moa hwcBt twa (quod-
cnnque) was in Gothic patawhah fei (St. John xv. 7).
54 Old and Middle English.
Tbe Indefinite Article dn (the Ootbio ain«, unui),
might stand before Numerals, as, a hundred, Sn hvTtd
peiiega (St. Matt, xviii. 28); so also a fevs, ditefedwa
worda ; here the diie is plural, and means oniy. Oar lower
orders imitate this idiom and say, ' a many times.' 8wm
(liAer(alinB) has been replaced by an other. In St. John
XTi. 16 is foand dn lytel, vhere we now say 'a litUe
while.'
An is sometimes used standing by itself, like the
Latin mhiu and the Gothic aim, as he sceolde him forgyfan
t^ne,' he should deliver to tliem one maji' (St, Lnkexxiii.
17). Horace has cerebrosvs prosQit wms, where the unus
stands for quidam. In this latter sense may be taken
cu'ce|> a» hi» Ieomin^-eni^fa(St.Lnkezi. 1). Bnt this free
nse of on by itself was far more common in the North
than in the Sontb. In St. Matthew zix. 16, vmus ait is
translated in all the Northern Gospels by an cuei ; this
idiom mther jarred on English ears in the Sonth, and is
there replaced by an mann cwcetS. In St. John xviii. 39,
the Gothic ainana becomes in Southern English arme
man. I have been careful to explain this an (one), since
there is a wrong notion abroad that onr one (^one asked
him) comes &om the French on ; it is to OldEnglish trans-
lators of the Latin unus that we should look for an
explanation of this idiom. New English idioms nearly
always first appeared in the North. The Gothic in
ainamma dage is seen with us as drnan dmge, it happened
mie day (St. Luke v. 17).
The oldest Latin had no Indefinite Article; una
aneilla dixit ad ms, a phrase that St. Jerome had no
objectioD to, smacks more of Manzoni than of Cicero,
Etiglish in its Earliest Shape. 55
and marks a wondrous change in tbe speech of educated
ItaliMiB. Both the Gothic and English employ this
Inde&nite Article ; in St. Matthew viii. 19, we find ain«
hokareia and an boeere for what Tyndale afterwards
called a genbe. One of the most marked tendencies of
the oldest English, sncb aa the Beownlf or Cadmon's
Lay, is to leave out the Article. Hence onr many pithy
phrases like, ' Eaint heart never won fair lady ;' we hare
here a great advantage over the Germans. The Article
might even be dropped before an adjective with no sub-
stantive following, as in St. Mark i. 7 ; etrengra eymp
after vie ; compare, handeome is that handtome does.
An -was used where We now say alone ; as in the
Pastoral, 227, ket dm Cffli gefeoht, ' let alone the fight.'
Another idiom for this was Itetap hi, ' let tbem alone *
(St. Hattbew xv. 14). In St. Lnke ix. 38, we find
tutn dtUiea runu, my only son. We have onr first
glimpse of a common ezpression of onrs in he hit
tinhehode eaU to amtm, he ' thought it all one ' (Pastoral,
385).
Man was used indefinitely, where the Greeks would
have written tit ; and the loss of this man leaves a sad
gap in our modem English. Readers of ' David Copper-
field ' will remember the collegian who nses the phrase
a man for J; as ' a man is always hnngry here ; ' ' a man
might make himself very comfortable.'
Dickens, like Tyndale and Shakespeare, was fbnd of
another hoary old Teutonic idiom for his Indefinite Pro-
nouns ; thus, 'he spoke, as leho shouldsay.' Thismay
be traced back fifteen hundred years ; Ulphilas writes
Vabm vihag, the Latin H quis (St. Matt. v. 39) ; we now
56 Old and Middle English.
commonlj saj * if cmy one* This Indefinite who or 'inan^
as I showed before, comes into swa hwd swa^ our whoso.
We still keep the Nenter of this Indefinite Pronoun
in our * I tell yon what ; ' in Latin, aliqydd. ' To
give somewhat,' is in Gk>thic, wha gihcm (St. John
xiii. 29) ; the somewhat I have just written is as bad as
writing aUqmd quid. Any relic of old idioms, standing
quite by itself, pnzzles modem speakers ; hence some insist
on regarding the aforesaid what as if it mnst answer to
the dependent quidy and say, ' I tell yon what it is.' There
is yet another old nse of this word left ; as in whai with
thisy what with thai. The word sum, onr some, might stand
for either quidam or aliquis ; we now nsnally confine it
to the latter sense. In St. Matt. zz. 20, aliquid is
Englished by sum ying. The phrases ' some ten years,'
' snch and snch (man),' date from before the Conqnest.
Few of ns know what is the real constmction in a
phrase like ' they hate each other.' Here each is the
Nominative singular, and other the Accasative singular ;
we see in -ZElfric's CoUoqny (Thorpe's * Analecta^' 113),
that prosit tmusquisque alteri is translated hjframige
dnra gehwylc oyron.
Onr first is a word of cormpt formation ; in the
Pastoral, 121, we see the old form he wille fyrmest heon,
the Gothic /rwrnw^. What of old was pd forman two, is
in onr day the first two, as Cooper writes ; Sheridan
wrote the two first. In the various versions of the Bible,
we findjmmtlm translated by <^est ; in -^Ifric's CoUoqny,
which is rather late, this becomes /yrwe«i; 'seek je first
the kingdom of Qt>d.'
In St: Mark vi. 7, we see the distributive form of
English in its Earliest SItape. 57
Nnmerals ; ' Bending ont tLe disciples iwSfm. a/nd ttodm,'
an idiom differing from the Gothic. The Latin secundui
nu Englished by (Aier ; of this we keep the trace in
' every other man.'
The old translation of the Latin alter . . . alter, wae
fay the ki&dred English oier . . . o^. Bnt in the
PaBtoral Cu<e, 49, we Bee the b^^inning of a new form ;
twa hehodiif on is Scet . . . ot!er Scsf. In the Legends of
the Koly Rood, a further step is made, for the Article is
preGzed ; forlel pa wnne dcd . . . mid \am oYrmn. dcele.
In St. Matthew xviiL 12, we hear of the hnndred sheep,
and of their owner seeking feet &n. feforwearp, the one
that is lost ; in I^tin, earn qitee. This as yet is a most
nnosnal idiom, though it is fotmd also in .£l£ric.
In the same Gospel, ziiL 46, we see a cnrions idiom
that is still alive ; vita pretiota inargarita is Englished
by fat dn deorwyrlie meregrot. Here dn represents some-
thing that stands alone hy iUelf. We may still write
'the one (solns) supremely able man,' ' the mie perfect
song.' The ejntheta in these sentenceH seem to be almost
snperlatives ; Dr. Morris, in his ' English Accidence,' p.
145, givefi many instances from 1300 to 1600 of one ttie
(msjrk the transposition) beii^ prefixed to Snperlatives,
as, one the fairett. Scott, in his ' Life of Napoleon,'
Dses this idiom so late as 1827.
Sometimes the Cardinal and Ordinal are combined ;
aa an aru^hr^t^oSon, 'one and twentieth.' Theconstroc-
tion of oar half differs from the Latin ; in St. Mark vi.
23, we find healf min rice, ' half my kingdom ; ' an half
mmlung (Kemble's Charters, I. 310), wonld now be
' half a plonghland.' In the Chrotiicle for 894, we hear
*^i
58 Old and Middle English.
of the army, that they were symle healfe cet ha/m^ ' half
always at home.'
Manvy was followed by both Singular and Floral
Substantives ; as, mawy man ; about 1200 we began to
insert the indefinite article before mem. There was a
substantive m/jenigeo ; which we stiU use, when we talk
of a great mawy ; in confused imitation of this, in some
parts of the country, they speak of a good few. We
always placed the enough after a noun ; as, fierst genog^
* time enough ' (Pastoral, p. 415).
Adverbs are often formed from Substantives, as in
eaJne weg (alway), used by King Alfred ; ferdon omoeg^
' fared away.' This class of words clings to life ; thus the
old ikerrihte (contiauo), survives in the American ' I'll
do it right away.'
The points of the compass were used adverbially ;
thus in the Pastoral (p. 9), me his writerum sende su^
and nof6. So in the Blickling Homilies, 129, we read,
seo is west ]^onon (she is west thence) ; in p. 209, wceron
nof6 of Ikem stcme (were north of the stone). This idiom
is most unlike the Latin.
We sometimes see two old forms of an Adverb, as
vfweard and upweardes; either form is still allowable.
The es in the latter form was in the Thirteenth Century
to be added to many other Adverbs. Unwceres (unawares)
may be seen in the Chronicle of the year 1004.
How and wlt/y, as I said before, are but two forms of
one old pronoun ; the former asks as to the manner, the
latter as ,to the cause, of a thiag. But our how still
sometimes borders on the why ; as, ' how is it that ye did
not believe P ' Why is often used (Dr. Johnson always
English in its Earliest Shape. S9
b^an Tritli Why, sir) where no reason la expected, as a
load of expletive ; thns we see in St. John viii. 48, hwi
Be cueSe we -wel Jnei (nt eart Samaritantte ?
The repetition of AdrerbB in a sentence is veiy old ;
as, Uf lie amd liltU ; so is the comhination of opposite
adverbs, as, feor and neah, ' far and near,' King Alfred,
in his Pastoral, p. 5, says, I'c vmndrade gw&ie mtSie ; this
reminds as of the later French beaucoup, beaucoup. In
the Pastoral, p, 389, we read of Afeorr land (far land),
a cnrions English idiom. In p. 3, we find an idion
still kept in onr Bible ; Alfred tells as that in his day
English leamii^ was clcene oHfeallenu (clean decayed).
This sense of omnino is also attached to the French
synonym; as Moliere's c'est pure vtedisanee. I have
actually seen clean in this sense set down as mere slang
by one of onr would-be philologera; his Bible might
have saved him from this blonder.
There was another phrase for omnino, to be seen
in Sweet's ' Anglo-Saxon Reader,' p. 105 ; ' we hare
robbed God's honse t?in« and ute ; ' we now talk of ' ont
and oat.'
In onr word nowaday* we have the old Genitive of a
Sabstantive used as an Adverb ; the word was known of
old as ideeget (hodie). The adverb needs (be mnst needs
go) is another relic of this Genitive.
Kany Adverbs are formed by adding lie (now ly) to
the root. The most cnrions instance of this form is the
adjective -ungtliclU (onlikely), where liJte comes twice
over. Others are formed by adding lyiot> Participle,
as laughvaghj.
6o Old and Middle English.
The adverb hj&re geneiallj refers to place, bnt some-
times (not often) to time. Thus the Chronicle names a
year, and then adds 'here died the King/ This is the
sonrce of our lieTewpony heretofore, &c.
We often omit the verb in sentences like ' I did it
when a boy,' 'I climbed till out of breath/ This free
play, in which English outdoes all other tongues, may
be seen in the Chronicle for 901 : ' he died four weeks
(Br JElfred,^ The rightful cer }^am ye was very early
replaced by cer (ere) before a Verb. But against took
that after it, unlike our present usage, Udon lac orig^
\atte Josep ineode (Cenesis zHii. 25).
The Expletive ^cbt, like the Indefinite hit, was com-
monly used by the English to begin a sentence, as ftsr
was cm cyning. This resembles nothing in German or
Latin. Prepositions were often tacked on to this peer, as
thereout, theremdo, thus forming Compound Adverbs.
Some think that yea is a more archaic form than yes\
but gese and ged are alike found in our oldest writers.
There was also once a nese. As to negation, when a man
says ' I didn't never say nothing to nobody,' this is a
good old English idiom that lasted £ftr beyond 1600.
Hamlet says * Be not too tame neither,' and good writers
of our own time have had something of the kind. Much
harm has been done to our speech by attempts to ape
French and Latin idioms, especially about the time of
the Beformation. For instance, we are now told that
an English sentence ought never to end with a Preposi-
tion. This absurd rule is later than Addison's time,
and is not sanctioned by our forefathers' usage. When
English in its Earliest Shape. 6r
C&dxQon asked for the Enchariet on Ma death-bed, he
said BerOU me hwcBfere kvtel fo.'
Onr word nay has probably never changed its sound,
bnt it was of old written ne, as in onr Lord's words, ' I
say nnto yon, nay.' In St. Luke xiii. 3 there is another
form, ?ie, secge I'e, nd. This last is not hr from onr no,
which King Alfred nsed much aa the Scotch do now ;
' 1 am no fain to go.' In the History of Job {Thorpe's
'Analecta,' 36) we read tc sylfand nd o)>er, showing the
parentage of onr no other. The phrases no less, no nwre,
baptized or no, are very old, though we have aabstitnted
The negative was expreesed by ne coming befoi« a
Verb; but not long before the year 1000 we see this
encroached upon by the Adverbial Accusative ndwiht
(nihil). Matzner quotes luxe habhaX amd ndiciht gestineaS,
(Psalm cxxxiv. 17) ; also, wces he ndwiht hefig, from St.
Onthlac. This ndinihl in the Twelfth Century become
noht, and was afterwards pared down to not. The latter
form answers to the Latin non, while naught or n(mght
answers to nihil ; one of the many instancee of one Old
English word becoming two-pronged, aa it were, in later
times. In the Pastoral Care, 240, nauhl (nihil) is tamed
into a substantive, Stet nauht vias Hurhlogen, ' the
wickedoesB was perpetrated.' Hence came nahlnes,
naughtiuess, and other formations of the like kind.
Nan, like an, had a Plural, as in the Pastoral, 395 :
8a fie vnf habhen, wen iSo tvxlce hie nan ktebbeti, 'let
those that have wives be as though they had none.'
> Tboipt^t AmtUtda Jnglo-SMimiea, 5S.
62 Old and Middle English.
Hence comes onr ' Tlion shalt have none other Gods bnt
me.'
Bu was used just as we employ hot\ in phrases like
"both he wnd I, We have lost certain other old forms for
expressing this, such as ge ; still, in our version of 11.
Corinthians vii/ 11, yea hut is used to English the Crreek
alla^ repeated again and again.
Oelice is now our likewise.
The Latin non solum appears in the oldest English as
nd pcet an. We now omit the word in the middle. In
St. John xiii. 9 we see the change beginning ; nd mine
fet dnCj ac eac, &c.
Our samne was never used except adverbially ; thus
wifmen feohtaiS, swd sairve swd wcepned men, ♦women
fight the same as men;' that is, in the same way,
(Thorpe's ^ Analecta, ' 45) . The Latin idem was expressed,
not by sam£y but by ylc ; this lingers in Scotland, as in
the phrase Bedgauntlet of that Ilk, The Scottish ilka,
from celc (quisque), should never be confused with the
Scottish ilk from ylc (idem). Same (idem) began to
come into vogue about the year 1200.
We find d^Ser . , . ot$^, * either . . . or,' answering
to the Latin anit , , . aut. In the like way nd^Sor is fol-
lowed by ne, * neither this nor that.' In Numbers xiii. 20
hwo^^ is followed by ot$t$e, 'whether . . . or,' but this
was plainly a new idiom. The Latin sen appears as sum
in English, as in uSlfric's Colloquy, swa h/ivceper fu sy,
swa ceorl, swa kempa.
The old "penden (dum) was being encroached upon by
the Adverbial clause that has now quite driven it out.
We see in the Pastoral, 331, t$a hwile te.
English in its Earliest Shape, 63
Oar now wiU translate not only nunc, bat qvaniam ;
)ril m4 ne fonm/me, nu ie com. The senBe of time, how-
ever, still bangs abont this qwmiam.
It is carioas Uiat we find ewd lange nod (the Gothic
iwa lagga wheSa ttoe, St. Mark ii. 19), and many sach
ezpresaions, bat only «dna swd : so Moore in his Canadian
eong says —
' Soon as the woods on shore look dim.'
We still employ though (the German doeh) at the end
«f a sentence, in the geiiae of to/men, just as onr fore-
btfaers did. The first germ of onr /or all that (tamen)
may be seen in ' gB for pon ne gelyfdon Drihtne ' (Dea-
teronomy i. 32).
We Bometimes find sentences and poems bej^ ab-
mptly with and, like Sonthey'a ' And I was once like
this.' This idiom ia fband before the Norman Conqaest.
Oar */ answers not only to the Latin n, bat to one
eense of the Latin an. It might be followed by the Indi-
cative, as ' Oif he tynfid it, ptet ie ndt (St. John ix. 25).
The English tor quum was nanally }d or ptwme ; bat
before the Norman Conqaest Awienite (the Latin quando)
had b^nn to encroach npon the older forms ; still these
Imgered on antil the Fifleenth Centnry.
The old *wa, or at, was also used for qaum and dum.
It is hard to say which of these Latin words shonld
translate <u, in a sentence like Fielding's, 'they arrived
joat a* dinner was ready.' Onr asoftaaia foond in
Gothic, *wa ttfta twe (I. Cor. li, 25).
The old apposition of so to 10 is still kept in ' ao many
men, bo many minds.' This is a remnant of the old twd
nieel $wd, nod lange swd, Kodfeorr ewd.
64 Old and Middle English.
8wa^ like our modem form of it, cu, was very early
nsed for the Latin qtumiam : * thoa shalt suffer, swd ^u
lltSlice wr6hte.' It had also the sense of qtiwnwis : ' swd
he ne maog gestaslan, he hasfS l^eah,' &c. Hence onr * had
as he is, he still/ &c,
Swd also stood for qiian, and this is kept in onr ^ as
it were.' It is coupled with forthf as in onr common
phrase, ' so forth.'
The old gelice was nsed hefore swd, as in onr ' like as
a Sftther pitieth.'
Our though horders npon if: we know the Latin
eHamtti. Matzner qnotes from Canute's Laws, he sijlf
sceoldct feah he Uf hcefde. Our ' no wonder though,' Sc^
is equally old.
The English tongue cuts down its sentences as much
as it can, and therefore often drops that, coming after a
Yerh ; as ' I grant the man is sane.' This clipping was
in Yogue hefore the Conquest. . Matxner quotes scegde hi
dr^as wceron ; we wolden ]nt gesdwe.
That not after a Negative sometimes answers to with-
out, as in Jerrold's 'We never met, that we did not
fight.' Something like this is seen in the old ' higforovb
"pri dagos "past hig ndm, woeter ne geniStton ' (Exodus zy. 22).
That is nsed after a Comparative, like the Latin
quod ; so Bulwer has ' fears, not the less strong that they
were vague.' This that was of old written the ; as hit
is ])6 wyrse pe sii/me hdbha^ twd. Equally early instances
of m that and/ar that (quia) might be given. T6 pam
pcet stood for our to the end that.
The old s^iScun (since) has always stood for postqiiam
and quoniam alike.
English in its Earliest Shape. 65
We find oR wt, ' nntil now.' This government of an
Adverb by a Preposition, sparingly found in these early
times, has had great development in later ages.
Prepoaitions were prefixed to the Tentonic verb ; but
they were often detached from it, even so early as the
' daye of TTIfilas ; onr language has therefore in this
respect fallen below the level of Qreek and Latin.
How mnch better are the old fordo and q^e^ than our
new do for and let off ! King Alfred writes (Pastoral,
X()X'),Moy»eseodeinnand'ut; englas atigon up andafdwne.
In our own day, we have to say entrance and eztf, since
going in and going out, albeit Scriptural, would sonnd
most cumbroas. In St. Matthew, nv. 11, the foolish
Virgins say, Uet im in. The Gospels of 1000 have drifap
ul, where the older Northnmbrian version has the happier
compound of earlier years. Both the Clothio and the
English use ' he was ont^' in St. Mark i. 4S. The phrase
bring forp in St.Matt, zii. 35, is byno means so neat as j»y)-
fcrt, the Latin to be translated. Onr modem he nprose is
snrely better than the (Irai Aeitpji of the year 1000. What
in Gothic was afmait, became in the English of 1000 dceorf
of (carve oW), as we see in St. Matthew v. 30. King
Alfred writes (Pastoral, 171), ne Ho h'e mon of, ' let not
man draw them off.' We now writo both of and off,
making the latter nsnally an adverb ; this is one of the
doable forms so often seen in the New English. Of is
now and then nsed for a verb ; thns Alfred (Pastoral,
239) writes ne mwg he of, he cannot get off.' In the
66 Old and Middle English,
Legends of the Holy Rood, 103, (Early English Text
Society), we find, ^e dyd^ of his purpuran ; this do off we
afterwards contracted into doff, and do on (St. John xiri.
7), into don in the same way.^ The nnconpling of Pre-
positions adds to onr store of expressions ; thus to throw
over and set up are different from to overthroxo and
wpset.
The Preposition of is used instead of the old
Genitive, to express material. Thns we find not only
scenivwm sciran goldes^ but also redf of h<jeruni (St. Matt,
iii. 4). Compare Virgil's templum de marmore ponam.
This of and this de have been the parents of a wide-
spread offspring in modem times ; but our Old EDglish
Genitive Singular is happily still alive, though we use
it more in speaking than in writing. The twegen of
eow (St. Matt, xviii. 19, Southern version), seems very
modem, especially when contrasted with the Bush-
worth copy. The Partitive use of the of was be-
coming more frequent about 1000 ; what in Gothic was
s^imai yize hokarye became in the English of that year,
suine of tSam hocerwm (some of the bookers, scribes), as
we see in St. Mark ii. 6 ; a&lc of eow, is in St. Luke xiv. 33.
This of follows the Singular as well as the Plural. In
* ye are not of my sheep,^ we have a still unchanged idiom.
But we find even in the Gothic (St. John xii. 42) us paint
reikam managai, * many of the rich.' Coupling two pre-
positions like out o/ is a regular Teutonic idiom. The
ing how a Preposition can be turned into a verb. We hear people
say, ' I t^p and told him.'
* In don and doff our do still keeps the sense of the kindred
Greek ti-thc-mi, the Old English ge-do-yn.
English in its Earliest Sluipe. 67
following phrases date from very early times ; ' to heaJ
of hie wound,' ' eaten of worms,' ' to borrow of liim,'
' do nothing of myself,' ' he was of Bethaaida,' ' he
sprang of (off) the horse,' 'fear of thee.' English often
pnt of where the Gothic has from.
In modem times, hy has encroached upon 0/. King
Alfred seems to use the former in the sense of instramen-
taJity; hi^iimgelfumfelciiion sceal (/eSenceatt (Pastoral,
159), ' each should learn tliroagh hin own case ; ' he hine
genittie be horiitmrie (Ibid. 169) ; bi Snm. oncnawan
(Ibid. 2C5). 'To Mi ont by the way,' 'to have a
son by her,' ' less by one letter,' ' have it ready by
Easter,' ' a hundred by weight,' ' word by word ; '
these phrases date from, very early. In the phrase 'to
do one's dnty 6*^ a man,' we are reminded of the (Jothic
fit ; tliis often stands where English wonld use yiiihe
(circnm.). The English be recalls the Latin de. In the
old Southern Gospels we find ' to live by bread,' and ' to
die by the law ' (secnndnm legem), a Gothic phrase.
This by is not as yet prefixed to the person who is the
agent. Another of the oldest nses of by is kept by onr
sailora, who say ' North by East.'
With baa two meanings, seemingly contradictory, in
Latin, cuin. and contra. We say, to u-aR with a friend,
and to fight wHk a foe. It was used in both senses long
before the Conquest. In the Rushworth Gospels we read,
tepe nig mid vxe wiS jne is (St. Matt. xU. 30). With
has also the meaning of the Latin veraue, ' towards.'
King Alfred (Pastoral, 113) writes, eiiin wiS oSre memt,
'just towards other men.' Hence comes onr 'I'll be
even with you.' In later times kHH has encroached upon
68 Old and Middle English,
for, by, and others of its brethren ; it has moreover
driven ont the old mid, which expressed many of the
old senses of tvith : some of these we still keep ; snch as,
•what will he do with it?' *with that he departed/
* filled with grace,' ' overgrown with wood,' * weigh oath
with oath,' * with God it is possible,' ' hold np his head
with the best ; ' in this last phrase "ivith answers to th&
Latin inter.
Many of the oldest senses of for remain ; snch as,
* gave him wine for drink,' ' held him for king,' * he
came for bread,' * grace for grace,' * betrayed him for
envy.' In this last, the English for reminds ns of the
kindred Latin per ; in some of the other senses oifor^
the Latin pro appears. We read of sins * for GTode and
for womlde, ' we shonld now say, ' as regards ; ' the
phrase is the parent of our conmion • as for this,' qtwd
ad hoc special.
As to from, we find in the oldest English ; * to hide
firom me,' * to rest from work,' * far from me.' This
last appears in the later ^ he is from home.' In the old
idiom, fram hegeonda/ti Jordanen, * from beyond Jordan,'
we see two prepositions conpled together.
We have a clear hint of the Scottish fomenst in
foran ongean eow, (St. Matt. xxi. 2).
The old meaning of before, in * they were righteous
before God,' dates from the year 1000, or earlier.
The preposition after appears in ' made after His
likeness ; ' this is the Latin secundum. There is also
* we sent after him,' * we asked after him,'
Toward was very early severed, that the substantive
might be inserted in the middle ; our * to Oodward ' is
English in its Earliest Simpe. 69
well known. In the Chronicle for 1009 we find, ' to
tetpan vjeard.'
There ia an old sense of under, which is comnjon
to the Scandinavian and High German, and which
ajiBwers to the Latin inter viam. This is ' to get nnder
The oldest senses of to are seen in phrases like, * eat
to yonr fill,' ' moath to moath,' ' to this day,' 'I doom
to death,' ' to this end,' ' to my knowledge.' ' Cut to
pieces,' is sUghtly altered from the old ' ceorfart to
ttuicon ; ' ' to my cost,' ia foreshadowed hy ' to mielum
weotHe,' The Dative after a Vcrh is sometimes replaced
by to in Gothic as well as in English ; moreover, we
know St. Jerome's ' dwit ad me.' The phrase to
night is foand both in English and Gothic ; onr up
to time, preserves a trace of the nse of to as applied to
matters of time.
The preposition at, the Latin ad, is near of kin to
the last-mentioned to. We find among onr oldest
phrases, ' to have at hand,' ' have at heart,' ' at mid-
night,' ' at home.' In the Chronicle for the year 1049,
comes est IcBstan (at least) ; in <et nextan, we have cnt
away the preposition, and now writ« next. We still say,
'mn at him,' where hostile intent is meant; hot we
can no longer say, in the friendly sense of old days,
'I wafl in prison, and ye came at me.' .i^ is a prepo-
sition which has been mnch encroached npon in later
The oldest meanings of on are seen in ' he took on
him,' ' he is on fire,' ' to avenge ou him,' ' to gain on
tiieia,' ' to feed on thonghts,' * on either hand.' The
70 Old and Middle English.
words on and in interoliaiige in Old EngliBfa. ; and eren
now either of them might stand in phrases like, ' on this
wise,' * trust on him,' 'grace was on him.' The imitation
of the I^tin in and the French en, in later times, brought
in veiy forward ; we can therefore no longer say, * on
sheep's clothing,' ' there is life on yon,' ' long on body,'
' on idle ' (in vain), ' took on hand,' * cnt on two.' As
to the old 'thrice on year,' the on is now cormpted
into a. Very nnlike the I^tin idiom is the English con-
straction in St. John xi. 51 ; Caiaphtu ivces Sest gear
biseeop ; a constmction that we stiU keep. Two verses
before, we find, on geare biseeop.
The old geKende, in Latin juxta, still survives, as
handy ; in St. John vi. 19 comes, lie tmss gehende iam,
seype.
We began very early to turn Prepositions into
Adverbs. In the Pastoral, 395, is seen, tWn/Afe mfter
rehte Pamhta, ' Paul discoursed immediately afcerwards.'
We now even turn Prepositions into Nouns, for we
talk of a man's wpg and downs ; also into Verbal Nonns,
as, ow ouUtig ; also into Verbs, as, ' I dotoned him with
this.'
On the other hand, it is curious to see an Adjective
turned first into an Adverb, and then into a Pre-
position. Thus, eiB means late ; it then became «iS8o,
meaning afteneardi, since; last of all it is seen as
ft Preposition, taking an Accusative case ; ' since
that time.' The resources of Language are truly
wonderful.
We follow very old us^e when we put a Noun
before its governing Preposition ; as in, ' this plea I turn
English in its Earliest Shape. 71
from.' Sometimes the Relative is omitted, which shoitld
accompany the preposition, its, ' candles to eat by.* It
is wrong to derive this omission of the Behttive &om
the Scandinavian ; Tfing Alfred often has something like
it ; for instance, ' men took their swords Godee andan
mid to vtrecantte ' (wherewith to avenge God's wrath),
in the Pastoral, 381. Anything more nrliUe the
Latin cannot be conceived ; here is the tme English
terseness. Rather Iat«r, the Preposition was to be made
the last word in the sentence.
Onr sailors have kept alive bmftan (abaft) as a Pre-
position, though (sjt (aft) is with them only an Adverb.
Butan and binnan, (in Latin, extra et intra) still linger in
the Scotch Lowlands ; as in the old Perth ballad of
Cromwell's time: —
Anent, which of old was on^efn, is preserved in the
same district ; and this most nsefiil word seeins to be
coming into nse among oar best writers once more.
But gelang (the Latin -per) is now used only by the
poor J as in 'it is all along of yoa.' We sometimes hear
the old onforan as afore, and ongSan sonnded as again,
not the corrupt against. Tu is still used in America in
one of its old senses, where wc degenerate English
shonld use at ; we find in the Beowulf eeeean to Seorote,
'seek at Heorote.' The old Nottbumbrian HI is em-
ployed in the North, where we say to.
I repeat a few other instances, where we still nse
Prepositions in the tme Old English sense, thaogb very
72 Old and Middle English.
sparingly. To do one's duty hy a man ; to receive at
his hands; for all his prayers, i.e* in spite of; to go a
hunting, which of old was written, gdn on hn/ntunge ;
eaten of worms (by is hardly ever used before the Con-
quest in this sense of agency) ; we have Abraham to our
father; made after his likeness; to get them under
arms. Our best writers ahould never let these old
phrases die out ; we have already lost enough and too
much of the good Old English.
As to Interjections, 0 was Gothic, but is not seen in
English until the Twelfth Century, when a (ah) also
first appeared. .We find sow me in Psalm cxix. 5, which
Matzner quotes ; ou is found about 1300. The place of
the Gothic 0 was supplied by wdld, ealdy and Id. Christ
thus addresses his mother (St. John ii. 4) Id vnf. English
school girls, I believe, still use this la. The eaXd was
followed by \cet and gif^ just as we now say 0 that and
0 if^ when expressing a strong wish. Nu is used for the
Latin ecce, in St. Luke xiii. 35, and seems the parent
of our ' now, what would you think ? ' Leof was em-
ployed Avhere we say sir (St. John xx. 15), and sometimes
appears as Id leof. Perhaps something of the old world
lingers about our 'Dear Sir.' In -^Ifric's Colloquy,
eti'O/ni is translated by ge le6f\ the latter word seems but
an expletive. In the same piece we see the Latin 0, 0,
translated by Mg, hig ; which explains why we shout hi,
when wishing to stop any one ; (Thorpe, ' Analecta,' 102,
103).
The English of old employed hwoet (quid) as an
Interjection. This is the first word of the Beowulf, and
answers to our Ho. The old usage may be traced down
English in its Earliest Shape. 73
to onr times, thongh it was thought to be somewhat
overdone by King George the Third.'
Sometimes an English word has always borne two
difTei-ent meaninga ; thns from theearliest times, idle might
be applied to either a man or a tale. But a word lias
now oft«n lost one of the meanings it might bear of old;
thus fen has always translated the Latin palue, and it
might once also have translated the Latin hitwm. On
the other hand, one word in !New English often stands
for what were two words in the older tongue. Thos our
how representa hoga (arcua)and the Icelandic hugr (prora),
aswellaethe verb 6iyon(flectere), the parent of the nouns.
OuTKfliu is used for both goju (dictum) and saga (serra).
Without reckoning rima (ora), the old hrim, (gelu) and
rim. (numerus) have but one representative in New
English ; hence Pitt was able to punningly translate
'Aurora Musis arnica' by 'a rimy morning.' Our
share stands for both acear (vomer) and scearu
(pars) ; and oar cleave stands for both difan (hierere)
and clufan (findere) : Strong Verbs both. The mauy
meanings of the one word box are well known ; it re.
presents Old English, Latin, and Scandinavian words.
' In the BoUiad, the King meets Major Scott, and thus expresBM
binuelf :
Itlc'ChinkB I hear,
Great BranFwick'n voice Btlll vibrate on mj ear.
' What, what, what!
'Scott, Scott, Scott!
' Hot, hot, hot :
'Wbiit, what, what!'
I
word, as it were, on the old lines,
seen revived in our uppuhness ; gift
parts of the country givish is need tc
Sylf'Uc died out, and was replaced
by the selfish of the Puritans. M
revived a fine Old English word
parted with dnlic ; we have, theref
terval, been driven to borrow U7iiqu
In some cases Verbs have beco
and the corruptions have, so to s
other. Thus we have now but one
sent both the old ahnian (possidere^
(concedere). The modern leave is
(permittere) and lifan (relinquere).
only settle to stand for both setlan
slovenliness is seen elsewhere ; in
do duty for both laudare and locai
* healing a wound,' and of * a woui
verbs were hMan and hdlian, T
santry, as Mr. Barnes tells us, have
US: for thev nrrkTi !%«*>*»'» ^^ xv. * ■
English in its Earliest Shape, 75
sonnds of these words ; hence blunders sometimes arise.'
Thanks to onr slovenly forefathers, English is now the
punster's Paradise : Hood knew this well.
We have not often kept the sound of the old vowel
at the end of a word so faithfully as in worthy, smithy,
the former weorSe, mni^iSe,
Sometimes one Old English word gives birth to two
different modem verbs ; thus the old hellan has yielded
us both to bellow and to hell, the one used of bulls, the
other of deer. Scott tells us that he was glad to adorn
his poetry with the latter form of the verb. Something
of the same kind has happened with toil and till, both
coming from the old tylian.
In the English of onr day are many words tha^
are reckoned slangy, but which have a good old
pedigree. Such a one is tout, a word well known to
racing men ; but we find E[ing Alfred writing ta heafudu
totodon ut, the heads projected, peeped out, (Pastoral,
105). To lark comes from the old Idcan (ludere) ; this
verb North of the Trent is pronounced layhe, coming
from the kindred Icelandic leika. An actor is there
called a laker. To hoax comes from the old hvsc, a slight.
Newcastle men have been known to puzzle a stranger
by saying that they have eaten a hriclc ; this is but the
old hrice (fragmentum). The verb dyderian (decipere)
* I remember at school, about the year 1843, that our class was
giren Scott's lines :
* Hail to thy cold and clouded beam/ &c.,
which we were to torn into Latin longs and shorts. I still recall the
disgust of the master {vir playosus) on reading one blockhead's
attempt : it began with grando I
^6 Old and Middle English,
has sunk very low, since diddle cannot be used by any
grave writer ; the r has changed into Z, just as hridrian
has become riddle. The old slop, an over garment, is
the parent of our common slops. Mrs. Barkis, in
Dickens, allows that her husband is a little near (parens) ;
this is the old hneaiv, with the first letter clipped.
Readers of * Tom Brown's School-days ' will remember
the Slogger ; his name must have come from slogon, the
Plural Perfect of sledn (ferire). There was a good
old English verb, sparrom (claudere) ; this has had t
attached of late years, to round it off (ar, * tu es,' became
art) in the usual English way, and it is now seen in the
College phrase *to sport my oak,* or keep my door
barred.* To pink a man is not an elegant phrase now ;
but in the Pastoral, p. 296, pyngan (borrowed from the
Latin pungere) is used of Abner when slaying Asahel.
The verbal noun pungetung is derived from this verb ;
hence comes our punching. ' He's a fell clever lad '
comes in one of Lady Nairne's ballads ; the adverb is one
form of the old /ccZ (verus). Such phrases as, * a heap
of people,' * swingeing damages,' *to egg on,' 'unbe-
known,' may all lay claim to the best of English pedi-
grees. Our lower orders much enjoy a dish known to
them as * pig's innerds ; ' this is the old innewearde,
(viscera). Locke, in 1678, wrote of the inwards of a
beast; see his Life, by Fox Bourne, I. 402. To sing
small seems slangy ; it may be found in King Alfred's
Pastoral, p. 461. 'To spirit up a man to act' is not
' An antiquary, capable of seeing very far into a milestone, might
derive the verb spoon, so well known to our joung men and maidens,
from the old spanan, with its Perfect spCn, to allure.
English in its Earliest SItape. yj
reckoned a classical phrase, thongli at first sight it
seems to come from Ihe Latin ; it is in trnth a disguised
form of the old lo-spryttan (ezcitare) ; epurt and sprout
come from the same root. In the Pastoral, 249, we read
habhan to cfamene (hold in mockery) ; we here see the
source of onr scomfiil cry, gammon I Our gwindk may
come from ewindan, to vanish. ' Here is a wrinkle for
you ' must come &om the obsolete larence (dolus).
Our Old Knglish words are often sadly degraded.
No writer coold now use ■manniih, eneak, shove, or smirk
in a dignified sense ; but these had no debasing meaning
of old : snican is need of ' creeping things.' Our nap
(dormire) might be used in the loftiest of senses, as in
the Northumbrian Psalter, I. p. 142. We have, in our
wheedle, rather changed the sense of the old wcedlian, ' to
beg ; ' and the old gilpan (gloriari) has come down to yelp.
Fus was an adjective that might have been applied to
Alfred or Athelstane; our/usstf seldom rises now above
An old womali. Stinh, like the Latin odor, had a good
as well as an evil meaning. Puer might be translated
hy either cniht or end/a ; the former English word rose
much higher in the world abont 1060, the latter sank
very low abont 1360,
There are many words which we have not wholly
lost, bnt which we now nse in a most restricted sense.
The old icyrt (herba), so common of old, is now seen
only in St. John's wori, and a few other snob plants.
Urif (nt«ms) survives in midriff; hijfi (ora) in proper
names like Rotherkithe. The said names are most nseful
in keeping alive old Enghsh words ; thus cine (scissnra)
survives in the many chines of the Isle of Wight; in
78 Old and Middle English.
Black Gang Chine, two words oat of the three have
■dropped out of the common speech of Soathem England.
NorthSeet and Sonthfleet remind os of the old jleot
f Btatio navinm), which at Bristol is still called the Float.
The hills roand Baston are a fine preserve of the old
□arnes used by different races, the Tor, the Law, the
Knoll; Deepden keeps up the old English rfcn ortaiZei/;
Holbonrn reminds us that hum (hrook) once prevaUed
in the South as well as in the North ; Port Meadow at
Oxford speaks of the Roman -port, used by onr pagan
forefathers as a name for afoft'ii; indeed, ^oif and w^land.
«tood for (own and aonntTij. The Gtd, a mile or two off,
reminds us of the old geotan (fnndere). Tadcaster is, in
its last two syllables, a good imitation of the Roman
eaeira, known elsewhere as caislor and cheeter. Ticyford
reminds ns that twij once stood for duo. Proper names
keep alive the names of trades (such aa Walker. Baxter,
Bowijer, Lister, and Arr&tvmitith,) that have died ont or
are called by new temis. Perhaps an old relic, found in
one or two towns, preserves an old word that has long
been dropped elsewhere ; we cannot say that our Teutonic
name for peace is altogether dead, bo long as the Frith
stool stands in Hexham Church. The old attercop
(aranea) has its last syllable alone left, as we see in cob-
web ; c'ipp (apex) remains in cojiing st(me, and Hay Cop
is ft hill near Buxton. If wo had kept efesiaii. (toudere),
we shonld now use eaves in the true old way, as a Singu-
lar, not a Plural. We have lost the old verb iittsiwan,
"bnt we keep its Past Participle, wizened. Our glmidrian
(to swallow) has left a relic of itself in glanders. The
old crumh (corvuK) survives ia Crummw, the name often
English in its Earliest Sliape, 79
given to a cow in Scotland. The verb toerian was a
great loss ; the substantive weir remains, which I have
beard pronounced as riming both to bare and beer : we
should make a point of pronouncing it in the former way ;
its sound must not be corrupted like that of either, Trym"
man (confirmare) is seen in its old uncorrupt sense in
*' trim the boat ; ' it exists in other phrases with a rather
different meaning. To weigh anchor preserves a recol-
lection of the kindred vehere. The substantive trendel
(orbis) is gone, but we still trundle a hoop, and a line
trends towards an object. Though we hear oi pigsticking
in India, still we cannot now use stick freely in the sense
of pierce^ as our forefathers did. We talk of a fretted
ceiling ; the old frcetwian (omare) might have been used
in a much wider sense. The basins given out in Church
still remind us of the old geban (proclamatio). We
sometimes hear * 1*11 learn (docebo) you this ; ' the verb
represents the old Icoran, which has got confounded with
leomian. We have sometimes thought that we could
improve our forefathers' speech by yoking two of their
synonyms together; when we say sledgehammer, it is
like a Latinist writing malleus twice over. At the same
time, it must be acknowledged that muin strength was
always reckoned good English. The old tva^ was both
a substantive and an adjective ; both are kept in Scot-
land, was '5 we , and Fm waefor the man.
The gradual decay of old words is most mournful ;
their meanings seem to become more and more restricted.
How narrow a sense has salce (causa) in our day, com-
pared to what was its old power ! Loom once stood for
any household utensils; it is now restricted to the
8o Old and Middle English,
weaver's trade : we also talk of heir-looTris. The word
thing, in its sense of causa, remains in our phrases, * I
would not for any thing/ *bnt for one thing.' The
phrase, * to hear the rights of it,' remains to show that
riht would of old English Veritas. The tale told by-
Hilton's shepherds may bear two senses, as we know.
The old vrright (faber), still common in Scotland, has
died out in England, except in the compounds wheel-
wright, ship'Wright, and such like. The old sihh (affinis)
survives only in gos-sijp.
It is curious to see more than one meaning given to
an English word, and to know that these meanings run
very far back. Thus weather had a second sense, that of
procella ; this is kept alive by the saying, ' fear neither
wind nor weather.' Thus also inan has always borne
something like the sense of serviis, as well as that of
homo ; it implies inferiority ; an officer or a farmer speaks
of his inen. The old weorc meant dolor as well as opus ;
the former sense remains in, * I had sad worh with him. '
When we speak of 2^ fish-wife, we bear witness to the
fact that imfe has always meant mulier, as well as vaor.
The different meanings of one verb date very far back ;
hahhan means trahere as well as habere (Sweet's * Anglo-
Saxon Reader,' p. 63) ; sceotan (shoot) still means both
torquere and ruefe, and of old it had a third meaning,
solvere. It is curious that l(^tan (let) should have always
had the contradictory meanings of siiiere and obstare.
We may now both drive a trade, and drive cattle ; either
sense dates from early times. We have good sanction
both for sticking pigs, and for sticking to a friend.
Find has always had the sense both of invenire and
English in its Earliest Shape. Zl
providere ; ' yon must find yoorself.' The adverb /twte
has from the first had two meaningB ; a Frenchman once
complained that in England a horae was said to be fast
vhen galloping, and also /as/ when tied to a gate.
Onr speech is now bnt a wreck of what it wae. ThoB
5am, the old ber-em, alone remains of the many sab-
Etantives that had ent (locns) tacked on to them. Of
all the verbs that bore the prefix CBt, only ono is left,
retaining that preposition sadly mangled ; this is
tBtimtan, onr Unit ; its three last letters atill linger in
Scotland, in the shape of v:yte (culpa). Atiswer alone
remuns to show na onr old aiul, the Greek anti ; aiww
preserves a trace of the clipped ed in edniwe, this lost
prefix having commonly given way before the foreign re.
Onlihtaii has imitated the French by taking the shape of
enlighten ; asteallan baa become onr in«(aH ; bnt the old
a has been too often cast off altogether.' Sometimes
there has been a confusion between two old prepositions ;
thns, the last syllable of U'lgcnea has been tacked on to
ongegn, and thns agaiiies, aijainst, has been formed. We
have no longer the substantive stow (loons), except in
proper names, though we keep the verb sIok (locare).
Many niceties of inflection have been lost : the Perfect
of drink had of old dranc for its Singnlar, and dmncon
for its Plural ; the like may be remarked in sing, and
many other verbs. Our sorest loss is in onr power of
componnding; howfewknow that 'wilderness' is nothing
bnt wild-deor-Mss, the place of wild beast«. We atill
■ We hare rIso clipped the a in the Francli avanf-ward, and
made it vaoffuard. Our Norlbern wrilera tried to clip i^pottU and
tpiiUlc in the xauie yiAj, folloiriDg their ScuidinATiBn foisiatheiB.
82 Old atid Middle English,
keep manhood, but we have lost manship, and have there-
fore recourse to the Latin for Jiwmanity.
However we must remember that our present tongue-
has compensating advantages. Old English prose, it
must be allowed, was rather cumbrous in its construc-
tion, the weightiest word, as in Latin and German, often
coming at the end. If ever English were to become the
leading tongue of the world, this peculiarity would have
to be cast aside. ' The peasants of the North-Eastem
shires, in their daily talk, followed the far simpler Scandi-
navian construction ; if any chance were to bring their
speech into vogue, on the ruins of the old classic English,
the new dialect would be sure to add flexibiHty to the
former pith and strength ; this is the heritage of all English
speakers who are not false to their national traditions.^
There is also a tinge of poetry in our prose. Let us
hope that we shall never leave writing sentences, so
finely varied in construction as, * spoke the maid,' ' holy
is he,' * gold have I none,' * well have you done,' * this
done, he left,' * with this I complied,* * never spake
man,' * of noble race she came,' * die you shall,' * firm
as steel, as marble hard,' *lady mine,' 'come one,
come all,' * his daughters three,' * a grey old wolf and
a lean,' * who answers dies,' * it is gone, that sensibility
' How expressive are the three words, * First, London, Return.'
If these were to be turned into classic English, they would be ex-
panded into something like this : * Will you give me a ticket that
will entitle me to go to London and return thence by a railway car-
riage of the first class ? ' Our speech, as spoken in common life, is
wonderfully terse and pithy ; your average Englishman will never
waste his breath more than he can help. His tongue is well fitted
to be the language of the world in future years.
English in its Earliest Shape. 83
of principles.' The writingi of the great man, from
wliom I have taken the last phrase qaoted, are a stand-
ing lesson to hia brethren the prose writers ; we mnxt
steadily tread in the steps of the poets, at least so &r as
right reason will allow ; we most never let our written
tongue reach the dead commonplace level to which
underbred valgarity wonld fain drag ns down.' As it in,
onr English speech of 1877 rises far above the French
in varied constmction of sentences, and far above the
German in flexible ease.
There was one favourite art of onr forefethers,
which we have not yet altogether lost, prone though we
have been to copy French rimes. This art was Allitera-
tivo pootry, as seen in Cadmon's lines on the Deluge : —
For mid Fearma
Ftere ne moston
W(Bg lifiendum
Weetrea brogan
Heste Hiinos
' ac Me Halig god
Ferede and nerede.
Flftemstod
Deop ofer Dunum
see Drenca flod.'
Conybeare traces this love of Alliteration in English
' Lord MscBolaj wrote in his SMory about cav&Iiy priding
OKT the plain. ThU fine old SpenBrrian verb was objected to hj
Xx. Croker, in the famous luieidat reriev of the Hiitory ; the differ-
ence bet*een the well-read scholni and the tasteless pedant i»)uid not
be more happily maiked. Mr. Fronde uses man^ fine old phrases,
at which the Frenchified Oibbon would have shuddered. The
scholar impnres onr tongue, jatt as the penny-a-liner debases it.
* Conjbeare's Anglo-Baxoa Poetry, xxxiii.
84 Old and Middle English,
poets down to 1550, and Earle traces it on further to
1830. Byron's noble line on the Bruns wicker's death
at Qnatre Bras is well known. I can bear witness,
&om my own schoolboy recollections, to the popnlarity
of this old metre in 1849.^ This it is that has kept alive
phrases hke ' weal and woe,' ' born and bred,' ^ sooth to
say,' *fair or foul,' 'kith and kin,' *bed and board,'
*• make or mar,' ' might and main,' ' hang high as
Haman,' * forget and forgive,' * fish, flesh, and fowl,'
* meddle and muddle.' The Tory majority in 1874 was
said to be due to * Beer and Bible.' Wolsey was as-
sailed as follows : —
' Begot by butchers, but by bishops bred,
How high his Honour holds his haughty head.'
Sydney Smith compared the curate of his day to Lazarus,
* doctored by dogs and comforted with crumbs.'
This Alliteration was the soul of the earliest English
poetry. Poets and Priests are the two classes of men
that have most influence in keeping a language tolerably
well fixed ; with rare exceptions, they look back with
loving eye to what is old. It is truly wonderful that
the Gothic and English (without a written literature,
so far as we know), should have kept their intricate in-
flexions fairly well preserved for so many thousand years
after leaving the old Aryan cradle. It was their poets
and priests, no doubt, that prevented these tongues from
sinking into a confosed jargon. English poetry has
always held to old forms, that have been long dropped
* We were fond of an old ballad, beginning with —
* All round the rugged rocks
The ragged rascal ran.'
English in its Earliest Shape. 85
in commoii life ; of tluB, Spenser and Thomson ore the
best examples. The 'Erecthens' of Mr, Swinbnme,
and the ' Sigurd ' of Mr. Morris, show us the way in
vhich ive Bhoald go. Religiou, in this noble race, has
nm abreast of Poetry. Christian ministers took np the
old conservative tradition where the P^an priests
■dropped it All over the world the same effect may be
seen. The Bible, translated into hundreds of tongaes,
has &om first to last had a most conservative inflaence
upon the langnages spoken by mankind ; it has done its
best to fix them, if we may apply the verhfie to so
fleeting a thing as language ; religion and philology go
hand in hand. Bede and Aldhelm, Wicklifie and
Tyndale, alike bear witness to this tmth ; may the
English pnlpit ever cling fast to her old traditions ! It
was the Anglican clergy that tanght Dryden how to
write Cnglish, as the poet himself acknowledges. Lord
Macanlay, afler a philological ailment with lady
Holland, langhs at the idea of anyone, who has not the
English Bible at his finger-ends, setting np as a critic of
English. It was no mere chance that made one of onr
present Archbishops a foremost leader in reviving the
long-neglected claims of onr glorious Mother- tongue.'
Bishop Patteson, a new Hervas, was as renowned for his
philological studies as for his missionary achievements.
> Dr. TretK^t ia a good Tenton, and is therefore he&nilf uboeed
bj professors of Sua writiog. Oae of them, vho writes abaat sequa-
eioia diatAeau. reTilaa the Archbishop hb ' a cODlorlioDist and a fan-
tasu' 1 hnve seen it affirmed that oar laaniuge is hoalthitj develop-
ing itself, when everj peany-a-Iiaer scatters broadcast bis bad
gnuumar and Devfangled French phrases, vithouC giving one
^onght to the writings of Defoe, Swift, and Elelding !
86 Old and Middle English.
APPENDIX TO CHAPTER I.
TABLE OF INTERCHANGES OF CONSONANTS.
Ant one who compareB the kindred Sanscrit andEnglish words,
l^iven at pages 3 and 4, will see a close connection, according
to Orimm'a Law, between the following sounds : —
Samerii. EnglUA. Saiucrit. English.
bh b t th
P f gh g
dh d g Cj) c. k
It is needless to inuat on the fact that the lip-sounds, b, p,
f (li), are closely linlced together.' This alao holds true of the
tooth-sounds, d,t,th:, and of the throat-eounds, g, c (&), h.
But it is eaaj to sne that one of these three different groups
of soimda will often get confused with another group. When
we hear a child say ' I tan do' for ' I can go,' we see at OQCe
that there is a link between t and c, d and g ; the child obaerreB
Orimm's I^w with never failing exactness ; moreover, he shows
the connection between the Latin cumiUta and tumuliu. What
we call n^ (rough) is sounded in some partsof Scotland likertuU,
from the back of the throat ; here we see a further linW between
A: and/. Our verb lAicfe must come from the old if jrfipan. Thus the
tbroat-sounda touch the lip-sounds on the one hand, the tooth-
sounda on the other. There is also a direct connection between
the tooth-eounda and the lip-eounds, for Thtodore becomes
Feodor in Russian. These facts explain the different forms of
the English words ^Ten at page SI. In the Qreek dialects
puureg and ttioret may be compared (aa to their first letters)
with the Irish ctatAair, all three words having the same mean-
ing, that of OUT English (fethower)/our. The like may be seen
' Pope Pius IX. u
when he ep«aks to a se
English in its Earliest Shape. 87
in the lust coosonants olp^tte, kiTike (quinque), pump (Webh),
ftuBwering to our English ^Vf. So dip, tltde, and dick.
The liquidfl i, n, and r, are always running into each other.
What Virgil called Aiuigma, Dante writes Ala^ni, Btmonia
has become Bologna, and Fanormat ia now Palermo. Dyderian
has prot corrupted into rfiiWZe (aee page 76), and aitare into autd.
The I^tin homina in Spain became homra, and then hombret;
diaeoniu in French became ^acre; the Gothic /on is our _;&■«,
The liquid m baa a tendency to get confused with n, as
maj>pa, nappe ; damn, darne ; eemiia, tente ; rem, Wen. The old
<tuiete liaa given birth to mtt.
There is also a clo»e tie between m and b (sea page 15).
The High German 6 answers to the English / QiAer to liefof')
in the middle of a word ; hence our heofen (heaven) must once
in German have been kthai or hibel ; it ie now himmd. So jHii-
hati dies has become tamtdt.
L and d interchange ; the Gieek da}cru b the Latin lacruma,
and the Greek deka ia the Lithuanian l^ca ; dinffua is the older
form of lingita.
There is a connection between r and 1, as in the LAtin hoaoi
and honor, or the cries hussak and kitn-ah \ the Sanscrit atmi
must hare once been armi in English mouths, as we see by the
Second Person, tkoji art ; the Primitive Aryan atcmti became
aranti, in English our are (sunt). The words loat (eram)
and wvre (erant) belong to one and the same tense.
There is a connection between t and t ; th, that peculiatly
English sound, seems to stand halfway between them. When
a Frenchman pronounces our word thing, he will sometimes call
it ting, sometimes dng. The Southern English walwiath is akin
alike to the Latin volvit and to the Northern English Kalwiat
(ha wallows). We know the Greek forms tamo and tatto.
The Low German t becomes » or = in High German ; thus our
primitive to, toll, token, become at Dresden zu, toll, leichen.
The c or k, on the Continent, slid into ch before the year
900 ; ehief for caput is found in the Song of St. Eulalie,
and the Latin Sikero ie now pronounced in Italy C^icha-o.
Sometimes the eh, both in English and French, went on further
88 Old and Middle Eitglish,
and became ji; as capdla becomes javeUe, and the verb ceowan
becomes jaw. So the Sanscrit j has replaced a far older
Aryan ^.
In the Teutonic tongues g was early softened into y ; our
gear (annus) began with y in Gothic, In the Twelfth Century
the English g very often became w, though this is traceable
much earlier ; the Sanscrit gharma is the English wami ; the
Celtic goBper is the Latin vesper, pronounced something like
ueaper.
There is a dose connection between v and %d ; see the Sans-
crit words at pages 3 and 4. The Latin v, as in volvo, must have
been pronounced very like our English id ; and it is the same
with the Scandinayian v. Our Mveet (quid) has become in
Tulgar London speech wot, and this is sometimes heard as vot.
The most refined Germans have done something like this last
with their grand old w,
I have here given but few instances of the curious inter-
change of consonants ; any one that reads Bopp^s ' Comparative
Granmiar ' with due heed may find therein scores of other ex-
amples in the difierent Aryan tongues, and may work out the
subject for himself. M. Brachet's French Grammar supplies
many examples.i
* In Chapter I. it will be remarked that I have not always ac-
cented the Old English. In this respect I simply follow the author
I am copying.
CHAPTEK n.
SOBTHEBN ENGLISH, 600-1000.
EARLY C0KBUPTI0N3, 1000-lISC.
The examples given in the last Chapter have bcea
mostly taken from Wessei writers ; bnt Cadmon's Alli-
terative lines on the Delnge remind ns that in the
Seventh and Eighth Centuries there was no Tentonio
hud that could match Xorthombria in learning or
civilisation. Thither had come earnest miBsionaries
from Italy and Ireland. There Christianity had taken
fast root, and had bred snch men as Cadmon and Bede.
Charlemagne himself, the foremost of all Teatone, was
glad to welcome to his conrt Alcnin, who came from,
beyond the Hnmber. It was the dialect of Northumbria,
settled as that land was by Angles, that first sprang into
notice, and was so much in fiivonr, that even the West
Saxona on the Thames called their speech EnglUh ; a
feet never to he forgotten by students of onr Mother-
tongne.
This English of the North, or Nortbombrian, has
bequeathed to ns bnt few monnmenta, owing to the
ravages of the Danes in the Northern libraries. We
have, however, enongh of it left to see that in some
points it kept fer closer to the old Aryan Mother Speech
go Old and Middle English.
than the classical writers of "Wessex did ; thus, it boasts
the remnants of five verbs in ini — am^ heom (sum),
geseom (video), fleom (fugio), gedom (facio). But 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 Ruth-
well, 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 frill 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 ; some of these I give in my Appendix,
as the lay is the earliest English that we possess just as
it was written.* It has old forms of English nowhere
else found ; and it clearly appeals to the feelings of a
warKke race, hardly yet out of the bonds of heathenism;
the old tales of Balder are applied to Christ, who is
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
^ ' Cadmon mas fauae^o ' (not Cadmon) is the inscription lately
discovered on the cross ; and this confirms a gaess made long ago by
Mr. Haigh. Mr. Stephens assigns the nohle fragment of the Judith
to the great bard of the North.
Nortltern English. — Early Corruptioj
9»
from an old EnglisK skinbook at Yercelli. He fonnd
that hfi Had only three letters of his translation to cor-
rect. Seldom has there been sach a bit and sach a
confirmation of a hit,'
These Rnihwell Runes are in close agreement with
the dying words of Bede, the few English lines embedded
in the Latin text. In the Rnnes, the letter li is fonnd,
which did not appear in Southern English until two
centuries later. The word itnjcei, the Dual Aconsative,
betokens the hoariest eld. The Infinitive ends not in
the Sootbem an, but in a, like the old Norse and Friesic.
The n, with which the Plural of the Sonthem Imperfect
ended, has been clipped. There is a curious softening
of the guttural h. in xlmihiiiga. (almighty) ; the word is
here written almtfijottig}
The speech of the men who conquered Northumbria in
the Sixth Century mnst have been influenced by their
Danish neighbonrs of the mainland. I give a few words
from the Rnthwell Cross, compared with King Alfred's
Sonthem English : —
Soulhera. JtiilhwM.
Heofenas KeafunieB
Stiga
Clewundod
£al
Oogeslgau
Giwund^
Al»
Ongalgu
' Archaologia for 1843, p. 31.
' I can giTe a much earlier instance of tlie softeaing of the gat-
taml. Kuduriagamar wbb a funoos ABsyriaD oame, (Smith, Aa-
^rian Diioovmo, p. 223). j We know that it afterwards appears a«
Chedorlaomer.
* We follow the Xortb, which ie more primitive than the Sonlh,
92 Old and Middle English,
The Englisli ^id^ (thither) answered to the Latin
iWmc ; but here we find this word translated by ^er. So
general has this cormption become, that to say, 'whither
are you going ? ' would now be thought pedantic.
Htvcer replaces hvrider in the Blickling Homilies, which
seems to be another Northern work.
The next specimen given by me in my Appendix, is
about sixty years later than the Ruthwell Runes. It is
another fragment of Gadmon's, which was modernized
two hundred years after his time by King Alfred. But
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.
Modem.
FsDder
Fadur
Father
Swa
Sue
So
Gesc^p
Scop
Shaped
Bearnum
Bamum
Bairns
pa
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 modem 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,
finch as it was spoken before the Danes overran the land.^
in pronouncing this word. But in Dorset they still sound the e
before a, as in yacre, yale, yarm, and others. See Mr. Barnes'
Poems.
' Bosworth, Origin of the Germanic Languages^ pp. 56-60.
Northern English. — Eatly Corruptions. gj
Ooe ^reat mark of the Korth is, that a appears as e,
pronounced like the French e ; the English hrSd (latns)^
was in Gothic braid.
The next earliest Northambrian monnment that w&
have is a Psalter, which majr date horn about the year
A.D. 850. It is thought to hare been translated in one
of the shires just sonth of the Hnmber.' This Psalter,
like the former specimen, employs a instead of the
Southern ea, even as we ourselves do. There are many
other respecte in which the Psalter differs from later
Sngliah ; 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 Ibar. The Second Person ends in g, not et ;
as neosiM, thou viaitest ; less corrupt than King Alfred's
form. The Lowland Scoteb to this day say, titou lenows.
The prefix ge in Past Participles is often dropped,
as bledead, blessed, instead of gebletsod. Old Anglian
was nearer than any other Low German speech to
Danish, and ge is not fonnd in the Danish Parti-
ciple. The old h, coming before a liquid, is some-
times cast out ; roeS (rough) replaces the Southern
hri}ie. We also remark the Norse earan for samus, esHs,.
nini ; this in Southern speech is nearly always eyndon.^
I give a few words from this Psalter, to show that oar'
modem English in many things follows the Northern
rather than the Southern form.'
' HnshwDitli Gospels, \t. (Sortees Society), ProUgomena, in».
' We find, IioTeveT, aran \a KcDtish Chiirtcra (Kemble. I. 234)r
and the form tc bidde in the oldest Cb&rtera uf Kent and Worcester-
shini.
* See an eitnct from the Psalter in mj Appendix,
94
Old and Middle English.
JSouthem English.
Northern English,
Modern.
Ben
Boen
Boon (prayer^
B^c
Boec
Books
G^an
Goelan
Gool
D^man
DoemaTi
Doom^
Leoht
Leht
Light
Fram
From
From
Wesron
VVenin
Were
Nawiht
Nowihte
Nought*
Feldas
Feldes
Fields
Twa
Tu
Two
Syndrig
Syndrie
Sundry
Margen
Marne
Mom
Eage
Ege
Eye
Sealt
Rait
Salt
Hebbe
Hefe
Heave
Hefig
Hefio
Heavy
Arison
Ariosun
Arose
Slepon
Slypton
Slept
Swa hwylce swa Swe hwet
Whatflo
Dest
Gedoest
Doest
F^t
FoedeS
Feedeth
Heyt
Heitet5
Ue eateth
Tyn
Ten
Ten
Treow
Tre
Tree
Getimbrod
Timbred
Timbered
As ix) this Psalter, we may repeat a former remark,
that the sound of Englisb vowels in the North was very
different from what was usual in the South. We see
here cwece^, ferian, our quake, fare, which on the Thames
were written cwace^, faran, Frio and kwiol are written
for the Southern /reo and hweol, our free and wheel. We
^ We still have both the Northern and Southern forms of this
■word.
Northern English. — Early Corruptions. 95
mast pronounce all these old vowels as the French
wonld now. Onr modem pronnnciation has mainly
come from the North ; and this becomes very clear aboat
the year 1290. Still, while pronoancing in 'Ca.% Northern
way, we have often kept the old Sonthem spelling of
words ; and this has cansed onr pronunciation of vowels
to be so different from that used by other nations.
The writer who Englished the Latin words, one by
one, in this Psalter, must needs have been stmck by
the close tie between the two tongnes, more especially in
the following words, which are bnt a small sample of
what might be given : —
iMm.
En^ith.
LtAin.
EnglvA.
Sedet
SiteS
Simul
Somud
Eefrit
ReceS
Semper
Symble
T^git
DecetS
Duo
Tu
Genuit
Oende
Vir
Wer
Pisces
Fiwaa'
Vidua
Widwa
So the
Goths were ab
e to pnt \ehae
M]™fc
Latin quia ei tu.
Sometimes the North of England kept far nearer to
Aryan pnrity than did the Sonth ; - thus feoSur (in
Gothic, fidwor) is fonnd in this Psalter for the primitive
Aryan hiivar, instead of the nsaal/ecrwer, onr /our. On
' Since 1000 England and Italy alike have changed the ■ound
rfK!int«»A.
' It ii yeiy poaflibls that the Engliah scribe might think that hia
own conunonesl woida were derii-ed frma the I^tia ; I know that for
man; years of mj life I thought that oui' iiM^ came from longta.
Lit -OB hope that a better system of education obtaina now through-
out onr land ; perhaps in years l« come our dictiouary makers will
oeaM to deriw out 'he ii man' fcum Anglo-Soxou 'bo ia man.'
96 Old and Middle English,
the other hand, corruption was plainly at work in the
North. The Plural Perfect of the verb vyijrce was, in
the South wrohton^ our tarought ; but this, in the Psalter,
II. p. 183, is turned into wyrctun. The encroachment
upon the Perfects of verbs has been going on ever
since ; the Weak slyptorij as marked above, has replaced
the Strong sl^on. Within the last few years, I see that
some writers, who should know better, put mowed and
sowed instead of mown and sovm.
The Scotch are well known for their love of vowels
and dislike of consonants ; with them aU wool becomes
a 00, and in this Psalter, I. p. 126, we find a/mplvus trans-
lated by mee, not by the Southern m^r : mo is seen in
the Sermons of Lever, a Northern man, and is still used
by our poets for m4)re'
In I. p. 63, we see the Neuter 8« (hoc) employed
for other Genders, just as we use it now ; ^es was of old
the Masculine, and ^eos the Feminine. This is an early
instance of a Northern corruption.
In the Psalter, II. page 144, descend^ro is Englished
by duiie stigu ; this first word was elsewhere written
of dune f our adowTiy which the poets still keep alive.
Clipping and paring usually began in the North.
There is now no commoner English word than bread ;
I think it first appears in the phrase hio-bready for honey ^
comb, in the Psalter, I. p. 52. Pants was Englished by
hlaf in the South down to the year 1100.
We here see both cnol and hnol for what we call a
knoll ; the h before Z, n, or r, is always struck out (the
process was now beginning), while the c or A; similarly
placed, is allowed to remain at the beginning of modern
Northern English. — Early Corruptions. 97
ICngllBli trorda. Both c uid & had a gatttusl sonnd, but
titis una probably more marked in c than in ft. We
have DOW noUiing ansvering to the Oerman Slodwig,
where the A was prononnoed in the Fifth Centnry with
snch foros as to be rendered Olovis, not Liyvit. Bnt
in the Chronicle for 1050, a well-known English name
appears as Srodbert.
We find 7w nsed jait as the Sootch now nsa it;
ffif ic no foretettu, where na would, as a general mle,
hare been nsed in the Sonth.
A new element in English speech now comes into play.
Bather before the time that the Northnmbrian Psalter
was compiled, the Danes began to harry nnhappy
England. The fends oi near kinsmen are always the
hittergst ; and this we foond tme in the Ninth Centniy.
Soon the object of the heathen became settlement in the
land, and not merely plunder. The whole of England
wDold faaivB &illen nnder their yoke, bad not a hero come
forth from the Somersetshire marges.
In A.D. 876, we read in tie Saxon Chronicle that
the Danish king, ' Norfihymbra land gedslde, and
faergende weron and heora tiligende wteron.'' In the
aert year, the ontlandish host ' gef or on Myroena land,
and hit gedsldon sum.' In 680, 'for so here on Kast-
CBgle and geset jrat land and gedtelde.' Here we find
■ At the head of ths Y&miw is a monntsia, called of old by tlie
Celtic Dome Ben Yair. To this tbe KomaoB prefixed thiir Hont,
and the DaaM long afterwards added their yiord Law. The hill ii
DOW called Hountbenjerlaw; in it kill cornea three times orer. —
Oamett's Euat/t, p. 70.
98 Old and Middle English,
many English shires, once thriving and civilisedy par-
celled out within fonr years among the Danes. 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, Gxims, Spils, Osgods, i^d Thors,
who have left such abiding traces of themselves in
Eastern Mercia and Northumbria, settled among us.
They gave their own namea of Whitby and Derby to
older English towns, and changed the name of Boman
Eboracum from Eoforwic to lorvik or York.*
The endings hy^ thva/ite, ness^ drop, haugh, and gwrthy
are the sure tokens of the great Danish settlement in
England ; fifteen hundred of such names are still to be
fotmd in our North-Eastem shires. The six counties to
the North of Mercia have among them 246 places that
end in by ; Lincolnshire, the great Danish 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 biisJc are Middle Verbs,
compounded of the Icelandic baJca and btta with the
ending sik (self).' York and Lincoln were the great
seats of Norse influence, as we see by the numbers of Norse
' Layamon, I. p. 113, relates these changes. AcoordiDg to him,
the town was first called Kaer Ebrauc; then Ehoxac ; then foreign-
ers called it Eorerwic ; and the Northern men by a bad habit called
it Seorc.
* Dr. Morris was the first to point this out.
Northern English. — Early Corrupti
money-coiners wLo are known to have there plied toe
trade. English freedom was in the end the gainer by
the fresh blood that now flowed in. When Doomsday
Book was compiled, no shire conld vie with that of
Lincoln in the thoaeanda of its freeholders ; East Anglia
was not &r behiad.' Danish snmameB like Anderson,
Paterson, and, greater than all, Nelson, show the good
blcod that our Northern and Eastern shires can boast.
Thor'sdaywasintheendtoreplaceThnnreaday. Another
Norse Ood, he of the sea, bearing the name of Egir,
still rushes np English rivers like the Trent and the
Witham, the water rising many feet: theeayreis a word
well known in Lincolnshire. The Norse /eiojt is a com-
ponnd from /ee and lay, a man who pats down his
money, like the member of a clnb. This became in
England /eZasei/etowei/eifom. So early as 1300 it had
become a term of scorn ; bnt the fellows of oar College^
will always keep alive the more hononrable meaning
of the word.
Few of England's children have done her better
service than Alfred's son and danghter, whose deeds
are written in the Saxon Chronicle. King Edward's
reign was one steady war ^^inst the Danish lords of
Mercia and East Anglia ; the strife r^ed all along the
line between London and Shrewsbary, the King's men
throwing np works to guard the shires they were win-
ning 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 Bed-
' Worsafts, ZS< DajiM anJ A'orMmen, pp. 71, 119, 170. JW^^ £■
lOO Old and Middle English.
ford and Northampton gave their allegiance to the great
King of Wessex ; Derby and Leicester fell hefore his
sister. The Norsemen atmggled hard against Edward's
iron bit ; bat the whole of East Anglia and Cambridge
yielded to bim in 921. By the end of the following
year, he was master of Stamford and Nottingham ; Ian.
colnBhire seems to have been the last of his conqneete.
In 924f, all the English, Danes, and Celts in our island
chose Edward, the champion of Christianity against
heathenism, for thoir Father and Lord. England, as
we see, was speedily becoming Bomething more thad a
geographical name.
Alfred had been King of the South ; Al&ed's son had
won the Midland ; AI^^'s gmndsoDS were nowto bring
the North under their yoke. The Danes diove the many
qnarrelsome English kingdoms into nnity in sheer self-
defence ; much as in onr own time the Anstrians helped
Italy to become one nation. The Saxon Chronicle in
941 names the Five Danish Bni^hs which overawed
Mercia, and which have had so great an influence on the
tongue now spoken by us.
Butga fife And SnotingahSm
liigoraceaater Swylce Stanford eftc
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. Northnmberland, nnder her Danish
kings, was still holding ont against the Soathem Over-
lord. At length, in 954, the lastof these kings dropped
ont of history ; and, Eadred, the son of Edward and the
NortJurn English. — Early Corruptions. loi
grandson of Al&ed, became the one King of all Eng-
land, Bwaying the land firom the Frith of Forth to the
Knglish ChanneL'
Weaaez, it is easy to see, was to oar iahmd mach
what Piedmont long afterwards became to Italy, and
Brandenburg to Qermany. It is not wonderful then that
in the Tenth Century the literature of Wessex was
looked npon as the best of models, and took the place
of t^e North ambrian literatnre of Bede's time. Good
fin^ish prose-writerB most have formed themselves
npon King Alfred ; English ' shapers ' or ' makers '
mnst have imitated the lofty lay, that tells how
Al&ed's grandsons sroote Celt and Dane alike on the
great day of Brananbnrgh. The Court of Winches-
ter must in those days have been to England what
Paris has nearly always been to France : no such pat-
tern of elegance could elsewhere have been found.
For all that, were I to be pven my choice as to what
buried specimen of English writing should be brooght
to light, I shonld ask for a sample of the Butland
peasantry's common talk about the year that Eadred
waa caUing himself Kaiser of all Britain.* Such a
sample would be as precio^ as the bad Latin, the
foretaste of the Xew Italian, which may be read on the
walls of Pompeii. By Eadred's time, two or three gene-
■ Eadred -wu like King Victor EmnuiDael, who has no noder-
kingi below him ; Eadzed's iatliei vbs like Kaiser William.
* Eemble'B Ckarttrt, II. 304. Little did I think, when writing
thni in 1873, that three jsan later this title would be referred to
by gnre RattemGn, ai a reneon for l>e8towing a new title upon
Queen TictoHa.
102 Old and Middle English.
rations of Danes and Angles must have been mingled
together ; tlie nnconth dialect, woefnllj shorn of inflec-
tions, spoken in the markets of Leicester and Stamford,
would be found to foreshadow the corruptions of the
Peterborough Chronicle after 1120.
The oountrj, fiilling within a radius of twenty miles
drawn from the centre of Rutland, would be acknow-
ledged, I think, as the cradle of the New EngUsh that
we now speak. To go further afield ; all the land enclosed
within a line drawn round from the Qumber through
Doncaster, Derby, Ashby, Rugby, Northampton, Bed-
ford, and Colchester (this may be called the Mercian
Danelagh) helped mightily in forming the new litera-
ture : within this boundary were the Five Burghs, and
the other Danish ^ strongholds already named. Just
outside this boundary was Yorkshire, which has also
had its 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 Eng-
land'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 Danish settlement two hundred years before Wil-
liam's landing. What happened in Northumbria and '
Eastern Mercia will always take place when two kindred
<:
«•
«
• •*• • •
Northern English. — Early Corruptions. 103
tribes are thrown together. An intormmgUng either of
Irish with Welsh, or of French with Spaniards, or of
Poles with Bohemians, would break up the old inflec-
tions aod gmnunar of each nation, if there were no
acknowledged standard of national speech whereby the
tide of cormptioii ntight be stemmed.
When sQch an intermingling takes place, the endings
of the Verb and the Substantive are not always caught,
and therefore speedily drop oat of the months of the
peasantry. In our own day this process may be seen
going on in the United States. Thonsanda of Gtermans
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 950 another work was compiled in
Northern English, the Lindisfame Gospels.' It has
some forms older than those of the Beowulf ; it has other
forms more corrupt than those used by Roy, about 1530.
I give specimens of words, taken &om these Gospels,
side I7 side with the corresponding Wessex terms.
aa«ih^EngUA.
Norths E^UA.
Modem EngUA.
Se
De
The
ffi
Da
Thej
Hji»
Dnn
Thdr
Hi
Hia
Her
Aiilwia
AnofSnm
One of them
Eom
Am
Am
Eut
Art
Art
GeBTDt
Arogie
Are ye
w s ipeciliieD of tbees in my Appendix.
I04
Old and Middle English.
Southern JBn^isIL
Northern Bn^Ush,
Na mara
Noht maia
OUdru
GUdes
Burgwaru
Fnder willan
Burg^iaras
Faderea willo
Axode
Ascade
Breost
Brest
Sunn
Sona
Bohton
lifee
Bocbton
Gtemang
Begeondan
Betweonan
Inmong
Beyeonda
Bitnien
Beforan
Before
OlflBn-heoitan
Olaene of bearte
Eorthan sealt
Eortbes salt
G^wefen
Gewoefen
Ic secgeeow
Ic enetSo inb to
Hwitne gedon
Magon ge
Deajr
Huitgeuirce
Magag^e
Dsrr
Getunbrode
Getimberde
Burh
OwaetJ
Burug
OuoeC
Feoh
Feb
OymtS
Fynd
Bon
Oymmes
Jblondas
Doa
Hund
Hundrid
Awriten be
Awntten of
Ge dydon
Gie dide
He sitt
He sittes
Fullebana
Fnlla mit$ banum
Seoc
Sek
We do«
We doe
De«
Does
Bycge«
Bye«
Modem JEngHdih,
Not more
Children
Burghers
Father's will
Asked
Breast
Son
lives (vivit)
Bought
Among
Beyond
Between
Before
Clean of heart
Earth's salt
Woven
Quoth I to you
To make white
May ye
Dare
Timbered (built)
Borough
Quoth
Fee
Comes
Fiends
Do (facere)
Hundred
Written of (de)
Ye did
He sits
Full of bones
Sick
We do
Does
Buyeth
Northern English, — Early Corruptions, 105
Smdhem JEnffUsk, Northern English. Modei-n English.
LosiaS
LosetS
Loseth
Nigontig
Neantih
Ninety
Feower
Feor
Four
Fixas
Fisces
Fishes
Feorr
Farra
Far
Geaewen
Qeseen
Seen
Spilld6
SpUd
Spilt (Perfect)
LflBtia
Latteia
T^atter
UnbisdatS
Unbinde
Unbind (solTite)
Ge biddatS
Qie bidde
Ye bid
Been
Becon
Beacon
Tacn
Tacon
Token
Icliaebbe
Ic hafo
I haTe
RunnedsQ
Sunday
Wednfon
We driofon
We drove
Bnru
Dor
Door
Gescj
Scoeas
Shoes
Deah
Dffich
Though
Cuppa
Gopp
Oup
Lyre
TiOBe
Loss (jactura)
Ea)^Jicre
Ea6ur
Easier
SIsepS
Slepes
Sleeps
Wyrhta
Wercmonn
Workman
Swurd
Saoxd
Sword
I>rig«
Dryia
Diy
Mu5 twegra otJ^e MutJtuoe otS6e tJrea Mouth of two or three
]ireora gewituesae
witnesa
witnesses
Heonon
Hena
Hence
Driwa
Driga
Thiice
DryddA
Dirda
Third
BiTd
Biid
Bird
The Norsemen, breathing
fire and slaughter^ have
far eyer branded,
as we see, their mark upon England's
tongae. Northern English had become veiy cormpt
since the year 800 ; as I before said, the intermingling
1
I06 Old and Middle English.
of two kindred tribes, like the Angles and Danes, must
tend to shear away the endings of Nonns and Verbs.
The Third Persons, both Singular and Plural, of the
Present tense now often end in b instead of th^ as A«
(msoBces ; we follow the North in daily life, but we listen
to the Southern form when we go to Church. The tS of
the Imperatiye also becomes «, as ioyrcas instead of
wyrcc^ ; indeed, the as is sometimes clipped altogether.
New idioms crop up, which would have astonished
King Alfred; we find full of fiscv/m for plenvs piscivm.
The Old English Plural of nouns in an is now changed,
and hearta replaces heartcm ; 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; there is a wrong notion abroad that the
G-erman Plural in en is more venerable than the English
Plural in es. Such newfangled Genitives Singular as
sterres, brydgumes, heartes, tunges^ fadores, and such
Nominative Plurals as stea/rras, hurgas, and ctdfrasy are
now found. There is a tendency to confound Definite
with Indefinite Adjectives. The Dative Plural in ttm is
sometimes dropped. In short, we see the foreshadow-
ing of the New English forms. The South, where the
Danes coxdd never gain a foothold, held &st to the
old speech ; and some 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 Alfired's death ;
the East Midland must have been in the same plight.
Northern En^ish. — Early Corruptions. 107
As to the apelling of the Lindia&me Qospels, we find
the e donhled, as in geseen ; we farther see two new
combmatious, ai tmd ei, which were to be wide spread in
later EDglish. These, like the SonUiem ic, ea, and ie,
had tlia sound of the French S.' There is alao ou, as in
King Alfred, for the more commoii aw ; on Bometimes
replaces ok, having the sound of the broad Italian k ;
a fashion that was to spread wide in the Thirteenth
Centtuy. We find vowels often donhled ; there ta 00 aa
well asee. The Sonthem/eoioer (pronotmced lite /ewer)
is now seen as feor, not &r from for, as we now pro-
uoance the word for quatuoT.
That change of sonads, which has inflaenced onr
later speech, m&j be clearly seen in these Northern
Oospela.* Tamian becomes temnui, etanaa becomes
sttsnai, wa is wcb. Ber (hie) is seen as Mr, «ceap (oris)
as icip. Tmhie (docuit) is found as tahte, onr taught;
atmestan becomes aimissa, our alma. Many other such
iust&nCBB cotUd be given ; the word reu (rue) is in our
days sounded as if it was written rv (our roo) ; the old
eu or e<no always is sonnded like u, if it follows r.
So in these Gospels the Southern lareow is written
laruu. We most look to the Northem shires for the
first traces of our present pronunciation.
We know the old controversy about Home and Hume
in the last century ; the 0 and the u have indeed been
■ We h«Fe Bee iSei^wu written for the Plural of the Southern
word )>Ayffn ; thii ahowa lioir etuil/ the foreign word rei^ long after-
waid toot root in England.
* All the words that follow must be pronounced aa the Trench
would do now.
id8 Old and Middle English.
much confnBed in later English, and we here find bath
pol andpul, the Welsh ^Z, oxapool. Heo (ilia) is here
seen as kiu ; henoe the Lancashire hoo, so well known
to Mrs. Oaskell's readers.
As to consonants, Uie Southern h is often tamed into
the hard ch i hwwt becomes ckiusd ; the kindred Latin quid,
which was the word translated, seems to have snggeated
the d at the end of this Northnmbrian word. So the lAtin
rectos is sometimes Englished by rectos, and not by the
proper rihtas; the likeneas between the two tongnes
must in many a word have forced itself npon any shrewd
translator's mind, as I eaid before. To this day, in the
Scotch liowlands, words like right or night may be heard
sonnded with a, strong gnttaml in the middle, ae in
German. In these Gospels, iueh is sometimes written
for iuh (vob).
There is another imitation of the Latin in St. Lnke
xxii. 39, where Olivamm is Englished by Olebeanta, as
if the varum answered to our word harrow. Alfred in
the Sonth reversed this process, for he turned Abnef
into JEfaere,
There are strong hints of Danish inflnence ; thus uif
is sometimes written for ■amlf, and the Old English
seofd^ (septimns) is seen as seofwnda : here the m and d
come from Scandinavia. The Danish Active Participle
is often osed instead of the Old English, as ga/ngamde for
gangende; and this long lingered in Scotland. Our
foreign invaders, in this instance, bronght English nearer
to Sanscrit than it was before.
Onr tear is here Been in the very old form, teher, the
Gothic tagr and the Greek dakru.
Northern English. — Early Corruptions. 109
In the &boTe ioBtaiice, we have caught one of the
last traces of the Old ; I now afford one of the first
glimpses of the Xew. In St. Matthew, xzt. 24, the
Southern Otiapels give for the Latin semintuti the true
old fonn of the Second Person Singular of the Strong
Perfect, leowe ; this, in the Lindistame Gospels, takes an .
« at the end, as if it beloi^d to a Weak Verb, and
becomes 8u sawes, ' thou sowedett,' and in St. Luke xix. 21
it is seen as Su gesauadetd. This cormptioa made very
slow way in England ; even down to the Refonnatiou
we see the old form; and when that was unhappily lost,
one of the most remarkable links between English and
Sanscrit was snapped for ever.'
There is another instance of the same corruption in
St. Luke xiv. 22, where imperasti is Englished by $w
gehehtes ; the last word would, in the South, have had
no ■ at the end.
In St. Luke, vii. 32, the Strong Perfect vxopon.
(plorastis) is replaced by the Weak form gie wcepde, our
t/e wept. This process we saw beginning in the Ps^ter.
I have already pointed out the close tie between the
letters « and r. In these Gospels they were becoming
confused ; in St. Luke, it. 9, perdidemm. is Englished
by both f orient aa&forlnre.
The first instance of another corruption may be seen
in St. Matthew ii. 9, (loeug,') ubi erat puer ; the ubi was
always peer m Old English, but we now see it translated
by AuwT- as well as fer. What led to the change is seen
in St. John xii. 26 ; uhi is there Englished by tua kuer,
' See bow the Strong Verb should be coDJugated at p, 25.
I lo Old and Middle English.
oar vsk^em : this in the Soath would have been fwa
hweer tmx. In the same way, as time went od, the rela-
tive that was replaced by the cormpt vjhoL We have a
remnant of the tme Old English in take that thine
9«, thongh we look in vain for the similar stay thwe
thou art.
Another startling change cornea in St. Uatt. xriii.
21, reminding ob of Cicero's Sdbeo dieere. The old dgan
(making its Second Fereon Singnlar of the Present, )>w
£ge) meant no more than ^poatidere, and this old sense
laet«d beyond the year 1600, as in Shakespeare's 'the
noblest grace she owed.' Bat in the above Gospel t«zt,
3w aht to getdanne is employed to English the Latin debea ;
liaheg Bolvere. This aht, replacing the rightfnl dge, is the
parei^t of oar ought ; a most nsefol aoxiliary verb, which
now stands for nearly all the Persons, Singular and
Plural, of the Present and Fast tenses alike of dgan.
We have here, I fhink, the earliest instance of an English
word sliding into a new meaning before our eyes ; we
shall meet with many other examples of this. Rather
later, the verb with its new sense is found in King
Canute's laws, and afterwards in the Chronicle for the
year 1070. The kindred Scandinavian verb etga may
have had some inflaence in effecting the change of
meaning here.
The IaUu ave was Englished in the South by hat tocu
(Mi, the first word being an adjective. In the North, the
verb was dropped ; for in St. Matt, zxvii 29 twe becomes
simply hal, our haU ; the Scandinavian AetU is used like
this.
Oar language is all the richer, since it comes tram
Northern English. — Early Corruptions, ill
different sources. We now ose on and in 'with different
seases, bat it was not so of old. We follow tlteflu
Nortliem Gospels when we talk of having life in the
Scriptares ; the Southern men snbetituted on for
the i"n.
We know that wldle is now naed in Yorkshire for the
French jiugu'a <x que, not for the French pendant que ;
&a in ' stay while I come.' In St. Matt, xxiv. 34 Ha
hufUe ifl osed for our modem tiU in the phrase ' till all
these things be fulfilled.' This usage is often found in
these Idndisfame Gospels.
Onr himhim (whilom) for quondam, is first fonnd in
St. Lake xxiii. 19 ; it stood commonly for aUquando,
like the Scotch ■whiles.
In the Sontb, the First Person Singular of the Per-
fect was kept distinct from its Plural brother; as ic
fond (inveni), wefundon. In the North onr present way
of jnmbling the two together was foreshadowed about
nine hundred years ago ; fa/nd ie comes in St. Matt, viii,
10. In zir. 30, the Glosser writes both (mgatm and
tm^unne over the same Latin rerK
We have already seen hio hrced for/ainu; but in St.
John Ti. 23 we see the first use of Iread for panxa. This
-comes again in the Bnshworth Gospels ; the old hlaf by
degrees made way for the new term.
Cote is seen in the glossary to Scott's Novels as a
Northem term for a care ; cofa, with this sense, is found
in these Gospels. There is another English word, hof,
meaning the same, which seems to be the nearest akin
of all to the Latin cavtu, according to established rules.
The Latin agere p<eniteBiiam had a most lofty sense
1 1 2 Old and Middle English.
in St. Jerome's time, expressiDg an act of the mind,
since he uses it of Ood Himsnlf. In Italy, ipmitenza (a
cnrions instance of the degradation of words), now rises
no higher than a bodily act, done in atonement for sin.
Before the year 1000 ^pceniteniia had acqnired the more
debased meaning, at least in the Sonth of England, since
it is there translated by dcsd-bote ; but in the North it
seems to have kept its nobler sense, for there it was
Englished by hreonissey ruefulness^ (St. Matt. iiL 2).
Long afterwards, Wickliffe and Coyerdale went wrong
in Englishing poenitentia by penance^ while Tyndale, a
far better scholar, whom we follow, hit upon the right
word for the Greek metcmoia.
Oar peak is commonly derived from the French ; bnt
in St. Luke's aooonnt of onr Lord's temptation, pirma
tempU was Englished in 950 by hompic temples.
In St. Matt. xiv. 13, pedestres (in this Version alone)
is translated by foe^emenn. The word ' footman ' does not
appear again nntil about 1300, in the Alexander.
In the same Gospel, xxiv. 22, (ymnis caro is translated,
not in our literal way, but by eghiielo lichoma. This last
word (the Latin corpus) gives us the first hint as to how
our everybody and nobody arose.*
In the same book, ix. 20, sangumis flttxus becomes
bhdes floutng ; the last word was never used in the
South. The ing at the end of words was in time to
supplant ung, and the change is often foreshadowed in
these Gospels. It is to Northern England that we
mainly owe oxir Verbal Nouns in ing, as we shall see
* Lye, as quoted by ro8worth« says that Itc stands for the dead
body, Itchama for tho liring body.
Nortfiern English. — Eajly Comiptions, 113
when perasing her monuments of the Thirteenth Cen-
taiy.
We sometimes hear the phrase ' to chop and change.'
The first of these verbs is found in St. Luke xiz. 15,
where negotiatus esset is Englished by geceopad were.
This seems more akin to the Scandinavian Jcaupa than to
the Southern phrase cedpcm^ whence come clieap and
ekapnutn. Our verb job toems to come from this chop.
The Latin phrase cited above carries the mind to the
English hwignisse, which translates sollicitiido, at page 15
of Hardwick's Versions of St. Matthew; Mr. Earle wishes
to derive our h^Tiess (negotium) from the French
hescingnes. I am loth to yield up so thoroughly national
a word to the foreigner; and I would suggest that
there is but little difference in the meaning of nego-
Hum and aoUicitudo. Either of them would express the
cares of this life, a well-known Scriptural phrase. We
still Bay ' I made it my business/ that is, ' my care ; ' just
asWicklifife wrote, Jiyve thou hisynesse (St. hxikexh.BS).
It is hard to tell whence comes our word sneer. In
St. Matt. iz. 24 dendehant is Englished by smerdon; there
may be an exchange here of m and n. In the South,
this verb wottld have had a hi prefixed.
Out word bundles is first found as bunda, in St. Matt.
ziiL 30 ; it is the Scandinavian bundin.^
Our stir and shake were usually active Verbs, but In
* How beavtifol an instrument of language is the Teutonic vowel-
change im the middle of a word ! We have thus struck off band, bejid,
hindy bondy hundrle. Compare aharey shears shire, &c. ; grabf grip,
frrove, groove, grub, &c.
114 Old and Middle English.
St. Matt. xi. 7 agifatam is Englished by styrends and
In St, Matt, ixv, 36 the verb claXdon ( je) clothed, ia
Boeo for the first time ; this ia the Scandinavian verb
In St. Lnke'e acconnt of our Lord's snfTerings, it is
said that the soldiers thrashed Him, iSurgcon; this verb
woald in our days be thought hardly lofty enough for
the occasion.
The Infinitive in n is constantly clipped ; and not
only does awrittan (acribere) become awritta, bnt passes
^irther into atoritte, oar write. Many other snch instances
conid be given. Sometimes a Perfect is clipped ; thus
eodoii (ibant) becomes eado (St. Lake xxiv. 13).
The Soathem gyllan Jie no becomes in the North
geseUa oSer no, ' give tribnte or not.'
Our adjective Mgh is need independently of substan-
tives, as Oil higli. This began very early, for in St.
Luke i. 78 ex alto is Englished by of keh ; the expression
must have seemed rather strange, for of heofnum is there
given as an explanation. These Latin idioms in the
Bible must have had great influence upon English. When
we see qute et qjialie niulier (St. Luke vii. 39) translated
by hiioeh and hulie vnf, we cannot help thinking that the
hulie must have been suggested by the kindred guaUs, as
the English word is never found in the South.
The BUckling Homihes, published in 1874 by Dr.
Morris for the Early English Text Society, are remarkable
as bearing a date ; they were compiled in 971. I would
suggest Staffordshire or the neighbourhood as the place
where they were drawn up; they abound in Northern
Northern English. — Early Corruptions. 115
forms, sach aa iugitk, halie (aanctns), hafaS, aldor (prin-
ceps), owihi ; the ge at the beginniag of Fast Participles
is often clipped ; e often roplacee the Southern <e and ea.
On the other hand, there are pecnliarities, which are
afterwards seen in Salop ; such as e for the t or « of
other ahirea; senne (peccatnm), hergean (sepelire), sceU
dig (rens). In saiiwle (anima), p 43, the w and the w
are united, either of which letters might have stood after
a or o. In p, 159 we see the old form tooruld (stecnliim) ;
in the pa^ before, this is pared down to worlde.
The Consonants are often thrown ont. The hrape
(cito) of p. 155 loses its h in the preceding page ; the
g is lost in fyliende (seqnens), p. 249 ; in halie (sanctas),
p. 143 ; and in an, for agen (proprios), p. 105. Ofdiine
becomes adune (ftdown), p, 173; herem (horreum) be-
comes 6ere» (barn), p. 41. In p. 21 we see o))«i leokte
written instead of on \on leokte (' i' the light,' as Shake-
speare would say). Some have set this clipping down to
the Danes' account, but it is due simply to Teutonic
laziness in pronouncing consonants. Thus, before the
year 400, on hack is seen corrupted into the Qotbic
ibakai ; King Alfred wrote both omixg and aweg (away).
We may still say both on shore and ashore.
In p. 131 we find embe twelf moTiap (about a twelf-
month) ; the first instance, I think, of this pecnliarly
Knglish noun. In p. 45 we read, htm, sylfum ncBnige
gode beon, ' to be of no good to himself ; ' we now say,
'he is no good to any one.'
As to Pronouns, in pp. 23 and 45 we see p<em (illia)
need where in the Sonth heo^n would hare come. This
usage was continned 200 years later by Orrmin, who most
I r6 Old and Middle English.
likely lived not far from the shire where these Homilies
were compiled. In p. 49 comes hro^or Tnine {brethren
mine), instead of the nanal form. Another asc^ of
Orrmin's is foreshadowed in p. 127; we see mt mghwylen'nt
anwa (at each one) : in the Sonth, the last word, anum,
wonid not have been allowed. It yfoa the indefinite nan
that stood elsewhere for the Greek lis ; bnt in p. 125 we
read of the finest work that men conid devise : an idiom
that we still keep.
In p. 243 due tid stands for nlivi, and shows whence
cornea ottr mkte, in the sense of the Latin word. In
p. 215 is he Jitpfde twBm liBt ]ie twentig (he had two less
than twenty), a moat terse English idiom.
In p. 165 the Angel tells Zacharias ne wiU fw |>e
emdreadan (fear not) ; an early instance of xoill bang
nsed to soften a command.
We find such phrases as ejw swa ( jnsfc so), p. 7S ;
fvl leaf (fiill dear), p. 131. A well-known Adjective is
here nsed mnch like an Adverb : still hod hitherto
Englished the French iranquiUe, it is now farther nsed
for toujoun. We read in p. 209 of men fe on itFre stowe
ttilU imirwdan (that dwelt still in the place) ; the context
shows that still was gaining a new sense, which was long
peculiar te the North.
In p. 121, five lines from the top, niia is evidently
used for the Latin ergo ; a most striking innovation.
As te Prepoeitions, the nse of 6^ is mnch extended.
In p. 213 comes ferilan he him (went past him) ; in
p. 185 is keoldan he him (hold by them, cleave to them).
It had often been nsed to express the instroment ; it now
introduces the agent, in p. 163, answering to the Latin
Nortltern English.— Early Corrupiimts. wj
ah ; something is otigyten be eaUum men (understood by
ajl men). This last sense U moBt nnnsaal, and is not
found ^ain, I think, until Mandeville's time, nearly four
handred years later. In p. 21? we get onr firet hint of
unto ; St. Martin, seeing men Eitand round a person's
body, went into him. In p. 127 comes up op breott heali
(high ap to the breast), the source of oar breast-high.
I^tin words were losing their own endings, and were
being stamped with the English mark; we here find
liiecipul, aposlol, tempi.
The Bnshworth Gospels were compiled in the North
ahont the year 1000.' One of the translators was a
priest at Karewood in Yorkshire. I give a few words
to show how mach nearer the dialect is to our present
speech than West Saxon is : —
SoiUAem.
iVortAem.
Mod»n.
Ic
Ih
1
Eac
.Ek
Eke
ByreS
Bere«
Beweth
To cumenne eart
Owome scftlt
Shalt come
Ealle gearwe
AUiara
All j-are (ready)
Q«oc
loc
Yoke
Ne&ra
NftTU
Narrow
Seolfer
Sylfur
Silver
Onmiddan
Inmidle
In middle
Geonga
Iimge
Young
Pening
Pennig
Penny
There were traces of Danish forms in the Lindisfanie
Gospels ; these are still plainer to the eye in the Bush-
' Mi. Sksat has laCalj fixed the dat« af thess Northern GoepeU ;
Bee hi« Preface to St. Muk. In my former -wort I was here misled
by Gamett,
Ii8 Old and Middle EnglisiL
worth Book. In St. Luke, xiz. 21, tu es is translated
by the kindred pu is, which is a sure mark of Scandi-
navia ; the is in the old Northnmbrian kingdom answered
to the Latin num^ es, est, all alike. ^ There is another
Danish form in St. Luke xziii. 41, where the prononn
hie is translated, not by ^es, bnt by t$er ; the thir may be
remarked in the * Cursor Mandi,' in Hampole, and in
Scotch law documents almost down to the year 1700.
In the North, words were pared down as much
as possible ; the first letter of a/postol is here cast
out, much as in Orrmin's writings two hundred years
later ; this is a Scandinavian usage, which lasted down
to Wickliffe's time. The Southern geworden became in
Yorkshire aivar^ ; where the Old English prefix ge lin-
gers in our day, it commonly takes the form a.
The Northern k is here much used for the Southern
c, and cu is turned into qti, following the Latin. The
combination oi may be remarked, which was very rare
in England before this time, except in proper names like
Boisil and Loidis ; it seems to have been sounded like
the French e. There is an early instance of v replacing
/, in St. Matt. i. 24, where vAve is found for wif\ we see
in another place leovost. I often stands for g, at the
beginning of words. Alfred's gh, so common with us,
replaces the guttural h, as, neghihur, for the old neahhur.
The sound of o is already confused with that of u, for we
find unduati (solvite). As happens in many other in-
stances, we now write this word in the Southern way,
* This may be seen in the Jacobite ballad : —
' Cogie, an the King come,
I'se be fou, and thou's be toom.'
Northern English. — Early Corruptions. 119
and pronounce it as the NorthemerB did. Tlie old jjiws
{herba) is now seen as jrcM, oar grass.
What in the Sonth was /lyne, becomes him in the
North ; the Dative replaces the Accnsative, both in the
Singttlar and Plnrul, as we see in St. Matt, xvii. 5,
and other places ; in chap. ii. 4, we find lieom, need for
}iAq, jost as we say in talking, ' I asked 'em.'
There is a ouriona idiom in St. Matt. xv. 32 ; )>reo
Sagas is nu pai, &c. We shonld now prefix it to the i€.
The other Versions keep closer to the Latin.
In St. Matthew xxvi, 68, we find the fisst instance,
I think, of the Neuter Relative Btanding after a Mascu-
line Antecedent ; hwa ia Jttef fe slog ? ' who is it that ? '
This is just as if a Latiniet were to write, quie est quod ?
There is a like innovation in St. Matt. xv. 34 ;
hwe^ Mafas, <tc. ? ' what loaves ? ' This translates the
lAtin quot, which the GloHser perhaps took for a kindred
word ; bnt the English Aicief had never been coupled
with a Plural Nominative before, so far as can be known.
In St. Luke xxiii. 34, hwmt for the first time stands
as a Relative, like the Latin quod; wufun pcet kwmt
hi dooS. We should now strike out the pwt. These
three last instances of cormption in English show what
influence the intermingling of Anglians with Danes has
had in our land. More than a hundred years later, the
corrupt English of the North was spreading downward
to Peterborongh. We should cast aside all the old
notione about our grammar owing its debasement to the
Norman Conqnest. Rich Kent, though overrun with
foreigners, held fast to the Old English endings down to
1340, long after the greater part of the land had dropped
I20 Old and Middle English.
ihem ;* Yorkshire bad got rid of many of her endings long
before the Normans came. It was not these last con-
querors that substituted the Plural ending in ea for
the old Plural in en ; this en, with its Genitive in en«,
lasted until 1340 in Kent.
The old of gets a new meaning, our ixniceming, in St.
John xviii. 23. In the Soutb, the rightful be was main-
tained ; cyp geivitnesse he t/fele, ' of the eviL'
The ending es is seen added to Adverbs in St.
Matthew viii. 32 ; we there find niikrweardes. This is
the parent of our corrupt ones (once), hence^ dliocvys, and
many such.
We often find dol used for stuUus, whence comes
our dolt ; the t as usual roimding ofE the word.
Piper (tibicen), the Scandinavian pijpari^ seems pecu-
liar to the North, as another word is employed in the
Southern Gospels.
We sound our word whelps more correctly now than
was done in the North nine hundred years ago ; for in
St. Matthew xv. 27, it is written welpas. All who wish
to speak good English must clearly sound the h before
the w in words like when, whaL
In St. Matthew xxi. 19, contintu) is Englished by in
styde, a Danish form. Hence comes our * on the spot,'
referring to time, not to place.
The old tuna (enclosui'e), might stand for either a
village or a garden ; it is here applied to Bethany and to
G^thsemane alike.
The Latin torrens is Englished by hlynne in St. John
xviii. 1. This word is peculiar to the North; the linns
of Scotland are well known.
NortJtem English. — Early Corruptions, 121
When we talk of our haunden duty, we are more
primitiye than the author of the Bushworth Gospels
was, who clips the last consonant, and has uribunde for
solutum ; the endings of Verbs were now much mauled.
But he cleaves to his old dom (facio), where the m marks
a very early daie.
In St. Mark v. 14, foed is found instead of foedcm ;
here the rightful ending disappears altogether. Wickliffe
is fia* more primitive, for he has tliei fedden, they fed.
We follow the Southern Perfect spoetton (they spat),
rather than the aplttadun of these Gospels. In the Present,
we prefer the Northern spit to the old Southern Present
spcet. Our Standard English comes from many different
shires ia,r apart.
The Southern Participle gecnyt (knit) has prevailed
over the gecnyted of the Rushworth Gospels.
I have kept one of the greatest changes till the last.
In St. Matthew vi. 7, docm stands for faciunt; in St.
John xix. 15, habh&ii stands for hahemus. The n that
ends these words in the Plural of the Present is some-
t^iing altogether new ; it would have been replaced by C
in the South, by s in the North. These changes will be
discussed a little later ; it is enough now to remark, that
these Gospels could not well have been Englished far to
the North of Doncaster.
We may now return to Southern England. The
effect of Latin upon English may be seen in ^Ifric's
Grammar, which belongs to this time.^ He finds him-
self obliged to use foreign terms; as, 'Pronomina habba5
' See SomDor's edition of it.
122 Old and Middle English.
feower declinunga^^ p* 17 ; * we liabba;^ declvnod ... we
wille secgan p& seofan derivatwa,* p* 18 ; ']>a babba^ six
casus,^ SuLor is Englished by sutere ; murmxtr by ceoumng
(jawing). He can translate quadrwpes hj fy}^erfeie ; but
there is a sad f alling-off in onr power of componnding,
when hivium has to be Englished by the cnmbrons iwegra
wega gelcete. He is happy in haying gemetu^ wherewith
to translate the kindred meira. His pupils cannot have
gathered mnch new knowledge from this sentence ; * syn-
don indedindbilia^ pedt is, nndeclinigendlice,' p. 51 ; a
cnrions instance of a foreign word being fitted with an
English head and tail. The names of the cases are given
in Latin.
We may remark in -^Ifric's other writings, that he
talks of a halig satict, thus coupling two synonyms ; and
he cuts down the old gehdl (integer) to half thus con-
founding it with the English word for scmtts ; for these
points see Sweet's 'Anglo-Saxon Eeader,' 99, 100.
Wifmen is pared down to wimmertf our womveny just as
the Latin amavisse became a/mdssef Onaivod became
Gnceo ; we still keep the sound of the old word wimmen^
though we misspell it. The hard g is softened in the
third letter of geiuhodan (jugati) ; Oerherus becomes
Oervems, and on the other hand Javes becomes Johes,
the Genitive of Jupiter.* -^Ifiric speaks of cb, iScet is open
laga ; here we have the Old English and the new Danish
translations of lex,^ In the Chronicle for the year 994,
(BTitg is cut down to ceni; and in the year 998, t5t*r/i is
replaced by iS^iruh^ whence ilwrough and thoroughfare.
In the year 1009, the old Jdafmoesse loses its A' in two
* See Thorpe's AnaUcta^ 37, 01, 92, 102, for these changes.
' Sweet, Anglo-Saxon Reader, 64, 90.
Northern English. — Early Corruptions. 133
copies of the Chronicle, and loseB its / in a third. Oar
Tjamiaaa was nearly formed.
JELemble'a ' Charters,' after the year 1000, show a
great change going on in our tongue. In III. 353, we
hear that a man nndertakes to pat nothing faU in a book ;
the adjective is a foreign word. Danish words come in
with Canute ; in 17. 37, we hear of silver weighed ' be
hmtingei gewihte.' In a WiD of 1046 (IV. 106), heriot
r^laces kere-geaiv; the Danish word logo. (lex) is
plamlyabouttodriveonttheOldEnglisho!. InlV. 870,
we come upon the true form of Edward the Confessor's
Charters, and we can see how wretchedly other docu-
ments of his reign have been mauled by later tran-
scribers ;'n«iny of these latter papers are set out by
Mr. Wright has printed, in his Popular Treatises on
Science, an English Manoal of Astronomy, that dates
from about 1000 or a little earlier. Bceda here becomes
Bed«, nwBTjen becomes merien (mom), and there is HUErfew,
which has lost the g before ito d ; orcerd, not far from
oar orchard, comes in p. 10.
In p. 16 we hear that lewd men call Septemtrio
earUs-w^ ; it is cnrioua that we have preserved the old
letter a in onr corruption of this name, and that we do
not here talk of churl. In p. 18 we read of Elias and his
enapa; this last word was adding the sense of servua to
its old meaning puer, and nearly four hundred years
later it was to take a third sense, that of nebido. The
terseness of English comes out in the phrase, an igland
ha norSon fytum »yx daga fcer (an island six days' journey
North of this) ; this/tw is the Accnsative of measuring,
124 Old and Middle English.
which was in time to encroacli greatly upon other
cases.
In p. 13 hissextus is Englished by iwuwa syx, ' twice
six ; ' this is not often fonnd so early. A remnant of the
old sonnd lasted down to Mandeville's time, who has Uoo
so fii/uch.
In p. 17 we see our forcible idiom, which replaces t/",
coupled with the Subjunctive, by the Imperative ; Lord
Macaulay was very fond of this. Ntme cenne sticcan, hit
Jiata^ ; ' take a stick, it will become hot.'
Even in those early days learned men found that they
could not wholly express their meaning in pure English ;
we read here of circMl and firmameniwm. We hear
of the hlyd'7no7i^ (noisy month), which we •now call
March ; and we have also Fehruarucs ; the old and the
new.
One of the tokens of change in a language is, that
a Noun is brought in to express in a more lengthy
way what had been denoted by a Preposition. In
a Charter of 1046 (Kemble, IV. 106), the old toi^ pan
pe is exchanged for 07i t$am gerad iSoet (on condition
that).
The * Apollonius,* published by Mr. Thorpe, cannot
well be dated before 1050 ; the clippings are frequent ;
Infinitives and Participles are sadly maimed. The old
uncnawen (unknown) is seen as tcnoiiaive, a corruption
of the Past Participle that is a sure mark of the South.
With us, a cup is broken, an officer is broke.
The e, which should come at the end of words, often
vanishes ; the Adverb rlhte becomes rihL The y is oft)en
turned into i, thus hysig becomes biey, p. 20. We see
Nortliem English, — Early Corruptions, 125
pnA (fiend) in p. 7, just as we now pronounce the
word.
Many Consonants are thrown out, as we have re-
marked before ; arihi is found in p. 3, I think, for the
first time; ancc&antd loses its first n in p. 24; the
InlinitiTe rtman loses its last n, Menigu y^niultitudo)
becotnes mcmio in p. 12 ; hence Dryden's * the many
rend the skies.' In p. 18 the Article se becomes Jte,
as we still have it.
In p. 19 is an instance of the repetition of one and
the same noun, an idiom in which England delights,
'the king held ^^rn hcmd on handa,*
In p. 4 we see another diange of meaning ; cniht
had hitherto been used to English servus ; it now bears
aotuething like our sense of the word; for ealdorman
(prince) is written over it as an explanation. A word
is often degraded, but not ofben promoted, as in this
instance.
In p. 12 we find 8wnne ^cet pe gemiltsige ; here the
Neuter Belative peat is used after a Masculine Antece-
dent, as in the North. In the next page, to an is used
instead of the proper to dnum.
In p. 8 comes ic gehirde secgan, ' I heard say ; ' here
num, which should be the third word, is dropped. The
Adverb /of6toere£ seems to become an Adjective in p. 10,
' tfiey >Arere foriktferd on their way ; ' forward is now often
used by us as an Adjective. In p. 14 efne is used in a
sew sense ^efne fes man, whom thou didst aid, is
ettTiouB ; ' it seems something like the Latin ipse.
There are changes in the Chronicle after the year
1000. Six years after that date the old Wmtanceaster is
126 Old and Middle English,
seen as Wincester, to wliicli we now add but one letter.
In 1035, the g is thrown out of hlcBfdige ; in 1049 the )>
is thrown ont of Norynien. A little later, Petrtus becomes
Petre (Petcjr). In 1062 sisudaMichaheles moesse (Michael-
mas) ; here the Saint at the beginning is dropped; as also
in Thonies mcesse ; we often in onr day hear the Grenitive
Thomases used, like the old Genitive Juliuses, In 1054,
a bishop for Jtces hynges cerende, *he went the king's
errand ; ' a cnrions idiom of the Accusative after an In-
transitive Verb. This is something more than the old
* live a life,' * fight a fight.' In the year 1055 we hear
o£ Hereford port (town), an instance of English concise-
ness, like Sinai munt. In the year 1061 word com (word
came) that, &G, In 1064, a man marches against his
enemy with many shires that are named ; here the shires
stand for their inhabitants, like Macanlay's 'fast fled
Ferentinnm.' In the same year, the Apostle Jude is
mentioned. The land of Cambria appears about this
time as Brytland and Wealas (year 1048) ; the dwellers
therein are f e Welsc. A few years later, in 1077, it is
the land to the West of Normandy that is called
Brytlandf the Brittany of our time.
There is an Impersonal idiom in 1052, pa com hit to
witenne pam eorlum^ 'then came it to the Jbiowledge
of the earls.' In 1044 we read of * the Abbot of Abban-
dune ; ' the of is here beginning to supplant the rightfol
071.
In the year 994 stands cet neaxta/n, 'in the next
place ; ' we should now say simply next ; at least dates
from the same age, and at all was to come later. In the
year 1066 a man lifede huton pry gear ; here the ne is
Northern English. — Early Corruptions. 127
dropped before the verb, and thus Indon gete the sense
of the LAtin tamium.
We have seen the changes in the North ; even in the
South, Danish words were taking root ; some are fonnd
in Canute's day ; and William I. , addressing his Londoners
in their own tongue, aa3rs that he will not allow ' |>get
Qujg man eow tenig imang beode.' This wrong (malum)
comes from the Scandinflvifln rangr (obliquus) ; it drove
oot the Old English vioh.
I shall consider elsewhere the effect of the Norman
Conquest upon England's speech. I give in my Appen.
diz a specimen of the East Anglian dialect, much akin
to the Northumbrian, written not long after the battle
of Haatinf^.' In the Legend of St. Edmund, the holy
man of Suffolk, we see the forms of ^e, 8e, and the, all
rejdacing the old le ; the cases of the Substantive and the
endings of the Verb are clipped ; the pre6x ge is seldom
found, and iset stands for t^e old Participle geget. As to
the Infinitive, the old dalfan becomes dcelfe; the Dative
Aeom replaces the old Accusative M, as heom wat gehwa,
' each knows them.' The adjective does not agree in case
with the substantive ; as mid eepele ieaimtvi. An heora
is turned into art mon of Aim; a corruption that soon
spread over the South. The first letter is pared away
from hlafard; the Anglian alh replaces the Southern
eaJh. Eode is making way for vienJe (ivit) ; and we
find such forms as cMM, nefre, healed, fologede, instead
of did, ncefre, hmlod, fyligde.
' Mr. Tljorpe, in bis AnaUcta Aiiglo-Saximica, looks npon the
Legend, which he prints, aa an Eut Anglioo vork.
128 Old and Middle English.
The Chronicle, after the Norman Conquest, shows
new forms of spelling ; the Northern et replaces e and
<B, as in aweig and togeines ; d/roef (pepnlit) becomes draf.
A Welshman is named in the year 1097, whose name
was Gaduugatm ; here the au is employed to express the
strong accent on the last syllable. The Plural as now
becomes es, as castel^, in the year 1087. The old
Olecmeceastre (pronounced Olewehaigtre), is written Olowe"
ceastre in the year 1119; not far from our Oloucesiter,
An u is sometimes inserted, for hosyn becomes hosum.
As to Consonants ; n is used to round off a word, for
the Celtic Donacha is written Dunecan in 1093. The »,
on the other hand, is clipped in 1087, when wmre (erant)
replaces wceron. We have seen that w was not a
favourite letter in the North ; the Old English letter for
w was disused so early as 1070 in the South, for in one
of the Chronicles we read of Oantuuarehyrt, The new
ih begins to usurp upon the old f, as in Theotford ; the
hard g is dropped in the middle of halwy drfa, and cente.
A well-known name is written Bogcer in 1076. The old
eallgeador is lengthened to ecdl togcedere in the year 1095.
The change of/ into v, in the middle of a word, proceeds.
In the very year of the Norman Conquest, we read of a
provost, and in the next year we find tinstvemisse ; one
version of the Chronicle, in 1078, talks of Eofeshamme,
while another spells the word as Evesham, The inter-
change of 8 and r (see page 87 of this book) is found ; in
the year of the Conquest we see both the old ge&uron
and the new cvLsen (they chose).
The Article stands by itself, followed by of, thus
saving the repetition of a Noun that had gone before ;
Northern English. — Early Corruptions. 129
in the year 1096 is fonud, se eorl of Flaitdran and »e of
Biman (be of Boal<^tie). This settiog a Pronoun (sach
the Article is here) before a Preposition, is strange to
Old English, thongh it might be done in Greek and
Qothic.
One of the first changes that followed the Conqneet
was the great development given to of; the old Qenitive
of Konns vras now encroached npoD, and French infl,a-
ence may have been here at work. Within twenty-five
years after 1066, we find —
Ut Uhtlke of otS (recked of oath)
aferede ofheom (ftfrwd of them)
m,ycil dai of hit mannon
btbmdot of ^am ^e (stripped of)
he teruk of hit immnon (some of bis men)
yrfewtma ofealion (hur of all)
As to this last, in the very next sentence we see the true
old Genitive form yrfenuma ealles. So in the sentence,
that follows cyng of Deninearcan, comes the rightfhl
Englalamdet cyng. We stand here, in 1085, between the
Old and the New. In 1095, there ia a new idiom, Gothic
bat not Old English ; stars fall he anan oSfie twam, ' by
one or two.' A few sentences on, we see this Inj stand
for the lAtin per ; sende Rotngesceot be him ; purh would
have been employed earlier. In 1076, something tarns
ont to myeelan hearnie ; this reminds as of the older to
•raichtm, loeorf e, p. 69.
Wi&atan of old meant no more than attra, bnt in
lU87 it gained the new sense of tvae, as we now mostly
nae it. The great William, we hear, wonld have won
130 Old and Middle English.
Ireland wt^kc^on cdcon, wcepnon.^ In 1076, a man is said
to be BrittUc en hia modor healfe (side). In 1094, uppon
is nsed for prceter ; itppon \0Bt ; this is the source of onr
thousands upon thousands.
In Pronouns, the concision of cases has begun, as in
the North ; in the year 1067 we find ^0971., the Dative, stand
for hi, the Accusative. There is a startling corruption
in the account of Stamford Bridge Fight, added by a
later hand after the year 1100 ; instead of the rightfol
o^er, we read \>a com cm oper, which is as though a
Latinist should write umu alter for alter. There is also
mfre \>e c^er man, * every other man,' in 1087. In 1096,
naptng is found for nan ying.
In Substantives, there are tokens found that a great
change has come over England ; hSc is turned into hokes,
(lihri) ; in 1070, we fiind (ri$ swerunge (oath-swearing) ;
this prefixing an Accusative to a Verbal Noun became
very common ; such a phrase as hea/m cenwung had
always been used. In 1073, comes on pa saihealfe (sea- '^t*
side) ; here two nouns are packed together, most tersely.
In 1098, we hear that a mere hlod weoU (ran blood) ;
a new use of the Accusative. In 1086, we read that
the Conqueror duMade his swvu Henrie to ridere ; this
French chevalier is in the next year Englished by oniht.
The Dative in wn was vanishing ; we fiind the phrase
mid feawe matman in 1088. In 1091, we read of 12
of pes cynges healfe aaid 12 of pes eorles ; the English
> This of old wonld hare been h4Uan. Onr but still expresses
ut\ prater, qum, sed, tferikm; in Scotland, I believe, it may still
stand for extra and nine. Cor fiithers mnst have thought that too
groAt a load was thrown upon one word«
ntst
Nortltern English. — Early Corruptions. 131
seem to have resolved upon saviDg tbeir breath and
not repeating their Substantives.
Ab to Adjectives, there ie a new coDstrnction in the
jear 1085, fcw mycel hit wcere wwrfi, ' how mnoh it waa
worth ; ' here the AccaBative replaces the old Oenitire
-after lomH. Oewmr of old meant only cautious ; it now gets
the sense of our aware, as we see in 1095. Three years
later, trywe (fidus) takes a new meaning, that of honestut ;
a prodigy is related on the faith of certain trywe men.
The Comparative Adverbs, bet and leng, are now
changed into betert and leiigre. The repetition of a com-
parative adverb (wtm-e and more, for instance), has been
popular ^ith us ever siuce swXor and sw^or was set
down in the account of the year 1086. In the next year
we read nafde he ncejre swa mycel ijjel gedon ; but we
ehould now say, ' had he done ever so much evil ; ' still
the older idiom remains in our Bible.
Afl to Verba, in 1070 we find that the old ahie (in
the sense of debere) has come down South from Tork-
shire ; many other words have followed in its track
since that year. A new idiom for the Subjunctive starts
up in 108?, instead of the old Imperfect formerly used ;
$ifhe tnotle Ubhan, he h<^de geumnnon, 'he had won' or
* he would have won,' guperaoUtei. This had we still
keep in poetry ; our present substitute for it in prose
waa to crop up seventy years later than the above-quoted
entry. In the wonderful sketch of the Conqueror, in
1087, the writer tells us hu gedon mann, he vxea ; this
S^don means oom.fOiit'M, and we still talk of weU-done
meat. Onr Pluperfect of the word 60 is first found in
1096, he hea/de gebeon, 'he had been.' There is no
132 Old and Middle English,
Pluperfect like this in Old English, but the Icelandic
has lie^r verit (Matzner, II. 74) ; gebeon replaces the old
gewesen. In 1098, a prodigy was related by men that
sceoJdan geseon hit ; we should say rrmst ha/ve seen it.
They say in the North, * you would hear that fact a
month ago ; ' where would hear stands for mvst have
heard ; this reminds us of the time when we had no Plu-
perfect of the Subjunctive. In 1100 comes the unusual
Passive form, blod wees gesewen weallan (visu«st fluere),
instead of the former idiom, ' man saw blood flow.'
As to Pronouns, in 1072, WiUiam did with his ene»
mies ^cet he wolde ; this \(Bt stands for the old swa hwmt
8wa (quodcunque) ; we should now replace it by whaL
In 1095 we hear of fa feower forewarde dagos (the four
first days) ; the usual idiom here would be faforman^
twd (the first two). Either idiom is used now, and is
most venerable. In 1100 King Henry acts he foere
rcede fe hiin abutan wceran (by the rede of them that
were about him). It is most unusual, in Old English,
to find this Relative pe detached from its Antecedent ;
it should have followed as the very next word. Scott
has * their lot v;ho fled.^ In modem English composition
the improper position of the Relative is the commonest
of all grammatical pitfalls.
We may here cast a glanco at Domesday Book, which
tells us how English words, pronounced by peasants and
not by scholars, sounded in ISforman ears. The ch was
employed for A;, as in Ohenif Berchelai ; gJi expressed the
hard sound of g before e or i, as OhersmUme.^ The »
' This gh was mnch usecl in Tudor times to express the hard g"
l>cfore eori; this usage prevails in Italy.
Northern English. — Early Corrupiions. 133
was often used for #. The g and \ in the middle of
words were thrown out ; Eadffifth and Swegen, beoamu
Eddeva and 8uen ; .^pdric became Ailric. The h, was
tamed into c, aa Brietric. When we see Mlfred written
Alured, we light npon the first trace of a new form of
the word. The u is often written for v and /. The
English II ia commonly written ov, in the French way.
What we now call Evlland was set down in the Survey
as HoUant ; the French sonnded 01 as ou or oo-e.' The
)) was always a pnzzle to Frenchmen ; pegn was written
teign. There was a place in Derbyshire called Wilelm-
ttorp (now Williams thorpe), which was held in 1065 by
one Swain Cilt ; this is a carious instance of a foreign
Christiui name taking root in English soil, as the name
of a hamlet. One of the greatest changes is that of
the old Wigeraeeasler into TTtrcMtre, not far fixtm oni'
. Woreetter ; Darbie shows the new sound, still existing, of
Beoraby, There can be no doabt about the Old English
prononciation of ow, when the Frenchmen write the old
Stow as Sliyu ; the former combination has usually had
to make way for the latter. In Lincolnshire and Derby-
shire the old a was in some pUices getting the sound of
the French S, for StainUme is fonnd ; the Northern
sound was coming SonthwardR. Fugelestou, had not as
yet been out down to Fithtow.
We may examine the Peterborough Chronicle from
1100 down to the great fire in 1116. There is atendenoy
to get rid of p in every part of the word ; thus in the
year 1100 we read that William Rufos was slain by hit
0 fariDB of one proper name, Mure
1 34 Old and Middle English.
anav. men ; the an sboold have been agen (propriaB) ;
even our word otwt in 1877 keeps more of the old form
than the an of 1 100. There are forms like sari and don ;
in the last the prefix ge ie altogether pared away, as in
Torkahire. In 1104 gebrogden liecom.eB gebroidat
(braided) ; we shall often find y or i replacing an old
hard g. This oi differs from, the oi in Hoilant, for it
here has the sound of the XVench e, jnat as the French
Moretoin was pronounced ; oar broidered hair is a relic
of the old form of the word just qnoted. The diphthong
m was soon to vanish ; in 1105 we see akvxBr instead of
aglivxer % the Northern ei, as well as ai, was becoming
popular in the ^dland, for we see reinat (rains) in
1116; a third combination for the French S, namely ai,
was soon to follow oi and ei down from tte North.
The Indefinite an is used before a proper name of
time in 1116 ; something happened on an Frigdteg.
We know the sense of onr faiherland, borrowed of late
years from the Qerman ; in the year 1101, /(sderland
meant simply paternal estate. In 1110 we see the method
of reckoning by nigbte, and not by days, in feowertijne
nihta (fortnight). We read that when Rnfns was
bnried, the Witan were nek handa, nigh at hand, or
handy. In the year 1101 there is a startling change,
mnch like the one in the Lindisfame Gospels which
substituted huer (ubi) for the old \wr. The Earl of
Moretoin worked against the King ; for hwan (quam ob
cansam) the King punished him. This is an early
Midland instance of hwa (it properly answered to the
Latin quia, not to qui) being used as a Belative ; an
older writer would have written /tirjiawi. The new form
Northern English. — Early Corruptions. 135
18 repeated in 1110. We have a rather cnrioaa idiom in
onr day, ' a caetle of the earl's,' a kind of doable Geni-
tive ; we see something like this is the year 1106, ae
(nb* eorlea ccnme costol. In the year 1114 comes wolde he,
nolde he, the ancestor of onr willy nilly. In 1116 appeius
of nanan aegeean, ' speaJE of none ; ' biofyorewonld baTe
been used instead of this of, whiob we saw in the Rash-
worth Qoapels. Since those days, of and bi seem to
hare changed places in oar common talk. What we
write 'nothing at all' was in 1110 set down as nanpiji^
mid ealle. In the same year comes nan^nny of him vnxa
geicBwen (seen) ; a startling change in idiom. The help-
tai word man now shrinks into me, answering to the
French on, as irie hegwn to ineorcerme ; this was to last
for 200 years. In 1119 we hear that an Earl died of
wounds. Before this, in 1114, the Dative had been
con&sed with the AccnsatiTe, as in the North ; for
Aim is pat for hme. Onr Soathem peasants still use
the latter, as ' hit an hard ; ' Sqnire Western, who was
above a peasant (at least in rank), loved this old
phrase. The article «e is so conAised in all its cases
that we End he aende se arcehiteop, where it stands for
the Accnsative. Onr mnddJing of the Dative and Accn-
satrve is very plain in the sentence he geaf ^one abbotrice
o» munee. The Plural kua now becomes ha»<u, onr
htnue* ; the ending a» was to swallow ap all its brethren ;
this cannot be owing to French influence, as I have
before said.
I have now broo^t my readers to the threshold of a
&esh Period, which was to sweep away nearly all onr old
Inflections, to weaken disastrously onr power of 00m-
136 Old and Middle English.
pounding, to sret rid of thoosandB of onr common words,
and to ponr French adulterations into our word-etore,
which had been hitherto all but wholly Tentonic, There
was to be a marked difference between the English of
1120 and the fatnre English of 1303. I donbt whether
any European language ever onderwent changes such as
have be&Uen oar own Mother>tongae, at least within
timeB traceable by History.'
■ Aa ngatda change, nearest to English comes Spanish ; with its
Latin gionildlrork, and its later infoslan, fll^t of (Hmiaii, then of
Aiabic. Oennan; and Scandinavia never onderwent any permanent
fbreign eonqnest, and theFein differ from the other nadons of Europe.
Middle Etiglish: Cultivation.
CHAPTER III.
THE MIDDLE BH0LI8B.
Pebiod I. — Cultivation.
(1120-1220.)
Enoland has been happy, beyond her Teatonic siatere,
in the many and Tarioos etorea o£ her oldest literatnre
that hare floated down the stream of time. Poems
Bcriptand and profane, epics, war-songs, riddles, trans-
lations of the Bible, homilies, prayers, treatises on science
and grammar, codes of law, wills, charters, chronicles
set down year by yeu-, tales, and dialognes — all these
(wontd that we took more inttirest in them !) are onr
rich inheritance. In spite of the havock wrought at the
Beformation, no land in Europe can show snch monn-
meate of national speech for the 400 years afler a.d. 680
as England boasts. And nowhere else can we so clearly
mark the national speech slowly swinging ronnd &om
the Old to the New.
Take the opposite case of Italy. In 1190 we find
Falcandns holding in scorn the everyday speech of bis
coonttTmen, and compiling a work in the Old Italian
(that is, Latin), Bach as would have been easily read by
Cnsar or Cicero. Falcandna trod in the path that had
138 Old and Middle English.
been followed by all good Italian writers for twelve
centuries ; bat two or three years after his book had been
written, we find his conntrymaji, Ciullo d'Alcamo, all of
a endden pntdng forth tbe first known poem in the New
Italian, a poem that wonld now be readily understood
by an unlettered soldier like Oaribaldi.
In Italy, there is a sndden spring from tbe Old to
the New, at least in writt«n literature ; but in England
tbe cbange is most slow. I have already traced the cor<
rnption shown in the Northnmbrian writings. In the
Peterborongh Gbronicle of 1120, we see an evident effort
to keep as near as may be to the old Wincbeater standard
of English. Some of tbe inflections indeed are gone,
bat tbe writer pats eoXl for the iM 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 bom within fifteen miles of Peterborongh : tbe
diction of this Midland bard differs hardly at all from
what we speak nnder Qaeen Victoria. Nothing in
philology can be more interesting than these 180 years,
answering rongbly to the Hves of onr first Angevin Bang,
of his son, grandson, and great-grandson.
The Middle English, ranging between tbe two last-
given dates, may be divided into three t^s, apon each
of which I shall bestow a Chapter : —
I. Caltivation : from 1120 to 1220.
II. Neglect : from 1220 to 1280.
m. Keparation : from 1280 to 1303.
In Age I. English was fairly well oaltivat«d, and few
old words naed in prose were allowed to slip ; it was
Middle English: Cultivation. 139
different with onr inflectionB, at least in the North. In
Age n., English waa cast aside as something vnlgar, and
nearly every coltivated writer in onr island betook him-
self to French or latin ; oar tongne almost lost its noble
power of componoding, and parted with thonsanda of old
words. A very few translations &om French and latin
kept a feeble light barning during these balefal years.
In Age III. English writers translated copionelj from the
French, though they gave birth to nothing original ; they
ihna stopped the decay of onr feat perishing language,
and French words in shoals were brought in to supply
the place of the English lost in Age II.
In going through these 180 years, the plan I follow
is this. I first give specimens of prose and poetry
written within the Mercian Danelagh and East Anglia,
where onr classic New English was for the most part
bom. These specimens are the first-fruits of the East
Midland Dialect. To each specimen I 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 Danel^h, and from its
Yorkshire border, will be seen boldly to foreshadow
what is to come ; the samples from shires lying to the
South and Weat of the Danelagh will show tokens of a
fond lingering love for what is byegone. In the Esst
Midland there was the same mingling of Angles and
Danes that we find in the shires where the Northumbrian
Gospels were translated.
In questions bearing on dialects, clearness and pre-
cision are of the utmost importance ; I therefore here
set up a new landmark, which will he of some nse in
140 Old and Middle English,
fixing the shires where different poems were compiled.
If we draw a line firom Shrewsbary through Northamp-
ton and Bedford to Colchester, we shall roughlj lay
down the boundary between the shires that were wrested
from the Celts by Saxon kings, and those other shires
that were first settled by Angles and afterwards handed
over to the Danes by Alfred.^ This line I make
bold to call the Great Sundering Line ; I only wish I
could write Tongue-shed^ like water-shed. To the North
and East of this Line (it answers fairly to the Loire in
France) lived the men whose language, a mixture of
Danish and Anglian, foreshadowed the New English.
To the South and West of this Line lived the descen-
dants of the Old Saxons, such as Cerdic's men, whose
purer tongue, down to 1400 and even later, showed a
warm attachment to inflections that had elsewhere passed
away. The Peterborough Chronicle, written about
1160, is far easier to a novice in Old English than is
the renowned Kentish treatise of 1340. The difference
between the language of the two is explained by
one simple fact : the Danish settlement of 870. ' Clip
and pare ' was the watchword of the Danelagh ; * Hold
to the old ways ' was the watchword of King Alfred's
* Essex, taken as a whole, belonged to the South. In the Chro-
nicle of Ralph of Coggeshall, published by the Master of the Bolls
in 187^1 we read that a ghost, appearing in Suffolk, loquebatur Ang-
lieS secundum idioma regionia illius. — Bage 1 20. This proves that
about the year 1200 there was a difference between the speech of
Suffolk and that of Northern Essex, where Balph lived. I have
therefore taken care to carry my line to the North of Ooggeshall.
Mr. Taylor {Words and Places, 110) proves that there was a Banish
colony in the North-east of Essex, for which I haye made allowance.
Middle English: Cultivation. 141
shires. Ab to the corraptions that distingnisli New
English from Old English, we may pnt two-thirds of
these down to the Danelagh, the remaimng one-third
to the Sonihera shireB. The two-thirds are represented
by a line drawn between York and Coichester ; the one-
third by a line drawn between Worcester and Canterbury.
There are various marks which show at once where
English mannscripts were written. Thns, if the old word
grceg, after the year 1160, be spelt gray or ifrai, we may
in general set it down to the North of the Qreat Line ; if
it be spelt grey or grei, to the Sonth. Either gray or gretf
is now good English; in this respect the word (not beinga
proper ntune)stands quite by itsdf.' The ch, that replaced
c, spread easily over the Sonth, bnt made its way slowly
across the Line. Theuin m/ach,saoh,iB a snre mark of
the South, while mikel, swilc, betoken a Northern writer }
ale or iic prevails in the North, geh/wyle or itch is the
favourite Southern form ; ech (oar each) seems to be a
compromise between the two. The Northern gilt and
the Sonthem gull, two forms of the old gylt, combine in
onr gmlt. If a writer nses both sets of forms ; if he
sometimes, not always, clips the Prefix to the Past Par>
ticiple ; if he oses both keo and the (ilia), both hi and
thei (illi), both he taken and he taketh ; we may safely
say that auch a wiiter lived not far &om the Great
Sundering Line, and must have had much in common
with North and Sonth alike. Such writers we may
tntce from the compiler of the Essex Homilies in 1180
down to the blind Salopian bard of 1420.
142 Old and Middle English,
. 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 Peterborongh. Her Abbot was bronght
home, sick nnto death, from the field of Hastings ; her
monks were among the first Englishmen that came nnder
the Conqneror's frown. Her Minster snflfered more
from Here ward and his Danish friends than from her new
French Abbot, Tnrold. At Peterborongh 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 under-
stand the history of our tongue.
This Chronicle beso^ 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 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
Middle English: Cultivation. 143
bamt in the Gre.' The copyists thus handed down to
US a mass of good English prose, a great contrast to the
fo^ed Charters, drawn np in the Midland speech of
1120, which were newly inserted in the Chronicle. It
is with these last that my business lies, aa also with the
local annals of Peterboroagh, taken down from the
months of old men who coald 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 is the
Danelagh before the yeai 1131, at which date the first
Peterborongb compilers seem to hare laid aside their
pens. This reign of King Henry I. is the most interest-
ing of all reigns to a stndent of English ; the Yorkshire
corraptions of the Tenth Century are seen travelling
down to the South, a process that has always been
going on in England, both in the fotma and in the
sounds of words.
In Vowels, the combination torn was being replaced \
by eu ; thus feawa- became fewna, which was perhaps 1
meant for the corrupt Dative fevan (few). This is in '
He forged Charter, inserted in the year 656. Feower
becomes fowar ; heora and him (in Latin, eorum and ei'g)
now change into here and kem; this last we still nse in
phrases like ' give it 'em well ; ' and this Dative Flnral
' I hero follow Mx. E&rla in liia account of the S&xon ChronIcleB.
The cock and ball Calea in the forged Charters of the Abbej are
moit amnsing to any one who knows the true history of England in
the Seventh Centnr}. Somewhat later, King Edgar it Enppoeed to
use the word maritet in one of these Chartenl
144 Old and Middle English.
drove ont the old Accneative M. The combination et*
was replacing the older eov!, for we find \eaidiorn, \ e6we>
becomcB iWe (yonr) : eo is tamed into i, aa betmte and
mt for hetweox and leoht ; it sometimes changes into e, '
as 8re for threo. FyT (ignis) appears aa^r; te was soon [
to drop, for h<Bd (jnssit) becomes hed, sonnded aa we
KOnnd it now; and afre (semper) becomes efre. The
combination au, fonnd in very few English worda before
the Conqnest, comes more forward ; it is pronounced as
in France. It becomes confnsed with o (a circnm-
stance which has had a Btriking effect npon onr English
pronnnciatioa) ; the old dber (ant) is seen written oi^er;
nail, \nnon, become nun, Ikenen. In the year 1124,
keftning appears; and some old monk, who aimed at
correctness, has pat the u, the proper letter to be nsed,
above the t in the manascript. In the year 1123 the old
Wealat becomes Waks.
As to changes in Consonants, the old k sometimes
becomes ch, as hurch for bwh ; this prevailed over the
Eastern side of England, from London to Tork ; thongh
gh came later to be more used than ch. Onr old 8 was
o^n laid aside for tk, the latter being better known to
the 14'ormana. There is a tendency to get rid of the letter
g in every part of a word ; thus we find
Scir-gereia becomeB scirreve (sheiriff)
Gj-t „ iett
Dsg „ d»i (day)
Geatwestd „ iateward (porter) '
I G somclimrs changed to y, and then centones lat«r, onring to
East Anglinn influence npon Standard English, changed back to ?
iigain i aa we see in this wurd ffa/r. still called by the Scotch getl.
Middle English : Cultivation.
0»g
becjomes keie"(liey) •
P»gni.
„
SfBines (thanes)
Eijiiiiht%
'„
almihti
Pening
„
peni
Legdon
leidon
S.gd.
„
Beide
IJiiS
liei
M»g
^
nuei
Geomden
••
iomdan (yearned)
F in the middle of a word ia often replaced by v ; thus
we geafon becomes toe gmen, and lufe becomes Iwoe ; this
change was etill more marked in the SoatL.
In Noons tlie Dative Plnral inTtmhaalongTanislied;
there is a general break-np of case- endings ; and the
Nominative Plnral in ae (now eg) ia swallowing ap all
the other Declensions. The Definite and Indefinite
forms of Adjectivee are jnmbled together, and the
^reement of their cases with those of Substantives is
no longer heeded.
Seolfer becomes uluer
Sunn
eimes (sons)
Naman
nam (name)
Hlaford'
lauerf (lord)
Heifbd
heafed(head)
Hunecan
mimeces (monks)
Wif
wifes
Laga
lacea (lakes)
We saw before that the old hv* became huga» ; it
3 now hiuei, our houses. There is a oarioas instance
■ Here the NoithsFD k beginB to replace die Old Bi
' The A before a liquid now begins to drop, ia the approved
Anglian fashion.
146
Old and Middle English.
of the way in which Nouua become Prepositione to
be ibimd in the year 1129 ; we read he \\i half ^a
muntet, ' on this side the monDtaina.' Here we h^ve
the last word in the Accnsative, and not in the Oeai-
tive ; after this, a Preposition might easily be fonned
&oni beside, like behind or before. Bather earlier, in
the year 1123, on an half him may be seen ; we ahoald
now say, ' on one side of him.' The old gvnfre (dex-
tera) was now giving way to right, just as the stiU
older teso (in Gothic, laihswo) had long before made
room for eunpre.
There is a change in Prononna; the AccuBative hi
(illam) is seen as hire (her) in the aoconnt of the year
1127. The Neuter Relative fa?t is no longer confined to
the Neuter Singalar antecedent, bnt follows Plurals, jnst
aawe use it; thus in the forged Charter of the year 656
we find ealh pa fimj f. ie wit. In the forged Charter
inserted in the year 675, swa hwylc swa (quicnnque) ia
pared down to hteilc pe ; a great cbange. jSIc (qnisque)
becomes Uea, which still lingers in Scotland. We find
al instead of the old Genitive Plural ealra (omnium).
The old English Definite Article se, seo, ptBt, becomes
hopeleasly confused in its cases and genders ; we are not
far from the adoption of Ihe to do duty for them all.
The Verb, as written at Peterlxirough in Henry the
First's day, is wonderfully changed from what it was in
the Confessor's time.
OM£VwA-
Peta-boroui/h.
Luflge
Lufe (love)
Lufdde
luuede (laved)
Sceolde
scolde (ahould)
Middle English: Ctdtivation.
OidEnglUh.
PeterborouffA.
Eom
Am
Be6
be(«(}
BeoS
be(<ni7i<)
Wseg
YniS
renneth (cunit)
Bleowoa
blewen (blew)
Heald
held
HAbInn'
Wan (hBve)
The Infinitire now drops tbe n, as in the Northnm-
brian Gospels. In Pope Agatho's foiled Charter of 675,
we find ' ie wUle segge,' I will saj : this should have heen
seegati. The ge, prefixed to the Past Participle, now
drops altogether in the Danelagh ; the Danes, having
nothing of the kind, forced their maimed Participle upon
na. Still, the ge, slightly altered, is fonnd to this
day in shires where the Danes never settled. Thns, in
Dorset and Somereet they say, 'I have a-heard,' the old
gek'/Tiie. One Past Participle, gehateii, still lingered on
in the Midland for fonrscore years after the paring down
of all its brethren. No Teutonic country wag fonder of
this ge in old times than Southern England.
Bat we now come to the great change of all in Verbs,
the Shibboleth which is the sure mark of a Midland
dialect. The Old English Present Plural of Verbs ended
in afi, as we h^roA, gS hyraS, hi hijraS. Some have
thought that, after the common English fashion, an »
which nsed to follow the a, has heen here cast out. Bnt
the peasants in some of our shires may bare kept the
older iorm A^mnS ; as we find the peasants on the Rhine
using three difibrent forms of the Present Plural ; to
148 Old and Middle English.
wit, liebent, li^tet, Knd liebfn.^ Beaiing this parallel case
in mind, we can understand how the Present Plnral of
the Mercian Banelan^h came to end in en and not in atS.
The Peterborongh Chronicle, in Henry the First's reign,
nses Itt/gefi, haven, for the Plnral of the Present of Verbs;
wo even find lin for Uggen. This ia the Midland form,
of which we have already seen an instance in the Hnsh-
worth Gospels. The Soathern form would be liggeth,
hnhhelk ; a slight alteration of the Old English. The
Northern form, spoken beyond the Hnmber, wonld he
li'gges, havet, aa we saw in the Northnmbrian Gospels.
Another Shibboleth of Enp;lish dialects ia the Active
Participle. Tn the North thia ended in ande, the Danish
form. In the Midland it retained the eiuk, the Old
English form, thongh in Lincolnshire and Eaafc Anglia
this was often supplanted by the Danijih iwfe. In the
South, it ended in in'le, as we shall soon see. To take an
example, we etand gtnging.
North. — ^We standee aingande.
Midland. — ^We standen sinijende.
South. — We standeth singinde.
This Midland form of the Present Plnral is still alive
in Lancashire. The Southern form ia kept in the famons
Winchester motto, ' Manners maketh Man.'
A strange idiom of the English Verb is seen in the
foiled Charter of 656, i^ancod jowr^S it fon cBlmihtif ' be it
thanked to the Almighty ;' hence comes onr modern he
hanged to Aim, and snch like, where we form new Im-
personal Verbs. In the year 1123 stands hit timt don
' Gsmftt'B Fieaj/s, p. 142.
Middle English: CtdHvaHon. 149
Smie jjope to tinderHanden ; ' the Pope was made to un-
deretand;' hence comes, 'I do ;od to wit.' In 1127
stands the Beflexive, he be^okie him. The hesitating
Pi£r mihte beii stands in the same year for )>ter tixeroit.
Some new Adverbs are seen ; for hw'i in the forged
Charter of 666 is the forerunner of our wherefore ; whyfor
remains in some dialecte. The old for pom (igitor) is
now changed into ^terfore ; aona becomes ton (soon).
The old (tti (III had formerly meant ' in one body,' or
* continually ;' in the year 1122 it gets the new sense
' at once ;' in the Soath it took the form of anon, and is
not yet dead. la Wi'.t, a Pope dies, and ler he watre wel
ded, two new Popes are chosen ; here -wel is used mnch
as in the old well niyh. The Middle English delighta
in adding et to old Adverbs ; (en^ and tvmoa now be-
comes cenee (once) and Iwigee (twice).
As to Prepositions, we 6eefi/r to employed in a new
sense in the year 1127 ; this follows a Scandinavian
and French constrnction ; we read, ee kyng hit didefor
to havene silbe, ' the king did it to have peace.' Hence
the well-known ' What went ye ont for to see ? ' We
Buppresa the strengthening for in our modem speech.
This for now geta a new sense, tliat of enim j here a Pre-
position becomes a Conjunction by dropping the pam or
]>at that nsed to follow. In the year 1123, we read that
' it did not last, for the bishop was against it ;' forfav
fe vonld have been nsed earlier, .^r also is nsed for cer
)>um. Onr abvtan (abont) was now encroaching on the
old ymbe ; for in the forged Charter of 656, the phrase
is used ' about three miles to a hamlet.'
Uany words common to ns and to onr brethren on
1 go Old and Middle English.
the mainlaiid, live on in the moaths of the common folk
for hnndrede of years ere they can win their way into
booke.' Thna Mr. Tennyson pats into the month of bis
Inncolnahire farmer the word fruizorti-cloci for a certain
insect. No ench word as clock cao be found in the
Anglo-Saxon dictionaries, though it is tanked on by onr
peasantry \a many other anhstautives, to stand for
varions insects. Bat on taming to an Old German
gloss of wondrons a^, we find ' cAuZ«^A, acarabmis.' *
We shall meet many other English words, akin to the
Dutch and High German, which were not set down in
writing antnl the Twelfth, Thirteenth, and Fourteenth
Centuries, when these words replaced others that are
found in the Anglo-Saxon dictionaiy. Some of the
strangers are also lised by Danish writers ; it is thos
often bard to tell whether a Teutonic word came to
England with Hengist in the Fifth Centoiy or with
Hnbba in the Ninth Oentoiy. Perhape the safest dis-
tinction is to keep in mind the Great Sondering Line ;
in the case of strajige Teatonic words that crop np 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 tvyrre, our vjar ; this reminds
OB of the Old Dutch werreiti in Latin, militare. In
1124, the new form hicrlte, our barley, replaces the old
here, which still lingers in Scotland. Cnawleae (acknow-
ledge) is seen for the first time in a forgery inserted in
the account of the year 963. As might be expected,
> Compara the Lot LHtio taliare (secnre), nnffulgru {uper), snd
nunj such Tords, Thicb no good classic writer vonid emploj.
' See Oaraett't Guayi, p. 68.
Middle English : Ctdtivation. 151
ScandioaviaD words, long nsed by the Dano- Anglian
peasaatiy, were creeping into written English prose.
The Danish haihe (ambo) drove ont the Old English ha
and inUu. In the foiled Charter inserted in the annals
of 656, we read of the hamlet Grsatecroa ; the last ejlla-
ble of this comes from the Norse hro»», and it was this
word, not the French croice, that supplanted our Old
English rod (rood). In 1128, we find the phrase, ' {>nrh
his micele viiles;' this new word, which is still in onr ,
months, comes from the Scandinavian vcela (decipere).
In 1131, we see ' )>a wies tenn pieces ; ' the snhstantiTe
is from the Scaudinavian ptogr; English is the only
Tentonic tongue that of old lacked this synonym for
aratmm ; the tme old tulh still lingers in Dorset. Tha
Scandinavian fra replaces the Old English from ; and
we still say, ' U> and fro.' Where an older writer
would have written ' on Be norS half,' the Peterborongh
Chronicler for 1131 changes on into 0; we have already
seen arikt ; and we may still write either ashore or on
ihore. The old English eeofopa had long been written
giofund in Yorkshire ; it is now written seovefende
(seventh) in the Midland ; onr present form of the word
is a componnd of Old English and Scandinavian. The
letter g was, as a general mle, being thrown out in the
Midland ; bnt so strong was the Danish influence, that
the first letter of their Perfect gekk (ivit) was set before
the Old English synonym eode, and gaed (so well known
In the Scotch Lowlands) is the result. The verb for-gede
may be seen in the year 1129. This did not come to
the South of the Great Sundering Line.
One effect of the mingling of Danes and Englishmen
152 Old and Middle English.
was the Bimplifying of oar constrDction of aenteoicee,
which, had hitherto been cumbroaa ; the Verb had oftKi
come last, after the case governed by it. This was sow
altered ; about the yeur 1125 the Peterborongb Engliab
becomea most eaey in coustruction. Oar toBgoe was,
in this respect at least, to rise far above her High
Gemutn sister.
EAST MIDLAND DIALECT OF 1120.
Extracts from a forged Peterborough Charter (in-
serted in the year 656) : —
Da seonde se kyniug lefter J-one abbode |iet he leaes-
llien eent the kitiy after the abbot t&ai ht ijwdili/
telice Bcolde to bim camon. and he ewa dyde. £)a cweed
tiauid come to did quoth
Ee kyning to )>an abbode. La leof Snxnlf. ic hane geseoud
Lo, loved I have seat
secgfm for bni. Min broSor Peada and min leone &eond
<i(^ why brother loved friend
Oswi ougonnen an mynstre Criste to ]oue and Saacte
began mitultr lo ChrwCt glory
Petre. Oo min brojier is faren of ])isBe line, swa swa Crist
Bui goaefrom li/e as
wolde. Oc ic wile fe gebidden. la leone freond. fat hii
^rayto they
wirce feaostlice on ]iere werce, and ic fe wile finden
may work diligeniiy the
\ srto gold end silner. land and ahte. and al peb fcerte
Middle Eitglish: Cultivation.
Swa he spedde awa him Crist hnSe. swa ]iet in fenna
& m granitd few
geare weee )>at mjnstre gare. Da ])a kyning heorda |>Eet
y«i» ready. Wken heati
gesecgOB. )>a wterd 8e swiSe glted. beot aeonden Eeond
said vxa he right glad he hade Oiroagh
al hi Jieode tetter alie 1
hii ptopU
(>e Gode Innedon. pe.t lii Bcotdon to him cnmene. and
tiat come
Beotte ^e. Am hwonne man ecolde ]>at myostre gebalegon.
let day when , haiioiii
And ic bidde ealie )>a )>a cefter me cnmen. heon hi mine
aU those thai be they
Bnnes. beon hi mine bre8re. onper kyningas |ia eaffer me
cumen. |>at nre gjfe mote atandeu. awa awa hi willen
our gift may
been delnimeode on |)a ece lif. and Bwa swa hi wilen
fartaktre in the eternal
letbeorstaD pet ece wite. Swa hwa swa nre gife onjier
escape jmniehnieat. Whosoever
opre godene manne gyfe waneiaS, wansle him aeo
oj other good mm teaseas tie
heofenlice iateward on heofenrice. And awa hwa awa
heavenly galeteard hiaven-kiiigdom
hit eceK. ece him Beo heofenlice iateward on heofenrice.
m. and )>a (tat gewriten
154 Old and Middle English.
mid here fingre on Crifites mele. and ietten mid here
^Bith thtir crou agreed
tnnge. . Des writ wsea gewriton sfter nre.
Drihtnes acennedneBBe DGLXIIII. Jies kpiiiigfta
Zonff Unk
IX gear. Leidon |>a Oodes cnrs. and ealre haJgane care.
Thfy laid Ihtn lairUlf
and al cristene folces. fe ani fing nndjde fat faar w»s
gedon, swa beo hit eeiiS alle. Amen.
THE CONTRAST TO THE EAST MIDLAND.
(About A.». 1120.J
Ure hlaford almihti; God wile and ns hot Jiat we hine
Infie. and of him smaje and epece. naht him to mede ao -^
hus to freme and to fnltome. for liim Bei;o alle hiscefte.
. . . Oif nonmanneltohtof Gode. nonnespoceof him.
Gif non of him tie spece. non hine se lufede. Gif noa
hine no Infede. non to him ne come, ne delende. nere of
his eiidineBse. nof his merhCe. Hit is wel swete of him
to specene. J>enche jie lelc word of him awete. al awa an
hani tiar felle ape jinre hieiie. Heo is hefone liht and
eorCe brihtuesae. loftes leom. and all hiscefte ji'^'^^''^
anglene blisee. and mancenne hiht and hope, richtwisen
Btrenhct>e. and niedfnlle froner.'
■ Old Engliih Botailiei, edited hy Dr, Hottib (Sarlj Eagliali Text
Scwirty). p. 217. These goon to p. 245. The pawBge I giToaboTO
IB an iHginal one of the trauBcriber's. irritten long after SMnii
Middle English: Cultivation. 155
Page 219. Seraphim frtrntntfe oSer ajilielend.
God l^t hi habben d;eii cAir/i, to ehiesefii.
„ 221. Forging )>a ones tredwes westm.
„ 235. He cwet a wander worder.
,, 223. pa werftn foSe deadlice.
„ 225. Ic wille halden })e and ii wif.
Ic wille aeitan n» wed (covenant).
„ 233. He ns forSteh al»t is cyldam,.
'?tA%T, of warn we siellie habbe^S.
„ 235. B&m of hire ogen, innoC.
Qif ic &der ham.,
Wer laJSieres fdoclie.
,, 239. Win s^ie, wic drednees wurC.
Bime aUe longe ae ic lefie.
Thia Sonthem English, as anyone may see, is far more
archaic than the dialect of Peterborough, After the year
1000, .^Urio had written many homiliea in the Engliah of
his day, and these were popular in our land long after
his deatit. A clean sweep, it is true, was made of a Latin
sentence of his, wherein he npholda the old Tentonio idea
of the Enchariflt, and overturns the newfangled Tran.
Bubatantiation, a doctrine of which Lanfranc, seventy
yeara lat«r, was the great champion iu England.' But
otherwise .^Ifrio's teaching was thought sonnd, and hia
homilies were more than once turned into the corrupt
English of succeeding centuries. We have one of these
versions, drawn np about the time of the foi^d Peter-
borough Charters ; this is headed by the extract given
■ See Faber'a DiffcuUia of Romanum (Third Edition, p. 2S0) as
to eraram made in Mfiie'e text b^ theologiniw of a lat«t age.
156 Old afid Middle English.
above. The East Midland, with its stem contractions,
is like the Attic of Thncydides ; 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 &r to the South of the Mer-
cian Danelagh, holds fairly well by the Old English
forms ; thus, instead of the Peterborough t$6, we find the
older BBy Bi^ \ai ; aud we sometimes meet with the old
Dative Plural in -wm, though the old Genitive is often
replaced by the form with 0/, 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/er (ignis) and gdi (scelus) point to
some shire near Kent. The combination ie, used by
Eang Alfred, is here found ; for chiesen (eligere), hieiri
(cor), n'e^i (pluvia), and hiemi (esse), with many similar
words, occur ; this ie does not appear later, except in Kent
and Essex. We may perhaps pitch upon London as the
place where these Homilies were compiled ; we know that
many Danes were settled in that city, drawn thither by
the same attraction that allured them to Havre and
Waterford long before King Canute's day. It would
seem that from this Danish settlement some litde clipping
and paring of English words must have resulted ; in the pre-
sent work we see the an of the Infinitive pared away, as
in come (venire), jte/^ (dare), write (scribere), do (facere),
ahide (manere). In other parts of the South, the old
ending of the Infinitive lingered on until Caxton's press,
and even later ; the poetic Earl of Surrey writes * I dare
well Bay&n.^ and there is an instance of the same form
thirty years later still in a common letter. The endings of
Middle English : Cultivation. 157
other ten^ss of the Verb are clipped ; we find (B&r loe g^
and wer (erant). Ab to this last Verb, I wonld remark
that we hare tamed the Singnlar nnmber w(e« into u»w,
the Plnral nnmber wowon into were ; the corruption of
the old diphthong is due, in the former coee to the North,
in the latter to the South. Another Rtrong token of
Danish inflnence ia in page 219 ; we there see not only
the Old English form tioSe (deoimns), bnt the Danish n
intruding into the word, as feon^ ; the Danish se/enfije
at p. 229 replaces the true Old English Ivartd teof<mtui.
The wordrc (lex) was dropping oat of nse ; bo the Danish
laga (oar law) is given as an explanation of the older
word.
New forms are found here which have already ap.
peared in the North, sacb as |>u aJiti (debes), btffie, hread,
for (enim), ^erfor, ano^er, *eiS5, anon, na fing, he fiaS iM
(he hath been), had, he icerefe, me (man), /or to, abSo (in
Gothic ibukai, onr abaclc) ; in the is shortened into iSe.
Shakspeare has ' digged i' the dark.' English dislikes n
coming before a th, and long before this time had turned
the old Aryan dimta or tontha into (08, onr tootA. Siocer is
made to do daty for a Belatire as in the North; in
p. 241 we read of ' ]>e fnnte loer (nbi) he ifnlled his.' Of
is used most freely instead of the old Genitive. The
Northern combination et is foond, as in peigne and et^Ser;
we have not very often kept this.'
I have hitherto spoken of Danish and Northern in-
' We k«ep the true old ionnd of ri to words Hks eight ; bnt
^ier is hopelenBtj degraded ; it ia samrtimeH given ns a pnzzle in
proanndation, irheChaT the n bsrs should be Bonnded like the Ger-
man eica the French J. Onr at presaires the tme old sonnd.
15S Old and Middle English.
fiuence, as seen in these Homilies, and as bearing upon
the question of the place where they were written. - I
now mark other new letters and forms, here to be seen.
The old (B was corrupted into a or e ; instead of waster
we find both water and water. The diphthong sometimes
became ai or e; ; we see both mai and ine^ for the old mceg
(possum) ; cet (manducavit) becomes oeai ; on the other
hand, Ic^dde (duxit) becomes ledde. The a was sometimes
turned into e, for J)e5 (the Latin hi) replaces fas ; the y
sometimes became e (a mark of the South East), for we
find evyl cund hedeley instead of the old yfd and bydel ;
King Alfred's te appears once more, and was used hence-
forward in Kent and Essex ; we here see chiese (p. 114)
for ceosan. We find a change that is for ages the sure
mark of a Southern dialect ; namely, the turning of i or
y into u. Thus cudc, mycele^ and awvpen ^ here become
cwuce^ mticele, and swu^en. This change has not greatly
affected our Standard English, except that we use the
Southern much and such instead of the old my eel and
stvylc. In Anglo-Saxon dictionaries we often find two
sets of forms for one word ; as wiht, wuht^ hyng, burug,
higan, hugan ; it may be that this difference of vowels, if
carefdlly searched out, would help to fix the shire where
the works in question were compiled. The vowel i is
found to the North, the vowel u to the South, of the
Great Sundering Line; it is strange that these are
replaced by e near Shrewsbury and also near London.
It is curious to mark in Stratmann's Dictionary the three
forms taken in various shires by words like cim, fur,
Bunne, guLt
^ This old "word survives among cricketers only, who make good
Middle English : Cultivation. 159
In tbese Homilies we see ieriefef, ixwine, and meZ«fa-
««nl; the first e io each of these words is something
new in the Sonth, and we still keep the sound of this a in
ieriel (bmial), and also the sound of the old i in )>ri and in
(three and see). We farther find o replaced b; u, for ^ us
(ad nos) may he seen, #hioh tu we still pronounce as it is
written in these Honulies. No English word has under-
gone more changes than tcedwicitt in its progress to onr
present show ; we here see eeeawode become acewede
(p. 227) ; eoio is seen as ^eu. There isa tendency to drop
the vowel altogether at the end of the Weak Participle
PassiTe ; gelcefod becomes ^elifd, almost as we pronoance
left now.
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, ncn, ogen (own), and haXigost, for the old mar,
lang, nan, dgeti, and hdiig gaet. Moreover, as we learn
&om the Conqneror's English Charter to London, the
great city was the abode of a lai^ French-speaking
population. From these men (Becket's father was one
of them), it seems likely that their Euglish fellow-sab-
jects learned to torn the hard c into the soft cA ; ceoian
and nee into chiegen and riehe. Long before this time,
the French etutel bad become ck<uteV The ch comee
into other parts of the word ; moehe, a form long peooliar
to the London neighbonrhood, appears as well as ntuoele.
' The FraDcb omit (BchoU] appears in thiju EomiUei (p. 213)
i6o Old aiid Middle English.
The cbanges of the a and the c, most sparinglj found as
yet, are the two main cormptions that our Standard
English has borrowed from the South* There is another
sound of ch, found here, as at Peterborough, in words
like hwrclt^ richtuns, and lichie ; the Old and New are
mingled in ^eworhcte ; this ch wh^ following vowels tiook
the hard sound, which it still keeps in the Scotch Low-
lands. The A is of near kin to c ; it is here often wrongly
used, or dropped at the beginning of words; we see
wa for hwa, wic for hwylc^ ham (sum) for am ; wot (quid)
has held its ground in London till this day. Let us
hope that speakers of good English will never drop the
sound of % in hwmt^ hwat. The g undergoes change, as
at Peterborough; genoh and agSn become irvnoh and
a^Snes ; we also see a^eiS (debemus) and modinesse. The
Peterborough iwiges (bis) has become ivnes ; this es was
to be constantly added on to words for the next 140
years ; aySnes^ as I said before, replaces agSn, The g is
softened into y or i, especially at the beginning of Past
Participles. The letter 3 appears to replace the old hard
g^ and it lasted for 350 years ; we see jfi and %ev/r for the
old ge and eotoer. This new letter adds to our store of
words ; we may talk both of a guild and of the yield of
fields, both words comijig from the old gildcm (solvere).
There is a curious interchange of letters in his acemiende
(generatio) ; this last word stands for the old verbal
noun acennung. Fourscore years later the aforesaid
interchange of g and d was to work a balef al effect upon
the old Active Participle. The n also is much clipped;
on or an is often pared down into a, and our shortened
Indefinite Article is now first found ; mm and yin are
Middle English: Cultivation. i6i
cnt down into mi and H\ the old myimi&n beoomes mel-
sUnMmi (p. 241) ; alter this the miln, still found in the
ScottdshLovrlftDdB, became mullein Oloacestershiro, aboat
1300. We have still both MUner and Miller as proper
names. The/iBolao castont; Aa&(habet)replaceB Aib/U;
there is alBO had. But no word underwent so maoh clipp-
ing as eaUvM ; it is here cot down into alae, and then into
u, tiie speediest of all onr changes. We find in these
Homilies forms like ahe long ee and alse longe as ; the w
is thrown out of iwa, for we read la fid (p. 233). The
I is moreoTer thrown out in siiyle, htoylc, and mycelt
which now become gwiea, vrice, and moehe; further
changes were to come forty years later. The letter » is
dropped at the end of the word, for hyrgels (sepnlchmm)
becomes herkl, whence comes our burial.
On turning from the changes in sound to the changes
in the words themselree, we find that the », with
which many Nonns formerly ended, is tnmed into
en; eildru becomes eyldren. The Sonth of England,
unlike the North, always loved the Plural in en, of which
the Oermans are so fond. Satrede is found for the first
time, as well as hate. In page 231 the Substantive ia
dropped altogether after the Adjective, ^at hi aUe be pe
Idtit to pa de^ie per were ; here time would in former days
have followed Idtst ; we should now say, ' at the latest.'
The whole sentence quoted is worth study ; we still say
'yon must be there to the day,' a very old usage of to.
The of is used more freely than ever j we see not only
the old hit goites ^e, but the new giefof hit gatte (the
gift of his Spirit) ; there is also w-er of (sure of), whera
l62 Old and Middle English,
the of expresses the Latin de (anent) ; this sicefr had not
appeared since Alfred's time.
A startling change has taken place in Prononns ; we
now find the first nse of one of onr New English Rela-
tives. "Rwa and ^tr^Zc had never been so employed of
yore ; they answered to the Latin quis^ not t^o qyii ; bat
our tongue had now come under French influence. As
yet, the Genitive and Dative only of liwdi^y not the Nomina-
tive, are used in the Relative sense. We saw before that
Iwoad in Old English answers to aliquid ; we now see it
nsed for qua . . . qtm, the Romance que . . . que ; in
page 237, we read, that they hed^ icorrve^ watfrend^ wat
fd. In the year 1300 we shall meet with a further step
in the development of this what Enough is now followed
by the Oerundial Infinitive ; oelc had innoh to donne
(p. 239).
There are some changes in the Verb ; we see the
true Southern Shibboleth, the Active Participle ending
in inde, as himind for the old himende. Still, so early
as the year 1000, we find utgangynde in St. Matt. iz. 31.
Another mark of the South is the clipping the n at the
end of Past Participles ; we here find icome (ventum),
j,ern6we (notum), and others, such as ihi for gewesen.
This in a short time prevailed all over Southern England;
and we may still hear ' it is broke,' and such like, as
I have said before. In these Homilies we find come
(venerunt), come (venire), and icome (ventum), all
three. This is a specimen of Danish clipping. The
sentence nmcede hine hli^e (p. 233) shows the con-
struction that led to our make merry. The verb ddn is
used for ponere ; don hine into ^iestemess is in p. 289.
Middle English: Cultivation. 163
In the older Engliah, ' to live life ' may be foand ; we
now further Bee, dea^ stoelten.
One change, here seen very clearly, is so strange that
I mast retam to it. An Old English word sometimes,
in this period of Middle English, is split up into two or
three different forms, each with its own meaning. Thns,
we here find ealtwa hecoming the parent, not only of
■dUo (etiam), bat of ag (iit). Chancer sometimes n sea
both to and as for the Latin ul in the same sentence.
This splitting is called bi/urcatioa or two-pronging, Thns
we find &n splitting tip into one and a, a process
often repeated. Some of the grammars, which delnde
the yonth of England, still tell ns that Uie article a
becomes on before a consonant !
A few lines on The Grave, printed by Mr. Thorpe in
bis'Analecta Anglo -Saxonica,' p. 142, seem to belong
to this time. Here we find for the first time in Eng-
lish the word lah or lage (hnmilis): 'Hit biS nnheh
and lak ; te hele>wagee beoS lage' The ScandinaTian
and Frisian have words akin to this. Fonrscore years
later, we find the verb to laj,}ie>m (to lower) ; and almost
two hundred years further on, we light on hi 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 neighboarhood of Bntland. The Peterborongh
Chronicle seems to have been laid aside for many years
164 Old and Middle English,
after 1131. England was at this time groaning nnder
some of the worst sorrows she has ever known ; we
haye come to the nineteen winters when Stephen was
King. As soon as these evil days were over, and
England had began her happy conrse (this has lasted,
with but few checks, for more than seven hundred
years ^), the Peterboroagh monks went on with their
Chronicle. Their language was becoming more and
more corrapt; bat the picture they set before us of
King Stephen's reign 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. We here find forms that remind us of
the North, such as vma 9ua (quicunque) ; we still pro-
nounce the Uy though we write 0, in w7u> ; all replaces the
former eaM ; k is found instead of c, as smoke and snake.
From the South came forms such as the clipped Infinitive,
cumm^ sei ; also onoh (satis), a3ene«, alse, hi namm ; get
(gotten) ; in these two last the inflection is gone. The h is
clipped, for wile and it replace hwUe and hit ; the Southern
0 encroaches upon a, for more, ormey replace the old mdr,
d/n ; this last is sometimes cut down into a. The n is
clipped: there is both nan treuthe and najustise. Still
the Midland Participle in end is kept, as ridend. Enoughy
as in the South, is followed by the Qerundial Infinitive.
The old eow is changed into eu and eo ; for we see both
treuthe and treothe for treotS, towards the beginning of
the year 1137. We still keep both truth and troth.
' Even our few ciTil wars haye commonly in the end farthered
the good estate of the realm.
Middle English : Cultivation. 165
■
As to new combinations of Vowels : cs is often re-
placed by a ; as ^ hare, he was, he spac ; onale]^ becomes
an «lep, not far from onr asleep ; eo becomes u, for aculde
{fihonld) replaces sceolde ; it becomes 6, as in held
(tennit). Nea/ro is turned into nareu. Tbe combina-
tion ou is seen, which was in the end to encroach so
much npon the old u, as is now seen in owr (ur),
house (hns), and many snch. We now find Olcnicestre,
naU^kr, Poitou, Angou, following the ou^Ser (o^er) of
1120 ; the extended use of this ou must be due to France.
The true East Midland system of contraction is seen in
the French word castles, written instead of castelas.
There is a change in Consonants. The old ic (ego)
is now i ; on the other hand, c is inserted, for seo (ilia)
becomes sees (she) ; a most curious addition. In the
iiccount of the year 1138 we see a combination of letters,
most common now in our speech ; itiw iMTi'ed* ^supplants
g and h ; as sloghen (they slew). This soon preyailed
all oyer the East of England from London to York-
.shire. The g is sometimes thrown out in the middle of a
word; Bristowe (Bristol), and lien, replace Bricgstow and
Uggen ; this g sometimes yields to ^ or z, as in the new
mrUcBrd and iaf (dedit). The letter h is inserted in tuman,
which becomes ywribes ; the foreign gu sometimes replaces
the home-bom cu7, as in quarteme ; th is often found for
ihe good old ]> and t$. A to is cast out, when suster is
written for svouster (soror).
As to Substantives : nefom becomes neves; the Irish
peasantry still keep this Teutonic form, newies, rejecting
our French-bom word nephews. The Dative in um is
«adly mauled; hi the fet replaces hi fotum; we also see
1 66 Old and Middle English,
midfcBu men. The Dative and Accasative are hopelessly^
confused ; in the year 1132, we read, iaf ^oet dbhotrice arv
^rior ; in 1135, pais. he maJcede men.
In Verbs : ecm and cuthe are used freely in the sense
of the old may and might, just as Tyndale was to
employ them later. In 1132, we read, hs dide him
faren (he made him fare) ; in the old time, the
Gbrund with to would have been used after dide, and
not this Infinitive. In the beginning of 1140, we read,
he iaf him alse he dide aUe oUre ; this is a continuation of
the idiom employed long before by King Alfred. At the
end of the year 1140 is found, he helde him for fader
a/nd he him for swne ; here the verb is left out, which
should stand between the seventh and eighth words ;
we catch a glimpse of the future freedom of construction
in the New English. The transitive hon is a Strong
verb, and its rightful Perfect is heyig ; in the year 1137
this Perfect is confused with the intransitive henged
(hanged) ; the jumbling of these two Perfects is often
found in our day.
The word cefre (semper) is prefixed to celcy which last
already contained within itself d, another form of semper;
CBvric (every) is the result; a hint of this word has
appeared before. But this newfangled addition ever
was usually to come at the end of words. The word at
is also often here prefixed to other words, as alsuilc
als, and this became a common practice later. We have
before met with * some of the scribes ; ' we now read of
m^mi of ]>d casUes.
What was before written ealge<tdor (omnino) now
becomes aUegoedere, A new phrase, nevre mare, is found ;
Middle Englisk : Cultivation. 167
here more ia applied to express time. The word efaonet,
with the usual adverbial e» at the end, is a new word
which lasted many hundred yeara in Eagland as efisoons.
A new constractioii of Prepositions is seen in candlet
to aten hi. We have before seen the Relative omitted,
coming before a Gerandial Infinitive (see page 71), bat
we now fnrther see, besides the omission of the Relative,
the Preposition made the laut word in the sentence.
This gives wonderful freedom to onr oonsimction of
Bentences; Orrmin, forty years later, wa^ often to imitate
tiiis idiom, which seema to be Danish.
The noht (non), which had already been ased with
verbs instead of the old ne, is now seen once more, as in
1132, was it noht Icmg, We find to )Ke( (nsqne ad) nsed ;
and also the AngUan and Danish til, which is now no
longer followed by [xet ; til hi iafen up comes at the be-
ginning of 1137 ; thoB til imitated the new constmction
of fcrr, and was soon to make an end of the Old English
oS pai (osqae). ...
The old fe hwite pe lasted down to 1300 in Glonces-
tershire, bnt it is pared down at Peterborongh ; for we
read vtUe Stephne wot kingi thns an old substantive ia
made to express the Latin dum.
More Danish forms crop np ; we find cyreeutrd (kirk-
yard) formed on the Danish pattern, instead of the Old
English cin'cftme. When King Stephen lays hold of
Earl Randolph, he is said to act thrangh wicd rede.
This is the first appearance in onr island of the common
word wicked, a word derived by Mr. Wedgwood from
Lapland or Esthonia. The verb (afce ia employed in its
old Scandinavian sense. In that tongne, hann tok at
1 68 Old and Middle English.
yrhja means ' lie took (beg^) to work.' In the Chroni-
cle for 1135 we read David toe to weasien. A glance at
Gleasby's Icelandic Dictionaiy will show manj senses of
take, which are not found in Old English books, but
which are now common to England and to Iceland. In
1135 we see tocan pa oUre and helden her easiles (the
others took and held) ; this take replaced the old fang (a
verb that still lingers in Deyonshire) ; we hear that 'K'lTig
Henry 11. toe to pe rice.
There is a new word, scatter, akin to the Dutch
schetteren. King Stephen, we are told, in the year 1137,
had treasure, but scatered sotlice, that is * dispersed it like
a fool.*
EAST MIDLAND DIALECT OF 1100.
Extract from the Peterborough Chronicle for the
year 1137, compiled about twenty years later.
pa the suikes undergeston peX he milde man was and
When traitors understood
softe and god and na iustise ne dide. po, diden hi alle
ffood no then they
wunder. Hi hadden him manred maked and athes
homage made oaths
suoren. ac hi nan treuthe ne heolden. alle hi wssron for-
Imt held
sworen. and here treothes f orloren. for ®uric rice .man
forfeited every mighty
his castles makede and agsenes him heolden and fylden
against
fe land ful of castles. Hi suencten suyf$e ]>a uurecce
oppressed sore wreteked
Middle English: estivation. 169
men of )>e land mid cafitelweorces. pa ]>e castles naaren
itamen lii ^a men pe hi irenden )»at ani god hefden. bathe
fA)l f Ae^ thoagH property had
be nihtes and be dieies. carlmen and wimmen, and diden
nntellendlice pining, for ne niuercn ntenre nan martyrs
muptakaH* torture no
4wa pined alee hi weron. He hedged ap bi the fet and
Of tjbjf
smoked heom mid tnl smoke, me henged bi Uie thnmbes.
foul
other bi the hefed. and hengen brjniges on her fet. Me
or htad lumg burning Ihmgt
-dide cnott«d atrenges abnton here halved, and aniTtben
liead tfvufttd
to )>at it gsde to ))e hgemes. Hi diden heom in qnar-
v>eiU braint prittut
t«me. )>ar nadres and snakes and pades trraron inne. and
w jers adden ieadi
drapen heom swa. Snme hi diden in cmcet hns. pttt is
JtiBad Some honM
^e ))e man Jierinne. fat
] hadden onoh to beron onne, pat was sua maced.
I/O Old and Middle EnglisJi
]>at is feostned to an beom. and diden an scsdrp iren abnton
)>a mannes {rote and his hals. )>at he ne myhte nowider-
neck tfioay
wardes ne sitten ne lien ne slepen. oc basron al )>at iren.
(^Mi0c<tofi li» but
Mani )>nsen hi drapen mid hnngssr. I ne canne i ne-
thausande
mai tellen alle ]>e wundes. ne alle fe pines ^at hi diden
wrecce men on fis land, and p&t lastede ]>a XIX. wiutre
wile Stephne was king, and eevre it was nnerse and
foorse
nnerse. • « .
1154. — On fis gSBT W89rd f e king Steph. ded. and be-
was
byried fer his wif and his snne W89ron bebyried SBt
Fanresfeld. ^eei minstre hi makeden. pa )>e king was
ded. "Sa was fe eorl beionde S89. and ne dnrste nan man
don o)>er bnte god. for )>e micel eie of him,
atoe
The year 1135. Micel ping scnlde cumm.
JSuric man sone rsBvede. .
W^ia sua bare his byrthen. .
THE CONTRAST TO THE EAST MIDLAND.
(About 1160.)!
Ure feder ))et in heouene is^
)>et is al 8ot$ ful iwis.
weo moten to ]>eos weordes iseon.
pet to line and to saule gode beon.
1 Old English Homilies, First Series (Early English Text Society)^
p. 56.
Middle English: Cultivation.
\%t weo beon swa his eunes iborene.
)>et he beo feder fmd we bim icwene.
f«t we dos alle his ibeden.
sod hu nilla for to reden.
Loke weo ns wiS bini miedon
liurh beelzebubcB ewikedom
he haueS to ub mucbel niS.
atle ]n deiee of ura riS.
abuten us he is for to bleDcben.
Mid alle his mihto be wule us sweachei
Gif we leomiS godes laie.
J«DQe of])uncheS hit him aare.
Bute we bileuen uie ufele iwiine.
Ne )cepe8 be noht |«t we beon sune.
Gif we clepieff bine feder fenne.
&I pet is us to lutel wunne.
bolde we godes Isje.
pet we habbeS of hia anje.
Pa^ 75. lo ilene in god pe fede(r) almihti. ecnp-
pende and wetdende of heoneoe and of orSe and of alle
iscefte. and ich ilene on pe helende crist. his enlepi sane,
ore lanerd. he is ihaten heleode for he moacnn helede of
pan depliche atier. pet pe aide deonel blon on adam and
on eae and on al heora ofsprinke. swa pet heore fif-&Id&
mihto horn wes al binnmen. pet is hore lost, here loking.
hore blawing. bore smelling, heore feling wes al iattret.
Page 58. Is afered Xuie peo eorfie hire trakie.
63. For pe sanle of him is forloren.
73. Eeh mon Iiabbe mot.
„ Heo scolen heore iileita cnnoen . .
83. De snnnfi tckin^ per pnrh . .
„ Ho nimeS al mouch.
172 Old and Middle English,
Pag^ 127. Mxichele mare Inae he scawede us.
„ 141. Der stod a ricM halae and a luft.
„ 145. Techd6 tlb bi hwiche weie.
„ 179. Were we ... . Bwa vnele hicauJUe.
„ 129. Him fuhfce hicumelic fet 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
Btill popular.' Having been compiled somewhere about
1160, the work stands about half-tvay between the Beo-
wulf 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 yolume are
many Homilies, which give us a good idea of the English
fipoken in the South at this time. The following are the
main points of difference between them and the HomOies
of Henry the First's time.
The old diphthong ob, beloved of our Others, was
being got rid of in the South ; it is here replaced by e,
•et, and ea ; Icewede becomes lewed (indoctus) ; cec/^er
becomes ei^er ; while scBy cBfrey Icsdan^ become sea^ eaver^
1 The English rimes, written before the Norman Conquest, must
have been nothing but an exercise of ingenuity : —
Flah mah flite'5,
Flan man hwite'S,
Burg soig bite's,
Bald aid «wite«,
WwBC-fjDC wri«a«.
This IS a long poem, printed by Conybeare, Anglo-Stuan Poetry,
p. zziii«
Middle English: Cultivation. 173
Ze(u2e». The maintenaiice of the ea, so often used by
US, is due to the Wessez shires ; they even changed the
Prench 'pais into j^eoce. The old combination ow^ sonnded
like the French ou, was also being altered ; this may haye
come from imitating French spelling. Onr word Stom
was spelt in Doomsday Book as SUm^ as I have already
said ; we now see eovo&r (yester) become towr. We also
find ttrew^ f^ewe^ hireudaKS, The sonndiou (prononnced as
in the name lUou)^ was a f ayourite one with onr fathers ;
but we may remark that, when it comes after r, we now
almost always soand it as if it was simply ou. The
beginning of this change may be seen in these Homilies ;
we find roij^e (our ruth) in page 157 ; this seems a com-
promise between the Old English hreow and the Danish
hry^, Trowe replaces treowe at page 69 ; and Jieov)
(color) becomes hou^ onr hue^ at page 83. This same
change is seen later in a Dorsetshire poem of 1240. We
find both the old sonnd hleu and the new sonnd liUm
(flayit). In page 85 is nowe (noyns), while newe occnrs
elsewhere ; people still sometimes talk of what they call
nooB. A is here changed into e, as }^€nne for yam/ne (tone).
It is still oftener changed into 0, a snre mark of the Sonth ;
we see among^ moWf one, hemoned (manned, page 23).
The most cnrions thing is the change of a into u;
at page 157 is fonnd vmme (yte mihi) ; while the
old wa is seen in the sentence before. The old yro-
wode (passiiB est) is now written prov/wede (page 17).
The tty replacing e and i, is always a token of the
shires to the Sonth of the Great Snndering Line.
This change comes yery often in the Homilies. We
here see ueh instead of the Midland ceilc or each\ and
174
Old and Middle English,
hlupeliehe for onr hlithely. The old eaw was now
written eu and ewe ; we find deu and ^ewe for the former
deaw and ]>6au;. In page 103 stands sleto^ (sloth) ; and
in page 107 comes slatt^ ; this a/u was now coming in,
and mnst have had the sound of the French ou; we
light npon hlcuuweny nauty and bicauhte. The old gylt
becomes guU in the South.
Old.
Neio.
H&s
Heste
Qeacj
Sceos (Bhoefl)
Legere
Lilijare (liar)
Sunnandffig
Sunedei
Feowert5a
Forth
Geolo
Jeluwe (yellow)
Handgeweoroe
Hondiwork
Seocnes
Sicness
Sly«
SlajetS (dayeth)
Wyl«
Welle«
The letter g interchanges with h, for geleafa here takes
its modem form hileve (belief) ; just as gelitlicm was to
become helittle ; the English Imperative geyc (ange) is
seen in Gk>thic as hiauk. The g is also softened, as we
«aw before, into ^ or y, and this rather later became w
in many cases. Sagu is here seen as sa^e ; we still have
the phrase ' I have said my say,* In page 35 esca replaces
<ixe. H is sometimes misnsed ; hester stands for Easier^
and alffoT half. At page 139 the Peterborough mveric
(quisque) is found in its new shape, efri ; the East Mid-
land corruptions were working down Southwards. The
earlier lengten becomes leinten^ our Lent; and hnute
•(nux) becomes fmte. The new French c is used like the
Middle English: Ctdtivation. 175
^Snglish « in tniice (mercy) and mt'fcten (miaereri).
Hitherto near (propins) had been the ComparatiTe of
rneo^ (prope) ; bnt we now see a form like ^ amZ neor
(fu' and near) at page 137 ; the neor points to Scan,
'dinavia.
France was now dictating much of onr pronunciation,
and many rowels iniiBt in this age have been sonnded
in the same way on either eide of the Channel. Gh
replaces e in coantleBs inatancea. Cerran (verti) now
becomes cherre ; we still say ' on the jar,' ' or ajar.
We also find ehirehe, leche, diche, teache, biteclie (beseech) .
Moreover, we see, in page 83, the two forms jci'iM and
Khine), the last being a new aonnd now creeping into
English. Sopopnlar did it become, that two hundred
yeam later we forced French verba in tr to take the sound,
as peritk. Bat the French cabne has become cabbage,
jnat as Perusia became Pemgia. The o]djUcas is now
aeen as fistes. The corrupt forms of 1120, gwite, wice,
and inoche, now became twvia, tvrwhe, and sulcTte (snch) ;
teiTcAe, and htoiehe ; muche and muchel. jEIc (qaisqne)
takes its modem shape of eleke and eclie; and an in
fastened on to it, thongh as yet very seldom. Thns, at
page 91, we read ' heo it delden elchun ; ' that is, to eocA
«ite. Latost (oltimns) is cat down to leite at page 143 ;
snd py ItBi ye is shortened into letle, which we still keep ;
this is like throwing out the quo in the Latin quominue.
Jf rqilaces the old gif ; the first is the Scandinavian ef,
the Ootfaic t6.
We sometimes find v sabstitated for / at the be-
' Pieltaitk »ill keep thij nlive for ever. Mr. JoBlice Stareleigh
csD hkTB bsen no atodent of Anglo-Saxon.
176 Old and Middle Ettglish.
ginning of a word, as veUe ifxf^U, page 81. It is the-
inflnenoe of the Sonth-Westem shirea that makes nft
write vusen and vat instead of the old _^awn and/sf ; it
is a wonder that we do not write voai iatfoa.
In &nbetantiTes, the coimption of Plurals goes on ^
v^ (mnlieres) becomes wifsB. The old endings were
dying ont, for in page 83 hcelend beoomes helore, our
healer.
We see a new Adjective in page 27, Qodfwrhi, onr
Qod-fearimg.
In Verbs, we sometimes find the Midland heon and
ItafoA, instead of the Soathem heoth (snnt), and hahben
(habent) ; this seems to show that these Homilies conld
not have been written £kf Sonth of the Great Sundering
Line ; it may be, at Oxford ; the Participle itwned
becomes itu/md at p^e 157, with the clipped soand that
we now use, except at chnrch. The Perfect ahte, not
the Present dge, stands for debet ; this had travelled to
the Sonth irom Yorlcshire. We liave the first hint of our
ado (at do) at page 77 ; vum mid me ne/de to dotme ;
< man had not to (at) do with me.' We see at page 71
a new idiom, pole im to ieteepen ; this wonld have been
eulier, 'snSer that we weep.' Again, at page 59,fu^el
lete he makede ; ' he made fowl lont (stoop) ; ' this would
havebeenearlier, 'faedidfowl tolout.' What was before
simply IcBt y(Bt yfel, is now let fet uvele beon ; we still
say ' let him be,' as well as ' let him alone.' There is a
new idiom in page 15 ; weren efierward miloe, ' were
after men^;' a construction strangely difierent from
the Latin pefebant. The most startling of all new idioms
come at page 11 ; we are there told that Moses bsted.
Middle English: Cultivation. 177
and ec Critt hit toalde hahben idon. In the older £iigliBh
wolde don mnfiti h&re stood for both faceret and feeitset ;
we now see the first attempt made at forming our usaal
Pluperfect SabjimctiTe. The new idiom did not become
common in England until 1290 ; the above sentence of
1160 seems Bomething bom out of doe time. It is a
French constmctioii, most alien to the old Teutonic.
Ah to PrononnB : we read eum of |re tede in page 133 ;
sum 0/ might hare been fallowed of old by a Floral, bat it
is now for the first time followed by a Singular. We have
seen the new Singolar Belative hvja nsed in the Homilies
of 1120 ; we now see the Plural of this, jeien pvrk htvam,
'gates through which' (page 153), and we find moreover
the neuter hwat employed for the first time in a Belative '
sense in Southern England ; Oodes toorde, for kwat (per
quod) }te seal vorsaken, &c. (page 81). We should now
say which, not what; bat it was a long time befbre this was
settled ; we may still say, ' what (quod) I did was this.'
Change is at work among the Adverbs. At page 35
we eee ic vmlde fein pinian, 'I woold tain pine;' here
the Adjective is nsed as an adverb, (libenter). At
p. 53, we find in two lines both the new alee feire aUe
and the older iwa gone se ; here the ewa. of right has no
business to be. OHerlicor now becomes olSer-weis (page
31). The Latin quum was of old Englished by pa or po,
more seldom by hmemie (qnando) ; bntin these Homilies
when often translates ^uunt, and three centuries later it
swept away its rivals altogether.
As to Prepositions : 0/ is in constant use, a sure mark
of the decay of Old English ; eaule of him is put for his
imd, simply to eke out a rime (hence came one for the
178 Old and Middle English.
life of me) ; the ofia sometimes used as an Adverb, with
a new spelling, u at page 29, $if )n'n hefet were ofe.
Here oar New English has split one old word into two
prongs, o/aad off. Moreover, we tarn this off into an
Adjective, the off hone, an off dny. Before this time, of
was net before the sobstantive, standing for material ; as
wrought of gold. Bat now this idiom is stretched farther ;
at page 123, we find he Tnakede ae freo of }ieotoaii ; ' he
made ns free inst«ad of onr being thralla.' At page 87,
ire see an earlj iustance otgo to; we read iwende Oodei
etigel to. We find op followed by another Preposition,
gfutwe up el Tiitne ckinne, ' snow np to my chin.' At (ad)
and to ore always interchanging ; at page 113 comes he
wio&ea Iwa to an, ' he maketh two (to be) at one,' an
idiom kept in oar Bible. We find not only furh, but
yurhut (tbrOQghont). This bad faar hundred years'
start of the corresponding High German durohaua. The
old on efn now takes an ej at the end of the word (a
process often repeated in Middle English), and is seen
at pc^ 55 as anundee, the later anentig or anent.
We see wa is me in page 35 ; the Scotch prefer the
old wea to v>a, in pronouncing this Interjection, the
Latin vcb mihi.
ks to tbe pronanciation of these Homilies : there is
vnk (hebdomada), grik (Grsecne), feren (ire), tpee
(dixit) ; foreshadowing oar modem utterance of these
words. We find many instances of worda getting a new
meaning. Bieuman, which of old stood for acetdere
(what will become of ns P) now Englishes both deoere
and fieri (pages 45 and 47) ; in the latter case, the
French devenir must have been imitated. The old hlot
Middle English : Cultivation. 1 79
meant nothing but son ; a new meaning is given to the
word at pt^^ 31, where we read of a yridie lot (tertia
pars) ; tfaie comes &om the Scandinaviaii hluti, differing
from Mutr (sora). The word hrteiire (rather) meant
dtiiu ; it now gets the farther meaning of potim ; at
page 45 is milde pes fe redper pet, &c. The old tcBlig
meant beatus ; in these Homilies it takes the sense of
(opteiif, page 31 ; bnt this meaning is not fonnd else-
where; the word is in onr day degraded as alTiUm, oar
riUjf, the exact opposite of what is seen here. I think
that this is almost the only instance of one English word
acquiring two directly opposite meanings at different
times. Wo shall fnrther see that it meant both felix
and ittfelix in the Thirteenth Centnry. The old sceadan
(separare) now gets the sense of fundere (page 15?);
the former meaning still lingers in ioaterthed, Stoshoyr^
used to mean 'worth stealing-,' at page 25 it gate its
new sense, validita : perhaps it was confounded with
rtaS«(/erA5. The verb seedwiaa loses its old meaning
spectare, and get^ its new sense monstrare, though we stUl
call speetacttlum a s/iom. We know that the word afford
has pozaled oar antiquaries ; we find it employed in these
Homilies, page tJ7 ; 'do t>ine elmesse of )ion pet t>n maht
ifin^ien.' Bishop Pecock nses avorlhi in this sense
three hundred years later. The old geforfiian meant
only * to tiirther or help.' Here, at least, we need not
seek for help from France.' The snbstantive eachepol may
be seen, in page 97, applied to St. Matthew's old trade.
The verb cateh is found for the first time with its Past
■ This waa first poiDted out hj Dr. Morris in tba Allkenaum.
I So Old and Middle English.
Participle eauhi& ; this Mr. Wedgwood derives from the
Picard caeker, meaning the same as ckaeger. There is
hardly anotherinstanceof an English Verb, comingfrom
the French, not ending with ed in the Past Participle.'
We may often find an old pedigree for a word that is
now reckoned slangy. We are told at page 15 that we
ODght to restrain the evil done by thieves ; the verb nsed
is wiistewen, afterwards repeated as stewen in the Legend
of St. Margaret. Hence comes the phrase, ' slow that
nonsense ; ' this may be fonnd in Scott and Dickens.*
Onr verb lick, as naed in polite society, can boast of the
best of Tentonic pedigrees ; as commonly nsed by
schoolboys, it is bat a corruption of the Welsh llachiav
(ferire). From this last may also come ovajiog, even as
Lloyd and Floyd are dne to one and the same eonrce.
Some Danish words and forms had crept Sonthwards.
Thns wenge (alte) is seen instead of the Old English
/ySn* (pt^^ 81); Hditige, the Danish tiSindi, onr tidings
{page 77) ; onr oijiim, the Icelandic d mis, is first seen
at page b7, under the form of onimis, that is, on amis*.
Three Scandinavian words, skiU, east, and thrugt, may
be Reen at pages 61, 47, 131. To put is foand at pages
15 and 53 ; in the former instance it means tmdere; in
the latter capere, not for from ponere, onr sense of the
word ; it seems to come from the Celtic potUa : there is
also a Danish putlen, and some point ns to the French
hottfer. Pat is a Sonthern word, and has now mach
■ Chd ncia- havp got caofouDded with the Old English gelaeeaa,
gcltehf, nifiining the Bime?
' In Hard Ttiaes cornea the phrnae, ' Kiild«nninBter, Uoa that;'
i.t. 'he qiiiol,'
Middle English: Cultivation, tSl
encroached on the true Old Englwh sat and do. The
pnzzle abont its derivation shows how many eonrces
have contributed to form our langoage. The various
meanings of "box come from Latin, Old English, and
Scandinavian.
There are a few words, now first foond, that we have
in common with the Oerman and other kindred tongues.
Soch a word is inH&glewen. At page 43 we see our
gTtwlher (there called tmorHer'), which is nearer akin to
the Low German of the mainland than to the Old Eng-
lish smorian. Oni forefathers used to express the Latin
finuier by wymtre, something wanting in full strength ;
in these Bomilles this is changed into luft (left), to
which we still cling. This U the Dutch luft or liteht, an
early instance of the interchange between e and / (see
page 86 of my book). We first find mare (radix) at
p. 103 ; this word is common to Germany and to Southern
England ; it was used by Hampshire witnesses on the
impostor Orion's trial, in 1873. Another exclusively
Southern word is 'ue sUtded horn nawiht' (p. 77), 'it
bestead them naught;' this is the Icelandic sty^a
(fnlcire).
The Moral Ode, printed along with these Homilies,
(page 159), is a transcript of some long English riming
poem, written about 1120. I tAiuk the date cannot be
put earlier than this, since the poem has the French
words leerve and caught ; the date cannot be much later,
since in one copy we find «e l»e (he that), a token of great
age ; this was remarked by Dr. Morris. It is plain that
this Ode was transcribed a few years later than the
Homilies; for ouh here replaces oh, a& in nouhte and
1 82 Old and Middh English.
^ovMs (nonght and thought) ; iru>u atanda for the old
genoh. There is also w instead of 17 and h ; folewed for
fologode (p. 179), lawe for lage (p, 17?), aorewe for torh
(p. 181) ; these are new Southern corruptions,' In line
347 are the words wniepe /ojeojie* ; the ie of the first points
to the South East of England, the ea of the second to the
South West. The Ode mnst hare been "traoBcribed at
itome place like Beading, lying on the borders of the two.
Never did any tongne employ so many variations of
vowels as the Middle English did, to represent the French
sonnd d; the form (Ai'e/ came from the South East, iea/
from the South West, reef from the North ; the enquiring
foreign student mnst be mnch puzzled by these products
of the difierent shires, which all helped to shape oar
Standard English.
The interchange between 0 and «, so often found in
English, was now affecting the Sonth ; we see fo/for Ivfed
(amavit) in line 2.i7, and iwoned for iteunod (Bolitas) in
line 57 ; hence our tvont. In line 361 fah becomes fou.
The old an (boIqb) is replaced by onf, and ]>o stands for pa
(illi) ; this ]>o lingered on in the Sonth down to the
Reformation, when the Yorkshire thiigc drove it out ; the
other form, thae, still lives in Scotland. On lif (in vitft)
is now seen as alive, in line 21 ; yet onr lexicon- makers,
even to this day, will have it that alive is an Adjective;
they might say aa mnch of abed and ashore. The old
yeliee becomes iliche (line 377), onr aliJce.
The form aUe tml *e (aa well as) is in line 70.
' The Torb gitagatt (rodere) liecama gnaw in the Sonth ; bnt the
old form gnag remained in the North, find ie onr nag ; the latter
varb, nnlike gnate, \» not reckoned daesic Engliah,
Middle English : Cultivation.
183
There is a wholly new form in line 130, a kwilke time *e
evre, ' on what time soever;' the everw&s seen before
prefixed to mlc (every), bat it was henceforth tacked on
behind Pronouns lilce what, vihoso, &c. Did those who
hronghtthis in think of 'mtquam and the Latin qv.icunque ?
The hvnlke, (which,) seema here to be set apart to be
coupled with a Neat«r SubatantiTe. The Nominative
hwa is nsed for qui for the first time in line 133 ; moni
mmt hwa rechi.
We have seen the Saffix eugf: we may once more see
the Prefix al in line 144 ; onr fathers were fond of setting
this al before to (nimis); we here see ailo dore, ' all too
deu:.' They went on to place it before another to, the
(0 answering to the German zer ; one solitary rehc of
this remains in onr Bible, happily spared by the revisers
of Tyndale, a lover of the old form ; we learn that a stone
all to-hrake (Abimelech's) tkuU.
We have already seen never more at Peterborongh ;
we now see evre ma, evermore.
As to Prepositions : we find a repetition of the new
idiom in the Chronicle, ' nothing was seen of him ; ' of
ofl«n follows to hear, but seldom to lee. In line 381 is
fo gcuUen more of him. eeon ; * see of the travaQ of his
soni ' comes in onr Bible. In line 18 we read eie
ttond^ mett of motme, which, if literally tnmed into
Latin, would be timor slat hominibw de hfmiine ; we have
now changed the construction, and say men stand m
atve of man. The old ymhe (the Greek amphi) was
Dsed as a Preposition down to 1400, and still lives in
■uinquhile ; bnt we here see about beginning to en-
croach npon it; in line 267, theij tveren alruteti echie.
1 84 Old and Middle English.
' they were busy about property.' This foreshadows onr
Fntnre Participle, 'he ia about to tempt.' What was
before to eoie now becomes for goSe (forsooth) in line 174.
In line 132 we Bee muchel he AaveS to beten, ' he has
much to atone for. ' The have here seema to halt between
the meanings of poseidere and debere, and reminds us of
the change in the old Northumbrian agon. In line 302
there is ich Ian beo, y.f I seal, liache ; ' I can be a leech,
if I be called on, or if it be my daty.' The seal here
explains a story in Mr. Earle's ' Philology of the English
Tongue,' p. 204) ; a farmer drove a comer borne into the
ground, and then said, ' That one'U stand for twenty
years, if be thouldl ' This old sense of shall Heems to
have been kept in Wessex alone.
The Gemndial Infinitive now follows an Adjectire;
in line 39 cornea siker to habheii, ' sure to have.'
In line 137 we Bee how barely came to translate the
lotin iiiiB ; we read of twa bnre tide, two bare hours, or
barely two hours.
The process of the formation of new words may here
be watched. We have seen the first appearance of onr
larang, wrong ; wU is now added to it, Jnat as riht became
rihtwis. In line 256 we hear of wrongwise reven; the
Scotch long kept the word wrangout, corrupted much as
rightemM is ; they also coined iimeom (opportnnns).
We find an old English Verb, wealtian (welter),
which has another form icealcan, the Latin vohore. This
last takes the new meaning of ambulare in line 237 ; hi
umZiteS eore. The old begetan meant adipisci ; it now gets
the sense of (/enerore in line 105, hwi loerea ho biietenf
Cunig (coney), akin to a Glerman word, now appears.
Middle English: Cultivation. 185
Before leaving the South, we may glance at an old
WincheBter Charter, seemingly drawn np about 1060,
and transcribed about 1160 (Kemble, 17. p. 260). The
ge is allowed to remain, and the »c is not yet changed
into th ; bat the old <b is nsnaUy replaced by e, and cA
appears. The writer is not certain whether to pat eu or
eav>, for he sets down ^iv/md&m. He rejoices in the letter
u, writing frwcup, vrwrstv/pe, and •m.'mJces \ he employs this
u for the old eo, as ^n for h&on,frvst forpreost. This
explains why the old heo (ilia) is pronounced in Lanca-
shire as Au, or aa we now write it, hoo ; strange it is that
so old-fashioned and common a word shonld linger in a
Northern shire, and not in the Sonth. The interchange
between w and eo is veiy old ; for the Sanscrit bku is the
English beo. We find in the Charter the new Serfore.
The technical Latin moj^u^ (of a school) is now replaced
by the French meisire.
England had not yet lost her love of reading her
own history written in her own tongne. A Kentish
copy of the Chronicle seems to belong to this time, for
we find Bach a form as graichynnene (with the fh sound)
in the account of the year 1075.' In the beginning of
the relation of the year 1030, the old byrig is written
heri, and i;rte/ stands for gee^; these are tnie Kentish
marks. Farther on, amyrrende is written for amyrrenne
(rastare) ; this shows how easily snch a form as crienne
merci (pet«re misericordiam) might become eriende
merci, in the phrase, 'crying mercy availed little-'*
About this time, rather before the murder of St.
> This cop; is kninrn an ' CottuD, Domitian, A. TIIL 2.'
* Wiekliffe hoa wu ft> do^ngt (facCunu), in St. Lnke uii. 23.
1 86 Old and Middle English,
Thomas, we light upon a tale, which shows how fast
English and French were hlending together. The great-
grandsons of those that met in deadly grapple at
Hastings had become so united by intermarriage, that it
was hard to tell, so a lawyer of the day says, whether
a freeman was English or Norman by birth. ^ Hugh
de Morville, a man of renown' in his time, one of the
future Canterbury murderers, could well understand his
wife's English, when she wished to give him a sudden
alarm; *Huge de Morevile, ware, ware, ware, Lithulf
heth his swerd adrage ! ' Here the adjective wmr
(cautus) is treated as if it were a verb, the rightful heo
(esto) being omitted before it ; this is the first instance
of our shortened phrase, when speaking to a dog, * war
rabbit,* Ac. The heili (habet) is a clipped hafc^. The
adrage is the Past Participle, clipped in the true Southern
way, for it is a Canterbury monk that tells the tale. I
wish we had more specimens of the off-hand colloquial
EngHsh.^
There is an English Charter of Henry the Second's
that belongs to this time (Hickes, * Thesaurus,* I. xvi.) ;
here the Old English eow (you) is written jeaw ; the att,
sounded like the French ou^ was a sound common to
London and Paris alike. Indeed, so late as 1417,
Idsieux was written Leseaux (* Paston Letters,' Gaird-
ner, I. 7).
About this time, the Old Southern English Gospels
' Dialogws de ScaccariOt Stubbs's DocumenU, 193.
2 Materials for BeckeVs Life (Master of the Kolls), 128. See
Kemble's Charters^ II. 96, for a good specimen of the Kentish of this
time, or a little later.
Middle En^isk: Cultivation. 187
of King iGthelred'e time were fitted for modem nse.
These, known in their new form as the Hatton Ckjspels,
are now accessible to all; St. Matthew's Gospel was
published in 1858.' The main cormptioa is the change
of c into cA, as mycel into tnychel, and aslc into eleh. The
endingsare clipped as nsual; thus «un.u becomes sune. The.
old toyZcum is tnmed into iceleum (welcome), page 48. In
page 142, something like onr wherewith is seen for the
first time ; aboat the year 1000, it had been said that
' a man has nothing hicawm (nnde) be can pay ; ' this
hmanon in the present version is tnrned into hwcBrmid ;
many changes of this nature were to follow.
After this time, about 1160, there were to be no
more English versions of the Bible, and no more English
Charters, granted by the Crown. This ecom for our
toDgae, conceived in high places, was to last for about
two hundred years, and was to do great harm.
THE EAST MIDLAND DIALECT.
(1180.)
The first specimen of this is the Anthem said to have
been dictated by St. Thomas, soon after his martyrdom,
to a Norfolk priest. We have this as it was set down
by William of Canterbury.* The first four lines are —
Hali Thomas of hevenriche,
Alls poatlea eve(ii)lic!ie.
D6 niartyra fte understands
Deyhuaoilicbe on here hande.
' Jnfflo-Siuon and Northumbrian Veriiong of St. Malthevfi Got-
ptl, hy Haidwick.
' MaUriaUfoT Becket'i Hatory {Master of the Bolli), I. 151.
1 88 Old and Middle English,
Here the East Midland Imli and wndersiamjdiA (snsci'
pinnt) have not been changed into the Kentish holi and
wadLeprstanA^. The clipping of the a in apostles in the
second line is a snre token of the Danelagh, and comes
often in Omnin. In the fifth line standi Drichtin
(Dominns), not Drihten ; the change of h into ch was to
become common. In the tenth line, the Anglian sinne
has been altered into the Kentish senne, even though it
mars the rinie.
We must now for the third time cast an eye upon
the Homilies, which throw such a flood of light upon
. Twelfth Century English.^ 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 Dane-
lagh, others to the South. They have peculiarities,
found also in Kent ; such as the chaiuge of t into 6,
manken for mankind sermen for sinnen ; also, the com-
bination ie to express the sound of the French e, as in
liefy hitmien, gier, ]>ief, fiend, friend ; lie (page 229) for
the older leo^en ; glie for gho ; fiehle (page 191) for what
we call feehh. 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. It
is pretty clear that they must have been compiled not
far from Colchester ; the forms peculiar to the North of
the Great Sundering Line here mingle with those that
' Old English Homilies^ Second Series (Early Englifih Text
Society), published by Dr. Morris. These did not come out before
the end of Hay, 1873.
Middle English: Cultivation. 189
come from the South. We have hen, beS, 6m8, all three,
for sunt: both at)>er and ei))er, bad and bed, gilteg and
gultesjjlre and^r, clepe and dupe. The old tilian had
the two meanings of eolere and laborare ; the older form
of the verb we keep for the former meaning, while the
iidien of these Homilies, now written toil, expresses
ihe latter meaning. The Plnral of the Present ends in
both et! and en. Some have affirmed that the Iiondon
dialect was East Midland and not Sonthern. I would
ask snch critics to remark the strong Sonthem dash in
these Homilies, written at some place to the North of
London; snch words are here fonod as heo, iok, )>o,
Hngene (r^nm), queiiinde, ac, konden, urnen (cnrrere).
It is cnrions to compare the Moral Ode, as tran-
scribed into this Essex dialect, with that version of it
noticed at page 181 of this book. The following are
some of the changes ; — -
SoiUhfm.
JW.r.
Southmt
Ei»ex.
anCunu.)
on
kUo
Rlie
drajen
drawea
leiojen (me
itiri)
lie
ech
afii
I Mai
Isal
ajBD (propriiiB)
owen
Incauhte
tukeihte
ctep (sale)
ware
eorles
Tierks
knauS
CDOweS
englene(angelonuu) angles
blaweS
hloweS
kenoea
fond
fiendea
5eoje«
Sieu«
lafie
lo8e
There are three decided tokens of Northern inflaence in
theee Homilies : the areiv (sunt), the AeSen (hinc), and
the clipping of the prefix ge in Past Participles.
The <B often becomes a, as eai, brae, bigot; the a is
igo , Old and Middle English.
oonBtantly changed into o, as /o, wrdd, old, drof, mow,
sori, enow, two, souZe, Foul ; the e replaoes ea, as ckeke,
eke,fewe, leve; the t replaces eo, as pt'A, Uht; in aZumS
(p. 141) u replaces eo. The combination ai, hitherto not
mnch known in England, comes pretty often ; we aee
maiden, nai2, glaine ; here the i stands for an older g.
The new French ou is in great reqnest, for wo find
j?mMoe8, Uomoen, and snch like ; thera are fower, fuwer,
and Jbtire, all three forms ; we see both the old n/u and
the new now. The Peterborough vma (qui) may be
fonnd; And potest ia Englished by both mat and muge.
What was bihofHe in the SontherQ Homilies is hero bi-
houfe (behoof) ; vmmme is found once more, and vmo
stands for wa (p. 149) ; there is both woreld and vrurld.
The old Perfect eom (veni) now becomes cam (came),
p. 145, Some words were prononnced jnst as we sonnd
them now, as teme, neme, ivel, Inlwine ; these we mnst
here pronounce as the French would.
Ab to Consonants : the ge is dipped at the beginning
of Past Participles, and also the n, their last letter;
the n of the Infinitiyo sometimes disappears. The g is
oast out in the middle of a word, for the old gyttgode
(peccavit) is Bometimes eined ; the older form lasted in
Salop down to 1400. Oedriyed and hergode are now
dride and herede (harried) ; the Perfect of tigian is Uid
(p. 217), leger becomes loire, onr lair. There is here
also a combination of consonants mnch nsed in the
Eastern half of England, that of gh replacing the old h;
wo now find ^oghie and aglite (debnit) ; this was as yet
strange to the shires South of Thames. Another mark
of the North and of the Eastern coast, the nse of sal in-
Middle English: Cultivation. igi
stead of ekall, is also found. The hard g Bonnd was hence-
forth little used, except in Eaat Anglia and Northern
Ebecz ; wo here find foleg&i, hvrg, gvre {vester), heger
(entptor), gier (annns) ; also the cormpt gede (irit).
The w, which replaced <; in so many words, is creeping
np fi:t>Di the Soath ; we see moen, hrww, hiw, for agen, hreg,
and boga. Such forms occur as gree (gnunen), breSreii,
reu (pcenitet). In this last word we now transpose the
voweb. We here see the old genemned, pytidan, tnmed
into nemmed, pen.
The g sometimes becomes j as well as w ; in page 20&
we hear that Christ's body was ato^en (distractnm) ;
from the old teogan (a three-pronged fork, as it were),
we get three different cormptions, to Iwg, to toy, and to
tow. The h is sometimes tnmed into g, asJUg (fngit),
for the old Jleak ; the k at the beginning of a word
vauiahes, as vnt (albns) for hwit ; ihewe em is in pago
57. The ch often replaces c, aa in chireehe (cyrce),
much, st^neke, riehe. The fact that this new French
sonnd often replaced the Old English hard c has en-
riched our tongne with two sets of words, springing
from the same root ; thus we hare the two distinct
verbs, icake and tvateh, both from the old waic-an. Bnt
in 1180 their use was most unsettled ; at page 161 we
hear that the Devil weccheS (awaketh) evil. It is the
same with dike, ditch, shriek, screech, drink, drencit, kirk,
church, egg, edge, owing to this intrusive ch ; wa even
apply this system to French words, as tack, attach,
tricksy, treachery.
The new sonnd, eh instead of sc, seldom foond
hitherto, is established in the South-Eaetem ehires ; as
192 Old and Middle English.
Bhown in hisshup, shijpe^ ahufe (shove), shrifte^ fishes.
The t$ is sometimes changed into d, as hirden (onus) for
hyri^ ; this process went on in East Anglia. At page
111 the w is cast out ; for we see uppard instead of the
rightful upv^ard; we now often hear forrad shouted
instead of forwa/rd. The n in the middle of the word is
cast out; yunresdoeg becomes furesdai at page 61. The
n of on (unus) is clipped, for we see, at page 165, frcum
c stede to ofkr ; this 0 for on^ becomes common all through
the Sonth, and we have had a most narrow escape from
corrupting all our Strong Past Participles in this way,
as * I have do ' instead of done. The Preposition on is
clipped in page 109, for we see anes a dai, * once a day ; '
a Oodes nanne. The od or ed of the Weak Verb's Past
Participle is also clipped, as in lend and fild. An I is
tacked on to an old Verb, for cneowian is now replaced
by cnewl (kneel).
As to Substantives : the old geoc was Plural as well
as Singular, and it remains so in our Bible ; but at page
195 we find the corruption giokes. How utterly the
Dative has vanished may be seen in page 11 3, where
Tiege dages, without any Preposition, stands for in fastis
diehus. In page 187 we see a new construction, a kind
of Accusative Absolute ; he tsforloren, lifand sowle. In
page 173 we read, * they shall fear, and no wunder nw;'
we should now drop the last word.
At page 179 the old gemdkne (communis) is cut down
to niene^ our mean. There is a wonderful shortening in
mest man/ne (p. 169), which Englishes rruixima pa/rs
hominum; most is here applied to number and not to
magnitude, though we may still say * the most part.' In
Middle English: Cultivation. 193
page 165 cornea .from ivAe to werse, where the Adjectivee
stand without any SnbstantiTes.
As to Verbs : the oldest English allowed of snch
phrases as I do eoio to witanrte; this sense of do is
extended to make at page 213 ; speaking of buyers and
sellers, he him maJceH to ben bihinden ; the last word
shows how our hehind Itand in money matters arose.
As tbe last sentence shows, the Qemndial Infinitive with
to was coining in ; we see leren pe folc to understanden
(p. 93); hepenchei to forhten (p. 201); hine ioSeS to
dritiken (p. 213); hi<Mmelicke to wimien (p. 171); help
to feed, loth to do. We have seen that the Passive Parti-
•ciple might follow have, as 'he had itwronght;' we
now see this nst^ extended to the Active Participle at
page 145 ; he hadde vnmiende on him ye holigoet. We find
the Infinitive dropped altogether, at page 193, to save a
repetition ; no man ite ne leereS, . ... tie Gode nele. ich
adrada (I fear) ; the two last words are a foretaste of
one of our commonest English idioms. The new Plu-
perfect Subjunctive, the work of the Southern shires,
has not yet reached Essex, as we see in the third line of
page 133. On tbe other hand, there is an advance upon
the former Soathem idiom, eie stondeH men ; this becomes,
at p^e 89, he yat no» eu/e jie stand of, not far &om our
he that Hands in no awe of &c. In page 187 we find
another terse English sentence,^A^ ealde neddre ; earlier
writers woald have set some Preposition answering to
eoitlra sft«r the first word. The verb healdan waa
being freely used ; ith held mid hem (p. 211), holden Aire
wwJS (p. 181), holden weie (p. 161). Verbs were now
being run into each other; tencan was formerly the
194 Old and Middle English,
Transitiye mergere, emcan the Neuter mergi; the two
foims now get confounded, for in page 177 comep '^e
storm hiamke^ pe ship. So m pmgo 109 ihe old }i6iitu6
(vidotar) boeomoo finJctHS, whgnne nnp wig fhMtB
As to Nnmerals : in page 224 we find on c^er two Hden,
** one or two ; " a new phrase. At page 175 we hear of two
brethren, * pat on is Seint Peter and ))a^ otSer Seint Andren :'
this is a great change from the se an , , . se d6er used of
the two men who strove for the Papacy in 1129, as re-
corded in the Peterborongh Chronicle of that year. In
Scotch law papers the torn, and the tother may be remarked
down to very modem times ;^ the confusion between
letters is like that seen in the nonce. The Masculine
and Neuter of the Article were no longer to be distin-
guished ; at least, in Danish shires. The o, which has
so often replaced the old a, has added to our stock of
synonyms for umis; 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 years later, the form
stAch a one was to be written.
In page 213 there is a most curious new idiom ; the
old man and the later an (see page 54 of my book) seem
to be used together ; pe stede per me swo one dririkefij * the
place where one drinks so ;' the one here stands for ali-
quis for the first time, not for quidam or imuSf as in
fore-Conquest days. The French on may perhaps have
•
' So in the poem on the Chameleon : —
* Sin,' cried the umpire, 'cease year pother ;
The creature's neither one nor tother.'
MiddU English: Cultivation. 195
had Bome influence here. In pEtge 203 is a strong proof
how idiomatic tbe old Indefinite fnan or me was in Eng-
land ; mncA hlism me bihai w aUe, 'such bliss is promised
naaU(by God).'
On looking at the PrononnB, we find that gelfhaa
been tnmed into a Plural ; at p. 193 is im selven (our-
selTes). There is the old Genitive wre ech, which lasted
for ages Icmger; there is also the new form ech of iu, oti of
hem. At page 191 swa hwcet *wa is pared down to what ;
attreS huiat hao prikeS ; it may be tliat the quodounque,
which always translated the Old English gaa hwmt rwa,
ledoor&thers tolook npon^wat as a good translation for
the kindred quod. We see a new word, viarhi (whereby),
page 81 ; somethiog like wherewith had already been
coined in the South.
The compounds with the AA-v&ih where lead as on to
those with Acre ; hermfier alone had been used before
this time ; we find heritt (herein) at page 113. So
yonon-iMord had hitherto been the only compound with
]i(mim ; at page 189 we see ^wa&vforSward (thence for*
ward). Wo know onr phrase ' to cry off ; ' at page 213
we see )>e aovle . . . wilne^ ut (desires out), that is,
desirea to he out. At page 181, we read that the sonl
tun«S io (sbntteth to) hire gaten. For pam cenes, or for
fan tenet, becomes iu page 87 for the nonet, ' for that
alone, for the purpose ; ' a curious instance of the
confusion of letters, where two words run into each
other. We also see at work the Middle English tendency
to ad «« to words. The adverb wel (bene) stands for
riht (valde) in page 71; hs ia wd god; we etill say,
weQ worthy. The old well-nigh had been in very
Ig6 Old and Middle English.
earlj tuw; at page 1?7 comes, they jofi weZ o»»
Among FlvpoBitions, o/ is encroaohing more and
more npon older forms ; Ae ira« of miehel elde (p. 125)
here the earlier Eogliah wonld have used tlie Oenitive
BO lete of ^olehv/rdnes»e (pretence of patience, p. 79)
ortrmee of miWe (diatmst of power, p. 73); redde (rid)
ofdeoS (p. 171) ; emii of hileve (p. 191) ; ofehamede of
hem (p. 173); forhi*ne of him selven (an example of
himself, p. 149). Prom this last comes our ' make an
example of, makean exhibition of,* Ac. The sense of our
off oomea more to the front ; at page 89 we hear of a
man ye was of hit wit ; hence oar ' off his feed ; ' eurU^ of
rfi'uremnneii(p. 203), we should QOTC say ZeaveoJ^^our ting.
At page 12<'i there is a new sense of on ; on Au epit»e he
child itrende (begat) . The preposition to is making farther
way ; in page 141 we read Ze88e to sunne, . . . Ittve to
him; at page 157, fremfaUe to einhote; at page 73,
Jnlimp^ to godciinnesae ; the old Dative is here encroaohed
npon. The Anglian til, which did not travel far to the
Soath of the Great Sundering Line until two hundred
years after this, is now used with a Substantive of
time ; til amoregen is ia page 75. A wholly new Pre-
position, formed &om the Noun side, crops ap at
page 31, supplanting the old wiS ; bitide fe bureh.'
The old ut of now sometimes becomes ut from, as at
page 33. We see a wholly new phrase for the latin
quan at page 117; aee peh it were; here swa would
' nil sliovt m hcnr be/ore, belimd, beyond, beiatai, were formed
Middle English: Cultivation. 197
have been osed earlier. In page 107, <jfiioilci(njv« nt is
Engliehed by 6e swo ii 6eo ; the Relative force of the
old Kwa (as) is here seen ; we often use * be that as it
may.'
Many English words were now getting new meanings.
Before this, ealdaftEder had been need for avug ; it now
stands for iocer, for the kindred English word of this
latt«r, evieor, was unluckily dropped, at least in the
East. At page 157 we see that the old in/llan is hence-
forward to keep its sense of venders and to lose that of
tradere. Among the works of darkness mentioned at
page 13 ore 'chest and citew,' translated by Dr. Morris
'contention and jaw,' one sense of the old cemoan, oar
chew. Sir Charles Napier, when finding comfort, ba he
Baid, in 'jawing away ' at the powers that were, little
snBpeoted the good antbority he had for his verb.
There is a famons Mediieval phrase in page 113;
Christ, it is there sud, 'Iterede helle;' The Harrow-
ing of Hell plays a leading part in our old literature
firom first to last. We know onr phrase, ' to take to his
bed;' we read in page 20, ' )>u takest to huK,' that is,
'thou keepest at home.' At pt^e '201 we see a broad
line drawn between napping and eleep'mg. This distinc-
tion had been unknown in Old English. At page 151,
tdlai;&«, the old wUbc, is the adjective applied to snow
melted by the sun ; this may have been confnsed with
Ideow, and is seen in our luke-warm.
We find new forms like 'to eroke' or ' make crooked,'
page 61 ; suMren, our xwelter, page 7 ; snevi and
mwe (sniff and HnofT), pages 37 and 191. Tnulliehe
(traetfolly) appears, akin to the Frisian trd^t.
198
Old and Middle English.
There are inanj Scandinavian words, whicli we haye
followed, rather than the kindred Old English forms.
Diife, dmt ^
from diifa
Sleht, fUM
}f
slaegS
HolmiTn^ whoiegome
w
hdlsamr
Mece, meek
»
miiikr
Bote; root
9J
r6te
iShurte, shirt
9f
skyrta
Sbiike; shriek
9i
akrika
SmoC; sniock
»
smokkr
There are here also a few words common to England
and Holland, such as hvist, tvimple, and shiver (findere).
To scorn is here seen for the first time ; some have derived
it from the French escomir, to deprive of horns. But it
is used a few years later by Orrmin, the last of all men
to use a French word; secern (stercus) is the more
likely parent of the term.
Giraldus Cambrensis was flourishing at this time,
but English philology had still much to learn. In
page 45, the derivation of king is given; *he kenned
(directs) evre to rihte.' This is something like Mr.
Carlyle's well-known mistake, about cyning being the
man that can act. In page 99 the word husel (the
Eucharist) has to be accounted for ; we are told that no
man can say ' hu set (how blessed) it is.' At page 25,
we get another bit of Old English philology ; God is
called Father, we are there told, for two reasons ; * on
' The Old English culver was long used all through the South of
England, while the Danish dove was used in the North.
Middle English: Cultivation. 199
his for |>o )>e he . . , feidx (joined) ))e lemes to nre
licame . . • oSer is |>at he/et (feeds) alle I>ing.'
THE EAST MIDLAND DIALECT OF 1180,
Esexx EouLiEs. Pa^ lOS,
Jie weren |>o, and get bien mid mannen, fewe gode and
Um yU are unumg
fele ivele, and bigan to hinieQ ]'e ivele to gode mid his
wise wordes )>e he wi8 hem spec mnti wi8 mnSe |>e hwile
he wnnede lichamllche among hem. And agen )w time
imeU hoiHy
^ nre drihten volde him fechen fro |iiB wreche woreld
to his blisfnlle riche, \q aette he on write |ie wise word
kingdom
[>e he spec, and }iat writ sende into chirohen ; and hit is
cnmen into )ris holi minstre to dai, and biferen gin rad,
yon
feb ge it oe luiderstonden; ac we wilen bi Godes
tlioitgh but
wisBinge and bi his helpe I>erof ca]>en gia peee lit
guidatMt tkcloTt
word.
200 Old and Middle English,
t
THE CONTRAST TO THE EAST MIDLAND.
(About A.D. 1180.)
Da i,et seip ]>eo soule soriliche to hire l(icham) ; 8B&o
pu were lu]>er ]>eo hwile ]ni lif hssfdest, ]>u were leas and
lati and unriht liifede(8t and) la]>ere deden ; deredest
Cristene men and mid worde and mid werke so pu wnrst
mihte. (Ic weas) from God clene to ]>e isend, ac ]>a
havest nnc fordon mid pine lupere deden ; fu were gredi
and mid gromen pe onfnlled ; nnneaj^e ic on ]>e eni wonnng
ha(fde)for hearde mpe and ofer mete fnlle, for ]>in
wombe was pia Ood and ]>in wxdder ]>in iscend.
Forluren ]m havest feo ece blisse,
Bmumen )ni havest fe Paradis,
B(mu)men fe is ptet holi loud,
Den deofle p\x hist isold on hond|
For noldest ))u nefre (hab)ben inouh^
Buten ))u hefdest uuifouh.
Nu is }KBt swete al a^n,
D8Bt bittere fe bi(^) fomon ;
Dset bittere ilest pe efre,
Det gode ne cume5 ]>e nefre.
The aboye is taken from a Southern work, the Poem
on the Soul and Body, printed from a Worcester manu-
script by the late Sir Thomas Phillipps, to whom English
Philology owes much. We have here a foretaste of
Layamon's well-known work; there are some things
common to the present piece and to the Essex Homilies ;
as soule for satde, four, Mooso, chirche, drawen, owen^
where w supplants g\ qu ]b well established instead of
cw^ and besides is used as a Preposition. But the sh has
Middle English: Cultivation. 201
sot encroached upon the »c ; the old gcal and eerin have
not yet become shall and shrine in the Severn country.
In Vowels : ou is making way ; s/rau and claa appear ;
ei je a favonrito combination, for eihie, clei, neik, and
etje come ; we still pronounce the two first in the
proper way, with the sonnd of the French 4 ; the two
last have been degraded. The diphthong m sometimes
ranishea j Baada becomes Beda, as happened before the
Conqnest ; we see the Old and the New in the short
sentence, ^Ifric abbot fe we Alquin hotep. It in hopeless,
after seren hundred years of wrong spelling, to lalk
now of King Alfred. The o often replaces a; at p. 7,
a (semper), the aye of the North, is written 0 ; rather
later, in page 301 of this book, we shall find the
phrase ei/ and 0, an admission of the claims of both
North and South. The old gdt (beedns) is written got ;
bat on the Tyne, far to the North, Gateshead (Capnt
Caprse) has held its gronnd. Dd (dama) and gad
(stimolns) become do and gode ; rd-deor (capreoloa) is
changed into Toa-deor, and shows ns the steps by whiuh
theold a became the new o ; we still write hroad, goad, and
hoardf a compromise between the North and the Sonth.'
The sonnd of o can in onr tongue be expressed by about
ten different letters or combinations of letters ; the stn-
dent of onr language most here long for the simplicity of
the Italian. The oh becomes ouh, as in the Moral Ode
(see pagelSl); we see souhte and inouJi. The u is most
popnlar, a sore mark of the South ; this vowel replaces i,
' The old brid. thoagh dov writUn bntad, is pronoaneed moub-
thing in the old iraj. tot/ QsUke the wnmd of oa in other woidi,
nch u toad and road.
203 Old and Middle English.
for savr (ahire) becomes scitr ; it alfio replaces o, for hym
becomes hum. Bytt (ater) is now btttte, oar butt.
Sometimes a Gonsoiiant is dropped in the middle of
a word, for we see elleoven (eleven) for endleofan. The
city Cantwaraburh is now changed into Oantoreburi;
and thnB the French way of spelling (did they ever yet
spell a Teatonic word right F) ioflnenced ns. The
Infinitive dreogan (snbire) becomes driten, the Scotch
dree ; tnantlaga is now monaleia. The g drops at the end
of a word, for heg becomes hei ; we still keep the pro-
nnnciation of this word hay. Sometimes letters are
transposed ; ercBi (corms) becomes terf . Another badding
change may be seen in gpindd, which is here replaced
by epindle. The Southern c and the ilfortheni k are
coupled together, as in eroeke and ^iche. King Al&ed
had long before used the form orcgea^d instead of the
commoner ortgeard; the word is now softened into
orchard. In this way the Old English splot with ns
becomes splotch.
Another word, where c has become cA, is etcen,
ekiken^ in this word both the old and the new sound of
e are found. The old cealc now becomes chalc, our chalk.
Dagat is now da^es ; but w is the &vonrito letter in re-
placing the old g ; we see elbowe, fuweles (fowls), and
emca (sow). What was lah (homilia) in 1120 is now
lowe ; )h<. droge (trazisti) is drovx at page 8, An attempt
is even made to change days into dawes, a corruption
that lasted long in the South. The word lorhfull is
tamed into seoruhful. The Strong Verb changed into
the Weak ia seen in sleptegt, as in the Bnshworth Gos-
pels ; the Weak Verb turned into the Strong (a most
Middle English :' Cultivation. 203
mmBaal thing in English) is found in rungen fbr the
rightful ringocUn. There is scorede (secavit) for sccer;
we have now the two forms eeore and iKear, both coming
from the old sceran. We see the Latin word ajiienwo
Englished by teUj^erd, the first time that yard is found
applied to Bhip-gear. Sartrias is here Englished simply
by heo (ilia), referring to BeamtBre (B&rtor), which had
gone before ; onr teanutregs still keeps some trace of the
old seamettre, the right word to use.' Likte stands for
pulmo, OQT ' liver and lights.' Weaican stands once more
for atribtdare, as it did in the Sonthem Homilies : and
the new word deavep (become deaf) appears at page 5 ;
this is IntransitiTe, bnt the Scotch deave has become
Transitive.
We have other Bonrces open to ns, besides the Eng-
lish mannscripts. In the poems of Nigel Wireker,
written abont 1190, we come apon the names WUlekin
and Robekin. These are the names of boys, and are most-
likely due to Flemish immigrants into England. It is
curious that the new Teutonic ending kin shonld be first
attached to common French names like William and
Itobert; it was long before Sobekin became Rob or Bob.*
Abont the same time, the Coggeahall Chronicle talks of
MaUkin, a pet name derived from Mold, or Matilda.
' We find here piator Englished bj balcettre, whence oomea Box-
IcT. Ster Tea the eoding viually rrBerred for the feminiiie, u
tpiiuttr ; bnt Fharaoh'a baker was called in QenenB baeiitrt, befbre
the Conqne^ S«« Esrle'a FhOology, p. 820.
* Wireker'i poenu iiBre attrihnted, when pnblithed, to Branelloi
Tigelli. I coDBalted the edition published at Wolfenbfittol in 16112.
The namu in kin are found in p. 9i at this work.
204 Old and Middle English.
lAter in the Thirteenth Century we hear of JanJbtn,
and other each ; of these names, Ferhin is the most
lenowned. ^Ifric, iu his Giummar, written about two
hundred years before this time, had told hia pupils that
some nonns were diminutiva, giving for an example ho-
m^ncuZiM, lytle rmmn. He knew not the word mannikin.
THE EAST MIDLAND DIALECT.
{A.D. 1200.)
I now return once more to the neighbourhood of
Colchester, We have a collection of King Alfred's
saws, dating from about the year 1200.' It seems, like
the Essex Homilies, to belong to the Great Sundering
line ; we find the thorough East Anglian forms ffu, gung,
Mol, vm, arren, dagie (you, young, shall, how, are, days);
also hea )>u (page 32), where the rightful t is lost at the
end of the he». On the other hand, the Active Participle
ends in both the Midland eiit! and Southern iW.and the
t or 1/ is prefixed to the Past Participle ; the Soathem o
is preferred to the Northern a, as in no yiiig, ewo, land ;
such forms as cunne, Englene (Anglorum), are truly
Southern.
As to Vowels; mmg becomes may, moge, and muge;
the different sounds that might be given to one word are
most curious, and show how unsettled a thing Middle
English was. The o replaces t, for we find wola forwiU;
' Dr. Morris printa this, along with a Southern Tersion mode
tixtj f sun Utar, in hia OUl Englitk Miscellany (E^ly English Teit
Society), p. 103.
Middle English : Cultivation. 203
-of this we keep a trace in our loon'f (will not). The old
Superlative lengest remains, bnt lengra becomee longer
at page 113. The English ow sometimeB slides into the
foreign oii, aa in mouin, tnoain. The Aeo (ilia) becomes
hue at page 119, and this change spread all over the
South. The old dohteraaA noAt become douler and TWut.
The u seems to talce an e before it in pEige 121, where
the old beogan or bugan tnms into bewen ; mnch about
the same time, XiaTamon on the Severn was writing
beautoeden. The sound of the French ou is now expressed
by a combination of letters new to English scribeB ; in
p. 132 the old freotoS is written troijie, sounded much as
we sonod tmth. The Essex tulien was later to be written
toil. This French oi will be discussed in a later Chapter. <
Wesaw that King Al&ed was fond of doubling the letter
o ; this now crops np ^ain ; the old hoe is here written
iooc. Moreover, wudu (silva) is turned into wood, but
this must in Essex have been pronounced like mode. The
words wulf, vmlle, wurtd, bur (gebQ.r, colonns), have
always been pronounced in one and the same way from
first to last, thoT^h we have altered their spelling.
In Consonants there is a great change at work. The
h is Bometimes wrongly used, as herl for erl, wad for
what; it vanishes in the middle of Inovit (oportet). The
fondnese for the hard g is one of the pecnliaritieB of East
Anglia ; the old gesdmon and rowan are turned into sagin
' Id the old Latin InjKriptionB we Sod oi»at -vritten where later
uthotl would bare pnt unua. A bmoiu Oxford schoUr, "•""»'"' "g
& ichool in FerUuhire about 1820, asked a haj to spell poiion.
There was no aDswer. ' Hoot, moo,' cried the Khoolmaster, ' can je
ooipellpaoBlMi?' Tha bojat once spdt the woid right.
2o6 Old and Middle En^ish.
and TOgin} Bat mtsg and mga. (die) become may and
ia.%}, as we have since kept them ; aod aaga, hit in page
117 is cnt down to teit, a, proof how little tlie h in hit
was now soanded. The h was replaced sometimes, as
at Feterborongh, by gh, as degh ; sometimes by e, as
rict; sometimes by ch, as yochte, pu mieht, htush; some-
times by g, as migte, rigtin. We find tlie two forms
Tnukil and inoch. This poem differs from the Sssex
Homilies in the resistance offered to the newfangled eh,
which was replacing «;; we find indeed scAeneandgoAefe,
but sal is preferred to shal, and we shall find the same
resistance to «% in the East Anglian works of 1230.
The f is sometimes cormpted into d, as widuten, quad
(cw(B|t). Sir Thomas More, three hundred years later,
imitated this, writing quod he (dixit), which at that time
was langhed at as old-fashioned by his enemies. The
)> is added to a word, for wela becomes weife ; the con-
fnsion of this letter with / is seen at page 111, where
hingeolfe (himself) is written hUietelfe. The old (Boertw is
now aereis (acres), and ceorl takes the broader form of
cherrU (chnrl).
In Snbstantivee : we find that the GenitiTal es, known
in the North, bnt hitherto nnknown to certain words in
the Sonth, is now added ; faderit blitie is in page 129,
bnt the later version keeps the true old English fader
bliise. We find the corrupt alle cunne madmes in p^;e
127 (all kind of treasure) ; the later version sticks to
the rightful Genitive, uyches ewmes madmei (all kind's
treasures), 'treasure of all (every) kind,' showing how
< TMa seema to ahow that in the Eastern counties the a of gadvxm
and tliB 0 of roaan ireie DOt pK>nDnnc«d like the French on.
Middle English: Cultivation. 207
the idiom arose. Tlie 'word fKing was about this time
employed as a compliment ; Alfred is called in page 103
a htfsum pmg ; a few yeais lat^ it is applied even to
Christ. We see a &miliar phrase of oars for the first
time at page 133; elde lyumid to tune, 'a^ comes to
town,' that is, 'draws near ns.'
We find the old Idane rather changed at page 138,
where it is written lonke (lanky). There must have
been some great difference in sotmd between h on the
one hand, and c Emd g on the other, when they were pre-
fixed to I, n, and r ; in such cases h is always lost, while
c and g remain to this day.
There is a farther step made as to Belative Fronoans :
at page 117 we see may he forfarin, hwo hoee^ &c.
Here the hwo stands after the antecedent he for the first
time ; the idea of hwo so mnst have been in the writer's
mind. In p. 137 kewe (vester) stands for tuug, the first
instance of this TVench idiom in England; it comes
amidst a crowd of French words. I have set oat the
passage at page 209 of this work.
There is a great change in one of the Irregalar Verbs ;
the old ic mmg (possnm) took |m mikt Cor its second
person; this is now corrupted into )w tnaist at p. 117,
thongh the right^l fw micAf comes elsewhere. We saw
in the Lindis&rne Gospels this paring down of the Strong
Verb to the level of its Weak brother ; even in the
8ontb, |>u cuwne, jm d/urre, had become in some parts )>«
eanat, \u dearat, long before the Norman Conqnest. A new
idiom starts np at p. 103 ; hegia is cut down to gin, as
hem he gon l»rin ; and this gon or gan was nsed for ages
as a kind of Auxiliary Verb, side by side with can ; Scott
2o8 Old and Middle English.
has in his 'Lay of the Last UJnstrel,' tl>6ea/riga.-a,s^. At
p. 136 we see the Pronorm aefc before the ImpemtiTB, Jitt
gtf him ; this has not yet gone ont, for we still say ' yon
go there.' The verb like was of old Imperflonal, and we
may still say ' an it like yon.' Bnt at p. 105 it Englishes
affiant; we Bee Zovin &im and likin ; another instance of
this comes rather later. The verb da gets a new mean-
ing, finire ; mtTte dagis arren nd done is in p. 135. Ihifcen
is used intranBitively, as we learn by the context, at
p. 115 ; to diitte it ttdliti driven. We have seen how wrung
(malum) was first found at London ; we now see a verb
formed from it at p. 135, fe wronke gume Jm rigtin, 'be
sure to right the wronged man.' So mva (mouse) creates
a new verb, applied to cata, at p. 121. Another verb
crops up for the first time at p. 138, the small man woU
grennen, eoeken, and chiden ; froni this eocken must come
our adjective cocky. The new verb betide is seen in
p. 129.
The old noM is tnmed into ntntt and nat; it had
^ready, at Peterborongh, begun to drive out ne, and we
here find leve pa jwut instead of the rightful ne levefit;
but the old ne was used in prose so late as Campian's
time. The Old English fe hmle pe here takes the form
of hwUis pat, which is kept in our Bible ; the m or e« is
tacked on to Adverbs in the usual Middle English way.
We have already seen wel used for »wi")ie (valde) ; at
p. 103 the two are coupled together, wd notju strong.
An idiom most common in our Ballads is here first foond;
ton 10 dere (p. 135) ; here the so is not want«d. A new
idiom vms now coming down from the !tf orth ; at p. 133
we read wer (ubi) hachte is kid, per is arnipe ; this wer
Middlt English : Cultivation. 209
was before tbia time in the South written ^mr. The new
Relative forma were crowding in.
Kb to Prepositions : of as osnal waa employed with
new meaningB ; it replaced the old on in phrasea like degi
ofitioi, iotofword. Ihe confosion between on and of
lastB still, when we hear people talk of ' the whole lot on
'em;' vpbraid 0/ comes at p. 119; we should now turn
the of into with, though we still accuse of. The to waa
often used after uieor^n (fieri) ; this nsage is now ex-
tended, for we Bee melten to noeht, bringen to nouf. At
alway a had in English a sense nearly akia to m ; we now
find (p. 125) god ate nede, a phrase that Scott lored. Bi
is turned into an adverb at p. 137, he wole be hi.
The foreign word elerh is now used for tcholar as well
as for prieit ; for it is here said of Alfred that ' he waa
king and cleric,' p. 103. This old poem is most Teutonio;
but at the end of the two last stanzas, the bard, perhaps
wishing to show off his learning, brings in a few French
words most needlessly : —
Ac nim ]« to )ie a stable mon
)iat wont and dede bisette con,
and multeplien beure god,
a sug fere |>e his help in mod.
Hic ne «ge nout bi )>au,
fiat moni ne ben gentile man ;
Jmni Ins lore and genteleri
be UBendit huge eompanie.'
This is the first instance of onr word gentleman. There
are also leiterU and gtU. We find for the first time dote
' The A is aadlj uMOsed in thu piece, >b we m«.
210 Old and Middle English.
(dolt), akin to a Dntcb term ; besides a fevr Soandinariau
words. llv.ge, from the Xorae v^ga, to frighten. SwlA,
firotn the Swedish skiAla,. We have also added to oar
well-known word ham. the Danish sense mal&d,i(XT&, as
seen in this poem ; the old geban meejit edictwm,.
I may here remark, that in these Proverbs of Alfred
we see a great change clearly foreshadowed, that was
soon to mar the beaaty of onr English speech. There
is an evident distaste for compoonding Verbs with
Prepositions ; very few of SDch compounds are to be
fonnd here. Already in the Essex Homilies there had
been a falling off from the old system ; it is hard to see
why this should have been the csw ; for the Scandinavian,
as well as the Old English, delighted in pre&zing Pre-
positions to Verbs. Thirty years after this time the
same distaste will be remarked in other East ^ngli»ti
works. The Eastern shires, lying between Colchester
-and Leicester, took the lead in robbing ns of one of onr
choicest powers ; if Stiatmann's Dictionary be consulted,
we shall find many verbs, with of, to, ait, an, prefixed ;
hut these were used by writers, Northern and Soutliem
alike, who dwelt fa,r from Essex and East Anglia. In
p. lis our author uses letin lif (vitam perdere) ; tiie
Soathem transcriber altera the first word into forletea.
It was unlucky that, of all England, the shires near
London should have been the ones that started an evil
habit, elsewhere anknovrn. One consequence of this
clipping was, that English became more and more one-
syllabled.
A Latin Charter of King John's to York, in 1200,
may be here meutioued ; we there see onr word wreck
Middle English: Cultivation. 211
for trhe first time, the Scandinaviaii rek, ' somelhiDg
drifted on shore,' (Stabb's Documents illnatrative of
English Histoiy,' p. 304).
I now come to that writer who, clearlier than any
otter, foreshadows the growth of the New English. 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 pro-
portion of Tectonic words that are now obsolete, and
Layamon is known to have written after 1204. Orr-
min, if he were the good fellow tfaat I take him to have
been (I judge from his writings), wasa man well worthy
to have lived in the days that gave.ns the Great
Charter. He is the lafit of our English Makers who can
be said to have drunk from the undefiled Tentonic well ;
no later writer ever used so many PrepositionaJ com-
pounds, and on this account we onght perhaps to Gs
upon an earlier year than 1200 for his date. In the
course of his lengthy poem, he uses only four or 6ve
French words ; his few Latin words are Church phrases
known in our land long before the Norman Conquest.'
On the other hand, he has scores of Scandinavian words,
the result of the Danish settlement in onr Eastern shires
300 years before his day. He seldom uses the prefix
he, which is not Scandinavian. His book is the most
thoroughly Danish poem ever written in England, that
has come down to ns ; many of the words now in our
moatha are fonnd for the first Hme in his pi^s. Had
' When Te Siid so thorongh a Teuton nsing words like ginn and
xom, we Hbanld paoBs before ire derire tbsse from France.
212 Old and Middle English.
Bome of our late Iiexicogniiphers pored over him more,
they would have ntnmbled into fewer pitfalls.*
It is most important to fix the shire in which Orrmin
wrote, since no man did more to simplify onr English
frrammar, and to sweep away all nicety as to genders
and cases. He evidently dwelt not &r &om the Qrent
Line ; he has !ff orthem and Southern fonns of the same
word, like 6one and iene (snpplicatio), tre and ireow
(arbor), ^nis\ and ru?ine[> (currit), cne» and cneimoeti
(genna). Hod he lived to the Kast or South of Rutland,
he wonld not have employed their, them, for her, hem, at
so early a time. He cannot well be pnt far to the Weit
of Aahby in Leicestershire, for bo Scandinavian a writer _ .^
can hardly have lived in any district that does not
abound in hamlets with names ending in by. I shonld
myself place him at the old Danish burgh of Derby, not
far to the North of the Line. He uses ;ffio (the old Tieo) for
Ula ; and something like this is still heard in the mouths
of old Derbyshire men. He mnst not be removed very far
to the North of the Great Line, for he is most careful
in writing the In6nitive in enn, which was clipped at
Peterborough. Derbymaybe called the philological navel
of England ; from Derby a man may go East to Norwich,
and not step ont of the East Midland country ; he may
go North West to Lancaster, and not step ont of the West
Midland country.* Fifty miles to the North of Derby
is Yorkshire, a stronghold of one dialect ; fifty miles to
' Mr. White hss gifBD us a capital edition of Ormb'a posm,
tKe Ormulum. Dr. Stratmann has nude good use of it.
" There are no regular West Midland wocka before 1300, so I
here take liule notice of thie district.
Middle English : Ctdtivation. 213
the South West of Derby is 'WorcesterBliire,& stronghold
of another dialect.
There are many links between Omnin and the
Peterborough Chiwnicler who wrote forty years earlier.
The word cfeioten or jeAateiMJ is almost the only Passive
Participle which they leave undipped of ite prefix.
They both ose the two great Midland shibboleths, the
Present Plnral in e» and the Active Participle in enrfe.
They have the same objection to any ending but e* for
the Genitive Singnlar and the XominatiTe Plnral of
Konns, following in this the old Northumbrian Gospels.
They do not inflect the Article, and are thus lar ahead
of the EentisL writer of 1340. Ormiin nses ihai as a
DemonBtrative and not as a Nenter Article ; he knows
nothing of the Southern iKilk, used in Somersetshire to
this day. He haa no trace of the Genitive Plural in ene,
which lingered on in the South for 200 years after hia
time ; he makes no distinction between Definite and
Indefinite Adjectives, and their Plurals do not end
We find in Orrmin what we have already seen in
other Dano-Anglians, like the Essex writers far to the
South East; such forms as, forr the natiess, com to
twt, bum to askeg, at wSl', ffrim of heart, wel (valde),
arm (sunt), he gan followed by the Infinitive, cneHnug
instead of cneowunj, hiddl, »noj5, com, (venit). The
new Subjunctive form that we first saw in the Homihes
of II 60 is here repeated ; at line 151 of Orrmin's Preface
I thaU ha/em addUdd.
Asto Vowels: the <s is often preserved. Bntitsome-
214 Old and Middle English.
times becomes a, as hirrte for the old crcBt^ hadd (jussit)
for hoed, smacc for smoec ; sometimes it becomes e, as
speJcenn for spcecan, efenn for cefen. Orrmin evidently
lived not far from the Great Line. A is often clipped
at the beginning of a word ; thus apostles become possi-
lesSf as in the Koshworth Gospels : arise and aivake are
also clipped in the true Northern way ; adun is always
replaced by dim, our doivn, which is not yet a Preposition.
On the other hand a is set before the old hufan (snpri),
whence comes onr ahove^ and the Scottish ahoon, A
replaces ea, as chappmujin, hard, and darr, for ceapmunn,
heard, and dear, Orrmin prefers aw to au, most likely
sounding both like the French ou ; he talks not of Paul,
but of Paivell, though he has also Saul ; * with him
claustrnm becomes clawwstre, Orrmin puts e for a when
changing hita (fragmentum) into htte, at I. p. 300 ; he
takes care to mark that the i is short, thus distinguish-
ing it from our word for morsus. E replaces ea and eo,
as in the Lindisfarne Gospels ; we now find hi-est, calif,
dep, frend, leriienn, ned, held, lesenn, fe, e^he; nalcedd
(nudus) is found instead of nacod, and slecJce7iu instead
of slacian ; this last has given us two verbs instead of one^
slahe and slacJc. The interchange between i And y,BO
common in Middle English, is seen in Magy, the wise
men from the East ; the y must now have lost the sound
of the French u, 0 is hardly ever written for the Northern
a ; we do find iwvnvperr and iiowwharr for the old naio^er
and naliwar ; otherwise, this favourite Southern change
is kept at bay. Orrmin writes both aiuihht and oht for
* The Scotch mrito Laurence, the English Lawrence,
Middle English : Cultivation. 215
(diquid, anA we have kept both these forms.' 0 replaces
ea, as fohh (ctsi) for feah ; it also replaces e ; dogt and
Aj8 are found instead of the older dSst and (Ze8 ; Orrmin
writes both the Icelandic bon and the 0!d English bSn
ioronrprayer, but he sticks to the old jnp/ (nemns) ; our
grove was to come later. He replaces o by « in fawit
and buU ; instead of Galileo (CFalilee) he sometimes has
QdHletc, not OalUu ; this seems to show that eo was not
always pronoanced like u, as some wish to make ont.
Orrmin writes jAo for heo (ilia), not Au. He has
trovnppe, dropping the e that formerly came before the
0. When we see his iwefr, II. p. 4 (nnnqnam), shortened
for the sake of the verse, it tells as bow our poetic ne'er
arose in the North. The old siojian now becomes guJi.
h^kenn, onr tough. Ornnin is fond of mnning vowels
into each other, and sometimes cnts short the last vowel
in temple, mMyitre, shuldre, when they are followed by a
vowel sound; fiei is written for he it (II. 253), which
shows how the old hit (id) had lost the sonnd of its
first letter.
As to Consonants, geXang becomes hUenge, ' belonging
to,' jnst as we saw the interchange of h and g in belief.
The p, of near kin to b, was hardly ever used to begin a
word in English ; path and play are the only very early
homebom words, now in ose, that oommence with p ;
Dearly all Orrmin's words that begin with this Iett«r are
Church Latin phrases, for p is one of the chief letters in
Greek and Latin. Hewillnottnm/intovintheSoathem
' Orrcuii'B aaihlU was written act Mil mri
in oth<T 1
jIftceB. not
)ur itrac.
H«rewe
hare a hiot us to the MODd of the old am.
2l6 Old and Middle English.
w&j, for be writes til/err and heefedd. With him the c is
often tamed into eh, aa UBchenn, h^mtche, Ueehe, macehe,
tpaehe, ckotena ; wdkemun, however, holds its ground
agninattoafeftman. Orrmin was the second English writer,
BO &ur as is known, who pretty r^nlarly naed gh instead of
the fbrmer sc ; be wrote thawenn, shall, and $hame. This
change began in the South, and the older form bad not
altogether gone oat in the North, for he writes both
biskop and bUhop. Xowhere more clearly than in tiie
Ormnlnm can we see the stmggle between the Old and
tbe New. The g is often supplanted by 3 ; Orrmin Beems
to find this osefiil in distingnishing the Icelandic gate
(via) from tbe English geai (porta) ; his word for the
latter is still fonnd in Scotland as yett, Orrmin first
placed 2 at tbe end of a word after a vowel, as Jt^ (they),
jia^ instead of tbe old ne ; a;; as well as a (semper).
He gave as lay instead of the Peterborough lai. He
drops the final h, taming /eA (feoh) into/e. The words
eorplic and eatelice are softened down to er^U% and
/epeli^ (easily).' DntgoS becomes drukkpe (droath) ;
we sometimes pat the old g into this last word. We
have still left the old wagen (wag^n) ; we have also
ween, Orrmin's teagffi (wain). Not only he^he, bntAeA,
is written for our high ; hence we talk of the hey~datf of
yoath. The old eagoa (ocnli) now became e^htts, our
poetical eyne, the Scotch era. Bat Ornnio will never
aoft«n the g into id ; be even holds aloof from tbe old
geimcon. Sometimes be throws out ge altogether in the
middle of a word ; thus ungelie berames unnZtc (unlike).
' I ma amiued nt one eride iMing toe tar ming »e)u>larlUt w
well ta leielarly. Let him bm«h np hii Hiddls En^iah.
Middle English : Cultivation. 2iy
Auyadine U cnt down to Aww»tm, as he still appears in
onr &mily names. The t is sometimes thrown oat;
haletan becomes he^enn (to hail). This is still more
the case with tk; the old 0880 (aut) is seen aa o'pyr, and
this is twice pared down to orr (or), Tyndale, 330 jears
later, sometimes has the old other for the new or. As
oS8e became o^yr, so did Orrmin give ne (aec) an r at the
end ; we find at Vol. II. 223,
JVer eteyp ne, ne rfnimiepfi.
This ner (written by Layamon no) ninety years later
became onr nor ; the newfangled word could not wholly
drive ont the old me (ased by Gampian) nntil 1580.'
Orrmin seems to have had a foreknowledge of Grimm's
Law ; he toms the Latin triplex into yripeU. He once
QBea the corrupt n«r of the Sonth for the rigbtfol neh
(prope). He has both the old wv/rT^thipe and the new
vfu/rrthipe, worship. He often writes uppo for upon;
this is one of the Derbyshire pecnliarities that have been
lately brought home to all lovers of good English by the
authoress of ' Adam Bede ' ; the old v,ppe preceded the
bter wppan. The « replaces I, for scselode becomes »eo
nedd (sickened), just as Sol and Sttn are but two forms
of one old Aryan word. The I isinserted, asincnelerm;
keatfunga becomes halljlmgeas, a word still in Scotch
nae ; the eg, as nansl, is now added to roond off the old
Adverb. The tu is cut off in Tobias, which becomes
Tobi. Even OrmuD, good Teuton thongb be be, cannot
' I do not rafer to Bp«iiser'( ne her« ; he did not tub the language
of his OKU da;.
2i8 Old and Middle English,
resist putting the French e for the old ^ in his word millce
(mercy). When he writes he^a/nn^^ (the coins so called,)
we see that the ^ is beginning to stand for our z, as well
as for our y. He keeps near to the Old English in his
Jvdisskemi BmdJudew (JudsBus) ; he knows nothing of the
French way of throwing out the d here. He transposes
letters when he writes greashoppe, fressh, wrohhie ; wyrhta
(faber) becomes vrnhhte; in his tdbresstenn he follows
the Scandinavian hresta rather than the Old English
(etherstan. He unluckily transposes the old hwy writing
what instead of hwcet^ and so with other words. If we
had kept the h in its proper place, we should now have
full in our view the link between the English hwoet and
the Latin cmd (quid).* As regards the sound of hwoBty
English stands high above German. Orrmin, moreover,
transposes consonants when he writes Ihude and rhof.
At Vol. II., p. 280, we read of talde lai^he (ea antiqua lex) ;
this change of ih into ^, and this running of vowels
together, is still found in shires not far from Derby ; the
houyloft becomes tallot.
As to Substantives : the old Plural cildru now ap-
pears as chUldrBy which still lingers in Lancashire;
* gang whoam to thee childer and me,' as we read in the
fine modem ballad. Our corrupt Plural children came
from the South, as also did brethren and hine. We still
keep the old sunne heavi^ but Orrmin has a corrupt
Genitive in surmess lihht (II. p. 112). He forms a
' The interchange between c and h has not died out in our
island ; I hare heard Scotch peasants talk of a cwirlwind instead of
hwirlmnd. A Tuscan talks of the Emperor Harlo Quinto ; a Roman
calls him Cdrlo.
Middle English: Cultivation. 219
wholly new Plural when talking of se^ne goiUltiesmu
(virtntes), in Itis Preface, line 276; he also cormptB
^or (the Latin /wte) into deoresi (deers) ; we have hap-
pily not followed him here. The old ^nanva (bominnm)
is wonderfnlly altered, when we read, in I. p. 243, of
godc menneet kerrtess. He nseB menn for males and
females alike in I. p. 165 ; onr wiser age wonld talk of
iiidividuaU, which is a longer word than jpersong. The
Dative is mishandled by hint, as much as it is by as ; we
read that win iciMs hroht^attalldemimim; tolenerm (lend)
pa menn. The Accnsative replaces the Genitive in the
phrase whatt gale Miinm lie gannge^]i ; there is a donble
Accusative in to ledenn hemm pe lee^e. As in the Blick-
Mng Homilies, we get a hint of onr on the tpot (continao)
when we bear that Nathanael believed forryrihht i atede
am 9umm be &c. II. p. 125. The stem terseness of old
speech comes ont when Christ heads his qnotations from
Scripture with boc se^p (liber ait), omitting the Definite
Article, II. p. 41. A new piece of slang has arisen
of late years, 'it will snit yon down to the gronnd'
(onmino). It seems to be hinted at in II. p. 133, )>ws
ivinn iaa drunnlcenn to fe grand. There is now and then a
word used by Orrmin in a sense that seems strange to ns ;
the chariot that bore Eli jab aloft is called a hirrte ; the poor
woman who shared her scanty food with that prophet is
addressed by him as hffdig ; the word allderrman still
means a prince, and sometimes an abbot. Father later,
in a Latin Charter of 1255, given by Henry III. to
Oxford, aldermaniB nsed of nothing higher than hnrghers;
(Stnbbs, ' Docnments,' p. 368). We find for the first
time snch compounds as overlnng, overlord, words happily
220 Old and Middie English.
revived in our own day.' WedSlac (wedlock) now ap-
pears whore of old mjlac would have been used. The
former word, before Omnin's time, meant no more than
the Latin pigtms. The Old English uiaruld stood for
sceeviwti, and nothiog more ; it now begins to stand for
orbit.^ The latter was earlier translated by mtddan-eardi
Orrmin, at II. p. 256, oomponnds the Old and the New,
talldog of the mtddeU wereUd, Lie was the Old English
word for corpus, though it is in our day found only in
J/iekjleld aiaA lijch-gate; hodig nsually meant the tnink
or chest; bat Orrmin nsea hodij, far oftener than lie,
in our sense of the word. In one line he forms a new
Substantive oat of the two, speaking of hodi^kk. The
vord JlaU, akin to the Jlegil of the mainland, now
first appears in English. Bone (boon) changes its
meaning; it had meant prater, bat it now eomeismes
means /avour, as we nee it; in I. p. 263, comes patt bone
yattlie^eormde(<:rB,yed). In II. p. 125, the word trowwpe,
oar troth, meane belief; this laflt senae was of old ex-
pressed by Ireowe. A new word, kinnessmarm (cognatoa),
now appears; so does cWptitp (clothing). The North
of England was soon to abound in Verbal Nouns. We
read, in I. p. 247, that Herod was not crowned o Qodeie
haUfe ; this is the Scandinavian af ChSa luii/u, and fore-
' One critic ia mncb disgnBted at my uang overlord; in this I
simply follow my betters. Ha would probBbly prefer mperior dami-
nator, or hffptr-despol. He stands up for tociology sa a neat com-
puand ; BO he Tould of all thinga, I anppose, prefer hyper-domiMLtor.
' Thia -wotd ia atill rightly prononnrod aa a disayllable in Scot
laud ; aa id I^dy NaiFne'a MitherUa Lanmiie ; —
' Bat it wad gae wiUeas the mirald to lee.'
Middle English: Cultivation. 221
sbadowB onr hehalf, wluoh came a htuidred years later;
the passage may be tmnaUted by tyn QotCt part. In II.
p. 333, IB the first example, I think, of oar oommoa nBe
oifolk withoat an article before it ; it no longer meaoa a
nation, bat man ; Christ was baptizing folk. In Orr-
min's werkkeda^h, the new form of taeotv-dtBg, we find the
first germ of Shakspeare's workaday world.
As to AdjectiTeB: in I. p. 280, we see how they
changed their meaning, iwhiUo mann kkus himmfuU lap
to nehh^^tenn ; here the lap means odionim ; bnt as years
went on the Dative iwMllc mann was taken for a Nomi-
natiTe, and thna the lap got the meaning of invittu.
Omnin's foUhmmvm (compliant) has not yet the de-
grading sense of onr fidiome ; indeed, the latter is said
to be connected with foul. He nses eheepUh in a sense
far removed from oora, applying the word to a man
who tneehly follows Christ's pattern. He has, in U.
p. 182, when relating the miracle at Cana —
yinforrme win tN tinipe god,
)in> lattrt tnin im h^tra.
Here we have the opposition between former and
latter (posterior) ; the old lator meant only gerior ; this
new sense of the Comparative is fonnd in Dorsetshire
twenty years after this time. The /id was coming
in, as an Adjectival ending ; ws now light on pohiful.
In hia Pronouns, Omnin shows that he is a near
neighbour to Northnmbria. He nses I and ice ; pe^
peggre, pe^m; but sometimes replaces the two last by
heore, Aemm.' It was two hundred and sixty years before
their and them came into Standard English ; they are
' The Gothic ^rim for illxa is in St. John, ri. 7.
222 Old and Middle English,
trae Scandinavian forms. Unlike the Peterborough
Chronicler, Orrmin sticks to the Old English heo (in
Latin, ea), which he writes 2;^o. In I. p. 42, there is an
nnnsual form ; )>tt cwennkesst i ]n sellf modi^nesse. This
of old would have been pe silf; self seemed to be a
Noun, something like person*, Shakspeare has 'her
sweet self.* In I. p. 85, we see our common form
theirs for the first time; till e^perr peeress herrte.
Forms like ours and yours were to come later. This
Scandinavian form took long to reach the South ; three
hundred years later, Skelton wrote both I am yours and
I am your. Orrmin employs that before Masculines
for the Latin t'ZZe, which is something quite new ; London
kept this at bay and stuck to thilk for two hundred and
fifty years longer. In I. p. 227, we see—
whose lit iss \xttt lufepp gripp
pott mann shaU^findenn Jesu Crist.
For the Plural of this pati he employs fa, which fifty
years later was to become few (those) in the North,
This and that are for the first time coupled together in
I. p. 328—
Whatt tiss and tatt firofete.
That is set before Hike (idem) in I. p. 158 ; paM Hike
mam/a ; thai same is still used instead of the sa/me in some
parts of our country. This ylc was being encroached upon,
though it still lingers in Scotland ; as B>edgauntlet of
that Qc (de eodem). Orrmin has same once, and once
only —
£[e mihhte makenn cwike mean
peer of pa same staness.^^1. p. 346.
Middle English: Cultivation^ 223
This root »ame ia good Sanecrit and Gothic ; the Norse
Mime means ejusdem generis. Nothing in English is
stranger than that this Scandiaavian word, which was
confined to the North long after Orrmin's time, should
have driven ont the old yle. We now once more see
TTing Alfred's geonre (iste), after a long interval; o
^tml hallf t>e jlwrtm (on yonder side the stream),
II. p. 12. There ia a great change in Relative Pro-
noons ; a very foreign idiom comes in II. p. 94 : her iss
Tohamm ptw fctrrf foU^henn ; this is the first time that
the antecedent se or he before wkamm is dropped. The
old h-wyic is employed asaMascaline B^l&trve ; all vihillke
ihvlerm cwemenn me (omnes qni), II. p. 261 ; henoe
comes onr famoos which art in Heaven. The same hap-
pened to the German weUker. It had not yet been
settled how the Nenter Belative quod was to be
Englished; Orrmin uses the kindred word what. We
may see how this came to be employed as a Aelative by
comparing his all whattse i^n einne with his all 'fatt whatt
itt bitacnepp, I. p. 36 ; he nses it sometimes without an
antecedent, as in II, p, 91, tv, skallt sen purrh tohatt iu
ihaUt me cnowenn ; the phrase, they herdenn tnhatl he
aeSide, II. p. 188, has had a longer life. The old hwyle
formerly expressed the kindred Latin quaUs ; this hwylc
waa being replaced by the word we now use; in IL
p. 120, comes, he sep what lif Jiejj hdemi. Cleasby's
Dictionary gives ua the Scandinavian idiom hiat manna
ertu,. The phrase whaXt time is nsed for when, I. p. 251,
and this is still employed by onr poets. This what had
already been coupled with the Masculine Plural hlafat
in the Bushworth Gospels, written not far to the North
224 Old and Middle English.
of Orrmin'a abode; he faToare something like this
idiom when writing vihait monn, II. p. 202. The old
Iwoat had alwajrs stood for aliquid ; it seems now to
EogliBh res, as well as qm», qualis, and qaod. The Essex
gwm del is ia Orrmin's month luitvmwhaH, which we stdll
keep ; this was of old hweet titles ; we also find srun of err
and »amtmohwr. The phmse peUt iUke whatt (mAbto les)
is in n. p. 293. The old guia hwa awa, fijiowed by the
Verb, is wonderfully expanded in Orrmin's iohate itt wi
fatt sti^hefP, II. p. 20 ; this it was now being very freely
used throngboat England ; in II. p. 250, we find ]>urrk
Qodesa ^ife itt was* fatt &a. ; in I. p. 162, comes tohatt
witt itt its i pe to &c; in former times Jxef wonld
have been used instead of this itt. In I. p. 137 is tiiB
parent of onr if to he that ; Orrmin has %iff faU itt
fatt he -misdof. Even earlier than this, fast might
have followed ealle ; we now hear that a man's wife
most gnard him aU fatt %ho nuxs^, I. p. 214. The oU b
prefixed by Orrmin in the neaal way to Fartioiples and
Adjectives. The form firat fonnd in the Blickhng
Homilies, written not &r from Orrmin's shire, was now
being imitated; (bIc was taking on after it, whence
comes the Scotch i2ia ; wo see iUe an off aUe ^a, and ^so
swQle an (snch a) drattnJcennegte patt, II. p. 137 ; a new
idiom. So is ure kinde isB swiUc faU, I. p- 20. The
Subetantive ia now dropped after enough ; we may find
incj,he fatt ledemi &€., I. p. 10; here we must enpply
As to Nomerals, an had long been nsed stand-
ing by itself, answering to quidam ; it is now set
before a proper name for the first time ; at L p. 287,
Middle English: Cnltivatien. 225
we hear of tm Filippe, (one Philip,) 'Philippna qni-
dam.' We see a new phrase in I. p. 149 ; Omnin
talke of ehhte tipegt an (eight times one). We find all
an need in two different senses : at II. p. 193, it means
that Christ is wholly one mtii God ; at II. p. 40 we hear
that msji cannot
bi brad aU one l^bemt.
This is onr first glimpse of the fotnre alone ; many snch
forma with at prefixed were soon to follow. Another
Middle English form for tolut may be seen at II. p. 54;
he wau himm atie, a Reflexive Dative ; of this the Low-
land Scotch have still traces.' The word mnet (once)
had before stood for gemel, it now takes the meaning of
olim i I. p. 62, he wati asnegi vntrpenn blind. The old
meaning is fonnd in I. p. 35, patt mats ajj cBitete 0 fe jer ;
we here see that onr a in otiee a year is hut a clipped on.
The old (»rest (primus) was now rapidly giving way to
fint, which was to be the English word in future for
this number; we hear of the (wa^rMfe menn (I. page
261) ; here faforman hod would have been used before
this time.* We come upon the true old long form of
our phrase three fourths, &c. ; we hear, at I. p. 320, of
something divided o fowvtre feorfeim daleti ; we now
' This BefleziTe Dative may be Been in I^j Naiine'a Poetna,
p. 211 :—
' Ob I wba will di; the dreeping t«ar
She sheds her lane, ihe sheds her lane !
Thia Ume (aiie) waa at last mutekea for a If onn ; as ia p. 209 :—
* The kettle, for me, and hae conped its lane,'
' Which is right, the finl two or the two fint ? Something like
the former phrase has alirajs been nsed ; the latter dates &om later
times, and both have bean nsed bygood writers down to 1800.
226 Old and Middle English.
drop the last word. Hwuidredd, more akin to the
Scaadinavian than to the Old English kiMd, is em-
ployed.
Orrmin has many changes in the Verb. For the
Latin runt, we find arm, as well as beon and nnndmui.
The first of these was hardly ever need in the Sonth or
West of England; it comes &om the Angles, as we saw
in the Northnmbrian Oospels. Si wceron sometamee, as
in the Soathem Homilies, becomes Jie^S viwre ; bnt a
more wonderfat change is fu vxere tnmed into {ru wom,
the Ootbio toast (eras) ; ic teeal becomes I »haU. We
see the last of the pare form of the Old English si
(in Latin, ait) ; it enrvives, somevbat clipped, in oar yet,
i.e. ge ei. Seo is in the Ormnlnm cnt down to (e, and
beon (esse) to hen. Orrmin nses the old ic mot, pu ftwst,
and also a new Scandinavian aoxiUary verb, which is
employed even now from Caithnesa to Derbyshire.'
Snch a phrase as / mun do tkit ia first found in bis work ;
the mun is the Scandinavian muiM; bot mune in the -
Ormnlnm implies fntnrity, not necessity.
The new Plaperfect was taking &st root ; i,iff (he)
kfBffde fra^nedd, ' if be had asked ; ' here the Imperfect
wonld have followed if in the oldest English. Oar
phrase ' he is grown ' is more respectable than ' he has
grown ; ' for we find in Orrmin 3A0 leass waxewa, also
waierr waai floviedd; the Passive, not the Active.
Orrmin shows as the future extension that was to
be given to the former voice in Enghsh ; he has in
II. p. 58, Oodd woM peowiBtedd (served) ; in T. p. 294, ^
Middle English: Cultivation, 227
laxiA \a.tt liimmi vost beilenii eehenit ; in II. p. 63 maiaikmn
forrbodeiin its to faaidenn. None of the Aryan tongaes
was to nse the Passive so &ee1y as the English now
does ; Horace's ego proourare imperiyr is Bomething most
anosoal in Latin. In earlier times men talked of 'a
lamb to offer ; ' Orrmin has the great change, 11. p. 85,
fill livtnh to beti offrtdd ; we are more correct than he
was when we say ' 1 am to blame,' ' this house to let,'
' if the thing were to do again ; ' onr tme old Gemndial
forms. He clips the Imperative, writing loc instead of
lociaS, II. p. 90, where the word is specially addressed
to many men. The Infimtive is nsed as the equivalent
of a preceding SabBtantive in II. p. 223 ; all forrsokenn
higg lare, and kiiam to fullihenn ; ao in I. p. 220, a man
pleases God wip^ measess aiui w({'|) lo letenn ewiiigenn
Mvvnt ; we ahoald now use the Verbal J^oon, instead of
these Gemndial Infinitives, and this moat be kept in
mind when discussing the hard question of tng final.
There is a carious change of meaning in neden; Omuin
uses it in its old sense cogere, but he also employs it for
egere (in Icelandic, mouS-gjn/a.) ,- menn yalt iieilenn to
pia hullpe, I. p. 213. He has the Scandinavian verb wuut
with the Accusative. We still keep the old meaning of
(te^»(partiri); Orrmin gives it a new sense in I, p. 213,
iUc 'in, matat 'jatt ohht wipp pe shall tUelenn (have
dealings with) ; this sense comes from Scandinavia.
Miss here governs an Accusative, not a Genitive ; in
I. p. 310, the parents missten fe^re child.
At I. p. 188, we read of pe hede patl mann hitt in the
Paternoster ; the hede here bidden still stands for some-
thing abstract ; it was not until Chaucer's time that men
Q 2
228 Old and Middle English.
coald talk of ' a pair of beads.' A great load has been
thrown on onr verb hid; we may hid beads, hid to
supper, ^'if a servant go, or bid at an aaction. The old
meaning of stirdan was ' to be weary ; ' it now has the
meaning of ' to leave oft.' See II. p. 92. The old
nuTnonhad the sense of 'to intend;' it now has the
further sense of 'to signify.' We hear of the tnrile,
I. p. 42, that when she loses her mate, ne hepe^^ jJo
vsiyf ofwr ; here keep means manere, a new sense of the
word. We find ^att its to seggen, which is a contiiina-
tlon of an Old EnglUh idiom ; like ' do yon to wit ' ;
we follow Scandinavian forms in here Jiimm toittnetf,
hrinngenn till ende. The Infinitive follows enough
when the latt«r is preceded by an Adjective, as
straiig inoh lo werrpeiiit. The old Gothic imiandan
(perseverare) is here seen as stofindeiiu inn to; the
sonrce of our 'I stand to win,' &c. Orrmin has he ttrae
inn, from the old drican (ire).' But the Danish take is
now greatly developed. We find, as at Peterborough,
the phrase, ' he took to do so and so ; ' Orrmin carries
this idea a step further ; we hear that some men Uikenn
hemm till Orist, II. p. 230 ; also that the widowed Anna,
I. p. 2B6, toe tinp\> nan operr (hnsband) ; the common
phrase now would be ' take up with.' At I. p. 256 comes
the Scandinavian shade of meaning, takenn on hce^nig;
hence onr ' take in joke.' At I. p. 86, the Virgin foe
oun to fra^nenn, ' went on to ask ; ' hence our * do not
take on so,' that is, ' go on so.' At I. p. 323, comes
■ Sir Roger de Corerley at the thrntra I'mck in, hataiag somn
people talk near him. AddltOQ would have been pnzzled to gire the
deriratioD of Chit verb.
Middle English: Cultivation. 229
toite)t|> lyjporHi juia. At II. p. 148, Cain foe )tt|i jiew
Ab<xl ; hence onr ' take a fancy to ' &c. The waterpota,
II. p. 133, tokenn (contained) ^refald mett. At II. p. 117,
Filippe toe NalaiKuel wipy wordesg (Gnecia victorem
cepit) ; BO in Bums, * he takes the mother's eye.' It ia
not enough to etndy the meaning of the word take in
BoBworth's 'Anglo-Saxon Dictionary;' Cleasby's Ice-
landic Lexicon mnst be carefdiy Bearched ; this espe-
ci^y holds good in the case of writers who lived to
the North of the Great Sundering Line.
Orrmin naes assken (rogare), instead of the Sonthem
acsian, and we have here followed him; the Irish still
employ axe, since the first English settlers in Ireland
came &om BriBtol and the Sonth.
We find both bikaehedd and hikdkhi for caught. This
new word, which we saw first in the Sonth, must have
spread fast in England.
He sometimes turns a Strong Verb into a Weak one,
a process begun long before his time. He nsee heefedd
(elatnm) as well as hofemi ; he has ehppte (dormiyit),
where it ought to be 8^ ; weppien (flevernnt), instead of
weopon ; trededd (depressns), instead of treden.
As might be expected, Orrmin follows the Northern
ha/an rather than the Sonthern habban (habere). We
find a near approach to our modem corraption hatt in
Himm haffk tu slajenn wittenrlij. — I. page 154.
Scorcnedd (scorched) appears for the first time in
English; Wedgwood quotes the Low Dutch »ekrog^en,
which has the same meaning.
230 Old and Middle English,
Ornnin uses both the Strong and the Weak form for
the Past Participle of shmo ; he has both shcewenn and
shcewedd. 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.
As to Adverbs : for^ipjf appears for the first time,
but is used only once by Orrmin, who sticks to the old /orr-
^rihht. He was the first to use rihht before an Adjective
instead of stoife (valde) ; the foreign very has now almost
driven out this old Adverb ; rihht is also employed by
hira where we should BoyjiAst, ^e^ rihht nohht ne tvisstenn,
II. p. 333. Wrang is here used as an adverb ; it was for-
merly a substantive only ; he toe tare all wraiig, II. p. 60.
Another Scandinavian idiom appears ; wel is used as an
Adjective in I. p. 251, it tvass wel fat Crist wass h&renn.
The old uteweard is changed into utterrlike, which, how-
ever, does not as yet take our sense of the word. We have
seen ]nirhut arise forty years earlier ; from this purrhutliJce
(our ihormigMy) is now formed. The si^f^an is here
used much like our ago; nohht lannge wffemi, like
Scott's * sixty years since ; * this is the first hint of
*auld lang syne.* A new adverb suddenly appears
at II. p. 302 ; * thou makest future arks through the
one that is all rcedi^ i \>in herrte ' ; what before meant
jpamtus may henceforth mean^aw, and this we shall see
repeated in other Danish shires. WhUum is used in the
sense of quondam^ as in the Lindisfarne Gospels ; a proof
that Orrmin lived not far from Yorkshire. The curious
word hidene (in Dutch, by that) is now first found in
England ; we kept it in use for three hundred years..
Middle English; Cultivation. 231
In I. p. 254, the star, as is there ««k^,fitih na fon\erT
nuvr; here more is needlessly added, something like Matt
Highest ; hence comes onr furthermore, a word found
eighty years later in the Sir Tristrera. Orrmin repeats
his words in the Old English way, as hett and hett, mar
and mar; he unites the opposing adrerbs, ni* upp, raw
dun; her and tcere (here and there). We use merer in
the sense of the Latin ne or non, as ' never fear ; ' this
sense of the word is seen in Orrmin, II. p. 4 ; St. John
madd known that he itaw nafr a» off fe l>reo (non erat
Ac.). Na mare (non amplins) is need like no longer,
referring to time ; ' God wonld care na mare to be served
in that way,' I. p. 352. There is a change in I. p. 258,
f,iff ^att feji iholldeim oferr nohkt wendenn (go or not) ;
in the old time this nohht wonld have been nd. Hereof and
whereof are found ; also her uppe (hereupon), I. p. 38,
though it in this passage means herein ; tcer abatenn
(Uiereaboat) appears. The adverb away is more freely
used; atl. p. 24I,wefaear)>af< JbAept(Ta««atM^«(absent).
PrepositionB are now much employed as Adverbs; as
wpp t'rwi hecffne ; %iff {>m toillt habhenn off pin gillt,
I. p. 188 ; the week waf» gan all uf, I. p. ISO ; htggenn
vi (redimere), I. p. 271.
We have already seen ai though ; alls iff (quasi) now
replaces the Old English noilc. The Dauish t^imm is
ofl«n used instead of the English twa, and it is still
heard in whataomever. Tyndale long afterwards need now
to English the Greek o\m, as in St. Luke r. 36 ; Orrmin
Foreshadows this in I. p. 153 ; after referring to what he
had before said, he asks wH se^de ice nu ]'at &c. In I.
p. 69, he has ns lalde \>e^ nokht te^re Itiim, uppwarrd ne
232 Old and Middle English.
(iuniMcami noit-wfen- ; this new phrase is the one instance,
I think, in which we may now nse that trae Old English
idiom of the twofold negative. Manj standard authors
may be quoted for it, down to Enowles in his ' Virginins : '
* we needn't say that neither.' Let ns not allow this
fine old relic to peTish ntterly, Orrmin somewhat alters
the Old English shape of those Gonjonctions that are
formed from Prepositions: instead of (E/fer ^a-m, \e
followed by the Verb, he has affierr yatt ; he has also
before tkal,/or that, in thai, through that. Ho goeS'Still
farther, and forms while that, if that, and Tatka^ than
that; we are now apt to clip the that.
As to Pi-epositions : there is a new sense of with at
II. p. 34 i Christ's generations, it is said, go throngh
werett (men) fowteertif, annd an wif]) Criei hiimn eellfewt ;
that is, if Christ be added. Oirniin has also to wed wiih, to
berenn upp wip]i (hence onrjMii up with), I. p. 128. The
u)i)>)> is made an adverb and repeated, for the sake
of emphasis; 'I will show you wifp and wipp;' some-
thing like Orrmin's new withal (omnino). Layamon
abont the same time was writing through and through;
by and by was to come later. Orrmin uses the old btnnan
of time ; he has also wippinnenn in the same sense, as
wippittnenn sexe ^erees. He employs/or when referring to
time, aa forr lannge (for long) ; earlier writers would have
had to instead of this for, and the same remark applies
in /or the wmee. He has forr nane gode (for no good), H.
p. 182, and seek for; the last word would have been o/Ier
in Old English. There is a new Preposition in I. p. 354;
St. John forbids the Publicans to take anght /orr]) bi ]>«
kingessfe; thisis the sonrco of the Scotch /orii,j (pneter).
Middle English: Cultivation. 233
The pair m and on iaterchauge as asnal. We see don
him/m i ^Bg^re woMa, II. p. 221, (put him in their power).
A wholly new idiom appears in I. p. 104 ; Christ is said
to be Qodi inn himm eelfenn, that is ' teJcen by himself,'
(per se), in his own natore. Earlier Englishmen called
to heaven ; Orrmin shows as how the to was replaced by
on at I. p. 58, Orisi hidde)/]/ uppon hUfaden; he has also
' to set a name upon him.' Where we say ' to draw men
on to ' Ac., Orrmin snbatitntes uppcmn, U. p. 180. This
Mpon marks hostility ; in I. p. 248, Herod thinks that
the Slaffi were vppotm kimm emnenn with views of their
own ; the idea may be seen in the Chronicle about the
time of BnfiiB, and it survives in onr adze upon, eneroaeh
upon, find ttolen goodg upon a man. The old to is replaced
by itmtUl (into) when Orrmin boasts of his tarning a
book innlUl Ennglisshe; he was not polished enough,
I fear, to talk of gemi-SaM>n.* He has also lammMewn
(gather) fise mnliU an. Indeed, his inntUl seems to
foreshadow oar unlH, vnto, when we read in I. p. 250,
ledenn henvm )ie toejje inn^l ^aU tun. Over is strength-
ened by all, much as we nse it ; the flood passed all
oferr erfe. The old gelang on (per) is cnt down ; we
hear in II. p. 110 that something iw lango Crislees AeUpe;
Scott keeps this old phrase in his ' Dark Mnsgrave, it
was long of thee;' but the common folk now prefer 'all
along of thee ; ' the on and the of, as nsoal, interchange.
Toward replaces the old for and vrif, as lufe Unoarrd
' Onrnin, in the eyet of 80m« of our would-be philologem, must
Bpp«ar as i^orantlj preanmptnouB sa King Alfred bimself. Tha
idea of thsir barbarona jargon being uxonnted Engljeh '.
234 Old and Middle English.
Oodess hu8y 11. p. 188 ; in the Essex Homilies the Prepo>
sition here employed was togenes. Bi is now nsed before
a Pronoun to express isolation, like the Greek Jcata ; St.
John, we hear, grew np and cupe hen himm ane hi Mmm
sellfemi, I. p. 25. We find at nsed after the verb begin ;
heretics say that Christ higann (ortns est) att 8annte
Ma/f%e, II. p. 295; we should now, in snch a phrase,
nse from. Another new employment of at comes from
the Scandinavian ; he chces all att hiss wille, I. p. 120.
From is put before the Danish pepenn ; as fra fepenn-
forrp (from thenceforward), a needless addition ; in
Scandinavian, he^Swn fra stands for onr hence, Orrmin
has both free of and free from, with a Noun following.
That Preposition, which has been encroached on hjfrom,
is itself used in many new senses : we find ware of gl4xd
of rich of kissti'^ (liberal) of; this of replaces the old hi,
(the Latin de), in think of hear of ash of hear witness
of higripenn (rebuke) of write of how it was ; the old
(Jenitive makes way for of in repent of the tale of eight,
the hope of love of iieed of loss of somewhat of OMght of
two of upper hand of; in II. p. 125, we find first Godess
"^ife, and in the next line gife off Oodd; there is the old
form, Borne hurrh, and the new form, hurrh off '^^rsalem.
There are such phrases as see ifell ende off himm, I. p.
174; off si\>re (of late), I. p. 252; wass off his hmti',
I. p. 8 ; fejj ne frmdenn nohht off himm, I. p. 310 ; like
•see more of him.* The to is as much developed by
Orrmin as the of; we find look to himself fresh to (his
work), hum to ashes ; the Dative is replaced, in herrsumni
(obedient) till him; the Infinitive, following another
Verb, has to often prefixed, as forhid to go, help to do,
Middle English: Cultivatioti. 235
tet him io do, cltoee them to he, care to, doom to, he loth to,
/orhian (neglect) to, behoves to. The idiom give to wife
is one of oar oldest phrases ; Omniii carrieB this a little
forther in I. p. 255, wkattse pu doit to gode ; we stUI say,
' I am so mnch to the good.' At II. p. 133, conies )>ws
Winn ii8 drunkeivn to ])e grimd ; here the to replaces the
old oS of the Sonthem shires.
On-min's work proves that the Trent conntiy had
not yet lost the power of componnding words with
Preposittona and such prefixes as even,fuU,v,n, and wan.
This gives wonderful strength and pith to his verse.
We degenerate writers of New English nse few com-
ponnds but those with out, over, fore, and under ; in this
respect Ei^land (it is the weak point of onr tongne)
blls woefnlly short of India, Greece, and Germany.
Most striking is the nnmber of Omniu's words begin-
ning with the privative un. We have lost many of
them, and have thus sadly weakened onr diction ; bnt
onr best writers are awaking to a sense of oar Iobb, and
snch words as unwiedom are coming in once more.
Ornnin had no need to write the Latin immortality
when he had ready to hand snch a word aa vnndcBpshil-
diineate, implying even more than the Latin.'
Orrmin writes feelingly on the daties of kings to
their peoples, as wonld be natural in a bom subject of
the two sons of Henry II. ' A Christian King,' says
he, ' should be rihhtvns and milde, and god u'ij))> all hiss
' One profesBor of fine writing wis ^etj wroth in priot with me
tor mj ideas about English componiidB. He would bs glnd, I hnva
no donbt, to BBbstitQto iia-pontadaptiAility for Mr. PlimBoU's vulgarly
Tentonii; word, wnatavxirthintse.
236 Old and Middle English.
follc^ or Ood will hold him worse than that heathen
Emperor who drove out Archelans for oppression, and
for nothing else/ I. p. 286. Orrmin had doubtless
heard of the doings of a later Emperor, Henry YI., who
was the cause of draining England of much gold ; the old,
bard writes of Augustus as an Bamanisshe Kaaerrking^
a title which seems so much to puzzle the English of
our day. Orrmin must have known all about that sove-
reignty which was styled in the documents of his day,
' the Roman name and the Grerman sway.' He talks of
he^sanrv^ (besants), and evidently has an eye to the
Crusades in I. p. 153, where he says that no man ought
to be killed unless he seeks to slay you, forr Grisstendom
to cv)ennkenn (quench).
One of the peculiar shibboleths brought hither by
the Danes was the word ga/r (fiekcere), still to be found in
Scotland. Orrmin uses the compounds forrgart and
oferrgarrt. The verb is found neither in High nor in
Low German. The Scandinavian gow is used by him
for observare ; hence comes our a-gog, the Icelandic
d goBgium (on the watch). OrrDodn's Danish Adjective,
t^igg {fid'^)i ^&s not died out of our Northern speech ;
hutenn (vituperare), which first appears in Orrmin*s
work, is a puzzle to lexicographers, and may come either
from the Welsh or the Scandinavian. England cleaves
to her own old word leap ; Scotland to the Danish lattpa
(loup) ; they are both found in the Ormulum. The South
of England is wont to lark (ludere), the Old English
lacan ; the North of England follows Orrmin's leg^^enn^
the Iceland at leika. When we say * follow my ?eae2,' we
are using Orrmin's Icelandic word lei^ (ductus) ; the
Middle English : Cultivation. 237
Old English Idd meant only iter. We derive our modem
Dse of the word shift (matare) from the Scaodinavian,
and not &om the Old English ; in the latter the word
means ' to diatribnte,' and nothing more. We see the
two senses in Ornnin's work, I, p. 13, where he speaks
of Zachariah's service in the Temple, Onr word shift
(chemise) means only a change of linen. We speak o£
' sticking a man into a thing ;' this is Orrmin's steken
(figere), akin to an old German word. The Scotch say
' steke the door.' Hia "^errsaltem for Jerusalem ib a tme
Danish form. His masifilredwale (arch-heretic) is an
early instance of componnding French and Teatonic
'Nonns into one word. 'B.eji.s^ hurt for offendeTe,l<Edere;
this is akin to the Dntch.
It wonld be endless to point ont all Orrmin's Scan-
dinavian leanings. In onr word for the Latin siella, he
prefeiB the Danish «h'eme to the Old Engligh gteorra,
writing it iterme. He even nses og, the Danish word for
' e( ' in a phrase lik 055 occ a^j. He employs the Danish
ending le^c as well as the English nesg in his Sabstan-
tives, aa moitjlfijse, modiptesge. In tende, his word for
deeimtu, he follows the Danish tiends rather than the Old
English teatia ; onr tenth seems to be a compoand of the
two. The Enghsh Ghorch talks of tithet, the Scotch
Kirk of teiiid*. He uses a crowd of Danish words which
I do not notice, since they have dropped ont of nse.
Inke the Peterborongh Chronicler, Orrmin has fra, wiclce,
vrrtmg, wilets, ploh, kirrkegcBrd. While weighing the
mighty changes that were clearly at work in his day, we
.get some idea of the inSnence that the Danish settlement
of 870 haa had npon onr tongne. I give a list of those
238
Old and Middle English,
Scandinavian words, used by him, which have kept their
place in our speech.^
Old English,
Tynan
Tintregian
Unscearp
Ceapsetl
Fear
Hrffid
Sni5an
Seam
Sweltan
Wunian
Afaran
PaJ)
Freme
Qescrepelice
Oraeft
Oe&pman
Yfel
Ticcen
Tendan
XJp-heah
Ne&t
Sige
£ax
Seandmavian.
Angra
Beita
Blunda, dottiiire
Bu«
BoH
Buinn
Klippa
Krokr, uncus
Dvelia, delay
Flytta
Gata
Gagn, commodum
Gegnilega, convemently
Ginna, decipere
Okr, usury
Ilia
Kid
Kynda
k Lopti
Naut
Overhaand
Palozi
Orrmin,
Anngrenn, to anper
Be^n, to bait
Bhinnt
Bo])e, booth
BvHeybua
Bun, ready^
Clip, tottdere
Croc, a device
Beje, die
Dwelle >
Flitte, remove
Gate, path
Gajhenn, gain
Gejjnlike*
Gum, a contrivance
Huccster*
IUe,«Z/
Kide, capreolus
Kindle
0 Lofift, akft
Nowwt, bos
Oferrhannd, upper hand
Bulaxe^ pott^-axe
1 I give in my list the origin of a few Scotdsh phiasee, and the
reason why Yorkshiremen talk of the gainest way to a place.
< A ship is outward bound.
* We still have the old sensei ' to dwell long upon a thooght.'
The sense of habita/re has not quite driven out the sense of morari,
* Hence comes our ungainly. But the verb * to gain ' is &om the
French gagner,
A Ster was the sign of the feminine for hundreds of years after
this time/ at least in the South ; we see a change at work when On^
min applies the ending ster to a man.
Middle English : Ct^ltivation.
<MEngm.
Scandmnvian.
ftrmin.
Anuan
Reisa
Rej^^senB, (o roise
Sc<Sp
Staid
ScBld, mautrd
Fothtian
Skierra
Sierra, *we
CwBftw
Sl«gr
Sleh,»;y
Spiw
S16di
Slo|.,rio(
F«gr
Smuk'
Peon
prifaak
prife, thnve
Fultime
TJpphddi
Upphald, on <9>A<^n;
Bod
VSndr
Wand, rod
Wuidan
Vanta
WanteDD, corov
WyiBB
Vaem
Wene,tniwi]iScoteli
Geol
la
Yol, FuJe
We have had a great loss in tlie Old Englisli words
mid (cum) and uiman (capere).^ These are, with little
change, good Suiscrit ; and the GennanB have been too
wise to part with them. Orrmin bat seldom employs
them, and thej mnst have been now djlng oat in the
North. He is fonder of the two words which have
driven them ont, i.e. tcith and take. Had the banks of
Thames been the birthplace of our Standard Ei^Iish, we
shoold have kept all four words alike.
In giving a specimen of Orrmin's verse, I have been
carefol to take the sabject Irom scenes in Conrtly life,
where, after his time, nnmbers of French words mnst
onavoidsbly have been nsed by any poet, however mnch
a lover of homespnn English. Orrmin's pecnliar way
of doabling Consonants will be remarked. He clings
iast to the Infinitive in enn, which had been dropped at
' Eveij one remembun Cowper'B 'Sir Smog.' The old Daoiab
word hu beeo ndly degraded.
' The U«t imrviTeB in mmh, nnd in Corponl Sym.
240
Old and Middle English,
Pefcerborongli ; this is one of his few Southern leanings.
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.
OBMJJLUKf I. — Page 280.
Herode king ma^ swife* wel
])e \&pe^ gast bitacnenn ;
forr all hiss werrc and all hiss will
wass ifeU gast fiill cweme,^
and onn himm sellfenn was inoh**
his a^henn* sinne sens ;
for well biforenn )>att he swallt'
wass himm J^att wa' bigimnenn
}«tt he shall dre^henn^ a^ occ a^
inn helle wi]>]) ]>e deofell ;
forr he warr]>' seoc, and he bigann
to rotenn bufenn^ eor)7e,
and tohh^ he tocc wi)>]7 mete swa
]>att nan ne mihhte himm fiUenn,
and swa he stannc J^att iwhillc™ mann
was himm full la]> to nehhjhenn ;°
and all himm wsBrenn fet and \>eoB°
toboUenn' and toblawenn.
y& Iffichess ]»tt himm comenn to
and himm ne mihhtenn haalenn
he sloh, and sejjde J^att te^^ himm
ne kepptenn' nohht to berr^henn.
and he toe iwhillc hsefedd* mann
ofiT all hiss kineriche/
and let hemm stekenn" inn an bus,
and haldenn 8wi]>e fasste,
and badd tatt mann hemm shoUde skdn,
son summ' he shoUde dejenn.
• right
b loathsome
'pleasixig to
d enow
• own
f died
f woe
k suffer
t became
k atWTB
i yet
■> every
B approach
• thighs
pswoUen
q they
r heeded not
to protect
him
■ head
t kingdom
n had them
shut
xassoonas
Middle English: Ctdtivation.
ha )ioliht« l<att m&im rnunnde' bean
olThisa d»|) swi|>e bli)«,
&Dd wjaate |>att mann mumide )ia'
for hemm full sare wepenn,
and wotlde swa fiatt all |>e folic
[•att time shollde wepenn,
[•att mann himm shoUde findeon dted
Jtotth itt forr himm ne wffite.
Page 283.
And aSleiT {ntt ta wa«a ha ded
Id all hiss miccle einne-
acc |)Br waaa mikell oferrgarrt'
and modi;^eB8e'> sluBwedd
abuteun fatt stinnkennde lie'
[ner itt wass brohht till eor|)e ;
forr all Jie bssre* waas bilejjd
wiji|t bietflnn gold and BiUferr,
and all itt vasa sj^whar* bisett
wi[iji deorewurrjie' stanes*,
and all |iatt wiede ■ |ntt trar waas
uppo )<e btere fiindenir,
all wHfa itt off )>e bettate pall
jiatt anij mann ma^j ajhenn,"
and all itt waas wundenn wiplj gold
and aett ni^i)) deore stanese,
and all he wass wiuT{>Uke ahridd '
alls iff he wieie o life,
and ODn hiss luefedd wterenn twa
gildeue crunees sette,
and himm wass sett inn hiss rihht hannd
an dere kine jerrde ; '
and swa mann barr Jiatt fule ' lie
till Jner be bedenn haSle."
and bise cnilibteas alle iiu(ea°
forth jedenn° wi|>)) t>e bcere.
■ btngAU-
raerTanto
242 Old and Middle English.
wij)j) heore waepenn alle bun,' ' «•*''
8wa siimm itt birrf,** wif )) like. * ^* \3kA\b
and ec j'ser ^edenn wl])]7 ]>e lie
full wel fif hunndredd ]7ewwes8,'
to strawwenn gode gresess " faer, ■ \ie&»
)7att stunnkenn 8wi])e swete,
biforenn jiatt stinnkennde lie
])8er menn itt berenn sholldenn.
and tu88 ]7e^ alle brohtenn himm
wi])]? mikell modi^neese
till J)8Br f8Br ' he f ej^j^m liafFde sejjd * where
))att te^ himm brinngenn sholldenn.
swillc" mann wass J)att Herode king " such
]7att let te chilldiH9 cwellenn,
for fatt he wollde cwellenn Crist
amang hemm, ^iff he mihhte.
THE CONTRAST TO THE EAST MIDLAND.
(About A.D. 1206.)
(King Leab's Anger at Cordelia's Speech.)
pe king Leir iwerSe swa blac,
swilch hit a blac clo5 weoren.
iwaertS his hude and his heowe,
for he was 8u])e ihseimed,
mid paere wraetSSe he wes isweved,
))at he feol iswowen ;
late l^eo he up fusde,
])at meeiden wes afeared,
])a hit alles up brae,
hit wes vuel fat he spac :
Heerne Coidoille,
ich pe telle wille mine wille ;
of mine dohtren J)u were me durest,
nu ]>u eeert me aire Isef^s :
fr
Middle English : Cultivation. 243
ne acsit Jiu nsever holdeD
dale of mine Undo ;
ah mine dohtren
ich wille delen uune riche.
and ^ gcalt worSen warcheo,
and nonien in wansiSe,
for navere ich ne wende
)>at )ru me woldes )ms acandsD,
fwirfbre [ni scalt beon died ic wene :
fli J ut of mine eeeh-sane,
])ii)e suatren scuIsd habhea mi kinelond,
and )na me ia iqueme ;
\o due of Oomwaile
«cal habbe QornoiUe,
and J>e Scottene Mag
Bef^ ^t u;one ;
and ic hem jeve all |)a winne
\9 ich em waldingt over.
and al ^ aide king dude
swa he hafyede idemed.'
The above linea are taken from Lajamon's Brut,
compiled, ae it would seem, in WorcestefBhlre about the
year 1205. The proportion of Teatonic words, now
obsolete, to the whole is the same as in the Ormalnm.
The ea becomes leora; tbna earm (brachinm) is written
<Erm and arm. The diphthong ce is still found here, but
hardly appears in English after I^yamon's time ; this
te he sometimes alters into a and «, for he has not only
6«T (snstnlit), but bar and her; he has fiCTMie (tunc) and
also ^(vne and )i«nn« ; there is fmren as well as faren,
' Sir F. Hadden's LayaToon, I. 130. Layamon has added much
of his own to the original in thia atoiy of King Lear ; and the sddi-
tionB have been copied b; later Tritere, Shakepeara among them.
244 Old aftd Middle English.
lafdies (dominaB) and also leivedu The Old English
Gdsere (Caasar) now becomes Kaisere. The a often
becomes o ; JuU and hot both stand for calidtts, and the
words lond, hond, are written for land^ hand, as in the
oldest Worcester Charters printed by Kemble (* Cod.
Dip.' I. p. 100). This is also done by om' Frisian kins-
men. What Orrmin would have called o lande, Layamon
calls a hnde. The Verb drcef (pepulit) becomes draf
and drof\ the former is used in onr Version of the
Bible, the latter in our common talk. Our modem oc^
is found as well as ceS and a^ ; the first-mentioned form
reminds us of the Worcester manuscript quote at
p. 200 of this book. There is navnt (nihil) and also
normt and nauyt ; into all three most likely came the sound
of the French ou. Orrmin's la (ecce) becomes leo and lou.
The old weorc is replaced by both were and wore ; this
seems to show that both Vowels in the oldest form of the
word were sounded ; the form wurckes also appears. The
Perfect of ]yyden (premere) was once ]>iddey but it now
becomes ]>vdde ; hence our thvd. The graifess (nemora)
of Orrmin is now seen as groven, our groves. The inter-
change between o and u is going on ; Orrmin's hule
(taurus) appears ; there is niornede as well as the old
mumede, wane and vmne ; god (bonus) is found written
<)oud, just as we now pronounce it. The English
counterpart to voloy valid is seen in many shapes, as
wille, wolle, wulle ; walde, wolde, wulde ; the tc wulle
still lingers in our Western shires as I ool. Our word
for the Latin est varies as 5e8, 6eo?5, hifS, and bv^ ; and it
is much the same with the Vowels in the Perfect oifaU
{cadere). The Plural hcec becomes in Layamon few, fes.
Middle English: Cultivation. 24 J
peof, )>M ; we now fallow the Bonnd of the last. There are
both the old lieowai and the new hmcen (eecare) ; hoth
(leoioe and Jieow (semiB). The supplanting of « by ou,
aoimded in the same way, goes on as before ; we find
foil, turn, and botir. In treowoe (true) there is a com-
bination of the English tm and the French on. The
latter sonnd might be expreesed by oi ; we accordingly
find QloichsBter written for Olonceater.
Ab to Consonants : the old se beginniilg a word held
cat against the new »h &r more stedfastly on the Serem
than in On-min's country ; there are bnt five exceptions
to this rule in I^yauioii, which are scheld, sckeap, schip,
trjholdejtcheneheg. Bnt the cA often replaces c; wefindboth
die and dieh, »wile and euek, mueele, wuchel, mockul, and
muMe.' There are brech and crwxhe; the old eycene
now becomes huchene (kitchen). The FreneUc of former
days turns into Frenchie and Freneee (French) ; the old
form FrankU lingered a hundred and forty years longer
in the North and East of England. The word dohter is
seen as dochler; the k becomes sometimes Si sometimes
w ; for there are httrk, tMn'je, and bwruwe, all three ; the
g is clipped or softened, as peni, peni^es, uplircBid (np-
gebredan), iteied (getigod) ; the h disappears in teal,
written as well as icftcef ; we find brohle, Irouhte, brovte
(obtnlit). Some little confusion has been the resalt of
all these changes; thus with Layamon ^uioea (onr_^w)
' We have the proper names Mickle ftod MUchtlt formed from
the old nn/cel. By tha vay.whnt strange ironj fnrnilhed the Celtic
pKtiiota of IS48 with B leader who boosted the most Teutonic of all
names, except perbap* Smith I
246 ■ Old and Middle English.
replaces the old flugon (yolavemnt) ; the likeness to
flowcm (fluere) is rather puzzling, to saj nothing offleon
(fogere). Letters are sometimes cast out in the middle
of a word ; endlufon is turned into (Bllevene^ and et^e
(cucullus) into cvle (cowl). We keep the last letter of
loaf^ the old Udf\ but Layamon in the Plural turns the
/ into v^ and writes Idves^ our loaves. There is a great
change in the tenses of leosan (amittere) ; in the Perfect
losede (our lost) comes as well as the old les ; in the Past
Participle ilosed (our lost), comes as well as the old
iloren. Consonants are sometimes transposed, for we
find both hrvde and burde (mulier).
In Substantives new Plurals are formed ; hors (equi)
becomes horses ; the old form of the word lingers in
'horse and foot.' A great change in idiom, when
measure is to be specified, now appears ; in Old
English, age was expressed by the word wmtre
with a cardinal number, as Tie wees ttoelf wmtre; in
St. John ii. 20, ann/us is Englished by winter. This
is now altered, for we find he wasfiftene jer aid. The
Accusative is further used in the phrase he pleo'^^ede
his plw^en (played his play). Instead of the Accu-
sative, we find cenes cm ane tide (once on a time);
here the cenes stands for olim, as in Orrmin. A few
Substantives change their meaning ; pliht had hitherto
meant jpericulwn ; it now takes the sense of conditio,
which we keep ; "peau had hitherto been applied to
the mind only; it is now used of the body, as we
talk of thews cund sinews, Spenser used the word in
its old sense. Layamon, speaking of a mere, says,
* Eeower nohed heis\^ hence our word nook (angulus j,
Middle English : Cultivaiion. 247
which ma; come from hiidgan (flectere). He Dses
iop for caput.
He forms an Adjective from the old h«nde (prope).
He has indeed, in I. p. 206, an oSer stret Ite niakede tw^e
heiidi ; bat he nanally employs this word in the eenae of
eourteout, and in thie sense it was nsed for centnrieB.
Scott's phra.Be, ' WsJlace wight,' ia seen in liajamon,
who has itoikt (fortis). The Old English ending ol was
being corrupted ; for swicol now becomes atoic/ul, just aa
rather later forgitol was to become forgetful. At III.
p. 98, we see a spelling derice for marking, as strongly
aa may be, the difference between two Adjectives ;
' wonieS her hal and lunil,' ' wholeaud hale ; ' this of old
would have been gehal and hal (integer et sanns).
In Frononns : hit wees ia nsed to emphasise a Verb
following ; hit wes in one ^ol-dteie J>a( 4c., II. p. 532 ;
hit it umi)e geove jere yat y-u weren liere, I. p. 214, for-
merly |>tcf would have been nsed for this hit. One sense
of fosi is fonnd in I. p. 100; makiaii, om eorS has and Jiaf
inne Bwi^ feire itude ; this is like Cicero's 'andientem
Cratippam idqoe Athenis.' In L p. 136 comes ' teide to
hie bortien, yat uxs \e irisie king,' we shonld now alter
the constmction and say * basy (eager) king that he
was.* We sometimes find in Layamon peo (illi) instead
of the Old English hi ; a token that he did not lire very
far to the South of the Great Line. The hv>cBt is em-
ployed for the old hu. in icat keo ihoten Keoren (what they
were called), I. p. 2 ; while is nsed aa a BelatiTe.
Half is now Ret before an Adjective ; lieo Keoren
helf ^aru (half-ready), I. p. 361). Layamon was the
first to pnt the Indefinite Article after many, as moni
248 Old and Middle English,
anne (many one), Tfwny erme 'ping (many a thing), so
also half an hundred. A wonderfol change occurs in be
eau war^ III. p. 399 ; here the Accnsative eou is employed
for the IQominative ye. Onr translators of the Bible
were £ar more careful than Layamon in the nse of these
Pronouns.^ A form well known in later English comes
in I. p. 132, qvene navede he nane, ' qneen had he none/
The great change in Verbs that we owe to Layamon
is the alteration of the Present Participle Active. This,
which of old terminated in ende, became inde in the
South about 1100 ; and now, in 1204, it turns into inge ;
we here find heminge, fraininge^ singinge, and waldinge*
A hundred years later this worst of all our corruptionfl
reached Lincolnshire, and was unhappily adopted by
the man who shaped our modem speech. The con-
fusion between the Active Participle and the Verbal
Noun is endless ; it led to a wholly new English idiom
cropping up about 1770. Lest (ne) is ioWawe^hy should
and would with the Infinitive, instead of the old Sub-
junctive. Orrmin used the old form wa^s vmrrpenn (factufl
est) ; for this Layamon has pu weore his man biamien ;
he writes also Breiines wes awcei iflo^en, I. p. 203. The
construction of the old gewunian (solere) is altered ; the
Auxiliary Verb is added to it, as fe utla-^en weoren iwuned^
n. p. 94. The Passive Voice, as in Orrmin, is further
developed ; we light upon heo wes wel itaht^ I. p. 268, even
though teach governs the dative of the person ; still more
striking is the phrase pu cert ilete blod, II. p. 372. Thifl
is the first instance of the Accusative following the
* They made one slip in Genesis xlr. 8 : ' It was not you that
sent me.*
MtddU English: Cultivation. 249
PflfiBiTe, a most Englist idiom in modem times ; as wo
saj, ' I am forbidden meat.' We see the phrase hahh^n
care, I. p. 16. Onr draw taJces the farther sense of
venire, as well as that of trahere, in II. p. 14 ; lieo
widlei to )iiB dra^en,. Oar lay on (ferire) appears in
it<Brdiehe iieom leggen on, II. p. 465. The expletive,
ieh wene, is fonnd in L p. 131. The old gyrdan
(cingere) gets the farther sense of ixedere; as he
garde Suard on pat hte/d, I. p. 68; so Sbakspeara
has ' he will not spare to gird the Gods,' and we still
talk of girding at a, man. The oldnonn gyrd had borne
the meaning of t-iV^a. iSuio^an had hitherto meant sotiare;
it now got the sense of »woon, I. p. 130. Lajamon
has int^reoden in the new sense of videre ; of old it
had expressed oetendere : this is jnst the converse of the
change in the old «ceatm». Oar allot is first seen in
Layamon's iioten (destinatum). The Perfect of oar
roam (vagari), a puzzling word, is first seen in his
writings as rameden, I, p. 335 ; eighty years later the
a of this verb became o in the Danelagh. A Strong
Verb is turned into aWeak one when he says (I. p. 57),
Am tcipen runden, where we more correctly say his ships
As to Adverbs ; quieliclte changes its meaning and
is used for eito in I. p. 200, though bnt once only; it
comes three times in the later version of Layamon's
poem, drawn np abont 1260. There is a new phrase,
at pan laste (deniqne), I. p. 160 ; this seems an imitation
of the Old English constmction cet nextan. Long seems to
be nsed as an Adverb in Layamon's new phrases pene
dtei longe and tdle hnge niht ; the livdang day was to
250 Old and Middle English.
oome later. The word ^oZ/* seems employed as an
adverb in his hit is halfmon and halffisc^ I. p. 57. We
find her cefier 4m'4ki^Smik4im» in II. p. 19. We see the
combination weonne so (when as) in 11. p. 206; this
lasted nntil 1670, and whereas came np after Layamon's
day. We begin to find a distinction made between so
and as ; swa he 'per agon ase }>e oiSer hcefde idon, I. p. 288.
In Old English the idea of difference was expressed by
ungelice 'ponne. Layamon changes this, for he has al hit
iwm^ oSer \ene heo iwendeni (other than), II. p. 395 ;
Chancer turns this otiier into otherwise. In I. p. 142, we
see 'HO more used for no longer, heo nolden hem no more
feden\ in I. p. 128 rtwre is used in a different sense, heo
ne seide na ping ife6, no more penne hure suste.
Something new appears in hit likede wel pan hinge
hutenfor arte pinge, III. p. 264; it is sometimes hard to
tell whether hut stands for nisi or for prceter. There
is a pleonasm in the sentence heden hine heom rceden,
oiSer celles Ac, II. p. 82 ; here either o^ (ant) or else
would have been quite enough.
As to Prepositions : of is turned into an Adverb in
of mid here brecJies (off with), II. p. 332; the construc-
tion of mid here is curious, there being no Verb. There
is hiswiken of richen (whence our cheat of), and weri of
sor^en, a mon ofpriti jfiren, a king of miide nuBhte; in
the older tongue the Genitive was used instead of this
of The Latin de is Englished by out of in m,ine gumen
ut of Oalwoei'Sa, II. p. 25. The to, like the of, is some-
times used without a Verb, as nu heom to, nu heom tOf
II. p. 468, like Shakspeare's * to it again ! * This to
begins to supplant the old ofS (usque ad), as stihen to pan
Middle English: Cultivatton. 251
hixTR lichen hie (<xr<j, II. p. 428 ; Sydney Smith talked of
preaching a Chnrch ' bare to the aezton.' Ooe Old
English aae ot to'ia continiied iu iseten to mete ; ' stand to
your amiB ' is a survival of this, though wo now, in most
cases of this kind, prefer ai. Id notions of time tdgeaaet in
early times was used to express near approach ; this is now
changed, as in Orrmin, for we read toweard ^an sumere.
The old ^^ra» ongean, whence comes the Scotch foment,
is seen slightly altered at II. p. 353 ; »<Btfam aym him.
The on is used as an Adverb in he hefde brunie &11,
I. p. 66. We have dropped the on, or a nsed by Layamon
to mark fotare time ; as, cmn^ to dmi a eeoven nihte,
I. p. 232. Our threatening phrase, ' on pain of,' is seen
at I. p. 218, uppe vdte offeoioerti ■punden. The uppa is
clipped and need in a new sense, sti^en. up fan hulle,
III. p. 32. Layamon follows the Gothic Preposition
rather than the Old English purh when he writes twor bi
ai hevetiliche main, I. p. 146. This lit he uses when
repeating a Substantive in an adverbial sense, as side bi
ride. He has also hond wiS honde % the older English
used to in this sense. It had employed the verb metan,
followed inunediately by an Accusative ; layamon alters
this into meet with. He has ran with blood, instead of
using a siniple case. He talks of having weather mid
)»on be^slen, II. p. 74 ; whence Prior's line, ' the Colonel
toasted with the best.' This with or mid had expressed
inter in the Old English.
I give a list of many Scandinavian words nsed by
Layamon, which mnst have made their way to the
Severn from the North and East ; we shall find many
more in Dorsetshire & few years later.
252 Old and Middle English,
Club, from the Icelandic Idubba
Draht (haustus), firom the Icelandic drattr
Hap (fortune), from the Icelandic happ, good luck ^
Hit, from the Icelandic kitta
Hufitinge (house court), from the Norse hu6 and thmg
Raken (rush), from the Swedish rakaj to riot about'
Riven, firom the Icelandic rifa (rumpere)
Semen (beseem), from the Norse samoy to fit
To-dascte (dash out), from the Danish daskey to slap
Instead of the Old English word for insuUtj Layamon
enplojs ceite (ait), a word well known to all Etonians.
It is the Danish ey with the Definite Article tacked on
to the end in the nsual Scandinavian way ; ey-it, eyt, as
"Mr, Dasent tells ns. Layamon writes swain and swein
(pner), thus following the Vowel sound of the Danish
sveinn^ not that of the Old English swan. He has the
Danish form cros (crux) ; but the French. crai4:e was the
nsual form in Western England. We see the Scandina-
vian Whitsuntide for the first time in English ; the term
Pentecost had been employed in the Saxon Chronicle.
There are some other common words, which he is the
first English writer to nse. Thus he, living near
the Severn, has taken gyves (catenas) from the Welsh
gevyn; and cutte (secare) from the Welsh cwtt^ a
little piece : this last 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 hall), draf, and picchen (pangere),
* Hence happen^ happy^ ^taply, came into England and sup-
planted older words.
* Hence the Soke's Progress,
Middle English: Cultivation. 253
are akin 10 the Dntch op Qermui words ial, draf, picken.
SucJtert is foaad both is Datch and in Lajamon's work ;
twenty years after his time it appears as rock (agitare).
He haa also hahde (dnxit), the Frisian halia ; aa often
happens in English, the word hale remains, and by its aide
stands another form havl, which cropped ap ninety years
after this time ; at first, they were most likely prononnced
in the same way. Layamon says, * vKoieleden hia flnhtes,'
his flights became weak (I. p. 122) : the Verb has a
High German brother, and from this may come onr
verb tcohhle. At I. p. 275, we see for the first time the
word agasle (terrnit), whence comes onr aghast. For
the origin of this word we most go back to the Gothic
vigeujan. Onr ghostly and ghaiHij spring from widely
different sources.
Soon after lAyamon's time the Legend of St. Margaret
seems to have been compiled.' It has forms akin to the
Worcester manoscript printed by Sir Thomas Phillippa,
and in other particolara it resembles a well-known
Dorsetshire work. Bat it touches the East Midland in its
forms heon. and aren (snnt) ; and ita Participles terminate
sometimes in ende, sometimes in inde. The Fast Parti-
ciple inlein (p^e 11) resembles what we saw in the
Peterborough Chronicle. There is Layamon's new word
idOe, and his expression to lay on. This piece may have
been composed or transcribed not far from his consty,
bat nearer to the Great Line ; es, not eet, is sometimes
the ending of the second Person Singular. The Soathem
far and the Korthem goit are found close together. We
see here one Towel-change that has had great infinence
> Early EngliaH Text Socie^,
254 Old and Middle English.
upon Standard English ; words like dearc and 'meare
are written da/rch and marcke ; there is also smart, Henoe
it oomes that we pronounce Derby as Darby (see
Domesday Book), a change that we owe to the North
West. Lajamon was fond of the Old English diphthong
ce, bnt in the present work this is often altered to ea, as
in the words clean, heal, least. It is to the Southern
and Western shires that we owe the preservation of ea,
a fifiivourite combination of onr forefathers; the word
flea has never changed its spelling. We see in the
Legend both the old swa and the new so ; teep replaces
tep ; roa comes once more. The wimman of the East
Midland makes way for wummon ; we now 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. The old cwcep is
replaced by our modem quoth. There is a struggle
between the Old English eel and the Latin oleum ; eoli
is the upshot. Layamon's wroBstle becomes wrestle. The
old leosan is once written leowse (p. 13).
As to Consonants : lagu becomes lake, and Layamon's
gullen becomes %ellen (clamare) ; the e here seems to
point to Salop, where this vowel was used for the
Southern u and the Northern i. On reading at p. 13
ft* fikest (tu fallis), we may perhaps derive from this
verb ourflh, even as geleafa turns to belief. We find
the old/ in feat (p. 17), and our modem vet (vat) p. 18;
these are two forms of one word. The t is inserted ;
thus glisiiian becomes glistnian, our glisten.
In Adjectives : the ending fvl was driving out its
brethren ; we here find fearful (pavidus) for the first
Middle English: Cultivation. 255
time. Orrmin'B gcq^nn is seen id a new compoand,
uttgeinliche (nngaiiilj'). A. new phrase like sleorcndket
(etuk naked) crops ap; the first syllable probablf
stands for stenri (caada), with the DSnal interchange of
t and e.
Amon^; the Frononns ve find %u>a so eaver (qnicauqiie).
The Homeral an bears new constractions ; in p. 8 we
read hire moder wes on. )w frovrede hire, ' her mother wao
one (person) that ' &c. ; the old tnm of the sentence
would bave been ' one of those that ' &c. Onr phrase
* it is all one to me ' is seen in p. 5, al >rw it an.
As to Verbs : geem gets a sense unknown to 0)*rmin
and Layamon, that of vid^ri ; hit teefi aemdeii of im
(p. 9). We find a verb formed from wrenee (dolna),
torenchen tU of'pe weie (p. 4) ; ovx wrench now implies
bnite force, not trickery.' In the same page the old
gelamp (acoidit) is cnt down to lamp ; Mrs. Pipchin, in
Dickena, says of a thwarted child, ' she mnat lamp it ; '
this mnet mean ' take what may cliance.'
Among the Adverbs we see the first trace of our
downright, in ' dashed him odimriAt to the earth' (p, 12);
anonright and forthright have now been swept away.
The Adverb far is dropped in the ^hnaa fifte-ne wilen
from Antioehe (p. 2).
As to Prepositions : out of is employed in a new sense
at p. 6, ' he was enraged almost at of his iioitte,' oat of
his wits. The o/with a Substantive is employed instead
of an Adjective in the same page ; eaioUs of irne. The
Old English had used phrases like tnid ^isum wordum,
' I bare mcd wrench nsed for Solus bj Dc. Lay Ion, After the
begiiuing of tbe English Refoimation.
256 Old and Middle English,
he ' &c. ; a Pronoim is now substituted for the l^ouu.
At p. 22 we read, * wi^ fat they began to yell.*
There are many new words in this short piece ; among
them are drujpest (most dropping) and seemly, from the
Icelandic drupa and scBfniiligrl In the first syllable of
l^wertover (p. 10) we have followed the Icelandic yoert
(transversus), rather than the Old S(ng{&h fweorh (per-
versus) ; our verb thwerU thwart, cropped up twenty years
later in East Anglia ; it was long before overthtoart made
way for aihwart. There are many words akin to
Dutch and Grerman, such as drivel, gape, stutten (whence
our stutter), and shudder ; toggen (trahere) seems more
akin in form to the Dutch tocken than to the Old English
teogan. The word schillinde (sonans), at page 19, akin to
both the High German and the Icelandic, tells us whence
comes our shrill, one of the words into which r has
found its way. The former wifstew is now seen as steto
(compescere). The verb studge (go haltingly) is found;
schoolboys still say * I was stodged in my lesson.' Fut
is used for j307tere (p. 22), as well as for trudere. There
is a new verb, divert, which is coupled with to dread ;
hence our dither.
The Legend of St. Klatherine (Abbotsford Club),
seems to have been drawn up much about the same
time as the foregoing piece. It must have been a'
translation from the French, if we may judge by the .
many French idioms ; Layamon, though he too was a
translator, stuck feir more closely to the old idioms.
The Legend seems to belong to the neighbourhood of
the Great Line, perhaps to Southern Salop-; we here see
Layamon's agaste, and Orrmin's took on, an hwat (una
Middle English: Cultivation. 257
res) fwmuito, jer (ibi), and d/an.; heo (ilia) becomes haj
the Latin damns is EngUahed by clepet, not clepeat.
Cacurrit is Englished by the Northern rtwt, not by am.
There ia a Southern vereion of this piece, where hitheti
(incUnat) is mistaken for bueS (est), and is altered into
ieoS, at p. 20 ; wiS into Tnid, ha into heo. At page 97 we
find in one line bahsume and beisitme, meaning the same
thing; the one comes from the old bUgan (flecti), the
other from hSgean, another form of the same word ; this
is a cnrious instance of two rariationa of the English
synonym for obediene mnning on together for 140 years
after the Conqnest. The former dwiht (aliqnid) is now
written ewt, showing na that aw was sounded like the
French ou. The old WodnescUeg now becomes Wednesdei,
and dol (hebes) becomes dul ; the wimmam. of the East,
as we here see, becomes vmnvmam. in the West and South.
The on appears again, replacing the more nsual o;
we find )>oa.
The old <Bmtig now becomes empti, with a p
inserted ; and the Verb itrangian, taking a Consonant,
becomes gtrengten.
Fault has often been found with the word melrro-
polis as applied to London, when capital ia meant;
onr true English mother-state is Anglen, &r to the
East. Still, in this piece (p. 3), we bear of fe moder
hurh (capital) of Alexander's kingdom. In p. 63 timber
gets the new sense of materia, just like the Greek
word for wood in Aristotle's 'Ethics.' The old 8nb>
atantive leaf (vir amatus) is turned into htoe, our love,
at p. 82 ; we have now mn leof and luftt, the person and
the thing, into one word. The old mw; (stercus) is here
258 Old and Middle English.
used as a term of reproach, and perhaps gave rise to
our far less severe word mvno^. At page 90 comes slet^
whence our bIahbIi maj come, since the old word is here
coupled with bIo\ our slough. The word fode (cibus)
took the farther meaning of aZumn/us all through the
Western half of England, and is used in that sense in
the Legend of St. Katherine. We now see a French
word made a Verbal Noun ; as desputing.
A new Adjective, rudi (ruddy), is formed from rud
(ruber). The ending fid was coming more into use,
for we find the new compound pinfid.
In Pronouns : we see the word self used (Orrmin had
done this), as if it were the Noun person ; at p. 58 comes
]>e ilke self (the same person) is Godes sune; in the
Southern copy of the Legend this has been altered into
seolf ]>e like. A curious new French idiom crops up
at p. 110 : ivrecche mon }>at Jnt hit art. At p. 74i comes
he het hise (he bade his men) ; here the Noun is dropped
after the Pronoan, as was often the case after mine
and thine. In p. 128, the Pronoun stands for a Noon :
hisohte him wi^ pe brond, that is, * besought the man who
bore the brand.' Something like this may be found in
Gothic, but not in Old English.
As to Numerals, the old olSer had not yet been sap-
planted by the French second ; at page 78, Katherine is
promised that she shall be pe o5er after pe Gwen ; the old
d6er stood for both secundus and alius. I have already
touched upon our phrase, * eveiy other man.'
The confusion between Strong and Weak Verbs was
going on throughout England ; what in the South
was ahongen (the right form of the Transitive Perfect),
Middle English: Cultivation. 259 ;
ame honged^n in the Severn country (p. 18); we
m find arieede inBtead of aras (aroBe). At p. 102 we
I the old idiom ' me itmjrfl to go,' where the Verb is
mperBonal ; this is Altogether changed at p. 84, where
■e find ye oinen lotigede for to senn ■ bnt it may be that
i here a Datire, A Participle replaces a Noun at
; )m mm iiceddet (bride). When we see aaoh a
hrase as that in p. 53, don it hnten evit to hoten (do it
' ithoat Zonn^ aaght, the French eans perdre), we can-
ot hdp thinking that the Infinitive in en mnst hare bad
3ine alight infinence, in forming onr new idiom ob
^ards what are seemingly Verbal Noana in ing. The
Id ff u^on had always meant prodesae ; it now begins to
ike the Scandinavian sense of decere ; in the Northern
iTsion we read (p. 99) a« Drihtin deali ; the Verb in
e Sonthem version is altered into ah (debet) ; we
ft say ' that will do very well for him.' A Verb is
f seen (p. 89) formed from the old gham (splendor),
\ another from the old claln/ng.
i&jnong the Adverbs found in the Legend, liiderio is
td for the first time at p. 21 ; hwen se eaver at
(0 ; heonne for^ wtardeg (henoeforwwd) at p. 112.
y. 37 comes eaoerihwer ; this is the old gehw^er
pe) with the nsnal Twelfth Century prefix etmr ;
itry where is now spelt wrong, for this is one of the
lords in which we still sound a corruption of the
\ so beloved of onr forefathers. In p. 110 a^t
ftill then) comes, instead of ' till that time.' We
ten that mid aUe or i'-i|> alle had hitherto meant
\ it now takes the meaning of moreover, in which
|e still nse it ; at p. 99 we hear that Christ came
26o Old and Middle English,
himself with many maidens itM alle, A new Adverbial
sense (it seems to come from Scandinavia) is bestowed
on up at p. 47 ; cwe'^e hami up, ' give them np.' This
up was soon to follow many other Verbs.
The 8wa or c» is nsed in new ways ; at p. 3 we read
of a tyrant hea^ene as he wes ; at p. 72 heaminde al as he
was ; the French que must have been the pattern regarded
in forming this new idiom. The as is nsed, where
we should put that ; in p. 86, * they saw as (St. Jerome's
quia) they smeared ; ' other English writers have both
who so and who that for quicimqtie. Another French
phrase, par si que, seems to have brought into England
a new conditional idiom, instead of the old with that ; at
p. 102 we read * let me live, swa fat (provided that) I
lose nothing.' The whole of the Legend must be a
translation from the French, and repays careful study.
As to Prepositions : we find /or hireself, p. 6, where
the for is used like the Scandinavian fyrir mer and
the French pour moi, ' so far as I am concerned.' This
reminds us of the wis for worM, in the Chronicle of
the year 1057. The upon is employed in a new sense
at p. 53 : jdng ]fat is iwent upon him, * a thing that is
formed after his likeness;' as we now say 'to form
himself upon BrummeU.' The onont (anent) is used
most freely.
There are some new Interjections ; hei is used at
p. 31, a cry of wonder or pleasure ; this French cry has
taken deep root in England; in Derbyshire I have
heard persons (above the lower class) begin their
sentences with hey, hut ; in other parts of our land it
is sounded like eh, Chaucer's ey, Orrmin's la here
Middle English: Cultivation. 261
l)ecoine8 l<m, our \o. At page 113 cornea Au nu, dame!
vhich is something wholly new, and points to the
French ; to them we owe moat of ovi Intetjections.
We find the Scandinavian word untidi, here applied
to weather; ^t ia foand in East Anglia not mnch
later. The word scourge now appears. The French
inflneuced the speUing of the compiler of the St.
Katfaerine ; we have seen eoU (oleom) ; this now
follows the French, and is wTitt«n eoile, prononnced
e-ooLe, joBt as in Scott'e ' Pirate ' they talk of awbale's
ulyie or ulxie. The word (see Littr4) was written
oile in France nntil abont 1280. Shakspeare writes
vnaneaUd, following the English form (el, bnt the Verb
anoyle wae written in the year 1588 (' Reliqniea AntiquB9,'
I. 255). We also find puiton (venenam). The French
Zei, standing for religUm, even as it did in France, is
need jnst before the English lahe», our lawi (p. 17).
What was written manniMe in the Essex Homilies now
becomes the Frenchified wuwtneMe (humanity) at p. 53.
The Yerb earn of the Northern copy is tnmed into
ofierven (deserve) in the Sonth (p- 121). Me, the French
maM, is often used to begin a sentence.
The Legend of St. Juliana (Early English Text
Society) is probably dne to the same hand as the fore-
going Legends. It has Orrmin's words want and kutin<j ;
it has Layamon's phrase no more, through flTtd through,
and his French Intellection 0 ; stew, drivel, out of hit
vfU, and many snch, are repeated. As to Vowels : the
a is sometimes out, as Saviinuel (p. 62) ; showing as
that aiB might stand for the broad Italian a as well
as for the French ou. Na is fonnd, and also oar
262 Old and Middle English,
no ; spearc becomes spa/rke. Contraction is at work, for
reafode (rapni) becomes refde (reft) at p. 40. The
Southern version of this piece alters fan (foes) into
van^ and dry is written dru (p. 33).
The final Consonant n is, in this Sonthem version,
altogether pared away ; we find (p. 53) \ni havest ido, cot
idon ; this Southern corruption all but rooted itself in
our Standard English two hundred years later. We find
both milzful and miVi.ful^ showing Orrmin's new sound
of the 2 ; it was to stand for s as well as for y ; owing
to it we write citizen and chastise for the old dteien and
chastijfi. The earlier flugon (fugerunt) is cut down to
fliie at p. 53. The old appeal heforan Gode appears as
for Oode at p. 14, the oath so often used in Shakspeare ;
this was in use in G-loucestershire about 1300.
We see, at p. 17, the old Adjective eomost turned
into a Substantive ; thou shalt be beaten, a« on emesse
(by way of earnest), the Latin pigwus. Our word lust
still kept its true meaning, for at p. 45 it is used of desire
to pray. We find such new phrases bb top to toe, fear
neither wind nor weather, in his teeth, p. 36; that is,
* against his own will.'
At p. 70 we see an Adjective coupled with a Parti-
ciple ; water is walUnde hai (boiling hot) ; two pages
earlier a Substantive had been used, walm hat, as in the
oldest English. The Adjective easy is used in a new
construction at p. 56, we heon e^ to hiwihelen (begnile).
We see, in the Pronouns, the old ich it dm, which was
not to last much longer ; we were to use the I am he.
But the French qiie reappears in this piece ; at p. 65
(Southern version), stands |h meiden am, ]>a^ ich ami.
Middle English : Cultivation. 263
Id Verbs there is the great change seen 250 years
«&rlier in Yorkshire ; the Second Person Singular of the
Btrong Perfect ends in e»t instead ofe: ]w Jv/nde»i Mm
treotee (p. 28) ; and this comes even in the Southern
version. Another corruption of the Verb for egtet is in
p. 50 ; hwei te mahte heon ; the Southern version here
holds to the better form, hwet let were. At p. 61 a
Participle is treated as an Adjective, and takes a Super-
lative ending ; Jt&mpene ieoreneil ; we now often hear
men talk of ' the damdest rogne.' The verb do, after long
disuse of the idiom, crops up again to save the repe-
tition of a foregoing verb ; ' eveiy thing shoold pratPe
thee, OMd iek do,' (p, 64). The do is also once more
prefixed to the Imperative ; do sei me, p. 40. Bisem^
fe (te decet) is nsed st p. 55 of the Southern version,
where the other has only ssmei. The verb rue (pity) is
no longer nsed impersonally, but governs an Accusative ;
at p. 56 comes areow pe eeohen.
Among the Adverbs we see kwerfore, huxr eo ever,
cuefoYfi (u, (as far as, p. 47). In the Southern version
(p. 61) ye.ar as is nsed for the Latin vbi ; it is the first
bint of onr wkereru. In the same page we read iw an
tceorre as he wes ; here the as stands for tiM, which in
the other version ia Englished by [ler.
At p. 68 we see ne buten used in the unnsnal sense of
vix ; nefde ha buten iseid ^at &C., ' she had bnt spoken,
when.'
The Prepositions are used in new senses. In Old
English, ' to mingle with,' was well known ; the idea^ is
now carried a little further, and we read in p. 22, ouS
(acquainted) wiS fe king. At p. 5 comes, he wet wel wtif
mxjn
264 Old and Middle English.
pe king. There is a carious idiom at p. 71 ; aw0k trt5
hire ut of mine ehsihfkj * quick with her out of my sight ; '
we saw something of the kind in Layamon, who also
dropped the verb. The ut of is nsed in a new sense,
where the mental canse of an action is to be marked ;
a tyrant began tendrin ut of ieoney ' to bum, out of an-
noyance,' p. 29.
The verb scaldj the Swedish skolla, appears in p. 71.
There is a new word histapet (constitntns), akin to the
German ; eighty years later this was to be written
bestead. In p. 78 we see the Old and the New face to
&ce ; hitherto England had reckoned the days of the
month in the Roman way ; this was now to be changed ;
we read ope sixtenlSe dei of Feovereles mone^y pe forte/nds
kcUende of Mea/rch pat cwne^ efter. We remark in the
above sentence, that the Danish n has made its way into
the nnmeral ; it was kept at bay in Gloucestershire even
so late as 1300. A curious French word is seen at
p. 56, gencling, better known to us as jangling ; the g
seems to have already assumed its soft sound; in the
Southern verflion this word is exchanged for pihehinge.
The treatise on HaJi Meidenhad was most b'kely
written by the compiler of the three foregoing Legends.
Some of the old words reappear, as eoile, puisun^ vrrenche,
low (ecce) ; there is the same contraction in words, as
prof for perof sworn for sworen ; the old sceawian (osten-
dere), which had already undergone many changes,
becomes scho (p. 17), as we still pronounce it. The c
often becomes ch ; we see the two forms side by side at
p. 35, where the pangs of childbirth are called a si^nde
sticJie; this last substantive has been rather lowered
i
Middle English: Cultivation. 265
since those Axya. The ending of the Ploial of the PreBent
is altogether clipped in the yerba twirmi and tolweane,
p. 13.
The old hreawUc (triatis) haA beea altered into
reoiofid; from this we Bee a new Sabetantive formed,
reov^nesse. We find in the middle of a sentence, mare
harm m, p. 9 ; an early instance of a parenthesis. The
exchange between that and as goes on ; hwa yat sehe,
* whoso seee,' comes at p. 17 ; se eikemette as ha was in,
p. 7 ; «eiS ase tnuchel ase &o., p. 5, points to the fatnre
' that is as mncli as to say.' There is also as well at.
At p. 39 we see moni an ; the lafit word stands for the
old man. At p. 19 is a wonderfiil innovation; tttirej
is nsed for the Oenitive Plural (oZioruim). At p. 5 of
hih stands where we shonM say below ; oar by has often
replaced an earlier of. Our cnrions phrase for ontnina
is seen at p. 85, ' leotefor gode.' Oar verb stickle seems
to be foreshadowed by stUxlinde (steadEestly), at p. 17.
In Verbs : onr show forth comes for the first time, I
think, at p. 3.
As to the Prepositions ; there is a new sense for of at
p. 5 ; a good maiden is freo ofhtreself, ' has command
over herself;' hence comes 'free of the gaild,' &a.
There is a new form of the Partitive o/atp. 21, toilebeon
of fe htt (tnrba); here one should oome before the
Preposition. How the of had encroached on the old
Qenitive form is strikingly shown in hut of a lute hwnle
(p. 47) ; we shoald here say ' a little moment's pleasare,*
and this last constraction wonld cleave &st to the Old
English. Oar /ace '<) /ace was before the Conqnest of
on^ne to aruine ; this is pared down in the present
266 Old and Middle English.
treatise, where it is ne^&e to nebhe, dropping the first
Preposition. There is an imitation of a Latin idiom at
p. 21, in the phrase crime upon crime; something like
this came in the Chronicle. At p. 41 comes kepan half
dale wi6 mon (keep half measures with).
We find two or three Scandinavian words, snch as
eahe and gealde (from geldr, that is, sterilis) ; there is
also crwpel (cripple), akin to the Dutch. The Old Eng-
lish ceowom has the sense of jaw, as in ^Ifric and in the
Homilies of 1180 ; the maiden is told, in p. 31, that the
husband ' chit te and cheowe^ ]>e.' A little lower down,
she is further threatened ; for he * beatet$ pe and hustefS
])e;' this last verb is the Icelandic heysta^ our haste
(ferire). Hence also the French ha^ston or hdton. Our
scream is found for the first time, and seems to be a con-
fusion between the Old English hrewm and the Welsh
ysgarm, each meaning the same ; there is also a Scandi-
navian skra/msa.^
To this time belong a few pieces printed by Dr.
Morris in his *01d English HomiUes' (pp. 183-217;
245-267). They seem to have been compiled in Salop;
we find the Northern aren (sunt) and talden side by side
with the Southern ido (factum), vmlle^y and libhinde.
The old 7ncena/ti (lugere) becomes rrume (p. 211), onr
7noam,j a change which was long in prevailing throughout
England ; it was useful, since it distinguished this sense
of the word from the other sense, atatuere (our mean).
We also see dol (p. 199) instead of the old dad (pars) ;
we have now difi*erent senses for the nouns dole and deal.
* The 8 that has got prefixed to hream renuncb us of cwyscMt that
has now become squeeze.
Middle English : Cultivation. 267
On reading a sentence likoGoddo/aJfejocW^ (p. 209),
we see what a loss we hxvB bad in the diaappearanoe of
oar accents; in earlier times tlie accent distugtUBhed
goda (bona) from Qod (Dens). Iidh (hnmilis) is changed
into lowe at p. 211 ; it may bave been sonnded like the
French ou, for it is written b)u% in other parte of England.
The change of 0 into u is seen in the new Imtte, oar hoon ;
and gchiUe for the old seeotan.
As to Cousonanta : the old hurg becomes buri, which
is kept in names of places like Shrewsbniy ; the other
old form burug is here seen as hirwwe, whence comes
onr burrow. The verb egliarmow becomes etlin., onr at?.
At p. 263 the old cwmp he is tamed into qvod he ;
this we have already seen elsewhere.
In Sabstantives the old declensions had been so
completely lost that eagan (ocali) is coostantly written
ehnen, as if the old form had been eaganan. English
was becoming veiy terse ; for we see in p. 205, ieh habbe
iheved of oier monnes ; we sfaoold say, ' I have had popt
of other man's goods' The new rit hand (p. 217) waa
taking the place of the old right half. At p. 249, the
phrase bi stale (by stealth) is nsed, implying seereei/, not
robbery. Ir the treatise Saielet Warde wa see h'usebonde
bearing the two meanings of eonjvx and paterfamilias ; '
it ia here opposed sometimes to tiiif, sometimes to kiutvif.
At p. 265 we read in «re ende, 'in our qnartera,' this
sense of the old ende was soon to vanish, and to be pre-
served in proper names only, like Andley End.
' The latter Bense was borne bj hoieboKde man in WieUiffe ; ae
St Lnke zii. 39. l^udale ha« beie, goei ma» of the hinue.
268 Old and Middle English,
Among Adjectives, fviJi was now supplanting earlier
endings, as has been remarked before ; we here meet
rueful and vjiLful, The es was being used for the ending
of the Genitive Plural, as we saw elsewhere ; at p. 189
comes alle heljpleses help, Orrmin's lasse (minor) is seen
as lessere ; onr Bible talks of ' the lesser light.' ^
In Prononns : we see the Aocnsative nsed for the
Nominative, as we do in ' it's me ; ' at p. 211 comes heo
^e world (dead) to me and me to fe worlde. At p. 265
we see that the old Dual is being encroached upon ; two
persons are addressed, first as e^5er of ow, and in the
same line comes incJeer tuj^es. The old obIc (quisque)
is spun out to eaver euch an (p. 263), an is steadily
replacing ma/n ; in the same page comes anes heorte
(alicujus cor) ; an having long stood for quidam, now, as
in Essex, stands for aliquis as well. Another idiom
connected with an is in page 209 ; ich of alle sunfvUe a/m
on msst ifuled, ' of all sinners I am the one most defiled ; '
fourscore years later was to come, * I am one the fairest.'
There is a new construction at p. 215, twofold of hittre;
dcel as usual, is dropped ; we should now say, ' twice as
much bitter.'
The same terseness is found in the exclamation, 0
muchel menske to heon moder, (p. 189) * 0 great honour
to be mother ; ' here is should come after the first Sub-
stantive. There is another ellipse in Oodd^ )>t milce,
p. 211 ; where give me is not expressed. What was ahest
(debes) in the Hali Meidenhad is here seen as oivest ;
^ One critic was very angry with me for using this classic Old
English form.
Middle English : Cultivation. 269
tkis is the form of the word we use to imply indebted'
ttess ; while oughtest implies duty. We have already
Been cnawleee (confiteor) ; thiB becomes at p. 206 icnou-
leekie, acknowledge. The idea of onr ' burst with rage '
is seen in linn ibuTsl (leo irafcns), at p. 255.
The old sone nea becomes age gone o»e, at p. 213.
Onr yea is sometimea impressively used in the middle of
a sentence ; at p. 265 we read, ■mihti to don al, ffi, makie
to etnakien &o.
In Prepositions : the of ia still further employed ; in
p. 209 stands Jw jeore (donnm) of |>e hoti goate, that is,
* the Spirit which was given ; ' at p. 213 comes gon me
hetere ut, ' tnm out better for me,' evenire.
We light on the new word dingle, applied to a recess
of the sea ; and ickimimeS or echvmer^ (Ailget) ; these
are akin to German words.
In Salop forms that wera nsed in Lothian and
Yorkshire seem to have clashed with forms employed in
Gloncestershire and Dorset ; aomething resembling the
Ormvlvm was the npsbot. In each succeeding oentniy
Salop comes to the front. The Wohnnge of nre
Lauerd seems io have been written here abont 1210,
(Morris' 'Old English Homilies,' First Series, p. 269).
In 1350, or so, the Romance of William of Paleme was
compiled here. In 1420, John Audlay wrote his poems
in the same dialect (Percy Society, No. 47). In 1580,
Chnrcbyard had not dropped all his old Salopian forms.
Baxter, who came from Salop, appeared abont 1650 as
one of the first heralds of the change that was then
passing over Stuidard English prose, and that was
snbetitoting Diyden's style for that of Milton, Soon
270 Old and Middle English.
after 1700, Farquhar, in his * Recruiting Ofl&cer/ gives
ns much, of the Salopian brogne. This intermingling of
Northern and Southern forms in Salop produced some-
thing not unlike Standard English ; we must always
keep the G-reat Sundering Line in view.
One piece, which seems to belong to this shire is
the Wohunge of ure Lauerd^ which I have already
named. We here see Orrmin's ^u was (eras), h/wat
hertef Jdiisman, v^po, and til (ad) ; also the Northern
am (sunt), ha/ve fat, huliande, I (ego), sin (peccatum),
raise, he makes \ the strangest instance is fat setis
up (attoUunt), page 283, which is a more Northern
form than anything we have seen as yet in the Midland.
There are also the more Southern forms \oa and Uuide,
The combination ui for the old y was long peculiar to
the Severn country.
There is much paring of letters, as in cald (vocatus),
offeard ^timens). The old hleahtor (risus) becomes
lahter. The old la (ecce) at last becomes lo, p. 283 ; we
have preferred the kiss found in this work to the cuss
of the South ; hredden (liberare) becomes rid^ p. 273,
though Scotland still talks of the redding straik. Con-
sonants are pared away, especially the guttural at the end
of words; we see gastli, hertili, rewli. At p. 271, fu
wAxcodest (fecisti) is replaced by \u Ttiades; the same
change may be remarked a few years later in East Anglia,
at the other end of the Great Line. When we see such
a form as hituhen (between) we may be pretty sure that
the h in the middle of a word had lost much of its old
guttural sound about 1210 ; ahful was used where we
Bay a/wful.
Middle English: Cultivatimt. 271
We find the Snbatiuitive steeling, wbich was long
confined to tlie shires near Salop. We see the change
in the meaning,of cheap ; it was a If oim meaning bargain,
as at p. 281, bnt at p. 273 we read untntett Iwie Uhtlicke
cheape. The Preposition not being employed here, men
in time came to look npon cheap as an Adverb.
Tnming to the Prononns, we see how the Xominatiye
hwa oame to be nsed as a Belatire ; at p. 275 is mai he
luve hwa ne luvet kia hroHer ? the hwo, here stands for the
old »wa hwo, etea (whoso). At p. 281 comes the idiom
often nsed by Dickens, ai hwa »e seie (ae who should
say), 'as if a man should Baj;'^Uie French ased comme
qui diraii. At p. 285 the writer gives an offering, >vmch
as hit is. In p. 281 we light on swa slrang a sunitg ; in
earlier times there wonld have been no Article here.
Among the Verbs, we may remark that cwSe is
eucroachingon mihfe (potni) ; at p. 2?1 comes tin blod ne
et^ies tu vnfihalde. In the same page make is followed
by a Past Participle, just as have was in earlier times ;
he makes him, luved. The verb tell takes the new
meaning of ' to have infinence npon ; ' )rt dea$ telles rikt
in al my hive, p. 2?5, The old frilA (inclinavi) becomes
the Weak Perfect, I bvhed, at p. 277.
The forms kwHa (dnm) and as tah (qnasi), first seen
in the Esaei neighboorhood, have now made their way
to Shropshire, at the other end of the Great Line ; hwilt
becomes kurils pal (p. 275), in Omnin'a fashion.
In Prepositions: we find Iwe ofpe (p. 273), that is,
' love given to thee ; ' a diatinctiou was wanted to prevent
confiision with pi hiv^, that is ' love coming from thee.'
At p. 283 comes lahhen pe to hokere (laugh thee to scorn).
272 Old and MiddU English.
At p. 281 is iean cheap hefdei iuon nu (a dear bai^ain
hadat thon in me !) ; the on or in here is mnch the same
as anejit, which is used bo freely in this piece. The in
ihos employed reappears in oar 'I was mistaken in
yon.'
At p. 287 oomes earpe (loqoi). The former Jnoeor
(trauBversus) is seen as querfcute (p. 285), whence oar
queer ; a word that we still apply to the doings of a poor
man that acts in an odd way ; if the man be rich, his
doings become eccentric. The Scandinavian i rattei (in
rags) is in page 277 ; the original word is rogg (viUne) ;
this is a good example of the interchange between t or d
and g.
A version of the Ancren Biwle (shortly to be
described) was compiled in Salop abont this time. The
interchange between u and o is plainly seen, when tnor
(pains) becomes mure, onr tnaor, p. 328. The old
balakful (p. 114) was kept in the Sonth, bnt in
Salop it was cnt down to baleful. In pronotmoing
should, we drop the I ; this is seen in whuden at page
416. The old Qenitive Flnral halgana (sanctoram) is
strangely altered at p. 94; the haie^ene of another
version becomes here halehenes; the Scotch have pre-
served hallovjeea, the one Genitive Plnral of this kind
left in onr island.' At p. 184 we find a henginge, the
Verbal Noon atmck off from the Verb. The old lUpmr
now becomes sltbbri (slippery). A new Adjective is
' I snipeet that it hw been preserved, from the SooUti mietaking
tlie but pliable for ten, tveintig- Some parish chnrdifs in England
were culled Ml iottaitdt (Omnium SBnetonun), and thia name nu;
perhapa be still alire.
Middle English: Cultivation. 273
formed from leomii ; this is lovste (solntos), the iioimd
of wliicli we have kept onaltered; ia the Southern
■version this wae written fe»fc.
At p. ?4<, we see three different forms for ioiifur ;
io Salop it is sliiet, id another county not br o£F«2i(2eS,
in the Sonth tlit. Salop preferred tmderloc (p. l\i) to
underfangen, and the new ooertoken to oftoken (p. 241).
At p. 2?2 a Past Participle is turned into an Adverb by
adding liche ; laaaedliche (etnlte). A carions instance
of the tme Old English alliteration is to be found at
p. 334 ; the men and wwmm^n and children of one text is
aAter^d into were avdunf and weTichel. The Scandinavian
jiloh, grie, vn/ndoh, and uggi (timers), replace the suluh^
pig, Jwri, and agrupie of the South.' Salop has the new
icratteS (scratcheth), where the other version has sc/irepeS ;
here is the interchange between t and p. In this copy
there are many iVench torms, snch as aioler (altar),
brooght in, where the other copies had Tentonio words.
We now come to the Anoren Riwle (Camden
Society), as compiled in the Dorset Dialect, about 1220.
We can see that this is the original version by a sentence
at p. 76, je patpUiefi (Inditdis), an idea which well soitA
the context. In one copy of the piece, this Verb has
been altered into the French pleideS ; in the Salopian
copy into the English synonym for pleid, molen ; in
either case the sense of the passage has been mistaken.
Reference is mode in the Ancren Biwle to the earlier
Legend of St. Margaret ; bnt the 0 has made farther
encroachments on the a, as two, wlioio, no, lone for Uen,
' From thU SttlopisD grii (porctu) comes ouz griMm.
274 Old and Middle English.
(commodfttntn), oten (oats), tWi, tope, liflode. The
combinattoii ea is much in use ; l/sne (macer) becomes
leane; MaheS (ridet) tnmB into iowAwrf!, the vowels
of which ne still keep ; it is like the name Stcmntov.
Here there can be no doubt that au stands for the
sound of the Italian a. The sounds of o and ti in-
terchange, for teogan becomes women, our leoo ; inok
(satis) and eloh become inouh and glouh (slew) ; the
changed sound of the o was kept at bay for long in tie
Eastern shires. Ott is here often written for the old «.
The gest (vadis) of this version was altered into gag in
Salop, and into the longer-lived giat in some comity
still farther to the Sonth East. The eo becomes t ; /eol
Knd eeoenee are now seen asfih and gitmeee ; it sometimes
becomes e, for herd (pecns) replaces heord. Indeed, in
the lexicons, heord, herd, and hord are pat down nnder
the same bead, as varying forms of one Old English word ;
herd in the present work is set apart for j>ecu*, while
hord had long before been appropriated to theamirw.
Macb in tbe same way feoh had stood for pecas (the
kindred word), pramium, and divitite, oil three. Led and
spred are found here, and not the lad and sprad of more
Northern shiies. The old awel (stibnla) becomes avl ;
it was written both moel and eael rather later in
Dorset. The iwelgcm of old now becomes eieohtwe
(swallow) ; the insertion of the Vowel between I and to
is carious. Tbe letter n is altogether cast ont, when
nemde (named) replaces the old nemnede. Tbe t is
added to the old grvnan, which be<K)mes grunten. Tbe
hard g is often softened ; btelg (venter) becomes belt;
tiige (hara) becomes iti ; him, and ireien are in the same
Middle English: Cultivation.
275
case. This g is often changed into a v> ; as snuie (dictom)
for »agit, vxHewen (seqni) for/oijiaw, juio^e for geogui,
vawenungeioT fmgnung. This last is a good instance how
the change of a Consonant can mark off a difference in
the sense of a word ; the harmlesB fain and the base
favm. are both comiptionB of the same word, the old
fwgnian, which bad the two senses gaudere and hlandiri.
In one sentence, in p. 343, we see the two forms acottea
and gehotten (solvere) ; townsmen pay geot, sailors have
a shot in the locker. The French e is employed for s,
as in hitee (oscnlnm) ; also milce (misericordia). The
2 sometimes makes its way into a word ; menge$ (miscet)
now becomes monglei ; on the other hand, halg is tnmed
into bag. A usage of Orrmin's reappears ; the s now
ends, not only the Oenitive Singular, bat the Genitive
Plaral ; thus in p^e 106 we read of ' her tears, and te
o5re Mariea.' The last word is Plnml.
We hear of St, Jame in p. 10 ; hence comes onr Jem.
At p. 412, we read, of ham i$ Intel streneSe ; eighty years
later, this was to be ' of them is little force ; ' one
handred years later atill, force wonid become matter.
We read in p. 418 of a parish officer who looked after
hedges; he ia here called the heiKard,&ad the proper
name Hayward still lingers among ns. Among the
Adjectives appears untowea (nntrained), which was
afterwards to become wanton, the un and the wan having
the same meaning. The ending /ul was coming in; wo
here find pinful (painfal) and dredful ; earlier endings
were disappearing; thns the '^orniht of old was changed
into )>omt. In ston-etille (p. 414) we have a Substantive
prefixed to give strength to an Adjeotire. The E^«nch
276 Old and MiddU English,
seeniB to bave giren ns mt Aear^ (ma ch&re), p. 98, where
the Adjective ntands alone. At p. 258 we read, hi* earlich
aritte ; here earlt/ for the first time becomes an Adjectdve ;
it had hitherto been only an Adverb. In p. 176 -we find
a wholly new idiom, which mnat have come froiu France,
replacing the old English Saperlative, ye metie dredful
secnesse jfalle. This new form became Terycommoa in
the following Centnry.
In Prononns : Orrmin's htoat, standing for the Latin
B«lative qvod, is laid aside in favour of humcke, the word
that we still use for the Neater BeUtive ; at p. 354 comes
peawes, bi kvmeJie me elimb^ to ye bUtse. This was to be
found thirty years later in Yorkshire as well as in Dorset
TetthiBAwMofte is almost always employed in the present
work to BtEtnd for the kindred lAtin qualu ; this old sense
laiited in the West down to 1400. We find aneren huxu
hlisse (p. 348) ; this translation of guarwm wonid have
astonished an earlier generation. The &i (one) is seen,
as before, standing for swn. man, aliqilit; ter on geS
(p. 252), ' where a man goes.' We now eay ' yonr enemy,'
bnt not 'yonr traitor;' this last is fonnd at p. 194.
Orrmin's new idiom of Verbs is repeated in p. 344;
we hear of sins of gnuxhwnge, . . .of eitten to longe;
this last Infinitive is nsed as a Verbal Nonn, something
like the Infinitive with the Article in Greek. At p. 360
we see side by side the old Imperative and the later one
formed with let ; let o8re aUffen . . . abide toe. ' Here the
' Ws still iomatimeB ose the oUor form ; ' Come wmI, come voe,
ve'll gutber iind go.' ' Be Thiae the gloiy , and be mine the thanu.'
Bow much more pidi is there in thtw ImpeistiTes than in the cum-
broni compound with Ut '.
Middle English: Cultivation. 277
writer does not use the Plnniil le&S (sinite) in addressing
his Anohoreaaea. The Ptirticiple is yoked, like an
Adjective, to a Snbatantive ; we bear of the vt^inde vuel
(falling sickness) ; hence oome onr writing materials,
and many such flexible forms. A pithy phrase vaa
once applied to onr two Isfit Stnart Kings : it was said
of Charles that be ' conld if he wonld ; ' of James, that
'he would if he conld.' On looking to the Ancren
Biwle, p. 338, we read he n« mei haon he wule, fe nolde
hvmle pet he muhte. This seems to have been a byword
well known in 1220. The Transitive Verb stop is foand
in p. 72. In p. 106 is the phiase bring to nouht, imd also
hereii him veolMiredden (company). At page 210 we
hear of jagglers who are said to makien cheres (make
We find new Adverbs cropping up, each as et enet
(at once), enes a vrike, hu se ever, hioerse ever, ewnetimje,
$0'M'uche^eT(^&eT, tij;orenA(»Mi (beforehand), nevertheUsse;
offeor was later to be written afar ; eaUanga was replaced
by ■atierliche, which now took a new sense. The al beo
(onr albeit) is remarkable ; something of the same kind
occurs in Middle High German ; the al prefixed shows
the completeness of the concession made. In p. 288 we
see a mistake, repeated six hnndred years later by Lord
Macanlay in his I^ys; what shoold be written iwit
(certe) is turned into a Verb, I wis. Our tquint is foond
for the first time in the Adverb asquint, p. 212. There
is wteZe iiwuk, very bad ; iiiouh re8e, very readily (page
86), A new Adverb, greatly, crops np by the side of
m,ucli% see p. 426. Nmit (non) is sometimes need for
the old n«. Hioar ate is in p. 200, translating vhieunqwe.
278 Old and Middle English.
We now Bay 'as narrnwly as ever she can,' instead of
the aae nsniklicke ase heo ever mei (p. 414). The word
sona (mox) has new oSspring, some aud soTiett.
An attempt is made to brii^ into vogue a new form,
to do duty for a Preposition ; at p. 260 comes ' im
atude of in, his cradel herbonied him ; ' his cradle sup-
plied the laclc of an ion ; tn hU stead had been used
before, bnt only referring to a person, not to a thing. The
for, which wonld have been used earlier all over England,
Englishes the kindred Latin per at p. 300 ; for this the
other versions of the Ancren Riwle use ttiiii and \ntTeh.
Inp. 110 we mark how the old on«/ne came to be changed;
in the Salopian copy it is fonnd as onevent. in the Dorset
copy as onont, not far from our anent. In the same page
we see bow the old Preposition jeowd (per) was dropping
aai of ase; it wae etill employed in Dorset, but was
replaced in one shire by oner, in another by in. At
p. 426 we find onr common expression, pet fur (ignis) go
Ht. The of was encroaching ; in p. 106 we find the old
vor his luve and the new tior Jie litve of him.
The old bac-elitor now becomes backbiter ; there are
also cheffare (chaffer), overturn, withdraw, withhold. A
new Snbstantive is formed from tremo ; this is iriwi,
onr truce. Our Ember days, the Scandinavian Imbru-
dj'aar, appear for the first time in the gnise of umbridei;
this and umquhile are the sole survivors in English of
the many words formed frnm our lost preposition vmhe,
the Greek atiiphi ; the old umstroke (circnmference)
lasted down to 1660. At page 46 comes gluffen (to
blunder), from the Icelandic glop (incuria) ; hence
perhaps 'to ciufi a regiment,' 8urh (dolor) had taken
Middle English: CtUtivation. 279
the Bliape of sewuuie in Dorset, but it remained »vrh6 in
Salop (see page 64). The old nscentJe becomes riaginie
(page 140), whence onr ranging.^ In page 128, we aro
told that a false nim ' chefleS of idel ; ' hence have arisen
to chatter and to chaff. Torple (cadere) seems to be
formed from lop (capat) 1 hence comes onr foppfe.
The East Midland dialect was pushing its conqnestfl
into the South, for many Scandinavian words are fonad
for the first time in this work ; as
Chough
Kofa, Icelandic
Crop, carpere
Dog
Dusk
Dulak, Danish
FlaakOri)
Flaksa, Swedish, vdUart
Groom
Gromr, Icelandic
Mased. ddirui
f Maaa, Old Norse, to chatter
1 fiL,^y
MdwIbd, grtm, moiOdy
Shy
Skygg, Swedish
Scowl
Skule, Danish
Skull
Skal, Danish
Scraggy
Sktekka, NoTse
Sluggish
Slffild, Norse
Smoulder
Smul, Danish, pWi>»
Wton
Vitna, leelaudic, taaan
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 onr Datch and Low Giermau kinsmen. England
seems now to have rid herself of ber old prejudice
' So m tbe Latin, j'un^ ig formed &oidj'ui^, and lingo &om lieo.
280 Old and MidMe English.
agniiut beginning words with the letter j> we were
rather later to tarn the Scandinavian hroddr (acnleos)
into ^od.
Bounce, punek
Bonzen
Puff
Pofien
Brink
Bnnk
Pick
Kcken, to um (
Oackle
Kakelen
Aarpt^
Cleppe,rf.M«-
Oo*tnede,««i
Our'
Kkppe
Eofiten
Korre t
Pack
Scrape
Snatch
P«k
Schiapen
Soacken
QiKgle
HaK
Huri
Giggen 1
Hache
Horrelai
Spat, nuKuii
Squint
Toot
,Sp.t
Squinte
Toetea, blow a
Pot
Bigge
Pot
[Tattle
horn
Tatelu
We find also in this work harlot, a vagabond, from the
Welsh herlawd, a y onth ; the word is nsed bj Chancer
withont an J bad sense ; Shakapeare has ' hai|lotiy
players.' From the same Celtic aomrcecome cudgel and
griddle, now first seen in English ; also hahan, our fia&e.
Feoddare, a pedlar, is also fonnd for the first time;
Forby derives it from jjerf, which in Norfolk is a
covered pannier.' There are many words in the Ancren
Biwle, which, as Wedgwood thinks, are formed from
the sonnd ; snch as gewgaw, ekaiter. The adjective in
Sh^Bpeare's ' little cwifer fellow ' is found in the Ancren
Biwle ; it seems to come from the old cuf (impiger). In
p. 106 comes the new verb hlind/elkn, which we haw
corrapted into blindfold.
' Tbia, w DOT, might cipreu a poltroon.
• The «nding are prove* that ire onght to write, not pedler. but
p«tUar; the wokI ia aometim«a given u a pnmle in spelling.
Middle English: Cultivation. 28 1
The Thiid Teraioii of the Ancren Biwle may have
been drawn up in Warwicksbire ; at any rate, it cannot
have been done for to the Sonth of the Great Line.
The clo)te$ of Salop become the more Soathem elebKet
(cintohes), p. 174. There is a great clipping of Coneo-
nanta in AoZpenea and pent (p. 96). The ending er was
Gomii^ into TOgae ; the old wrendTUca became ennde-bere
in Dorset, and erende leorere in the present version ; we
alao find the new word htffer (amator). For talit the
Prononn ^llich was need (p. 44) ; filke was coining in
to flxpreBB igte, filke fv,%eleg is nsed at p. 14, where the
Dorset version has ^eo ilke fuveles. In p. 68 this leads
to a tnistake ; the Dorset version has tSen ilke hvee, oHer
^er Ac. (in ettdem domoantnbi),bnt the present version
has in ^ilhe hus per (in ist& domo nbi). This )n7A«, nsed
instead of Ornnin's ]iat, soon spread into Gloncester-
sbire, where in 1300 it is fonnd as ^Ike.^ At p. 26 we
see the first instance of al olSer sum, the source of
Dryden's forcible aU and some ; the sum stands for one,
' one and all.' At p. 222 ire find ourfiatter for the first
time, the Scandinavian JlaSra ; in Salop the word was
not anderstood, for it is changed into faXter, making
nonsense ; in Dorset it \&fiaker.
In a Sonthem Creed of this time (' Beliqnise An-
tique,' I, 282) viamhe becomes vmmhe ; we still sonnd
this M in the old way, thongh we write it womb ; iche
here stands for what was elsewhere written eche (qnis-
' In tluB Bhire thuii, or tkitclt, SBBma to have beeD nsed tor UU,
while ihili or thicJi changed its meaniag to eipresa Ate. A Olouces-
tenhira witcesB hns been heud to say ' it «a« not ikici vn u hit
tiaek urn, but thiKk on u hit lUet mn.'
282
Old and Middle English.
qne) ; we stUl keep this old soimd of the i in pronoano-
We have now beheld the changes wrought by 100
years ; (he most weighty may be Been in the three short
words, TOHcA sAtp-owwmj, for mycal, Kxp, agen ; here the
old Bonnda y, e, ge, a, and g have been all altered.
Middle English : Neglect. 283
CHAPTER rV.
THS UIDDLB EXaUSH .^NEGLECT.
1220-1280.
Up to this time, 1220, English bad been fairly well
cultivated ; it was now to be tbrowD aside by the en-
lightened English public, aa something altogether in.
ferior to French or I^tin. The disaatrons period that
we are now aboat to consider ia illnatratod by very few
English writers ; things were very different before 1220,
and were, moreover, to be very different after 1280.
Anyone, who reads with due heed the specimens given
in this chapter, will see that the obsolete terms by
degrees become fewer in number ; in other words, maoh
old Teutonic is being swept away. We begin, as before,
witb
THE EAST Mmr-ANI) DIALECT.
(About A.D.J230.)
I first call attention to a poem — The Bestiary— that
is printed in Dr Morris's Old English Miscellany (Early
English Text Society), This poem is very nearly the
same in its dialect as the Qenesis and Exodus (Early
English Text Society), a piece which Dr. Morris refers
to Soffolk. The common marks of the East Midland
384 Old and Middle English.
Nponch aro found in both : the Present Participle eoda
in aruln in the one case, in both ande and ende in the
ntlinr ; the Plaral of the Present tense ends in en, or is
tlroppiil altogether, as luive instead of haven; the Prefix
to tlio Cut Participle comes most seldom. The Northern
I'mpoN iti on i /ra and til are fonnd. The Bestiary bears
HDino mumblanco to the Proverbs of Alfred; it is a
tmiiNlutiDii made mneh about the time that King
llixiry the Third was beginning to play the part of
ittihiilKUun in Kngland, having got rid of his wise
oouiiHoHors,'
Hunt wo find the Old English tinden (sunt) for
lUiittMt tlie Iniit time ; on the other hand, what Omnin
wroto ii/i itMc (tuilus) has now become o/ott; we also see
,..!.'« (formerly ,.-r.,.j), the Latin semel. The Southern o
hitd liMkK ilrivoii out the old Northern a in theee Eastern
vhinxt. We find Omnin's substitntion of o for on always
nvurring ht<n>, aa n /hv. But what he calls hrate (fregit)
is (ovn in tht* prt^eout poem as hrvhf ; our vereron of the
S««npttiTv«i hiu ailopt(<d the former, our oommon speech
*h<« Utti<r. W»' also lind mt tamed into ..«/ ; we nw
aiwtolhiit^ vS tht< kind in the Proverbs cf AUied,
fVjX .".w i* p(uf(,l tk>wn to t\Ui (fowls). The old g-.-.<
^whh'h wtNMtt K^h »*,»,-»-.i »od I.-.-wl b*re loses its I,
thv'^t^'h wv still talk v^ a ^ .'. .'.i. The B«stanr icfas W
< N.>« vr ^Tv foe ik< Sn« riof a h^ &^::b^ BHtnL «^ ta«
T■^ Bttwe wvanr "i .->:»* : »jii ;» ii »«5 JV'"^
Middle English: Neglect. 285
the Panther's spottes ; the Genesis and Exodna calls the
Bed Sea (p. 93) a saUe spot The poet prefers hirden
(onns) to tyrCen. At page 14 of The BestUry a Verbal
N'onn is formed Irom Uie word fox ; the Devil lioS a
foxing (dolus). This formation of Verbal Noons was
soon to become very commoa in the Dano-Ahglian
shiree. A confdsion was now arising between the
endings of Adjectives and those of Adverbs ; we have
long foand it awkward to write godlily, formed &om
godly ; the East Anglian writers kept the old Adjective
reuU (msstns), bat formed the new Adverb reufaUkef
p. 21; the /ul was rapidly spreading throogh England.
In p. 18 the Adjective irvirie (merry) is nsed as an
Adrerb ; mirie ge ringed. At p. 18 we find on hngHe it
teU him rewen ; the first two words stand for in the end ;
we see how we came to English tandem by at length.
In p. 13 hiisebond takes a third sense besides those of
conjuai and paterfantiliat ; it now means eolomu, whence
comes onr hwbandman, which was expressed in the
oldest English by bonda} The old teorian (deficere)
becomes tirgen at p. 12, where an elephant is said to tire.
We find here for the first time horlic (bnrly) applied to
elephants ; it is akin to the High Qerman purlih. The
word eliver (clever) is applied to the Devil. Mr.
Wedgwood says it comes from claw ; hence it in this
passage has the sense of nvmhle-fingered, mnchasropuitM
comes from ropto. The Adjective /n«, the Icelandic,/mn,
is seen here for the first time. The word irwte (anont),
* Lbvbt, moM than three bnndred yeazB later, lued Auiatxj for
286 Old and MiddU English.
need of the elepliaiit, is mkin to a Germaa word ; as also
is hovtn (manera), p. 16. The old Enghsh cm/ is noir
fonnd in the shape of chavel (in the account of the
whale) : it is not Ear from onr jouA. The Second Person
Singular of the Perfect of the Strong Verb andeigoee
the change already marked in the Lindis&me Gospels.
What in Old English was |>u hekU, is tamed at page 6
into fu higte$t (pollicitoB es).
In an East Anglian Creed of this time (' Reliqnis
Antaqnaa,' I. 234), we find we onelie loverd, wntten
where Orrmin wonld hare nsed the old anlepi^ (nnicas)
for the second word. Thtts a new form drove oat an
older one. However, in the oldest English we find the
Adrerb dnliee nsed for eolum.
In the Version of Qenesis and Esodns, there is an
interchange between a and e; we find both fer and far,
hali and heli. Orrmin's ma'^denhadhecomeB inaidsnhed.
A replaces ib ; slcBht and gUerf become elaght and tlarf.
The ea tams into et, for we find exlond (insnlft) ; (Et
(mandncavit) becomes at (p. 97). The t is clearly
opposed to the Sonthem u ; we meet hUs, wikinde, and
pride ; the Icelandic lyitir (soror), here written sitter,
(p. 109), is preferred to the Soatbem tatter; the
Old Eagtish bad the form sweostor. The i kept its
own sonnd, when coapled with a, in Sinai, for this is
made to rime with hi (p. 96) ;/r (ignis) becomes fier;
the ie was here no longer pronoanced lilce the French
S, for we meet with both drige and drie (aridas). We
find both His and fie«e for the latin Plural At ; we now
prononnce the word in the former way, and write it in
the Utter way. The old yldeste now becomes eldett ; and
MiddU English: Neglect. 287
titt (mamma) becomes tetfe, oar teat. On the other hand,
feoSa (decimns) is seen as li^e; hence our tithe. The
poet is fond of doablisg his vowels, as in 'mooA KoA/eet,
The oomhination oa appears, bat the latter vowel was
sonnded, for at p. 117 Soa is made to rime with Ftugai
much as Esau rimes with n* (p. 44). The o, creeping
up from the Soath, often replaced a; we find almogt,
frowa^d, hoi, wri^, loS, bond, solde, imd son ; there is
even towen (videmnt), at p. 86. The goven (dedenmt),
not gaven, anggeats the ' he gnv,' bo well known to ns.
TheoldjiMCTmn (qneri), still written men* in other shires,
became mone in Eaxt Anglia ; wcermi (erant) was
written wore, which is still alive in some parts ; and ter
(ante) makes room for or, p. i", which is kept in our
Bible ; or ever &c. Bat the 0 had often to give place to
ii ; we see vfulde for loolde (Tolnit), vitnte for tnoste, slug
&r sloh, ynug for genoh. Both word and ward atand for
verhvm. Nii is once seen as nou, and tvn as town.
There is a tendency to contract words by throwing out
vowels; as kid, Jilt, set, fed.
This clipping is eqoally apparent in the Consonants :
great havoc is made with the letter/; had coToes as well
as haeed ; there is }ta9, and Orrmin's pu hafit now
becomes jM4 a» (p. 51) ; sulde a gen ia written for ghotdi
home teen at p. 78, The word evermore is fonnd as ermore
at p, 9, whence comes onr poetical contractbn e'er for
ever. Lord sometimes replaces Orrmin's laferd, and
lemon stands for leofman. Other letters are thrown
ont ; we find forbi, or, and lie uw; at p. 71 we see both
tlie old biHgelee (sepnlchmm) and the new biriele, onr
burin! ; Aacfo! (grando) becomes AotT. On the other hand.
288 Old and Middle English.
we are Btmok by the poet's atnrdy cleaving to the Old
EDgtiah gutturals g and h at the b^niiing of words. So,
in the Bestiary, we find geveniiie, where the writer has
gone oat of his way to prefix a g before what was efen
in English, iafn in Scandinavian. It is East Anglia
tiiat has kept these hard letters alive. But for these
shires, whose spelling Caxton happily followed, we
ehonld now be writing to yive (donare), to yet (adipisci),
ayain (itenun), and yate (porta).' We have onlaokily
followed Omnin's oormptdoQ in yield, yelp, yearn, and
young. These Eaat Angtians talked of a dyke (fosBa),
when all Southern England spoke of a ditch. Orrmin's
driAkpe is now turned into drugte (drought), which
we have followed. The most remarkable ohange is
deigen (mori), instead of deye. There is also the
Peterborongh gede (ivit), frigt, lugeytti, wrogt, and, still
more wondertnl, preige (p. 114) for prceda. But evMi
into Sofiblk the Soathem w was forcing its way.
We find mreii (proprias) as well as ogen, and folwen
(seqni) as well as folgen. Owing to the changes of
letters in different shires, we sometimes have two
words where onr fore&tliers had but one, each word
with its own shade of meaning. ' To drag a man out '
is different from the phrase ' to dravi a man oat : ' the
hard North is here opposed to the softer South. Mca«-
ovor, we may speak of a dray horse. Oar Standanl
English is much the richer from having eprang up is
■ Out pi«p«c o«me Tftmmm (ostiunu) eumot !>•«* mmm m
KaM AogliK. It U cmicm that ataoe people n; iagnu and btgrntt,
JaMMwl of MmH and bm/onl. patting in a letter haid to ptowxtan.
Middle English: Neglect. 289
shiree widely apart. Ab if the foregoing variations of
drag vrere not enough, we hare borrowed the kindred
trig-ger from Oermany.
Some of the other consonants were undergoing change.
HhefeiS (fides) found here, represents the Old French
/eid, which was early lost in France (about the Eleventh
Century) ; fei was the commoner form, especially in the
oath par ma fay. The contrary change takes place when
ouSe (potnit) becomes cwde, which we unlnctily no longer
spell aright; the same change takes place in burden aud
tweatide ; peofi (fortom) turns into iejie ; both f^fi aud
fyfl existed in Scandinavia. The Peterborough tas (ilia)
now becomes sehe or she ; cwen is turned into queii. This
qu was favoured in East Anglia as much as in Scotland ;
qumo replaces Au, and the former lasted two hundred
years, as we see by the Faston Letters. The h at the
end of a word is clipped; Orrmin's fe is repeated,
our fee ; nth, our rough, is seen aa ru at p. 44 ; this
clipping of the final guttural went on all over the South.
The c is thrown out, for mOMid (factus) becomes nuide,
as in Salop ; seal turns into ml, as in Scotland ; this is
just the reverse of the old seo taming into sets (she)
about 1160. The former getamtiian (congregare)
becomes semelen (p. 110) ; here the kindred French word
must have bad some inflnence. The turtre of the Bestiary
is changed into turtui (p. 27) in the present work; the
Scandinavian had the two forms turiuri and twrlUdufa.
The r is added to a word ; hunter (the Scandinaviaji
Aundter) and tilier (p. 43) replace the old hitnta and
lUia. The n is clipped at the end of a Participle, as do
for don (factum) ; this is found in the Paeton Letters.
290 Old and MiddU English.
This letter is sometimes added, for oft becomes o/fen
(p. 109) and tdmihti becomes atmihtin, & change which
for a time spread all over the North ; the n is inserted,
for daigening replaces da^ang ; it is replaced by m, for
eeldon becomes seldu/m (seldom). The t is added, for
iuryrian (adveraari) is fonnd as ivierl (p. 38) ; the 6 is
added, for stalu (fartum) becomes sta^. The insertioD
of d after n in the middle of a word is carious ; this is
done for the s^e of ease ; iunor becomes Hunder, ami
what was elsewhere written cunrede is here written
kindred ; aire (omnium) gives place to aMre (p. 10) ;
this form last«d to 1600. Od the other hand, d ia some-
times dropped ; we find gol prenss (golden pins). The
connexion between p and t is very plain, when podet is
written for toads at p. 85 ; hence the Scotch pnddoei.
Milk becomes milclts at p. 79, the source of our milch
cmos ; wreeke and wrahe, two fbrms of the same word,
are fonnd in line 552.
As io . Substantives : Orrmin's sense of world was
ooming in ; we find at p. 4, middel werld used for the old
middan eard. The Latin cawta used to be Englished by
ping, which lasted down to 1340 ; but gake is now en-
largiog itfi meanii^ ; al p. 106 we find for is gaJce. We
know OUT common on the spot for proteKos ; at p. 94,
Moses throws a tree into the bitter water, which becomes
sweet on lie stede. At p. 10, in so monie limes, we see
a substitute for so often \ at p. 88 comes hisek God, tis
one ftSe (time) ; at p. itO is '1 shall come Hit time <^ier
ger;' that is, 'this time in the second year,' 'a year
hence.' The Accusative replaces the old Qenitive in o«
f^er aep (p. 89) 'a sheep of one year.' The same case
Middle English: Neglect. 291
becomes prominent in ^m name ururS a lettre mor (p. 29),
which would have been written formerly ' it became more
(longer) by a letter,' At p. 73 wo see the source of
our 'go full speed,' where we drop a preposition; it is
said that the Hebrews waxen miehil sped. The confnaion
between Dative and Accnsative is very plain in tofechen
Yaaac horn, a wif (p. 39). At p. 43 we read of rights, ^e
gueSen hen Se finae tunei (which are promised the first-
born sons). The English was becoming more and more
terse, as we see in this piece. A new Sabstautlve is
formed in p, 62 ; bi gure iering (your carriage) men mat
it sen. Another is formed from the word n'dan atp, 112,
wenle he hia ride, the Scandinavian retS.
In compounding Adjectives, the Jul of the Sonth
was employed, as dred/ul and frigtful, the latter for the
first time ; the lie, cnt down to li, was also in &vour, as
reuU ; inuglike (p. 60), the Scandinavian uggligr, the foil
English form is kept. The en of the Adjective is clipped,
when we read of a gold pot tX p. 95. There is a cnrionR
instance of the Accnsatiye of the Adjective being kept
alive by its constant use in common speech ; be bade
hem godtin dai, 'bade them good day' (p. 41). We
laugh at OUT modem phrase atofully joUy, but something
like it may be seen at p. 38 ; Abraham, when prevented
&om slaying his son, becomes frigU fagen, ' frightfully
fill n, joyful.' lap. 25 wesee ^ef/olc (multi); here gret
replaces m^ceZ ; we now talk of 'a great number,' but
' mncfa people ' is obsolete.
Among the Pronouns we find Set (illi), which had
crept down from the North ; it comes but once : ic once
or twice gives place to I. The Latin tu is twice Bng-
292 Old and MiddU English.
lished by rj% used in addressing a superior, at pp. 64, 65 ;
Jacob's children re^se to obey him and go to Egypt,
' &af ge (nisi tit) vriS iu tenAsti "Bmiiamin ; ' they afterwards
tell Joseph's Bteward, (jv.t giher it gu brogt agon. This
sn^ests the French voue, need for the Latin tit ; this
East Anglian nsage (see the FroTerbs of Alfred) was the
harbinger of a great change in onr common speech.
What Orrmin called fall an and ^att 0^ is seen here in
a new guise.
Two lilceneema ... be
Gftf hire Se (on.— Page 77.
Dia on wulde don Se to'bar wrong. — Page 78.
At p. 67 comee qval-to-evere ; at p. CO quilke is used, as
in the Ancren Riwle, for the Neuter Bel&tire. The ai
is mnch employed in atrengtheniag phrases, as oZ Ke
beltre, p. 66.
The great change in Numerals is that score is nsed
for twenty ; it comes from the old habit of thearmg
or scoring notches on wood np to twenty. The Celts,
Danes, and French counted something in this style, which
was now fitat nsed in English. In p. 91 we reiad —
'Gon woren VII scOTe ger.'
At p. 97, the Numeral thoueand is used as if it were a
Noun ; iU fti«e«f adile a meitter wold. A new idiom is
in p. 44 ; oh hundred so mikd tcea: Aw tile ; of old the
first fonr words would have been expressed thus, hy
ttund/red fold.
As to Yerbs, we find an old idiom revived after a long
sleep ; Hefolc teste dede (p. 57) ; here did rest stands for
retted ; seventy yean later this usage of do and did
became very common. In the Old English we find
Middle English: Neglect. 293
sentenoes like 'wished him (to) be named;' this nae of
the Infinitive Passive is now conpled with the Yerb
hid ; at p. 74 Pharaoh's d&nghter had it hen hrogt. The
Past Participle had always been used with an Accosative
after Tmnsitive Verbs, like tee ; this ns^e now began
to embrace Intransitive Verbs ; at p. 48 is Su^ja it him
tnitdim; 'it seemed to him misdone (peceo/um*). The
Passive Voice was spreading its conquests; at p. 24
comes woren he fereSrs nooren ; * they were sworn
brothers;' at p. 110 comes Se detert aren he walkeden
^rg ; ' they are walked.' We see the old nse of like in
him tnisliked Hat (p. 501 ; also the new nae as in the
Proverbs of Alfred, where the Verb changes its con-
straction and becomes Transitive :
Balaac mialiked al Sis quet^e,
And ledde hem &c.— Page 114.
The Verb beget is seen both in its old sense, adipitci, and
in its new sense gignere ; this last has driven cot the old
eennan. At p. 21, we see he higat a fune. A new Verb,
in tat hifel Sarrai, isneedfortheuld (refinijje?! (accidere).
Up to this time, niinaii had meant capere ; it here
acquires the farther sease of ire, and this is one of the
peculiar marks of the £aat Uidland Dialect for the next
hundred years ; our get has now both of the lAtin
meanings I have named. The Verb take is need iu the
same sense at p. 50 ; Laban toe aiid wente and folwede
on ; this sense of taJce is still alive ; it may be fiirther
seen in overtalce. Orrmin's phrase of taking with a
woman is repeated ; and at page 63 we hear of taking
leave. When we hear that Lot's wife wente in to a slon
294 Old and Middle English,
(p. 32), it suggests that of the two old meanings of
w&ndcLn^ the Latin tVa and mutare, the latter is most present
to our minds in the phrase, * he went into a rage.' The
Verb do is mnch used ; we hear that Adam and Eve were
don ub of Paradis (ejecti sunt). This must be the phrase
that suggested our modem expression for cheating. At
p. 69 comes it wuf6 mid him don (actum est de). At
p. 101 the Israelites deden Aaron in age, * put in fear.*
At p. 109 they deden fin, * made an end/ or * died.*
But make is beginning to encroach upon this do; the
people maden suHuren (sojourn) in t$e desert (p. 94). At
p. 72, we see that the hard East Anglian form wake
(vigilare) was to be set apart for one special meaning,
while the Southern corruption watch was to be in more
common use; Joseph's body was waked after death.
Clip is used in Orrmin's Scandinavian sense of tondere,
not in the Old English sense of amplecti ; the Scandi-
navian shift (mutare) comes at p. 50.
When we see stinken smoke at p. 34, where the
Participle has lost the de at itd end, we understand how
easily Layamon's corruption of ing for inde must have
spread through England, and how easily the Infinitive
and the Active Participle were confounded. A new
Verb, which we still keep, is seen in p. 41 ; Isaac was
mourning, but Eliezer eS^ede his sorge. This new for-
mation from ea^e (fisunlis) may have been confounded
with the French aaisier. Long before Chaucer's time
it was settled that in this Verb we should use the
French s, and not the Old English t$. Our unea^siness
was formerly written imea^nes.
Among the Adverbs are found guilum (olim), which
Middle English: Neglect. 295
liad long been known in Yorkshire. This word, coming
South, may have bad some share in driTtng the old hwiUt
(aliqnando) away from the Soath. Another Torkshire
idiom is a riede wot (nbi), instead of the old Jner (p. 57).
There are also moreover, hi time (betimes). The e, that of
old marked off the Adverb firom the Adjective, is clipped
in page 96 ; Amalek fagt (fought) hard. Bntthe ending
like was atUl in use, and was even tacked on to a French
Adjective, as festelike (hilariter), p. 97. The old nu fa
(jnst now) is altered at p. 45 j Esan is told, fin broSer
woe her »u. There is a great change in p. 113 ; Balaam
gede qui (ie) butefof&i, ' he went bnt a moment for that
porpoee.' Here hute stands for nomiisi; in the oldest
English a ne must have come before the Yerb. Orrmin
bad constantly oaed the ne compounded with Verbs, aa
nam, nis, and many Bach ; bat onr fine old componnda
were now waning away tbronghoat Easi Anglia. In this
poem nil and luilJe alone are left : we still say, loill he,
nill he ; a weighty link with the Latin volo, nolo.'
In Prepositione, 0/ is further extended; at p. 47 is
of fii> sfeie ic sal vwnen (remember) ; Dr. Guthrie, in
hie Idle, constantly writes ' I remember of it ; ' our more
claBBic remind of ie akin to this. Bitiden seems to get
the new sense prteter, as well as its, old sense j'wcta ; at
page 104 the Israelites, who had received Ught from
heaven, were consumed with fire ; it is said, fer is on
hem. bi»iden ligt, Amatig or a/mong is now turned into
aniongia, p. 47. The ofdtm, which was now well estab-
' It is curious U> find English more primittre Chan Gothic in thin
natter. Our old mlat %u (aomie sdi) is foond in Utfilu as niu
tDaM(SL Johniii. 10),
296
Old and Middle English.
lished as dun^ is nsed more like a Preposition than an
Adverb in Ae jigt&ti dun herbij p. 101, like onr dotun
there.
We find the welfSe of King Alfred's Proverbs, the
dwell of Orrmin, and the Salopian windoWf here repeated.
Readers of ' David Copperfield ' will remember that the
Suffolk peasantry speak of a house as a heein ; this is
explained by the Scandinavian higging, so well known in
Scotland. At p. 90 we read that was non higin-g of al
Egijpte without a corpse. This word kept its right
spelling in East Anglia down to 1440 ; since then the
g in the middle has been softened down. Id page 61
OiTmin's verb clapenn (vestire) takes the Past Participle
clad ; this is the Scandinavian Jdoeddr^ the Participle of
kloefSa; we still keep this form, as well as Chaucer's
clothed. There are other Scandinavian words found
here, such as
Busk, bush
Dream, sommum^
Glint
Levin, lightening *
Muck
Ransack
Kapen, to hurry f rap out
Kospen, rasp
Skie»
Buskr, Icelandic
Draumr, Icelandic
Qlanta, Swedish
Lygne, Norse
Mykr, Icelandic
Bansaka, Norse
Bapa, Norse
Baspa, Swedish
Sky, cloud, Noise
^ The 01(1 English dream meant only sonus or gaudium, and is so
used in the Bestiary.
* This is a curious instance of the interchange between g and/.
' This as jet only means in English a cloud, and this sense of
the "word lasted till Chaucer's time. Til skyia in Norse means * up
in the sky.' Twenty years after the present poem's date sky stood
for aer in Yorkshire.
Middle English: Neglect.
Spy
Spejft, Icelandic
Tine,/0M
Tins, Norse
%iy
Ugga,/iv'W««, NoiM
We find the word irk for the first time ; it is akin to
the Gennan erk&n (fastidire).
Of manna he ben forhirked to eten. — Page 104.
We see, in p. 35, ' hem ga,n i^t water lakeii ' (the
water began to fail them). Thie new word for deesee
is akin to the Bntch laecke (defect). In p. 26. we
find mention of tol and takel and orf. The second of
these SabstontiveB comes from the Welsh taclau, occoa-
trements. Oar word ikip comes from the Welsh yegip
(a qnick snatch); hence locnsts are called «ti;>})er«#, p. 88.
At p. 88, Pharaoh uses the Interjection, hu ! when
enraged with Moses; this mnat hare come from the
French comment. What Omnin had called oUfentesa
(a Teatonic ns^e of 800 years) now appears as hamelet
(p. 39) ; the old yJp was not to hold its gronnd much
longer. The old drake (draco) is written by the side of
the new French dragun. A form like Egypdenia shows
how the Old EngUah endings of proper names were
dying out. In p. 94 the road is said to he pert ; this
form of the French apert is strangely altered in our day
as regards its meaning. We read of Abraham, p. 29,
entertaining the angels with flures bred ; we now wisely
make a difference when spelling Jhur and fiower. We
see the Preiieh Verb lie sacred^, at p. 27, with its
English ending ; the Past Participle of this has become
so common that we now nse it as an Adjective. This
poem seems to have been written about 1230, and to
298
Old and Middle English.
have been transcribed seventy years later ; by that time
many of the old words had died out; thus wceshn,
wastenie (forma) conveyed no meaning to the trans-
criber, who writes it waspene.
A Norfolk lad is referred to the Lanercost Chronicle
for 1244, as bearing the name of Wille (Willy), the short
of WilUa77i ; the intermediate form most have been the
WilleJctn, found about 1190.
THE EAST MIDLAND DIALECT.
(About A.D. 1230.)
Account op the Flood.*
Do ' wex a flod Sis werlde wid-hin
and ouer-flowged men & deres ^ kin
wiSuten '^ Noe and hise $re sunen,
Sem, Gani; laphet, if we rigt munen,**
and here • foure wifes woren hem witS ;
iSise viii hadden in <5e arche grit$.'
Dat arche was a feteles ' good,
set and limed agen ^ flood ;
t$re hundred elne was it long,
nailed and sperd,^ <5ig and strong,
and 1** elne wid, and xxx** heg*;
^OT buten Noe long swing he dreg^;
an hundred winter, everic del,^
welken or" it was ended wel ;
of alle der f5e on werlde wunen,"
and foueles, weren ^erinne cumen
bi seven and seven, or by two & two,
Almigtin God him bad it so,
and mete quorbi ° <5ei migten liven,
'6or quiles he ^ woren on water driven.
•TheD
« except
^consider
•their
' peace
Byeaael
>> dosed
< high
kboretoil
1 bit
"dwell
« whereby
Pthey
' Genesis and Exodus^ p. 16 (Early English Text Society).
Middle English: Neglect.
seie hundred ger Noe was hold '
Qoan he dade ' him in Se arch»-wold.
Two 6usiint ger, sex hundred mo,
and sex and fifti forfi to So,'
weren of werldea elde niuten *
Sou " No« wM in to $e arche cumen.
He * wateres epringe here etrengSe undede,
and rejne gette' dun on ererilk Btede
fowerti dua and fowerti nigt,
80 -wex water wiS magti oJgt.
80 wunderlike it wex and get
tiat fiftene elne it overflet,
over ilk dune,* and over ilc hi],
Shurge Godes migt and Godea wil -,
and oHer fowerii ^ore-to,
due and nigtes atod et w ;
45o was ilc fleis * on werlde alagen,
So gunnen ' Se waterea him wiS-dragen.
De eevend moned was in cumen.
in Armenie Sat arche stod,
So was wiS-dragen ^at ilc * flod.
Do Se tende moned came in,
. 80 wurS dragen Se watres win ';
dunes wexen, Se flod wiS-drog,
It adds lasted long anog.'
Fowertj dus after Sis,
archea v^sidogt undon it ia,
Se raven ut-fleg,' hu ao it gan ben,
DO ■ cam he nogt to Se arche agen.
Se duve fond ^ no clene atede,
and wente agen and wel it dede ;
Se eevendai eft ut it tog,'
and brogt a grene olives bog ;*
eeve nigt uSen * everilc on
he is let ut flegen," crepeu, and gon,
wiSuten ' i!c aevend clece der
Se he sacrede on an aucter.°
Old atid Middle English.
Sex iiundred ger end on dan olde
Noe gag "■ ut of Se arche-wolde ;
8e first moned and te firat dei,
be sag erSe drie & te water aim ;
get he was wis and no^ to rad;*
gede' he nogt ut, til Clod him bad.
THE CONTRAST TO THE EAST MIDLAND.
(About A.D. 1230.)
Ar ne kuthe ieh Borghe non,
Nu ich mot maneD nim mon,
Karful wel sore ich Bjche ;
QeltleB ihc tbolye miicbele achame;
Help God for thin swete name,
Kjng of hevene-riche.
Jesu Crist, sod Qod, sod man,
Loverd, thu rew upon me,
Of priaun thar icb in am
Bring me ut and makye fre.
Ich and mine feren eume,
Ood wot ich ne lyghe noct,
For othre hahbet misnome,
Ben in tbys prison ibroct.
Almicti, that wel licth,
Of bale is liale and bote,
Hevone king;, of this woning
Ut us bringe mote.
Forjhef hem, the wykke men,
God, jhef it is thi wille,
For wos gelt wb bed ipelt
In thos prisun bille.
Ne hope non to his live,
Her ne aai he beliTe,
Middle English: Neglect. 301
Tleg'he thegh he stighe,
Dad him felled to pminde.
Nu bikd mtm wele imd blisce,
Bathe he ehal tharof misse,
"Worldea wele mid ywiae
Ne lasted huten cm stunde.
Maiden, that bare the heven king,
Bisech thin aone, that swete thing,
That he hsbbe of hus rewsing,
And bring \ia of this woning
For his muchele misae ;
He bring huB ut of this wo,
And hus tache werchen bwo,
Id those live go wu eit go,
That we mot«n e; and o
Habhen the eche blisce.
The above poem is tnken from the Liber de Antaqnia
Legibos (' KeUqnira Antiqate,' I. 274), in tlie possessioa
of the Corporation of London ; the mannscript hae musi-
cal noleB attached to it. The proportion of obsolete
English is macb the same as in the Genesie and Ezodns.
The poem of page 300 seeme therefore to represent the
London speech of the year 1230, or so. What was pin Saf-
folk becomes c here, as in the Twelfth Century Homilies;
it ia hmel, not hrogt; gelt replaces giU, as in Kent.
The Ji is sometimes misused, even as Londoners of our
day misnee it. The gh sotfietimes replaces the old k, as
we saw in the Esses HomiUes: this change was now
overspreading the greater part of the Eastern aide of
Eogluid between London and York. The change of p
into d in many words ia cnrione. The form habben
(habere) is a mark of the Sontb.
302 Old and Middle English,
THE EAST MIDLAND DIALECT.
(About A.D. 1240.)
The piece that comes next, a verBion of the Athanasian
Creed, was most likely written in the Northernmost
part of Lincolnshire, perhaps not far from Hull. We
see the Northern forms in gi*eat abundance ; thus whXih
is used for the Relative; aZs, ti\ sal, ))atV, &c,, come
often : the third Person Singular of the Present tense
ends in es, not in eth ; hes (erit) replaces the old beoi6.
But the Southern o was making great inroads on the
Northern a, as we saw in East Anglia ; in this piece we
find 80, non, no mOy whos, \fow (tamen),t/;^o so ; in short,
the whole poem foreshadows Manning's riming Chronicle.
The a becomes e, as in the Northern Gospels ; heli
(sanctus) replaces kali. The g is turned into yh ; and
many endings are clipped. The Participle gehoren is
cut down to horn. The writer who Englished this Creed
has little love for outlandish words ; sauf, sengeUtc, and
persones are the only three specimens of French here
found : he commonly calls persones by the obsolete name
hades. 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 incompre-
hensible. We see our hifore-sdid for the first time. Bot
(sed) and with (cum) are prefeired to their other English
synonyms, as in Orrmin's writings. Unlike that poet,
our present author will seldom use 7is for the Latin non\
he prefers noht, as in the East Anglian pieces : but he
once has nil {nolunt). We see the Participle lasimd,
Middle English: Neglect. 303
wliicli Omnia would h&ve ased. The new hsamd, (the
Franclt Ha.nf) replaces the old wetende.
This Creed, short though it be, shows os two great
changes that were takiag root in our spelling; k waa
being tomed, as in Essex, into gh, and v into ou. One
or two instances of these changes may. be seen in the
East Midland poems of 1230 ; bnt the alteration is now
well marked. We see ri/jhl, noyht, and tkurgkt, instead
of the old riht, nohi, and tkurh. These words mnst have
been pronounced with a strong gnttnral sound, which
may still be heard in the Scotch Lowlands ; there right
is Bonnded much like the Qerman reckt. Thoh is in this
Creed written pof, a sure mark of the North ; and this
shows ns how eough and rough came to be prouonnced
as they are now.' The letters k and / (or rather p) are
akin to each other; the primitive Aryan kafrwrie the
Gothic Jidwor (four), and the Lithuanian dvxy-lika is
onr twd-lifa (twelve). With us, Livomo becomes
Leghorn ; and in Aberdeenshire kwa (the Latin ^it) is
pronounced fa.
EAST MIDLAND.
(a.d. 1S40.)
Who Jnt {len will berihed ■ be,
So of |>e JiriuDeB '' leve he,
And nede at hele* |)»t last ».\ aal
Dat )« fleehede ' ai with a1
Of oure loneid Jhu Crist forfi •
Dat be trowe it trewU.
■ WbfBhonldfxni^A I>« sounded differeoU; from plixi^A? 'I have
304
Old and Middle English.
Den ever is trauth ' right
Dat we leve with alle oure miht
Dat oure louerd Jhu Crist in blis
Godes son and man he his,
God of Idnde of fadir kinned ■ werid Inforn,
Man of kinde of moder into werid bom,
Fulli GKxi, fulli man livand
Of schilfiil ^ saule and mannes ilesahe beand,
Eyen to the Fadir ]nirght godhede,
Lease )>en Fader )>urght manhede,
Dat )>of he be God and man,
Noght two frwaefer* is, bot Grist an,
On, noht l^urght wendinge ^ of Godhed in flesshe,
Bot {'urght takynge of manhede in godnesshe,
On al, noht be menginge of stayelness,'
Bot furht onhede of hode " fat is,
Dat ]>oled ° for our hele, doun went til helle,
De pred dai ros fro dede so felle,
Upstegh ° til heven, sittes on right hand
Of God Fadir alle mightand,
And yhit for to come is he
To deme ]7e quik and dede that be.
Ate whos come alle men ))at are
Sal rise with faire bodies fare.
And yelde sal fai, nil fai ne wil,
Of pair awen p dedes il,
And fat wel haf doun fat dai
Sal go to lif fat lastes u,
And iyel haf doun sal wende
fbeUef
'begotten
^reaeomtble
i rtill
k changing
1 Butatuioe
"person
■trnffowd
0 went np
Pown
a GOV in my box/ said a Frenchman, meaning a cough m his chest.
In the short sentence, a dough-faced ploughrwin, coughing and huh
coughing, went thoughtfidlg throtigh Loughborough^ ve find ou<fh
sounded in eight different ways. The Scotch still sound rough and
the proper name Brottgh as if the names ended in kh ; this was,
until lately, the usage in the Yorkshire dales.
Middle English: Neglect. 305
In fire lastend vithouten ende.
{Mb is ]?e traaht ))at heli <i isse, "i^oiy
Whilk bot' ilkon with miht hisse ' «»1m8
Trewlic and fastlic trowe he,
Saiife ne mai he never be.^
THE CONTRAST TO THE EAST MIDLAND DIALECT.
(About A.D. 1240.)
Thk Owl ahd NieRinroALE. — line 098.
Yut ]m aisheist wi ich ne fare
In to other londe and singe th&re.
No I what sholde ich among hom do.
War never blisse ne com to P
That lond nis god, ne hit nis este,
Ac wildemisee hit is and weste,
Enarres and eludes hoventinge,
Snou and ha^el 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 fiehs un-sode,
Suich wulves hit hadde to-brode ;
Hi drinketh mile, 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-tijt mid ru^e velle,
Ri^ svich hi comen ut of helle ;
The^ eni god man to hom come,
(So wiles dude sum from Rome)
For hom to lere gode thewes,
An for to leten hore unthewes,
* Hickes has mangled some of the words in this piece, which
1 leave as he printed it. It is in his Thesaurus^ I. 233.
306 Old and Middle English,
He mi^ bet sitte stille,
Vor al his wile he sholde spille ;
He mi^te bet teche ane bore
To we je bothe sheld and speie,
Than me that wilde folc i-bringe.
That hi me segge wolde i-here singe.
These lines are taken from a most charming Dorset-
shire 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 Biwle
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. In p. 44 we read that
'his worde was goddspeV We find also other saws,
such as
' Dahet habbe that ilke best^
That fuleth his owe nest.- ^
The Vowel o is encroaching upon its brethren;
mowe replaces the old mawe (metere). The former he
lyst (amittit) becomes he lost ; this form was not as yet
transferred from the Present to the Perfect. The «
is sometimes used for o ; the Past Participle isclwd
stands in p. 52 for the old gesceo-god ; we here get the
first hint as to our present way of sounding shoe. The
old prise (turdus) now becomes our thrusche.
The most remarkable new effect in Consonants is the
paring away of the n in the Past Participle of (igon ; in
p. 18 we read wane thi lust is ago ; the corrupt Southern
' The French imprecation ddhet shows whence comes our 'dash
it!'
Middle English : Neglect. 307
fonn kept by ns in Ivnq ago. The olderform remams in
woe-hegone; the Participle here cornea from legatigan
(ciroamdare). In the same way a8(i^on,(c/en(TeBper) here
becomes eve. In another word the / is thrown out, for
JuBtfterhecomes halter. TheAisprefizedtotheOldEnghsh
ah (bnbo) ; we may still write either howlet or molet,
like Hester and Esther. The n is inserted, for nihtegale
becomes nij^tingale ; in ' Middlemarch,' Mr. Dagley is load
in praise of the Binfonn (Reform). When we find
Alfred written Alvred (p. 9) we see a relic of the spelling
of Domesday Book. The old bnga (ramns) is written
sometimes bo^e, sometimes bowe. It is easy to see how
Layamon tnmed the Active Participle iiide into inge,
when we find at p. 30 nnginge riming with avinde.
One of the Snbstantiyes here used gains a syllable, for
morgen becomes }nore^eiing (morning), jnat as AoiA (ca-
vos) becomes lioleuh (hollow). The old rode had hitherto
meant erux; it is now seen as rodde, meaning virga.
The word honda (colonns) becomes hortdeman. We
find the Substantive sprenge (trap), which comes from
the Verb spring.
Afl to Adjectives ; the old gidig seems to have been
preserved by the Sonth and West alone. This poem
has many forms, snch as, in the deme (dark), into the
hare, in the thick, where the Adjective is nsed like a
Substantive, as in Greek.
Among Prononns, we find thilke, which is nsed only
once (p. 36). One of our modem usages is to insert it
is, when we wish to be emphatic. At p. 40 we read —
Uervore \t It that me tie ihutieth.
3o8 Old and Middle English.
This is stronger than ' on this aocoiint men shun thee/
At p. 4 we see oiher referred to past time, as we saj
* the other day.' —
That other ^er afaukun bredde.
The Article cm and the Numeral one, both springing
from the old dn^ were as yet anything but distinct ; in
the 4th line of the poem we read of an hide and one
nijfingale. At 25 the on (unus) appears without a Sub-
stantive and coupled with a Possessive Pronoun ; having
spoken of arts, the bird says, hetere is win on (craft).
In Verbs, we remark the change of meaning in the
old mot, most ; this Verb, which earlier bore the sense
of the Latin licet, now takes the meaning of oporiet ;
this may be plainly seen in p. 45, ]m most of londe
fleo. Still the Verb m/)t lasted in its oldest sense
down to 1550 ; it is still, I believe, used in the Free-
masons' formula, so mote it he. Must, used in the new
sense, has driven out the Old English thearf; and it so
entirely got the meaning of oportet, that must us (it
behoves us) is used in the Townly Mysteries, about the
year 1430. At p. 39 comes the Passive thu art ishote,
as if the old sceotan had always governed an Accusa-
tive.
We have seen many Adjectives here used as Sub-
stantives ; this usage is extended to Participles.. At
p. 50 comes
Wanne ich iseo the tohte Uete,
* The taught (tensus) let out.' At p. 34 solde hi "pollen
stands for * if they yelled ; * this use of should, in a con-
ditional sentence, is something new. At p. 20 we hear
Middle English: Neglect. 309
of a man tbat ne con 'mj^ lute singe ; here tlie Infinitive
is used as it were in apposition to the nout/ht, somethiaj;
like Orrmin's idiom. At p. 56 comes thu nevre mon
(homini) to gode ne etode ; this snggeets that our ' stand
tae a pot ' is short for ' stand me to a pot,' ' be worth to
me for ao much as a pot.' The phrase let he, instead of
let alone, is in p. 56. We use the verb bode always in a
bad sense ; this is seen in the present poem. Break now
becomes intransitive, as ' his heart nolde breke,' (p. 87).
The verb hihemman is formed irom hem (fimbria).
We find the phrase for (far) and wide, (p. 25), aa
well as the old far and near.
The Prepositions to be remarked are, ' he wonld not
for his life,' (p. 37) ; ' they are of thy mind,' (p. 52) ;
■ to miss of ^irhede ; ' in this last the of stands for the
Oenitive that nsed to follow the Old English folian
(carere). Hence /ai? o/", come sAorf 0/, dwappoini o/. In
p. 27 stands ' thoagh all strength were at one,' that is,
* in one place,' the old onan ; from this we have ' to
set at one ' (whence comes atonement) ; the at often haa
the meaning of in. The Preposition behind is used as a
Snbstantire at p. 21.
There are a few Scandinavian words, snch as miehap,
cakeieeald (cuckold), eo^ge (of a wheel), fait (falter),
utlete (outlet), and shrew, the last comes from skraa
(sloping) ; we now apply ghreio to women, and soreu) to
hones. The verb beehreta was formed &om this in the
next Century,
There are many words cropping np, akin to the
Dntch and German, like dock, clench, chite (gleba),
<remp (contrahere), kacck (parere), luring (torro vnltu),
310 Old and Middle EnglisiL
inesh, isliked (whence our sleek) ^ stumj), twinge, xvippen ;
the last in its intransitive sense.
In p. 27, we see the first use of a well-known Adjec-
tive:
Mod deth mid strengthe and mid witte ;
That other thing nis non )n&Jitte,\
That is, ' it is no match for man.' This is akin to the
Dutch viUen (con venire). There is also owesse (com-
primere),at p. 48, akin to the Dutch quasseny whence
comes our squash atid squeeze ; and at p. 54 we read, al
thi sjmUng schal astvinde ; here the Noun, akin to the
Dutch spuiteriy stands for sermo ; the race of spouters is
anything but extinct.
Among the few French words in this long poem are.
jpie (picus), gente (still used in Scotland as genty^) at (me
acorde ; stable is found with the French e at the begin-
ning clipped. The word gahbing is used in the French
sense of mockery, (p. 22), as in the Ancren Biwle ; this
old word was English, Scandinavian, and French, each
with a different shade of meaning ; we still talk of the
gift of the gab. Master is for the first time prefixed to
proper names ; as Maister Nichole ; in our surnames we
now follow the form Nicoll more than Nicholas.
The Cotton Manuscript (about 1240), in which the
last poem is embodied, contains many other pieces,
mostly Southern. These are repeated in the Jesus
Manuscript, compiled about twenty years later. ^ There
are here Northern forms, such as whase, sauley and
* These are printed by Dr. Morris, in his Old English Miscellany,
(Early English Text Society).
Middle English: Neglect. 311
wimmmi; also the Soatherjt vayre. Tke poemB may
perhaps belong to Oxford, or thereabouts. The a en.
onaohes npoa <e and ea, as in mast, chapman. The ou
becoaies prominent, as we auhte (debemas); gUow
becotaes gle (p. 91). The old hu is written Aou> at
p. 142. We here find onr modem eye and youhfe ; the
old smyc becomes smyehe (p. 75), whence our gmvteh and
smudge. The old gearwa is cut down to i^ere, our gear,
at page l&i. Lajamon's cormpt IVesent Participle is
spreading over Sonthem England ; in the one page 180
we see both the old b&miTtde and the new beminge
(nrens).
As to Xoone : the Virgin says, at p. 100, ich am
Qodea vpencke (ancilla) ; the word was henceforth nsed
only of women, though Orrmin had called Isaac a
vxnneheU.* We light on many new Enghsh names at
pp. 188-190 ; snch as Janekm (Jenkin), Wadekin
(Watkin), Bobin, Gilot, besides iihe old MaUkin.
We have seen Past Participles coupled with the
PoeseBsiTe Pronoun, no SuhstantdTe following ; AdjectiTes
are treated in the same way, after the fashion of the old
imn geltca ; at p. 82 comes myne gode ; sioularly, at p. 96,
a maid is addressed as A tteete, * Ah, sweet.' At p. 86 we
get an insight into the tme meaning of fireo ; it is there
opposed, not to thralls, bat to poure ; it must hare
&urly well expressed our genile in gentleman. To ^lis
word we shall return thirty years later. At p. 144
comes the curions word elyibe, which means avtdui, to
312 Old and Middle English.
jadge bj the context ; it may be another form of the
East Anglian clvoer.
Among the Pronouns, we see at p. 85 "pUTce (illi),
which was slowly spreading through the South, and
encroaching upon ])o. At p. 96 eu (yos) is evidently
written instead of \e (te) ; thou and you come sometimes
in a speech addressed to a single person ; this may be
seen in (Goldsmith and Knowles.^ At p. 73 we see say
used as an Impersonal Verb, an imitation of the old it ie
written ; we here light upon hit aey^ in pe godspelle. The
ohn of East Anglia now becomes al one (p. 85). In
Old EngHsh we should have found better he htmdredfold;
this is changed at p. 98 into he is hetere an hundred f aide.
What in Essex had been called pat an now becomes fe
on, which we still keep (p. 101).
Among the Verbs we remark moste used in the sense
of oportet, as we saw in Dorset. The old ute, followed
by the Infinitive, is seen for the last time, I think, at
p. 141. The Imperative bed^ is cut down to &eo at p. 78.
The Infinitive /aren is dropped in he schal heonne (hence)
at p. 94 ; at p. 186 is he made him falle. The peculiar
idiom with the verb stand, seen before in a Dorset poem,
is now carried a step further ; at p. 99 comes hit wolde
him stonde muchel stel (in great stead).
We see the Adverbs peruppon and panm/pal (pp. 78,
97) ; in the last, withal for the first time Englishes the
Latin crnn. At p. 139 after is used, not as a Preposition,
but for postea.
At p. 82 we see our Verb hwyne (whine), which
1 See Matzner's English Grammar, IIL 225.
Middle English: Neglect. 313
foUowB tbe Icelandic veina nther than the Old Englisli
wainan. There ib the Verb ruskit (p. 92) applied to
bounds rwhing or racing abont ; the tme old form was
rikmm. A new word for tremere comes at p. 176 :
For ich echal bemen in fur
And chiverin Ln iee.
We Bee in p. 76 a Celtic word bronght into English,
a word which Shakespere was to make immortal. It ia
said that greedy monks slutll be bitaukt fe puke (given
over to the Fiend). The Welsh pweca and bwg mean
' hobgoblin ; ' hence come onr hugheart and hogiea.^ Tyn-
dale, who lived near the Welsh border, usee bug for
something that frightens children ; bogle is employed in
Scotland for a seareerow.
The French inflaence in the poem is seen at p. 90,
where ten or twelve long lines end in one rime ;
bnt the English conld never hope to rival the French
in this riming Byetem. At p. 98 we see ymelone, a
relic of the old gim-stUn, that had been written for
hundreds of years in England; a few lines further
back, we find the new French gemine. The English
of the year 600 had been able to conple words of
their own with outlandish terms ; the English of 1240
eaw their own words dying away, and were glad to
' Good Sisliop Bedell, in n letter to Uiber, bmnds sn oppreaMr
nitmed Cooks : ' he it the most crjed out upon. loKinincb u he hath
fuund from the Irish the uicknuue of Fonc.'— P. lOfi of Bsdell's L\fe,
printed in I68S. Thia seems to show that about 1630 our 00 hiA
alreod; the soDod of the Freoch on The inteicliaiige of c andp ig
314 Old and Middle English.
replace them by purely foreign terms. The new ^^epit^
for instance, was used as well as fdh ; \e peple me tolde
is in p. 92. In p. 122 pe bivnlen, which is in the Cotton
Manuscript, is replaced by do pe gyle in the Jesus Manu-
script. When we see quiten (pay for) her die, at p. 190,
we have the source of our ' we are quits,* that is, ' we
have paid each other.*
THE EAST MIDLAND DIALECT.
(About 1250.)
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 tbe ' Beliquisd Antiques,' L 22.
This must have been used in the Northern part of
Mercia, perhaps not far from Orrmin's abode ; for the
a is not replaced by 0, as in East Anglia. We also
find such Northern forms as tily fra, cds, ahodldand.
But we have here the great Midland shibboleth, the
Present Plural of the Verb ending in en ; this is some-
times altogether dropped. The Third Person Singular
of the present now ends in «, which is most unlike the
Genesis and Exodus. The Preposition /or is used in a
new way ; it might always stand in a sentence like * for
God's sake ; ' it is now prefixed to the French nierci.
Omnia is translated by hevirilk ; this, to the North of
the Humber, would have been ilk an. Sal is used for
shall. Are is used for the Latin sunt. The Past Parti-
ciple has no prefix. The letter h is sometimes set at
the beginning of words most uncouthly. Acewiede
(genitus) is replaced by begotten. Heli stands for the old
Middle English : Neglect. 315
halig, as in the Athanasian Creed given at p. 488*. The
French lele (fidna) appears, which is Northern. On the
other hand, we find ham, (iUoa), not pam. We light
upon the full forme mamkind and kingdom for the first
time ; the latter was earlier written kingdom. Notting-
ham wonld be as hkely a town as any for the following
rimes. We may imagine the great Bishop Bobert hear-
ing his Mercian fiock repeat these same lines, while he
inms aaide for a short time &om his wrangles with the
Bomau Conrt, and &om the studies that made the name
of Inncolniensis known thronghoat Christendom.
THE EAST MIDLAND DIALECT.
(About A.D. 1260.)
[I b]idde huve with milde Bteveue
prayer raue i-oicc
til vie fader )ie king of hevene,
for fo ISTetd of Jia liu», and >il lele hine,
fail/ffnt hinds
for alle cristinfolk tliat ib in gode lif,
that Qod schilde ham to dai fro sinne and fro sicha ;
for alle the men that are In ainne bundeD,
that Jbeeu CriBt ham leyse, for is hali wndee ;
loBM monads
for quike and for desde and ol mankinde ;
and )«t we here Ood don in hevene mot pes it finde ;
may place ia Acarni
3l6 Old and Middle English.
kdA for Bile yeX on her)>e U8 fedin uid ibatre ;
Bide we nu sUe )« hali pater nostei.
Ure &dir Jnt bart in heveDe,
bilged Im |n name with giflis MTene,
uunin cume )n kiugdom,
^ wUle in her|>e ale in hevene be done,
lue bred Jiat tastes ai
gyre it bus |>is bilke dai,
and lire miBdediB )iu forgyve bus,
alB wa foi^ve pam pat misdon bus,
and leod us iutol na landinge,
tempUttum
hat &el8 ns fra alle ivele |>inge. Amen.
H«l Marie, ful of gmce,
)>e lavird witli |>e in lievinUc place,
blisced be )iu mBng alle wimmein,
and blisced be |>e bloHme of Jii wambe. Amen.
MaJcliD and moder ^t bar )>e bevene king,
wer us fro wre wy))er-wineB at ure hendiiig ;
d^end encmUa ending
blisced be )>e pappis )iat Qodis sone sauk,
)>at bargb ure Idnde ]wt |>e nedTS bjauak.
protMted race ser^tni trieked.
Sloder of milte and maidin Mari,
help us at ure bending, for \i meici.
|iat Buete Jbosu ))at born was of |>e,
fa give us in iiis godhed luni to ee.
Jhesu for |ii moder love and for fiin bali wndie,
)ni leise ue of ]« sinnes ^at we are inne bunde.
Middle English: Neglect. 317
' Hi trae in God, fader haJ-micbttende, f>at makede
heren and Iierde|>e, and in Jheen Kriat, is anelepi sone,
hoie laTerd, )>at was bigotin of fe liali gaet, and bom of
the mtdnden Karie, pinid under Pnnce Pilate, featened
to tke rode, ded and dnlvun, lichi in til helle, |>e }>nde
dai np ras fis dede to live, Btegh intil heveime, sitis on
is &dir riclit hand, fadir alvraldand, he fien aal come to
deme |ie qnike an fe dede. Hy troae by («li gast, and
bel; kirke, ^ Bamninge of balghes, forgi&ee of ainnee,
apriaigen of flejes, and life with-hatin bend. Amen.' '
THE CONTRAST TO THE EAST MIDLAHD.
(*.D. 12fi0.)
Pbalm VIII.
Laverd, oure Laverd, liou selkoutb is
Nune ^Tine in alle Isjid jiis.
For upe-hoven es [a mykelhede
Over beTena fiat ere brsde ;
Of mouth of childer end eookand
Made )rau lof in ilka land.
For ]ii faea ; )iat )>ou foi-do
Sfid, pe wreker him imto.
<r I hJ Be {line herenee hegh,
And werkes of Jiine fingreB slegh ; *
' Wb find the old genitire atill uncorrnpted, as hevtTU ting,/adir
Hand. We «tiU aej hell firt. Lady day. It is moat atrange that
Encb voida tafaKding, vtegk, t,a\ tamninge fbonld ever have dropped
eat of OQF apeecli, Binee they moat have bran in the montha of all
Engliahmea thnt knew the simpleat trathn of rali'^oo.
* Sy (eapiana) has hers a moat exalted aeoBe ; it haa been sadly
dcgnded. ' Naaty al; gid I ' asja one of Mr. TroUope'a matrooa
Bpeafciiig of ber eon's eDchanCreBs.
3l8 Old and Middle English,
^ mone and stemes mani ma,
"^at ]k)u grounded to be swa.
What is man^ )>at ]x)u mines of him P
Or son of man, for ]h)u sekes him P
'^ou liteled him a litel wight
Lesse fra Jnne aungeles bright ;
With blisse and mensk )h)u crouned him yet,
And over werkes of \\ hend him set.
^ou under-laide all ])inges
tinder his fete )>at ought forth-bringes,
Neete and schepe bathe for to welde,
In-over and beestes of ]>e felde,
Fogheles of heven and fissches of se,
pat forth-gone stihes of }>e se.
Laverd, our Laverd, hou selkouth is
Name June in alle land ]n8.
The above Psalm is a specimen of the Northumbrian
Psalter (Snrtees Society), a translation which, from its
large proportion of obsolete words must have been com-
piled abont 1250, thongh it has come down to ns only in
a transcript made sixty years later. This is the earliest
weU-marked long specimen of the Northern Dialect,
spoken at York, Dnrham, and Edinburgh alike ; it was
now making its way to Ayr and Aberdeen, and driving
ont the old Celtic dialects before it. This was the speech
that 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 bas
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
Middle English: Neglect. 319
speech have been, if York had replaced London as oar
capital!
This Palter, most likely compiled in Sonthem Tork-
ahire,' ia nearly akin in its spelling to the Lincolnshire
Creed in p. 303. We of conrse find the Active Participle
in aad, the old Scandinavian form ; »al ie nsed for shall j
thai, thair, thaim occnr, something like the forma in the
Ormnlnm. We see the correct fow ininee, where we now
should aay fow mindett ; a twofold cormption. The Third
Person Singnlar of thePresent ends in s, as giveg, does, has ;
we follow this Northern nsage in week-day life, but on
Snnday we have reconrse in chnrch to the old Southern
forma, giveih, doeth, &c. A remarkable Scandinavian
form, already fonnd in the Bnshworth Qospels, is seen
in Vol. I. p. 301 ; |«>u M (ta es) ; fim has, which is also
fonnd, is not yet grown into thou hast. The old
ending of the Imperative PInral is sometimes clipped,
thongh not oft>en ; as understaTtde for inleUi^te ; this
we saw in the Lindiaf^me Gospels. The Northern
form of the Present Plural in es appears, as hates,
(odemnt) ; and Shakeapere sometimes follows this
form.
As to Towels : the a replaces e and te, aafar, handy,
brake, spake ; it replaces o, as smwe for the rightful
tvxnv, and this wrong form has been forced into our
Bible by Tjndale. The ai replaces a, as /at (hostis),
' The Midland Present Pinral ending in m Is lometimes foviid,
as mirlai (laborant) ; I have alread; remwlwd on an iostancs of Uiia
in the Rnjshirorth QospeU. Ninety yean later, Higden sud that
this Torkihice speech waa«o harsh and rough that it could be hardly
nndantood in the South.
320 Old and Middle English.
ioT the older fa ; and this sonnd remains in Scotland ;
ogaines stands for contra, but the first letter is clipped
in compounds ; gaine-sagh is written where a Sonthemer
wonld have pnt ayensaiioe. This gainsay is the only
Verb compounded with gain that we have left. The «aid
of the Psalter has in the end beaten the Southern seid ;
there is also alaine. The e stands in meres (jumenta),
which we still pronounce aright ; the e is often doubled,
as in feet, neety heest. The old fencan (putare) is care-
fully kept in the South, that there may be no confusion
with pink^ (videtur) ; but in the North the former is seen
as think. Vol. I. p. 3. The o encroaches upon (b, for forgcet
becomes forgot ; swo and fo are found for stoa and fa»
There is much confusion between o and u ; we see the
old luve and the new love (amare) ; what was once
gebundne his (yinctos sues) now becomes his honden^
Vol. I. p. 221 ; new words were soon to be formed iroJXL
this Participle. The old duru (ostium) becomes doer id.
the North, Vol. 11. p. 153 ; the earlier form liyes in the
proper name Bwrward The words written arwe and
sorwe lose their last letter, and are sounded like a/ru and
soru ; the u was later to be replaced by o.
The old Consonants were roughly handled in the
North. The k is thrown out altogether in takes, iaken^
which become ta>s and tam,e\ the latter lives in our
poetiy. The old cneowun is cut down to newe, Vol. L
p. 33. The g sometimes becomes w ; the English word for
arcus is written both hough and howe ; geat (porta) be-
comes yhaie, the Scotch yett ; here the North followed
the South, and was perhaps glad to make a distinction
between this word and the Danish gcet (iter). Heg
Middle English: Neglect 321
(JoBfiium) becomes hai. The g is thrown out altogether
in inorgeny which becomes our morning (Vol. I. p. 157) ; *
the Scandinavians wrote moman as well as morginn.
We also find hie for hycgan (emere), slaerj and slavne.
The old h is replaced bj gh; we see heghest, eighty
neghbur, sagh. The guttural sound in the middle of
these words lingered in the Yorkshire dales long after
the year 1800, and maj still be heard in the Scotch
Lowlands. We see not written for noht. The / is
sometimes thrown out, for mper principes is Englished
by ovnr princes (Vol. II. p. 43) ; hence the poetical o*er.
The d is sometimes inserted, as in wrecchedness and
unckedness ; it is replaced by ^, as in left and reft^ where
the Vowels also have been mauled. The t is added to a
word, as when hds (raucus) becomes haast ; hence the
Scotch Tioast. The Scandinavian form was hosti. We
of the South a hundred years later put an r into the old
Adjective and called it hoarse. On the other hand, we now
too often drop the r in horse, and call it Twss, The hoAist
may have been formed from the old Verb hwostan
(cough). The t replaces the old |>, for heapo becomes
heghty our height. The old lengcm has a ]> inserted ;
elongavi is translated I l&nghped. Vol. I. p. 178. The p
sometimes slides into s ; what in 850 was aiSeastrade
smd (obscurati sunt), is now seen as er sestrede, Vol. L
p. 241. What used to be inlihton (inluzerunt) is now
Ughtnedf with a strange n. The old yurh (per) has its
' Morgen of old meant both eras apd mane ; the latter meaning
ifl ezpremed by the change of conBonanta seen here; the former
meaning is expressed by the Southern 10 or «» replacing the old g.
The old word becomes two-pronged.
T
322 Old and Middle English.
letters tranapoeed and becomes ih-ugh. The y is some-
times prefixed; for yerthe (terra), tbe ScandmaTian
jojUa, is in p. 3 ; hence the Scotch talk of yUl and yerl,
' ale and eari'
A process, lately spread in the North, seemed to
be replacing the nnmber of old SnbstantiTes that
England was fast losing at this tirae. We are stmck
by the jiumber of newly-coined Verbal Noans ; eojjfto
is Englished by ["e lakeing. Vol, I, p. 105; there is
also fuiJiUing, fieing ; but far stranger are the nnmber of
Plnrals, snch as gainges (gressns), not the old gong.
Vol. I. p. 115 ; |iatr hvi'tges (qn» snperfbenmt), Vol. I.
p. 41 ; and many others. Romanoe words nndergo this
process ; fafmlationeg hecotUBB /ahlingM,BAY 61. II. p, 91.'
Other new Plarals are formed ; iniquitate» had once
been Englished by ■utireMwi»n,Mse, this now becomes
vnckedneuee. Vol. I. p. ?5. The Yorkshire bard adds
nets to old words, as ivelnes, haXnwingnes ; even to this
day, when we coin a new Substantive, it is iiess that we
mostly employ for the ending, as pigheadedness and kmg-
windednegg. Sometimes he tnms an Adjective into a Sub-
stantive, for ohra kerharum (Vol. 1. p. Ill), is translated
wortes of greties ; hence onr name for certain vegetables.
Bona is goddee, onr good*. Snch phraaes as ntuM of
'might, man of merry, bred of sorw, folk of Igrad, become
common ; this tarn of speech we owe to transtaters
from the Latin. Onr nonn wndersta/nding, appeai'ijig in
1250 for the first time, comes straight from inteU«ctue,
' The verbal nouD gooentctting ie a conong inHtance of thi*
Middle English : NegUct. 323
OS we here Bee; tbongh we always had the verb. The
phrase nan m« haeMi a dele is nsed in Vol. II. p. 155 ;
the laet two words stand for aught, and hence comes ' a
good deal,' ' a hit,' Ac. There are the new Sobstantives
foandling and han^jmaijdea ; the last is formed like the
old teood-hon^j ; Enghsh delights in componnding two
Noans. The Scandinavianword ^-itZm^iafirsteeen.' The
old loolceit had meant both ^rviamenhim and nubes; the
second of these meanings is here taken Ceom tlie word,
and laid npon a wholly new word, ktoude ; it means
that vapours are drawn np into clods or masses, the
Dutch clole.^ In Vol. I. p. 43, we read in |»e kknidea of
\e skmoe, ' in nnbibns aeiis.' Sky has therefore at last
got its modem meaning ; this shiftiag of the senses of
words ia most cnrioos.
In AdjectiTes, we see the ending fvl growing apace ;
it is found not only in gladful, wonderful^ hlitheful, bat in
the foreign /rt*t(e/wi and merey/ul. We see adolescentiur
Englished bj ynige-like in Vol. II, p. 101. Orrmin had
used the Superlative inwreggl ; we now first find the
other forms oiiereat, nelkeresl, utlereet ; this last is the
Scandinavian uiaret. An Adjective is used without a
• Substantive in Vol. II. p. 177; pair worthi translates
iiohile$ eorum. Molestue is £nglished by a new word,
haekande (Vol, I. p, 105) ; hence, perhaps, oar 'hacking
congh,' Fresh takes the new meaning of recem in Vol. I.
' Thig word is stttl alive in the North, Burke, vho <sraa often a
^eat in YorkBhlre, says, in hie great speech before losing the Bristal
election, that he will neier throw the people any creature to tor-
ment, ' no, not m much as a kitling.'
' J have taken this from Weilgvoad, and much besides.
324 Old and Middle English.
p. 273. What was nlider in the South was Blvper in
the North ; and we have followed the latter form for
luhricus. The Definite Article was dropped before
an Adjective, as in onr 'handsome is that handsome
does ; ' in Vol. I. p. 23, peccator is Englished by sinful^
no longer by ae synfuLla.
As to Prononns : the old mildsa niin becomes haf
mercy of me, Vol. I. p. 71. We find ye wrongly used as
the Dative, I sail telle al yhe (Vol. I. p. 205). In hie
self translates in semel ipso. Vol. I. p. 1 09 ; while ipsi
inciderunt becomes /eZZe pam self, Yoh I. p. 181, where the
Dative is used as a Nominative. We see an effort made
after a new idiom in Vol. I. p. 265 ; nan erat quisepeliret
is there tnmed into was it naiie }^at walde hiri. Bat this
it could never drive out the old there, A wholly new form
of Pronouns is found in this Psalter. We have seen that
Orrmin, first of all our writers, used ]>at, the old Neuter
article, to translate ille ; and its Plural \>d, to translate
illi. This pd is still to be found in Scotland (Scott ttflks
af thae loons) : it held its ground in Southern England
as po down to 1530. The old Dative of this, Jx^rn, is still
in use among our lower orders ; as, * look at them lads.'
But in Yorkshire, about 1250, ]>as, our those, a' confusion »
with the old Plural of \>es (hie), began to be used for
f (£.' Vol. I. p. 243 : * Superbia eorum qui te oderunt^' is
translated pride of pa^ pat pe hates; and many such
instances could be given. The writer has elsewhere
pese, as in the Essex Homilies, to translate the Latin hL
* Hampole, ninety yean later, has the same comxption, )>a»
forM-
Middle English: Neglect, 325
In this Psalter we see the beginning of the corruptions
embodied in the phrase those who speak ; a phrase which
often with ns replaces the rightfdl they that speaky the
Old English fa ]>e.>
There are new Relative forms, which took a long
time to find their way to the Sonth ; as nane es whilke
Bonife mas ; yhe lohilk standes (qni statis), fest, God, pat
whilke pou vrroght. Orrmin had forms something like
these Yorkshire phrases ; the Relative Nominative whx)
was not commonly used in the Sonth until the Reforma-
tion ; we do not find in our Bible he who or he which ; in
our every-day talk we almost always make the old that
our Relative. We now see the new forms lohatkins,
nakin, a sure mark of the North ; the everilk of Peter-
borough now becomes everUkane ; capita multa (Vol. II.
p. 53) is Englished by hevedes of mani-a/ne.
Among the Numerals is found four-skore.
In Verbs: we see the Danish mon employed in
Orrmin^s sense of faturity ; not to translate oportet, as
has been the usage of the North since 1440. The Strong
Verbs delve, cleave, swepe, and wepe take Weak Perfects,
a process which unluckily has always been going on in
England ; helped replaces the true holpen, which lingers
in our Prayer-book. On the other hand, there is some-
* Addison, in his Humble Petition of * Who ' and * Whichf makes
these Belatives complain of the Jack Sprat That^ their snpplanter.
He is vrong : That is the true Old English Relative, representing
be ; the others are Thirteenth Century npstarts. It is curions that
Yorkshire had far more influence than Kent upon the language of
the capital in 1520. If we wish to be correct, wd should translate
'qui amant' by they that love: those who love can date no higher
than 1250.
326 Old and Middle English.
times an attempt to turn a Weak Perfect into a Strong
one ; as \ov. herd, where the older versioD has the right
)iu geherdet. We see the Participial idiom )>»u raade
dmne lierd in Vol. I. p. 247. The Participle is employed
• like an Adjective at Vol. 11. p. 161, ten^trmiged tautrt
(psolterinm decern cordamm). The Active Participle
bad always been nsed absolntely, as him speaking ; this
usage is now extended ta the Passive; at Vol. II.
p. 131, we bear that God smote the firstborn of B)gy}Jt;
noght one Ujt ]>are. This sentence, standing by itself,
can hardly be anything else than the Passive Participle
absolute. In the English of 1000, heom ge^n-eeeiuim
stands for the Active Participle absolnte. Oirmin's
change from the Active to the Passive Infinitive is seen
in Vol. II. p. 75; ■ma'ndasti tnandata hta cwtotliri is
Englished by ]>ou bade pine bodes to be yhemed ; in the
version made four hundred years earlier the eustodiri
was translated by the Active haldan. The constant
confasion between the Participle and other English
forms is seen in Vol. II. p. 99 ; tempus faeiendi becomes
time of makande. A Substantive coald be tamed into
a Verb, as Shakespere often does ; g«t domiiiatur is
translated by pat laverdes; the like happens to a
Comparative Adjective, I betred (pnevalni) ; and to a
Preposition, for we find to under (subdere), like Dr.
Johnson's I downed him. In Vol. I. p. 267 a new mean-
ing is given to epiU i what of old was Mod is agoten
(efiusas) now becomes blode es spilte. One of the puzzles
in our langoage 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 goyls,
I
Middle Efiglisk: Neglect. 327
gov^, or canals, and in the Gut, well known to Oxford
oarsmen. l'heo1dniaaningof«pt72(perdere)iBkeptinonr
oormpt word tpoii. Seeawian had changed its meaning
in 1160 from videre to manstrare ; it now further became
appwrere, at least in the North ; in Vol. I. p. 41 we find
appa/reho translated 1 aal sckewe. Lady 14'airne, in a
letter to her brother, aboat 1790, talks of hie thawing
away in London. We see the sense of ihtint giren for
the first time to Bcwaian. Eieptdti sunt (Yol. I. p. 291)
is translated ere out-»chowied-\ the word, with a t at the
end, had already been need in Salop, with a different
shade of meaning. In Tol. 11. p. 33, in translating
quaaiatio cetgweii, the Verb lefte ie employed ; we shonid
say left off. We find both I mined of (memor fni), and
also Isoi myne pare names (memor ero nominnm), Yol.
I. p. 37. In Yol. I. p. 107, think becomes tra,nBitiTe ;
moikedomes ware fai ihinkand. The old Weak Yerb
bitencte (demersit) is tnmed into the Strong ganke, Yol.
I. p. 215, a corruption still kept by qb. This confnsion
of two Verbs has appeared already. Tut inimici becomes
yine ilU'willand, Yol. I. p. 59, something like ' the
Qneen's traitors.'
Uany new Adverbial forms appear, snch as /or ever-
mare,frafer (alongd) al at ones, in midet of, downrigfUe,
yhates of ai (portca eetemales). The old moe swe (sicut)
now becomes alt it ware, Vol. U. p. 109. The old mniye
gives way to miket in Vol, I. p. 13 ; h/tel nu get (pnsillom
adhac) becomes yit a Httel, Vol. I. p. 113. When we
say that a man funis uip, we imply that he has been
missed and reappeare ; in Yol. I. p. 15 regreAere is
Englished by tome upe. It is cnrions to mark the
328 Old and Middle English.
varionB compouDtls of wil employed at different times to
tranelate voVrniiarie. This about the year 650 was wil-
gwrnUee ; abont 1250 it vraa vjilli ■ in a rather later copy
of the Psalter it WBB iirtJ/uIfi ; we should now g&j wil-
lingly. A new phrase crops up to translate fareitan ;
this is tkurgh hap (Vol. II. p. 115) j it is the foremnner
of onr mongrel per Aap».
As to Prepositions : we have already seen intU at
p. 233 of my work ; we now first light apon unHl, which
translates ad, (Vol. I. p. 79) ; also tuqw in, (Vol. I.
p. 189) ; uittil that is in page 315. Unto is seen for
the first time in England ; multw is Englished by tmto
worn, Vol. I. p. 225. The Gothic has wid halba (St
Mark vi. 23), where Tyndale has unto the halfe. In
Vol. II. 113, adpacem, is translated l^ at pais ; of old,
on would have been nsed.
We see that the bard of 1250 was not so good a
Latin scholar as the former poet of 850 ; euge ia now
translat«d, not l^ the earlier wel fe, but by wo, (Vol. I,
p. 107),
There are many Scandinavian words now fonnd for
the first time ; ae,
Brtuatan (brimstone), from the Icelandic
Dieg, from the Icelandic dregg (sediment).
OnsiBt (gnash), from the Norse ffituta.
Kitliuf;, from the Norse ketiingr.
Lurks, from the None Itirke.
Molbeij, from the Swedish mWAoer,'
Slttghtor, from the Norse tldtr.
' The Old English for this was j
Middle English: Neglect. 329
Scalp, &om the None tlad (shell).
Sculke, from the Danish Mkidke.
Snub, bom the Norse anu6(a (cut short).
Haiik, from the Icelandic htwkr.
It is from this laet, not from the Old English Iteajoc,
tibat onr word for aedjiiter comes ; in the same way we
have preferred the Scandinavian »ldir (cEedes) to the Old
English ikege. A glance at Stratmann'fi Dictionary will
show that the Sooth held to the Old English forma long
after the Scandinavian forma, now used by ns, had
appeared in the North. Tn onr verb whiten, fonnd
in this Psalter, we follow the Icelandic Kvitna, not
the Old English hmtian. The Plnial of havd (mantis)
in this Psalter is head, following the Scandinavian
form Aerufr. The Old English word for ituiiMa naed
to be dytig ; this last is fonnd with a new meaning in
a Northern writer ninety years later, and in the Present
Psalter insvpiens is translated by fule (Vol. I. p. 169),
prononncfld as we pronounce the word now. This may
come from the Icelandic /ol, though the French /oZ is seen
intheAncrenRiwle. What Orrmin called le^len (elevare)
now gets onr sound lift, the Icelandic lypta, Yol. I. p. 19&.
The Icelandic ^U (celeriter) appears here as tite ; it is
peculiar to Northern England, and stamps Qower, one of
those who used it, as a Northern man.
We see rniere, akin to the Dutch siia/rren, to grumble ;
lA^U (stipola), related to the Dntch stoppel. In Vol. II.
p. 53 conquattare is translated in three diiferent mana-
Bcriptfi by s^uat, squaccke, swacche (onr sgnath), all akin
to the Dntch gaa»»em. The Adjective gmert answers to
acerbtu, as before; it takes also a new meaning, for in
330 Old and Middle English,
I. 211 'pn'ovgefrwm iter is Englished by %nuiri wad : this is
the source of the Adjective we apply to dress. We see
yles for inatdcB ; the Psalter being a most Tentonic work,
let ns hope that onr isle is not derived from the French,
bnt that it is akin to the High Grerman isila. In the
more modem text of Layamon, eH-londe is turned into
ilond. Scald (nrere) is in Vol. II. pp. Ill, 115 ; the poet
sometimes translates the Noun torrens by scalding ! The
Nonn chi/mbes is used where cymbalan had been used 400
years earlier, Vol. 11. p. 179, and they are said to ring,
Mr. Wedgwood affirms that the word is Finnish, and
that it is an imitation of a clear sound. Scott employs the
phrase, ' Gk>d sain them ! ' and the Verb is used in
Germany ; in Vol. I. p. 195, henedicere is Englished by
sadne ; the old segnian was preserved in the North alone,
as was the case with many other old words. In Vol. I.
p. 79, hicus is Englished by flosche ; Jhise in Danish ia
* to flow with violence.*
The poet sticks as closely as he can to the Latin he
is translating. Thus mansitetiis is always hand-tame,
legislator is lagh-herer. Sometimes the Latin word is
imitated, as where henignitas is Englished by hettemes,
Vol. I. p. 167 ; malitia is turned into malloc, insuper
becomes in-over, I. p. 37 ; the Scandinavian inn yUr has
the meaning of over. Two of Layamon's new words
reappear ; noke and the Celtic Verb cut.
There is the Latin oli, and also the French form oyle ;
thus 0 and the newer ou must both have been sounded by
Yorkshire mouths in 1250 ; the old ele-treoio was now
replaced by oZive, tor by totir. There i& the old wine-
yherde and the new vinyhe for viiiea ; lioun replaces leon.
Middle English: Neglect. 331
Fantom comes pretty often, and slraite (straiten) Eng-
lisbee eoiulringere (Vol. I. p. 94). When captivitas is
translated wrecchednesse (Vol. I. p. 211), we see that the
word caitiff had already began to take root in oar land.
In p. 315 Jimeit improperly becomes fainyhes (feigns).
Cry was becoming very common ; clamare is tnmed by
make crie, II. p. 103. The old yl (porcupine) made
way for the French irchon at II. p. 17. The" obsolete
French /ere* (decet) so oftenfoondin Scotch law papers,
is to he seen in Vol. I. p. 9&. A few other French
words appear, snch aa fruUefuU, richessea ; the laat
being the nsnal translation of divituB, and thns the
PInral foirm of onr word is accounted for. The older
pats iasometimee turned into pens (pax). The word ire
is used to translate the Latin ira ; oar kindred word irre,
written by Alfred, cannot have died out at this time :
the Poet would think the Latin form more dignified than
the Old English. So after all we may hope that onr ire
is iroxa a Teutonic, and not &om a Idtiu sonrce. The
word majestas (I. p. 233), is Englished by an ingenious
componnd, masUkede. It is curions that some old
French words, such as viavii and leal, linger in the
l^orth, after having been dropped by the South.
About the year 1260 Layamon's old poem was tnmed
into the English of the day ; many Teutonic words of
1205 are dropped, being no longer understood ; and
some new French words are found. We may guess at
the place where the new version was drawn up : it could
not have been far from the Qreat Sundering Line, aa
both Northern and Southern forms are mingled ; umen
(cnrrere), mochel, sock, woch, ech one, the old Genitive
332 Old and Middle English.
Plnral ScoUefie (Scotomm), the Past P&rticiple ago, and
the new )nlit, point to the Sontii; while aZ«e (siont),
are (ennt), (laie (illi), Hneeman, comes (venit), and
higge (emere) point to the North. The transcriber's
honte may perhsps be fixed in the Northern comer of
Hertfordahire ; the forms ^ier (aimas) and aipe (navis)
ehow that he belongs to the neighbonrhood of Kssex ;
he naea sal for onr ehall. The East Midland forms are
seen to be encroaching an the Soath, and to be establiali-
ing themBelves near London ; we have in this Version a
foreBhadowing of Sir John Mandeville a bnndred jears
later. There is a change in the Vowels : Lay amon had
tnmed the old Perfect sat (sedit) into set; the
transcriber has sat, our form. 0 is always replacing
Layamon'a a, as in foh, »hon (micavit), rope, ohnede
(possidebat) ; o replaces u ia wont, love, aholder, wonder,
worj', mom (Ingere), worse ; we see ivominan, the source
of the first syllable of oar form which stands for both the
Doraetefaire Singnlar wwrnman, and the Northampton-
shire Plnral wim/men. The French ou is mnch used, as
fow for J.it. The hemen. (tabre) of the First Text is
turned into bames ; we keep this sound in our hoom.
As to Consonants : the A is misneed ; it is wrongly
prefixed in ham, and hieh, and wrongly docked in alf.
Dcege is softened Into daiye, and the old gnttoral hrokte
(tnlit) becomes hrofie and bro]ite; fonr hundred years
later. Banyan, who came from the same neighbonrtiood,
prononnced daughter as dafter, making it rime with
after. An s is added to henne, for henites (hence) is
found. An I is inserted, as louerdling, oar lordlmg. A
t is added, for we light on aj,enest (contra) and bitimtie.
Middle English: Neglect. 333
The former was repeated & hnndred years later by
Masdeville, a native of Hertfordshire.
There are Bome new forme. Bach as tcA &i(i nojn'ncr of
hit ; the three last words, a doable Ghnitive, replace
nanne me^Smeg, Vol. I. p. 136. The new Bolative is
coming in ; where the First Text has Tnoni mf fe, the
Second Text has many wtmmem W woehs, I. p. 1 13. The
Plaral of the Old Article was written J>a by Orrmin
and peo hy Layamon ; it aow becomes oar }iaie fat (itll
qui). In theii that say, they is Old English ; in thay say,
they is ScandioaTian ; both they and )>ai are found in
this Second Text of Layamon. The ever is added to
tohere in indirect questions ; they wondered ware evere
. . . sock heoed were iketmed. III. p. 37 ; this ie not in
the First Text. There is the phrase, for ene omA fiyr
evere, II. p. 435 ; hence oar ' once for all.'
There are some new constmctions of Prepositions :
siff e (since) had never hitherto been employed before
Nouns; but we see in I. p. I?7 «u))]i6 feilhe time; in the
First Textwe« followed the mtf^e; the Scandinavians
employed stxiasaPreposition. Se neon reed mt his monmen
waain the^BlratText, I. p. 70; thisnaeof at waebc^^inning
to go oat, at least in the Sonth; and o/is now snbstitnted
for it. There is also tn his dajfis for the former an
his d^ea, I. p. 2^^.
The Icelandic svmpa with its Weak Perfect weipta
is now confnsed with the Old English ewd-pa/n, which
hod the Strong Perfect noeop (swoop). Beofs to him
svjopte, m. p. 65 ; it is no longer suripte, as tn the First
Text. Oar word leg (cms) is now seen for the first
334 Old and Middle English.
time; it comes &om the Scaudinavian leggr, a stem;
this soon encroached on the Old English shank. Oloh
(chlamyB), which is found here, is a Geltio word. The
French tvmhe (tnmnlas), the sound of which we still
keep, replaces the tunne of the First Text, I. p. 259.
The French Verb !we comes in the phrase hii naede foi
craft, II. 598.
We owe a great deal to the men who, between 1240
and 1440, drew up the many macnBcript coUectionB of
English poems that still exist, taken from Tarioas soorces
by each compiler. The writ«r who copied many lays into
what is now called The Jesns Mannscript, ranged over
at IcBBt one hnndred and fort^ years. In one piece of
his, professing to give a list of the English Bishopricks,
there is no mention of Ely ; hence the original mnst
have been set down soon after the year 1100. In another
piece in the same collection, mention is made of Saint
Edmnnd, 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 varions dates between 1220 and 1260 ; for
the proportion of obsolete English in them variee mnch.
I have already glanced at the older pieces ; see p. 310 of
this book. The Southern element is wrfl marked, when
we find ago and vvlede (secntns est) ; there is the bolle
(fastis) used by Layamon and in the Anoren Biwle, not
the batte of the Hertfordshire transcriber of Layamon.
On the other hand, vn/mmtm, not vmmman, ia emplcqred.
Two very old forms are now seen for almost the last time ;
erne morewe{[). 45), and syndon snnt, (p. 145). The last
Middle English: Neglect. 335
comes in a tranBcript of a prose piece drawn up soon
after the year 1100, and waa very likely not onderetood.
The tranBcriber had been used to see au employed to
ezpreHB the broad a in French words ; this he now
transfera to Old English, writing Engelaunde and
QravMtebrugge, as well as Maudeleyne ; onp French way
of proQOtmcing Magdalen College is well known ; onr
pronnnciation of baume (balm) and avnt is a relic of
this time. We find ai p. 155 the proper name I/ug', not
Sago. At p. 145, we see how the names of onr English
shires and towns had been pared down by 1260;
there are Kanterhury and Cumherlond; the English
Dtmkolm was still preferred to the French Buregme,
which we have followed since 1300. Bat Serobsdr was
written Slohsckire, whence comes oar Sahp ; a corions
instance of the intercboi^ between r and I. There is
much paring of letters in common words ; forward
becomes forward, p. 42 ; on two is tnrned into a to, p. 50,
An 8 is added to beside, as in Layamoa ; and hisides is
used as an Adverb in p. 149, Hond and hng rime with
each other in p. 51. In p. 43, more bold is nsed for
the tme English bolder, to snit the rime. As in the
second oopy of Layamon, ^{llie appears ; and hwai miere
Englishes quodcunque (p. 52) ; the swa that shonld have
come in the middle of the word is dropped. We find
ImIJ taking the Xomeial one before it ; on. half hundred
(p. 146). It is easy to see how an Adverb becomes
changed into a Preposition, from the phrase bUid om
adwt ofhym (p. 42) ; all that is wanted is to drop the
of Inp.45 we seenAiernsedasan Adverb; cert^. There
are phiaaes like on after oh (p. 40) ; maJce (two) to one
336 Old and Middle English.
(p. 145) ; ti^li hire heorte (p. 55). Tbe Latin vix had
been hitherto Englished by wieape ; bat another phraae
is Been in p. 42 : nedde he bute itet/d ; thiy ie tbe parent
of the Torkshire nohbut.
We find at p. 57 the English to (in Latin dit) set
before the French Verb partir ; to-partt/ ut of lyve.
This paved the way for depart (snnder) ; the sense
which lingered on In England until about 1660, when
the old form in onr Marrif^ Service, ' tUl death, ns
depart,' was altered into ' till death ns do part.'
We mnet glance at the famons English Proclamation
of Henry the Third in 1259 ; no English deed had issued
from the Goort, so far as is known, for aboat a bandred
years before this time.' Tho language nsed is such as
never wss spoken ; it is that of some French clerk
basing his English npon old-&shioned deeds ; thus he
has met with the ancient agen (debent), and therefore
thinks that ogen will be onderstood in Huntingdonshire ;
he nses the obsolete diphthong is, as in dcd (pars) ; his
lo^nde (terra) is a compromise between Iforthem and
Southern EngUsh. The proper name Jamet, not the
old Jame, now appears ; and also Perres (Piers, Petms).
The Terb agan (debere) now gorems an A.ocasatiTe ;
pti treoidpe ^cst heo iu ogen ; hence our, ' owe much to.'
This eeeras to be a Frenoh idiom, and marks the com*
piler's nationality. I may here observe that no word in
the English tongue has a more curious history than the
Middle English: Neglect. 337
old a^wa. (owe). It is the first English word thai we can
clearly Bee changing its meaning, as I hare shown in
p. 110 of this book. It now in 12S9 ^ain ohangee its
oonstmction by taking an AccasatiTe (jasi as the old tteoi,
did) ; and this is the work of a foreigner. Oi^ more,
in 1455 it stands out as being the first word, I think, that
paved the way for the disastroos concision between the
Verbal Konn and the Active Participle; in Faetolf's claims
against the Grown (Oairdner's 'Paaton Letters,' 1.364),
we read, that money y« "un/n^ to the knight aforesaid.
Here the in or on is dropped that ehonid have come before
the Verbal Nonn, and the owi/ng therefore seems, most
deoeptiTely, to be a Participle. We do not now nse the
rightful 'a storm is a (in) brewing,' bnt say 'a storm
is brewing;' hence we natnrally come to think that
hrew is an Intiansitive Verb.' Lord Macanlay, as we
read in his Life, insisted on saying. ' the tea is a mailing ' ;
I only wish that he had pnt this fine old idiom into his
' History.' * The newfangled tea is being made, or any
such-like conBtmction, was not in vo?ne nntil aboat
1770. The muing did not stop here, but gave birth to a
new English version of the Latin Preposition oh; owing
to ■ this last is a rather late comer. Sach are the various
meanings and oonstmctions that may be linked to one
■ flood, about 1810, writes aneut Miba Kilmansegge : 'she is
Dov ecrawing in' (bwog buried). See Dilke'a Paptn of a Critic,
p. 06.
* Bis Uograpber print* or-making, which ia like printing ■ bona
i^traatUu: Mr. Earle (Eitgliah PhUologii, 486) calls sttention
to the idiom nsed b; sU classes in Yorkshire: 'Ivant tbe tea
■ntkiag.' I suspect that this stands for, ' I want tbe tea to be in
338 Old and Middle English.
Verb, within the apace of aboat SSOi years ; we have
here a fine example of the freedom of the English
tongue.
For the Southern English of 1260 we most have
recourse to the Harleian Manascript drawn up in Here*
fordshire abontl315, which takes in the works of the fore-
going fifty years and more. We may gaess at their date,
by reckoning the obsolete Teutonic and the French con-
tained in eaoh piece.* The Proverbs of Hending,
(Eemble, ' Anglo-Saxon Dialogoes,' .^Ifric Society,
Part m., 270), and some of Wright's Specimens of
Lyric Poetry (Percy Society), seem to belong to 1260.
The Vowel a replaces e, as mar for ni«rren ; this is later
found in Salop. The Northern /«fo (stnltus) is found
as well as the Southern Jol ; the old cymlic is seen aa
comely (Lyric Poems, p. 39) ; ue replaces eo, as Awe and
hv£n for heo (ilia) and beoit (sunt). Consonants are
cast ottt of the middle of a word, for hefule, leoedy,
become he»t, ledy, the last word being pronounced as it
is now ; gebrokt is pared down to hroht ; the d is clipped,
as bende (bent) for the old bended ; on the other hand,
the d appears at the end of vncked, as in Yorkshire ;
likes Bometimea stands for likep. The old dayet-eiet
had not as yet been cut down to daitiies.
As to Substantives : Omnin's go his gate is repeated.
A drunkard, when pledging his friends, is said to do
iiek mon ryht (Hending, p. 279) ; this phrase was used
long afterwards by Master Silence in his cups. The
tersenees of onr English comes out in a proverb like
' The isoportion of dieea in the Thirteenth Centor; may be
fcmnd in the Table at the end of mj Sereiitb Cbaptec,
Middle English : Neglect. 339
%'jht cA«}}, Itk^^R ffiJdei (Hending, p. 277) ; here there ia
no Verb at all ; this answers to onr liigh interest, bad
securit)/.
Among other Adjectives, the poet ia fond of lylie-
whijt, applied to a ladj ; this kind of compound comes
down from the earliest times. Shakespere's turn of
phrase, you were hesl go, ia foreshadowed in Hendiiig'a
advice (p. 279), betere were a rieh monfor te gpottie. At
p. 30 of the Lyric Poetry comea burde on of the beit ; we
ahoald now pat the Snbstantive, not first, but last.
Among Verbs, we remark mint nsed in the Dorset-
shire sense of oportet ; the do in do h/itrte me reminds as
of the Ancren Biwle. The Old Engliah idiom in fair to
see is now farther extended ; in Hending, p. 277, we read
shulde non he me ylycke to he god ; that is, ' in being good.'
The French d had most Ukely some influence here. There
is a new idiom of the Past Participle, comingperhaps from
tJiel^tin; betere is appel y^evefmi ^-efe (p. 273) ; itisodd
thai the laat Participle stands without any Nonn.
SpiUan (spoil) had hitherto been Transitive ; at p, 271,
it becomes Kenter. We see for the first time our form
histad (bestead) : so hit wea bisiad (conatitatnm). Lyric
Poems, p. 11. Omnia had used the Verb undertake in the
sense of reprehendere ; it now first gets the meaning of
mseipere, p. 41.
In Adverba : I^yamon's godltehe (pnlchre) is now
pared down to godly (p. 38) ; and this is foond after-
wards in Salop ; we shall sooa see other examples of
the confasioD thos created between the Adjective and
the Adverb. The Adverb fayre gets a new meanii^ in
Hending's Poems, p. 278 ; we there read, abijde fayre
340 Old and Middle English.
attd etiHe ; something like Cowper's fair ond soJUy ; hew
there is & change of meaning from puleker to tran-
The o/baA followed cyHig (prodigua) in Ormun; it
here follows fire, when that Adjective keeps its eariy
meaning poteftt; aman make^kimfreofmygod, Hending,
p. 277, ' master of my goods ; ' we now say ' makes free
with ' &c. At p. 29 of the Lyric Poems, we see Orrmin's
contraction of gelang to long ; mg lyf it long on tht.
At p. 42, away is used as an Intei^'ection, like the
French avawit.
The foreign Verb eervir now gets the sense of traetare,
that is now so common with ns ; he paf me ene aerae'f to,
Hending, p. 276.
In the same Herefordshire manuscript is the fiunoua
ballad on the Battle of Lewes, in 1264.' It may have
been the work of some Londoner, for we see that most
UQOsaal word mryvyng, which is not repeated, I think,
nntil Chancer wrote. We here find the word host (our
hoast), which is Celtic. We have already seen the word
ihreui ; this now becomes shreward, applied to the King's
son ; the ard here is a short-lived attempt at an imitation
of the French endings, snch as eou-arfj. Sire is pre&sed
to a proper name, ae Sir Edward. There is one great
change; French forms have always been fonnd con-
venient to lighten the toad thrown on onr English
Prepositions; and this has gone on for the last six
hundred years ; for had many meanings, and one of
these is now laid npon the French mangre, for we
find mwugTe Wyndesifre.
■ Political Songt (CiundeD Societ;), p. 69.
' Middle English : Negieci.
THE EAST MIDLAND DIALECT.
(About A.D. 1270.)
The following specimen most have been written mnch
abont the time that King Henry the Third ended his
wortblesB life, if we may jndge by internal evidence. It
was transcribed by a Herefordshire man abont forty years
later. Of the sixty Nonns, 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 lai^r proportion of
French than in this elegant lay, which may be set down
to 1270. The writer seems to hare 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 ; aud this is perhaps a token that the
lay was written not far to the South of the Great
Sundering Line. The Third Person Singular of the
Present Tense ends is eg, and not in the Southern eth.
The Plural of ^e same Tense ends in the Midland en.
We find ourselves speedily drawing near the time when
fiuglish verse was written such as might readily be un-
derstood six hundred years after it was composed.
THE EAST MIDLAND DIALECT.
(A.D. 1270.)
When the uyhtegale singes, the wodea waxea grene,
Lef ant gns ant blosme springs in Arerjl, y wene.
Old and Middle Englii/i.
Icb have loved al this jar, that y m&y lore n> more,
Ich have nked moni eyk,* leiAiiioii, for thin ore;'
Me nia love never the ner, ant th&t me reweth aore,
Suete leimuoti, theoch on me, ich have loved the
sore.'
Suete leMman, y preye the of love ODe epeche,
Wbil y Ijve in world so wyde other nuUe j' seche ;
With tlij love, m; euete leof, mt hlis thou iiuht«B
A. sneto cob of thy mouth mihte be my leche.
Suete lemmon, y pre^e the of a love bene ; **
Yef thou me loveet, aee men sayB, lemmon, aa y wene.
Ant jef hit thi wille be, thou loke that hit be sene,
So muchel j thenke upon the, that al y waze grene.
Bitnene Lyncolne and Lyndeseye, Northamptoun ant
Lounde,
Ne wot y non so fayr a may as y go fore y-bounde ;
Sueta lemmon, y preje the thiu bvie me a stounde,' '
Y wole mone my song oo wham that hit ys on * y- '
I have tJready mentioned the ProTerbs of Hending ;
&om this I give some of the homely bywords of the
time when Englishmen were drawing their sworcU npon
each other at Lewes and Eveaham.
Qod biginning make)) god eudyng.
Wyt ant wysdom ia god waiyeoun.
' Percy Society, vol. IV. p. 02, This is a'tiauBcript mads bya
Hecofbrdshire man, who mnst have altered and bto ant, niil inlo
mdJ^, kis into ecu. &e.
Middle English : Neglect.
Betere ie eyesor ^n al blynd.
Wei fyjit fat wel fly)).
SotteB bolt la gone shote.
Tel t^u never |)y fo |iat )>y fot ake)i.
Betere b appel y-^eve pen y-ete,
Oiedy is |>e godles.
When Jw coppe is follest, )jeiine ber hire feyreet.
Under boske (buah) shal men weder abide.
Wben |>e bale is heat, )ietiiie is )>e bote nest.
hightU remedy vigheet
Brend child fiir dredep.
Fer from eje, fer from herte.
Of luiboht bude men keireli brod )iong.
Dere is boht |)e bony )iat is licked of ]>e [>orne.
Ofte mp rewe)).
haitt
Ever out come)> evel sponne web.
Hope of long lyf fryle)) mony god wyf.
THE CONTRAST TO THE EAST MIDLAND,
(About i.D. 1270.)
A Toz gOD out of the node go,
Aflngret bo, that him wes wo ;
He nee nevere in none nise
Afingret etoiu half so swithe.
He ne hoeld nouther wey ne ftrete,
For him wes loth men to mete.
Him were levere meten one hen.
Then half an oundred wimmen.
He stiok swithe over al,
So that he of-aei ane wal.
Withinne the walle wee on houa.
The wox wes thider swithe woub.
For be thohute his hounger aquenche,
Other mid mete, other mid drunche.
344 Old and Middle English.
Abouten lie biheld wel ^enie,
Tho eroust lugon the vox to erne.^
This, evidently a translation from a Frencli tale,
is preserved in the Bigby Manascript, compiled rather
later, about 1290. The Southern dialect is well marked
in the forms thilkey ago, erne (currere), dest (facis),
siigge (dico), the Accusative thene, and the Genitive
Plural widewene, which at once reminds us of the
kindred Latin vidtuirumy root, ending, and all. On the
other hand, the Northern I have is encroaching on the
Southern ich hahhe, for both alike are found ; and the
form srifty not ahrift, suggests that the piece was com-
piled not far from Essex; perhaps, like Layamon's
Second Text, in Hertfordshire.
At p. 65 we find isiist thou (vides), pronounced as
we sound the word now. The o is' encroaching on the
old a ; at p. 59 we see both anne jkik €md on hok in one
couplet ; shamie becomes shome. The o is also encroaching
on the u ; wtUf is turned into wolf, though we still keep
the right old sound ; we find, I was woned (solebam) at
p. 61. As to Consonants, the guttural sound at the end
of a word was evidently dying out about this time, all
through the South of England ; we find lou (risit), imou
(satis), and dou for the Old English dah, our dough.
Layamon's hroute (tulit) is here repeated ; the h should
have come in the middle. The d is ca^t out, for godsib
becomes gossip, p. 61. The /is cast out, for we see the
old hofthurst at p. 67, and the new aihtt/rst at p. 60 ; the
latter form lingers in our Bible.
1 Hazlitt's Early Papular Poetry, vol. I. p. 68.
Middle English: Neglect. 345
Among the Pronoons, we remark the AooosatiTe ou
(voe) used for tbe XominatiTe ^e, a onriona iii§tance of
the bod gjMiiTniir that waa flooding Eingl&nd ; togedere
ou ley (jaoebatifl), p. 65. The lodefinite kU is used
very freely now ; hU com lo the time, that Ac (p. 66) ;
the hit also refers to a past eentence ; ' I have bled the
hens, and the, chavntfxler, hit wolde don goed (p. 59).
We see half prefixed to Adverbs; afingret half 10
simthe (p. 58).
Id Terbs : we see the progress of changes that were
at work all over England ; Bach a form as might have
been had been veiy rare hitherto, bat was now freely
used. The old Impeiatire had been flee thou ; this was
changed into Ihoufle (p. 59) ; we std! say, ' yon go there.'
The French was iuflnencing onr Verba ; the fox in
his trouble says (p. 61), nou ofmei.don hit hiia, (actnm
est de me). Again, repetition by A. of B.'s previons
words was something qnite new in English. ' Sei toot I
ahal do,' says the wolf, ' Do ? qjwd the vox,' Sus. (p. 65).
In the next page comes the wolfs question, ' Wed^ wolt
thoit ?' ' Weder ich tmUe ? the vox eede.' At p. 59 we
learn that five hens maie a flock.
As to Prepositions : for in the sense of at might
follow the Verb hold in the oldest English ; this nsage
is now extended to know ; the vox hine i-hnev. welfor hit
kwn (kjasman). This for is now, in one of its senses,
elbowed ont by mid (with) ; since we find —
Wat mid serewe, and mtij drede,
Ai his thuret him over-hede.^
■ Only the other d>7, 1 heatd a mso »b.j, 'I cumot aee, wUh
34^ Old and Middle English,
This with is now always tacked on to our partitive use
of iohai : ' wbat with one thing, what wii^ another,' Ac
The poem we have jnst gone through is uninis-
takeably a translation from the French. The old French
names of the animals, renowned in fable, are brought
into England : the cock is Sire Chauntecler ; the wolf
is Sigrim (Isegrim) ; the fox is Beneuard. We now
first hear in English of the freren or friars. Some say
that the French ending ia es had gr&d,i influence in
making England adopt es for the Plural ending of all her
Nouns ; so far is this from the truth, that in the present
piece the poet goes out of his way to alter the French
freres into yreren, the old Plural form to which Southern
England steadily clung. The French oath ifaie (i'faith)^
which is hardly extinct eyen now, may be seen at p. 64.
Every second line in the poem rimes with the line before
it, until we come to the end ; then three lines end in the
same rime ; a favourite usage of Diyden's is here fore-
shadowed.
In the Harleian Manuscript (Percy Society), men-
tioned at p. 338 of my book, there are Herefordshire poems
which seem to belong to 1270.^ They cannot have been
compiled &r to the South of the Great Line, for we see
the Northern forms are, gra/y, he ledes, he gos^ made
(factum), also the Midland we han. The poet was used
to express the broad French a in the usual way, as
romatmz ; indeed his baimi is still pronounced much as
he wrote it, though we spell it halm. The au might stand
' In trying to determine the age of these poems, I look most to
the proportion of French words in an Alliterative piece ; here the
poet always strives to be as Teutonic as he can.
Middle English: Neglect, 347
for either the broad a or the French ov, ; this we know,
by seeing the French reavme or royawme appear in later
English pieces, sometimes as reamie^ sometimes as rewnie.
He employs the au for English words, Yrvitmg fautiing
(p. 23), which is different from the vawermnge of the
Ancren Bdwle; unitowen becomes untoun (p. 32). The
old cerest (primnm) is cat down to erst ; and swan (cygnus)
is written swon, which comes near onr pronunciation of
the word. Seolc becomes sylk (silk). There is much
clipping of Consonants ; Ich haf becomes y ha (p. 31) ;
Jicefed (caput) becomes hed (p. 34) ; and there is also
forked. Liht loses the guttural in the middle, and is written
lyt, riming with v;yt (p. 31). The old Participle gewcetod
is in p. 80 pared down to toet A form peculiar to the poet
Is lossumy standing for lovesome (amabilis) ; it comes often.
There are some new forms in Adjectives. At p. 97
comes the well-known feyr ant fre^ here applied to the
"Virgin; this is repeated in the Tristrem of nearly the same
date, and it has been kept alive to our day.^ At p. 84
a sinful man is said to be more than umms ; at p. 24
wyves wUle is called ded wo ; hence comes our ' a dead
loss.' There is one remarkable change of idiom ; in
1260, a girl talks of women, and says that her lover
will soon vachen an newe (capere novam). But a few
years later, in a piece written about 1270, as I suppose,
women are mentioned, and w^ then hear of the feyrest
on ; here the one is added, to avoid the repetition of the
Substantive that has gone before.
' I refer to the fourth line of Billy Taylor : ' To a maiden fair
and free.' Free here means liberalia^ (ladylike). Bnrgoyne, in 1779,
talked abont ' the hononr of an officer and the liberality of a gentle-
man.' See his Lifet by Fonblanque, p. 227.
348 Old and Middle English.
Coming; to Verbs, we find taht hede, mid hit dotk me
god (p. 83). At p. 28 we read, heiere is tholten tA«»
moumen ; we oamiot belp snepecting that this Infinitive
gave rise to 'better is tholing than mourning;' the
corruption of form took place a few ^ears later. Again,
at p, 50, the qneetion is asked, tohet ys the hette bote t
Bote heryen him ; this Infinitive heryen (landare) looks
very like the parent of aome of onr seeming Verbal Nonns.
At p. 35, a girdle, as it is said, ' triketh to the to i^ heuce
comes trickle, a puzzling word Ew to its derivation.
The al prefixed is very common in these poems ; at
p. 23 we find for the first time al thah (qoamvis) ; it took
aboat ninety years to make its way to London.
We see the Danish brag, at p. 24, here used as an
Adjective. At p. 32, erowte is employed in a new sense,
standing for a clerk's shaven head ; in the Trietrem,
rather later, the word stands for the top of any man's
head. Lde (&ithfal) appears here ; it seems later to
have been whoUy confined to the Ifortli of England.
There is the woman's name Alyttmn at p. 28.
The sixty years comprised in this Chapter are the
unhappiest period in the whole of the English language,
if we search through all the fourteen hundred years that
separate the Beowulf from the Sigurd. Few indeed are
the poems of this parttcnlar period, &om 1220 to 1280,
if we contrast them with the work done in the first
twenty years of the Centary, and also with the achieve-
ments of its last twenty years ! As to prose, there is
none at all, alwa^ excepting King Henry's Procla-
mation.
Middle English: Reparation.
CHAPTER V.
HtDDLX ENaLISR — BBFAKATIOH.
(1280-1300.)
Wk had now, by 1280, tided over the worst ; hencefor-
ward, England was never a^in to throw aside her own
tonfpie,; our mined walls were to be repaired ; we were
to light our old candle, now bnniing very dimly, at the
blazing French torch. The heedfnl reader will rem&rk,
in the English specimens that follow, an ever-increasing
number of French words, wherewith the lost Teutonic
was being replaced. We torn once more to
THE EAST MIDLAND DIALECT,
f About A.D. 1280.)
King Edward was now batoning hia yoke npon
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 t«xt has been settled (why did no
Englishman take it in band, and go the right way to
work ?) by Dr. Mall of Breslan. With true German
350 Old and Middle English.
insight into pliilology, lie has compared three different
English transcripts : a Hertfordshire (?) one, of 1290 ;
a Herefordshire one, of 1315 ; and a Northern one, of
1330. Again we see the Midland tokens ; the Present
Plnral in en, the almost invariable disuse of the prefix
to the Past Participle, the substitution of nohi for ?ic,
"have I for hahhe ich ; there are unto and remie (currere),
he na/m hiin, like the later Tie gat him. The author wrote
hm and mariy not the Southern Jcun and mon^ since the
words are made to rime with htm and Abraham. The
old a is sometimes, but not always, replaced bj 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 konden^
found in all the three manuscripts, and the absence of
are (sunt), point to the Southern border of the Dane-
lagh; at the same time, the Northern ^oip (cum) has
driven out the Southern mid. Thei (illi) sometimes
replaces hi; both Ich and I are found. There is a
thoroughly Northern form ; he areu (pitied) hem. The
Midland form \frist (sitis) has been altered by all the
three transcribers ; the two Southern ones use jnirst,
something like our sound of the word : Dr. Mall, by the
help of the rime, has here restored the true reading.
Ch has replaced c, for michd, not mikel, is found in the
Northern manuscript. The dialogue is most curious :
Satan swears, far mafei, like the soundest of Christians ;
and our Lord uses a metaphor taken from a game of
hazard. The comic business, as in the AtUigane of
Sophocles, &Ils to a warder. The oath God wot^ else-
where Ooddotf comes once more ; and also the Danish
Middle English: Reparation, 351
word qaie (^)} which never made its way into the
Sonth, except in the form o^gaieB}
The fondness for new Verbal Nonns was coming
down from the North ; for at p. 31 "we find \i Goming
instead of the rightful cwme (adventus), which long
lingered. The old terseness in the idiom of Prononns is
seen at p. 27 ; Christ talks of other people's property,
and then says that Adam wes hoht loif mi/n; here no
Noun is conpled with the Prononn. The old well nigh
is now supplanted by almost, p. 27 ; the Scotch still use
the true old vicest (fere). As to Verbs : the Dorsetshire
meaning of oportet, as applied to moste, was creeping up
from the South ; alle mosten to helle te, p. 21 ; here the
Verb is in the past tense. The old Past Participle
iwiten is changed ; for at p. 23 we find ich have wist
(known). A sad corruption, seen in the Alfred Pro-
verbs, is now repeated ; 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 Weak Verb. At p. 27 we see hou mihtest fou
' I give a specimen from page 83 of Dr. Mall's -work. Abraham
speaks: —
Loueid, Crist, ich it am,
pat >oa calledest Abraham ;
pon me seidest, Ht of me
Shidde a god child boren be,
pat ons shnlde bringe of pine,
Me and wi)> me alle mine.
pon art >e child, >oa art >e man,
pat wes boren of Abraham ;
Bo non ^t >oa bihete me^
Bring me to heyene up wi^ >e.
The New English, as wq see, is all bnt formed.
352 Old and Middle Englisk
•
(potes) ; here Orrmin would have used maht or miM
for the Verb; indeed the Northern transcriber fifty
years later has altered it into moAj, In line 77, we see
in the transcript of 1290,
Sunne xsAfowndett ]h)u neyer non.
In line 189, the transcriber of 1315 writes —
Do nou ]>at |>oa hyhOdnt me.
It was many years before this cormption could taJce
root ; it is seldom found in Wickliffe, who tries to avoid
translating dedisii by either the old gave or the new
g<west, and commonly writes didest give.
At page 32, we find a line thus written in the tran-
script of 1290, ' we |>i comaundement forleten ; ' in the
transcript of 1315, this is ' we ]>in heste d/ude forleten.*
If this latter represent the original of 1280 best, it is
an early instance of a reyived Auxiliary Verb, of which
I shall give instances in the next Chapter.
Mnch ink was not long ago spent npon Byron's
expression, 'there let him lay' (jaceat). The bard
might have appealed to the transcript of 1315 :
Sathanas, y bynde )>e, her shalt ]>oa Un/
0 }>at come domesdai. — ^Page SO.
At p. 27 we read, of dper marines ping make mar*
chcmdise ; the French faire had most likely an influence
here, and the idiom was now becoming common.
The Herefordshire manuscript of this piece translates
donee by the Saxon o pat, where the other two manuscripts
have the Anglian and Danish til. The Herefordshire
Middle English: Reparation. 353
forms Aa)i, loten., and hv^\ (emit), all smack af the West
country ; as also foleioed (bflptizavit), p. 35, a fine Old
Knglish Verb that liad now died out of the Soath East,
tKoagb it wsis well known in Gloncesterahire down to
1520.'
Perhaps we may set down to this time the English
Charters of Bury St. Edmnnd's in the form that they
have come down to ns. They fill many pages of Eemble's
great work, from IV. p. 223 onwards ; one of them, as
we learn by a note in the margin, was read before the
Barons of the Exchequer. I think that the date of tran-
Bcription cumot be earlier than 1260, for we see the old
haiide (manns) written humde, in the French way, VI.
p. 199; and this conies twice. But there is also the form
iquUk (talis), VI. p. 11; nothing like this is to be
foond elsewhere antil the Cursor Mundi, abont 1290.
We knowfrom Domesday Book that the old stoio (loons)
was pronounced like the French tUm; we now see a
further change of form, for in VI. p. 12 is the form
itmu (loca) ; another proof that the aw must sometimes
bare had the sound of the French ou. The Consonants
of the old Charters transcribed hare been much altered ;
we find Suffolk, Norfolk, ha^eni, yurgh, lewed, tchal, sal,
everi, hit owen, govel, holy, go, I, no mart, oni, rickte, lent.
The town, which had sprung np around the great Abbey,
is liere called Eadmwndes biri. We see the East Anglian
change of )> into d, as in 1280 ; the form Umd (vivit) is
■ lyndale, -who know DoUiiiig abont what in bis day wm called
SoaoR. makM a itupendons mistake al^oat the Wesb-conntr; priest's
popular titU/oUtceT or voJovxr, deriving it frota the LAtin veto, which.
esnM into tha Baptiaul smiee !
354 Old and Middle Engtisk
in VI. p. 12. The guttural ia being dropped, for cUntler
cornea as well as duuehter ; u is tamed into the Freocb
form ou, as Gnmit, howr. The h is wrongly preExed ; ie
Jum (concedo) appears. The East Anglian y is in foil
use ; ae gel (adhuc), ginger (janior). Some of the
words transcribed could have been barely understood in
1280, such as sinden (Bunt), ic aucMe (liabni), tuefod
(altare).
Bat the greatest Midland work of 1280 is ihe 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 particular time, when Eling
Edward the First waa welding his Frenoh-speakiDg
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 na in the band of a Sonthem
writer, transoribed within a few years of its compilation.
This renowned Lincolnshire tale was most likely girea to
the world not &r from that part of England where Orrmin
bad written eighty years earlier ; the Havelok is certainly
of near kin to another LincolnsMre poem, compiled in
1303. Mr.Garnett,inp. 75of his 'EsBajB.'haB suggested
Derbyshire or Leicestershire as the birth-place of the
author.: Dr. Morris is in favour of a more Sonthem shire.
We find the common East Midland marks : the Preaent
Plural ending in en ; the Past Participle oftenest with-
out a prefix; are for the Latin sunt; niman for the
Latin ire ; and the oath Qoddot, which is said to be of
Danish birth . ' But there is also a dash of the N^orthem
Middle English : Reparation. 355
dialect ; tbe Secoad and Third FersoQB SiDgnlar of the
Present t«nae, and the Second Person PloraJ of the Im-
perative, alike end in e« now and then ; a fashion that
lingers in Scotland to this day. The Danish Active Par-
ticiple in avAe ie also foand, and Danish phrases like
tkVfSgate, hethen, gar, Ivyke, until, gate (via), til, Yerk
(Eboiacom). Orrmin's ntunm^ has now led to inmin
or mone, which is almost the Scotch maun, aa in line
840:
' I wene that we deye (die) inone.'
The poem was compiled to the East of Orrmin's shire,
for his 3A0 (the old heo) is now seen as ihe and »ho ; his
tJiey and their are sometimes met with, bnt have been often
altered by the Southern transcriber into hi and Mr,
The Sonthem thUk (iUe) is not foond once in the whole
poem. We now for the last time see the Old English
Dnal (tluB we most have brought from the Oxns) in the
line 1882 :
' Qripeth eper unker a god tre.'
Grip tach of you two a good tne.
This had of old been written ineer. Strange tricks are
played with the letter A, The letter d is dropped after
liquids, for we find here sAeZ, liel, bihel ; and the Danes
to this day have the same pronunciation. Bnt such
words as He, awilk, mikel, hviilgate, prove that our
modern corruptions of these words had not as yet made
their way far to the North of the Great lane ; the Harelok
shows us our Standard English almost formed, but
something is still wanting.
There are Northern forma, which coald never have
been used in the South in Edwardian days ; sach aa
356 Old and Middle English.
fter7W8y tntily Hnte, coupey loupey carle. The Plurals of
Substantives end in es, not en ; and to this there are
hardly any exceptions. The Northern wCp has driven
ont the Sonthem mid.
There appear again many forms which we saw
fif^ years earlier in that other East Midland work,
the Genesis and Exodns of East Anglia. Such are,
inster, or, clad, fled, fee, they did rest, he had he hroughty
they were hut a mile off^ leren (discere), goven^ sule ye,
wore (erant), at nede, aren (snnt), feyth. Understand
of (recipere de) appears, as in the poem dictated
by St. Thomas to the East Anglian priest. The qu
often replaces the n'ghtfnl hw, as quanne for htcanne ;
the alderhest of East Anglia is now altherhest. The
Southern transcriber, who went to work perhaps
ten years after his original was compiled, has taken
great liberties. He is fond of clipping the Northern
guttural h ; for he writes fou (qnamvis), plow, ante
(habuit), though he sometimes leaves this word as he
found it, auchte. He often writes nouth for the old
noht, and most likely dropped the guttural h in pro-
nouncing, for he has Iwoth for I wot. He has michely U
(ilc) del ; we see the true form ah (sicnt) in p. 16, but
this is sometimes wrongly changed into ahOy as in p. 10.
He writes wrohheres (latrones), p. 2, which shows that
the w had at that time no sound before the r, at least in
the South. He makes little difference between w and «;
he has the old hlawe (flare), which, however, is altered
into hlou at^p. 18 ; owen (proprius) is written oune at
p. 68 ; lawe (humilis) is changed into lowe, and sawe
(vidit) into sowe.
I h.
Middle English: Reparation, 357
As to Vowels : the ea becomes a \ for })earh (texit)
becomes havw^ the same vowel change is in the
Ormulmn and the Genesis. The verb for monstrare is
written ahauwe, riming with knawe, at p. 62 ; it is also
written shevs, riming with hiewe, at p. 43 ; spelling was
as yet in a most unsettled state. Eorl now becomes erl^
and seol (phoca) is seen as sele. Orrmin's lefftetin
(levare), a Danish word peculiar to the North, is now
written lift. The old grcep (salens) becomes grip, a
word still in use. The 0 is in great request ; the old
are (remus) becomes ore; ea>c (etiam) is sometimes
written ok. We may trace the Westward march, up
from East Anglia, of the o replacing the older a ; swa
has become «o, and is made to rime with Domino ; on
the other hand, wa (dolor) still rimes with stra, our
strata. The 0 also replaces li ; as we see in p. 81, where
the old ireowian (credere) is written tro, just as we
pronounce it ; we see ^oru written for ^urh in p. 85 ;
hence comes our thorough. They shoten replaces the
old Perfect scuton. The w is often written for u ; we
hear of Bokeshurw (p. 5) ; and hw (quomodo). The
old form yu and the new form ^ou both appear, the
Latin and the Greek forms of marking one and the same
sound; owcfouhten (pugnaverunt) now replaces Laya-
mon^ sfuhten. The muhte (potuit) of the Ancren Biwle
here becomes moucte and mouthe ; Tennyson's ' Northern
Farmer ' says, * it mowt 'a bean so.* The old acofrian
(recnperare) is pared down to covere at p. 57 ; it is here
intransitive.
On turning to the Consonants, we see h inserted, for
the old samening (conventus) of the Genesis must have
358 Old mid Middle English,
become semeling and then senibltng (p. 31). F i&
replaced by v, for cnafa becomes knave. The h is cast
out in the middle of a word, for lohan is written Ion
(p. 6). The g is cast ont as nsnal; there are snch
forms as eyne (oculi), still kept hj onr poets ; also
penies (p. 86). The g is replaced by ur, for we see the
proper name Huwe ; there is also drawen (tractns) and
atoe (terrere). The old galga becomes gcUwe-ire at p. 2 ;
and farther on, at p. 21, we hear of the galues, our
gcdlows. At Leicester, (fallow Tree Gkite is found as
the name of a street to this day. The s is inserted, for
the old cici6e is now seen as quiste, our bequest The
sevende of the Genesis is now written sevenpe (septimns) ;
it is the Old English seofojta with the Scandinavian n
inserted. We find, by a note of Mr. Skeat's at the end
of p. 74, that instead of the first letter of ye, onr yea,
there is f onnd a character that might stand for either
p, for p (the Old English te;), or for y. The like con-
fosion may be remarked in other manuscripts compiled
about 1290 ; we see at once why some still write y* for
the,^ We find two lines in p. 56 which explain why the
Irish to this day sound the r so strongly :
' And he haves on ]K)ru his arum (arm),
perof is ful mikel harum (harm).'
* The Gaxton Exhibition of Jnly, 1877, has here enabled me to
add a note. Gaxton, in printing, well distinguishes the )> firom the
y. The Bibles of Tyndide and Gorerdale, in 1536» make veiy little
difference between these characters ; still, there is a difference, if
the books are closely examined ; the |> is still employed in writing
the and thai. In Grafton's Bible of l/)40, there is no difference at
all made between ^ and y.
Middle English: Reparation. 359
So the InBh sound Tyndale's hfrren (natas) in the true
old way. The Scotch waroM (world) is another relic of
these Bounds.
We see the Old English word for a well-known
bird, in line 1241 ;
' Ne )ie hendt, ue )ie drake.'
The former sabstantiye, akin to the liatin ana», atuitit,
was still to last two hundred yeare, before it was anp.
planted bj the word duck. As to drake, this Poem Erst
shows ns that the word had lost its old form end-rake,
that is, anat-rex. There is hardl7 a word in English
tfaat has been so maoled ; 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.
The poet is fond of oonpling Nonns together, even
when one of them is French ; we find Iwe-dmrye, grtth-
lergeam, lerf-horw, romam-reding ; the nonn is some-
times qualified by another nonn of value, as a fer^ng
vKMtel (p. 27). The love for new Verbal Ifonns was
coming down from the North ; even French words were
snbmitted to this process ; at p. 58 we see utith iaynge
(cnm gandio). The Accusative of Time is seen again ;
it is said that something happens pU tid nitkes (p. 58),
where we should aaj 'this time of night.' We find the
Genitive employed, without the nsnal nonn following,
where property is meant ; pit elopes aren pe kokes (the
cook's), p. 35. At p. 48, Havelok is sent unto pe greyvet
(the grieve's house). The Grenitive of the Substantive
is now replacing the Adjective, when material is meant ;
at p. 78, we hear of gode feteres al of stel ; and at p. 38
36o Old and Middle English.
comes a fr^e of fir. Still, at; p. 43, a m&n is called a
deveUs lime (membrum). Folk now means not only
popvlui, bat comitaius ; the retinue of a great lord is
called hit folk at p. 46. An A^ective is turned into a
Substantive, when a criminal is said to bd led ontaide
the town vnto a grene, p. 80. Hen are said not to care
a »traai or a sloe for a thing. The old fedlg (rastrom)
now givee birth to a new Xoun/oZues, ojirfdUow*. The
ian (digiti pedis) of the South now become tot ; the
sonnd is well kept in our toee.
On tnraing to the Adjectives, we see the new
Sonthem form with moit encroaching on the old Super-
lative, as Tnest meke, p. 29. Lolh had hitherto meant
only molettvt ; it now, no longer governing a Dative,
gets the further sense of invitut ; we hear that an oath
is titken of the barons, lef and loth, p. 9. We see the
word cwic halfway between its old sense of vmia and its
latfir sense of citua ; certain men are called qyike, p. 41,
meaning active. The word sarig gets another meaning
besides it« old sense of trittit ; a bad man is called pa/
sort fend, p. 62. A new exhaustive definition of the
conditions of men is coming in ; all men are summoned,
|ieu and fre, p. 62 ; in the Tristrem of the same date,
this becomes bond and fre. This word fre haa another
side, which we see at p. 82 ; we there hear of a lady,
that the isfayr and the it fre. The word swlig kept its
old meaning of fetix down to 14^ in Norfolk ; but it
here means infelix ; a child, when abont to be murdered,
is called a teli knave, p. 15 ; the same sense of the word
is found in Qloncestershire twenty years later. It is
Middle English : Reparation. 361
most reioarkable that one word shoold bear two mean-
ings wide as tlie poles asimder, at one and the samfi
time. We may gather &om this scelig, that the Havelolc
wae written in the WeGtemmoat part of the Danelagh.'
In this Poem, men are often ezhanstiTely described,
not a^ one and all, hot as hroun and blak. The baUad
phrase red gold is now in vogue ; the old phrase had
been nsed long before this time, as we see in Kemble'a
Ghartora, IV. 292. An Adjective is qualified bj having
a Snbetantive prefixed; we hear of stan-ded (p. 50),
a phrase nsed bj Lord Essex in 1641 ; the phrase
is explained in p. 7b, where an earl falls ded to ani
ston. At p. 30 we light apon chyeg, al tpan netoe;
the word comes &om the old ^on, a eh^ ; we should
now say, bra/tid new. The Scandinavian phrase for this
was epan-nyr.
As to Prononns : the French nse voua, when address-
ing the Almighty ; this took root in the Northern half of
England. Kavelok, when in earnest prayer, employs
the word unmusical in Qoaker'a ear :
u."— P. 41.
I think we owe onr freedom from this partionlar cormp.
■ TheB«nBeof u(/iJizT«itBinedtill ISOO. Jamee VI. was called
bj a Scotch minuter ' GotCi oily vtusal,' Ou >i% neaiu aU^tu
DD», though it tbooi for boiuu in IdjamOD'a Seoatid Tett : tUi
reroindfl ns of tlie Qreeh eattha.
' This stiU lingers in Scotland ; see the Psobiu Cumed wtil
&w<fu b7 Hr. Wftddell, published in 1871 1 sacb phrases ss 'haigh,
O Ixod, i' jer ain might,' come constantly.
362 Old and Middle English.
tion to our Tereion of tbe Lord's Prajer, where (ti ie
rightly Englished by the kmdred pw, (Aou; to this we
hare alwsys st«adfaatly clang. We saw the sense in
which Omnin employed t}\^hi ; this is now extended ; at
p. 79 we read, England emkfe for to ben youres. This is a
sure mark of the North. At p. 2 we see the idiom, well
known to balUd-m&kers, where it becomes something
like an Indeterminate Pronoun, as in the Ancrm
Rivie:
It torn a hiiiff bi are dawtt
That m Am (nne vxre gode lawet.
There is another use of the Indefinite tt at p. 3 : tco to
dede wrong, toere it elere or were it knicth, &c. At p. 68
we see the earliest instance of a well-known valgariBm:
' Hwan Godard herde pat per frette.'
The Obliqne case of the old Article may have had
some influence here ; ex ilia hard was Englished by of
)>£ere tide. At p. 29 more is employed in a new sense ;
Havelok would not rest more fan he toere a best ; we
should now put amy before this more.
Th^re is a change in the use of Numerals ; at p. 5I>,
Havelok has a wound in the side, and on pora hU arum;
here on is employed without repeating the Substantive.
There is a new phrase in p. 75 ; two men feU down, first
pB croune ; we should now eay, crown first ; this is a
Hnd of Dative AbBolnte.
We see the Northern Strong Verb weakened in the
Participle, as pat he be lienged (p. 70) ; the Sonth stock
to the rightfnl hengen, our hung. At p. 57 knamed
Middle Englisli: Reparation. 363
(notns) is written to suit the rime, instead of hnmeeti.
The Somthem Participle Ao (factam), not (fwt, ts found
at p. 49, where it rimes with taio.
We aee both wolde have do (fecisset) and havede
farned (carniBBet) ; the two later forma of the Flnperfeot
Snl^nncttTe. There is a startling new idiom in p. 79 ;
iheqneenwa8brongbt,/wAem/wto<e, ' for them tosee,'
This is foand 170 ^eara later in the Gorentrj M3:Bterie3,
which were compiled not far from Leicester. We saw
in 1160 the phrase, ' he wonld have dose it ;' this nsage
is now extended to other verba ; in p. 49 comes, he
viende have tlawe (him), ' be thonght to Iiave elain him ; '
the InfinitiTfi Present would here have been nsed earlier.
J ween comes often as a mere expletive, as in p. 58. The
nonn watsail is now tnmed into a verb ; men hccveden
wosaeyled (p. 47). To prick is used in the fine old
poetical sense that Macanlay loved ;
An erl, )iat he saw priken poK,
Ful noblelike upon a stede. — P. 76.
We find snch phrases as he Ut pe harre Jhye (fly), to aey
nay, clap fttm on fe erune, crok hie crime, breb up mi dor.
The old dtigan (valere) appears here, and henceforward
was confined to the North, except in onr common phrase
' how do you do ? ' here the first do stands for facere, the
last for valere. The Scotch, less careless than onreelves,
make dovi their form for valere.
We see an Ai^verb formed from a Preposition in
poTuth-Uke {thoroughly), p. 21. The Scandinavian ncer,
like the Old English neh, expi-essed the Latin fere; at
p. 54, we find, ner ah naked so he icas horn. At p. 58
364 Old and Middle EngUsL
comes the old SRandioftTian phrase tU ok fra in our
form, to and fro. The overfwert of p. 80, with its last
nmnistakethble Danish letter, has amoe been pared down
to aihwart.
Some Prepositions are used in a new way. The 0/ was
encroaching on the on ; a phraee soch as the old gehlettod
on (inter)iOT^i*m makes way for Ti<dk he hvede qfaUe yinge,
p. 3. We see at p. 56, it is of him mikel scafe ; hence
Shakespere's ' O, the pity of it ! ' The 0/ replaces/or in
the phrase ilker twen.ti kniktee havede of genge (p. 66).
The with becomes prominent. Layamon had written of
mid here irechee;- we now see help him. doun with fe
ivr^ene, p. 28 ) and hwal sholde ich with wif do ? p. 35.
At p. 41 comes mm in with (le, the forerunner of onr ' get
along with yon.' The at is employed for the Preposition
on, where something is specially marked oat, as happening
within a short time ; at a dint (blow) he alow hsnt yre, p. 50.
In such-like phrases we see how near a and one are to
each other. A new sense of against is seen at p. 60 :
brUkter pan gold ageyn^fe lith(\ight). In tbeAncrenRiwIc,
unite etonde had stood for nonnunquam ; here it stands
for gwmdam, when the Danes refer to a deceased king,
at p. 64 ; the word was altered in Scotland into umbe
hwile (nmqnhile), with the same meaning of quondam.
There are a few Interjections ; at p. 36 comes jw
devel him Umee .' at p. 56 comes Qod-pank in the middle
of a sentence. In onr thank Ood! the first word moat
be a noun, the last word most be in the Dative case.
The Scandinavian verb lei/ke (Indere) is sounded
in this Poem just as oar Northern shires still pronounce
it ; we of the South call it lark, following the Old
Middle English: Reparation. 365
IjiigliBh ISfan} In onr Bonnd of weak, we lean to the
Ifortlieni waxket, t}ie ScandmsTian ueiib', rather than
to the Old English wde, which was at this time pro-
nonnced 100c aH through Southern England. Chanoar
ruled in this instance for the Northern form, which
must have made its way to London bj his time. The
form ^ol\, for fool, is pecnliar to the Dano-Anglian
shires, and appears hoth here and in the Tristrem.
As might be expected, there are many Danish words
in the Havelot. I give those which England has kept,
together with one or two to be fonnd in Lowland Scotch.
Big, from the Icelandic hdga (tumere).
Bleak, from the Icehuidic JA^cr (poUidus).
Blinlt, from the Dwiiali bltnke,
Boulder (a lock), &om the Icelandic bdla^r.
Coupe, aa in horte-couper, from the Icelandic haupa (etnere),
Onu (Scotch crmue), from the Swedish knu (excitable).
Din};, from the Icelandic daigia, to hammer.'
IXrt, from the Icelandic drit (excrementa).
Goul (to jowl, vivtare), itaxa the Icelandic gmita.
Grime, from the None grima (a spot).
Hempt'from the Icelandic hampr, not from the Old R>igliah
Put* (to throw), frvm the Icelandic poMo.
Sprawl, frova the Danish tinitlie.
Stack, twm the Danish gtaii.
Teyte (tight, acttre), from the Noise teUr (liTely).
> Tbia verb %iU BOOH ones more find its way into StandoidEngjish.
WetlingtoD, bafbre JB16, ipeakiDg of an officer who had got himself
killed needlessly, said, 'What boalDMS had he larking there?' See
Lord Jiacautay't Uft, U. 277.
' Ciui OornMiD '^ in the side' come from this?
■ Hence comes the phraie, pulling the stone, flisl found in Uiis
366 Old and Middle English.
Besides these Scandinayian words, we find in the Have-
lok other words now for the first time employed. Sach
are lad (pner), from the Welsh llawd ' ; stroate, oar stnd
(contendere), a High Qerman word ; hoy (pner), akin to
the Sna,bian huah ; to hutt, akin to the Dntch hotten ; bui,
(a houl at wrestling), which Mr. Wedgwood deriTes
from hv.gan (flectere), and loughl, a word applied to the
coils of a rope, and so to the turns of things that sno
oeed each other. File, akin to the Dntch initi, means a
worthless person ; we may still often hear a man called
' a canning old file,' In 2499 of the Etavelok, we read,
' Here him rore, )i«t fule^.'
To-twe (divellere) is akin to a High German word;
from it comes the d(^'s name Towger. The Verbal Nonn
itching, first fonnd here, is -said to be a word formed
from the sonnd imitated.
It is cnriona to see in this Lay two forms of the same
word that has come to England by different channels ;
we have gete (cnstodire) from the Icelandic gceta ; and
also wayte, which means the aame, coming from the
French gaailer, a corrnption of the wahteti brought inlA
6anl by her Oerman conquerors. Sad havock must have
been wrought with English prepositional compounds in
the eighty years that separate the Havelok from the
Ormulum. In compound words, wnJe, the Greek amphi,
comes only ttiree times throughout the long Poem before
OS ; for only five times ; vdtk only once ; of not at all-
The English tongue had been losing some of its best
' Lodte, the WeUh female of this word, has become oui ttut.
Middle English : Reparation. 367
applianccB. The Preposition to, answering to the Gor-
man car asd the Latin die, was still often fonnd in com-
position, and did not a!t(^ther drop until the days of
James I. ; it was even prefixed to French Verbs.
THE EAST MIDLAND DLiLEOT.
(Al)out4.D. 1280.)'
The Hateloe.— Page 38.
On )« nith, als Goldeborw lay,
gory and sorwful was ahe ay.
For she wende sbe were tnawike,' ' tcioktd
pat ah[e w]ere yeven unkyndelike,'' "■ "^^
O nith saw ihe |>er-iDne a lith, "^
A 8wi|?e • fliyr, a swijw bryth, " verr
Al so brith, al no shir," ° cImt
So it were a blase of fir.
She ]okede Do(r))>, and ek south,
And saw it comen ut of his mouth,
pat lay lu hire in \e bed :
No ferliie ' (wu she were sdred. • wonda
pouthe she, ' wat may this bimene P
He beth ' heyman yet, als y wene, ' ""U *"
He beth heyman • er he be ded.' ' nobiem
On hise shiddTe, of gold T«d
She saw a Bwi)ie noble croii,
Of an angel she herde a voyi,
' GMdeborw, lat \\ »3T7I6 be,
For HaTelok, ))at hare)! spuaet )«,
He [U] Mnges sone, and kinges eyr,
pat tnkemieth " Jiat croii so feyr. ' i"**"
' In thia Poem nith sunde for night, and other words in tha u
368 Old and Middle English.
It bikennetii more, f>ftt he shsl
Denemark bBven, uid Englond ol.
He Bhal ben king Btronft and atork
Of Engelond and Denemark.'
pat shal )m wit )nii ejus eeu,'
And ))o ijialt ques and levedi lien.'
panne she havede herd the stevene *
Of |)e angel uth of hevene,
She WB8 80 fele (d|>ea ' blithe,
pat she ne mithe Uie joie mjtbe.''
But Harelok sone anon she kiste.
And be slpp and nouth ne wiste.
Hwan pat aungel havede eeyd,
Of hii slep anon he brajd,"
And seide, ' lemmau, elepes |>ou ?
A selkuth" drem dremede me dou.
Herkne nou hwat me haveth met,'
Me |>outhe y was in Denemark set,
Bnt on on ^ moste ^ hil
pat evere yete kam i til.
It was so hey, )iat j wel mouthe
Al |>e werd ' aa, als me )K>uthe.
Als i sat upon )>at lowe,'
I Ingan Denematk for to awe,
pe borwes' and |>e castles stronge ;
And mine annes weren so longe,
That i fodmede, al at onee,
Denemark, with mine longe bonea.
And Imnne ' y wolde mine armea drawe
m me, and horn for to have,
Al that evere is Denemark liveden
On mine armss &ste clyreden.*
And Jw strongs castles alle
On knes bigunnen for to falle,
■ This vaj of prononndDg all the three TOwelsalikB of tba void
Smgetond had not died otit in Sbakeapere's time.
Middle English: Reparation. 369
pe kajes fellen at mine fet.
Ai)o)>er drem diemede me ek,
pat ich fley ' over jie sftlte ae ' H"*
Tit Engelajid, and al with me
pat evere was in Denemark lyvee," ' '^'^
But ' bondomen, and here wives, * e»«pt
And ]iat ich kom til Engelond, t
Al closede it intil mine hond.
And, Goldeborw, j gaf [it] (».
Deus t lenunan, hwat ma; |qa be P '
Sho anawerede and seyde Bone :
' Jheeu Oiifit, |>at mode mone,
pine dremee time to joye ;
pat wite * ))w that sittes in trone. ' aecno
Ne non stroDg king, ne caysere,
So )iou ehalt be, fn[r] ]Nm ahalt b«re
In Engelond corune yet ;
Denemark shal knele to )n. fet
Alle ^ castles |iat areu per-inne,
Shal-tow, lemman, fill wel winne.'
IE OONTRAST TO THE EAST MIDLAND.
(About A.D. 1280.)
Whan Jhesu Orist was done on rade
And [folede de)) for ure gode,
He clepede to hym aeiut Johan,
pat was his oje qenea man.
And his ojene moder also,
Ne clepede he hym feren no mo.
And sede, 'wif, lo her ^ child
pat on {re rode is ispild :
Nu ihc am bonged on {tIb tte
Wel sore ihc wot hit rewe|> )«.
Mine fet and hondea of bled . . .
Bifmts gult ihc Jwlie [ds ded.
37° Old and Middle English.
Mine men |.Bt ft;tte me U) lovo.
For •x\imx iLu cum irum liereiie abuve,
Me hare)! idoD )iis itfae schame.
Ihc n&ve DO giilt, hi l>u)> to bUme.
To mi fitder ihc bidde mi bone,
pat he forjive hit hem wel sone.'
Marie Btod and sore weop,
pe teres feolle to hire fet.
No wunder nag )iej heo wepe sore,
Of sore^e ne mi^ heo wite no more,
AMieDDe he |)at of hire nam Mod and flesa,
Also bia suete ^le was,
Heng inajled on ))e treo.
' Aloe, my Bone,' seide heo,
' Hu ma; ihc live, hu maj ]>i8 beo ? '
The above ib taken from the ABSDrnption of the
"Virgin, printed by the Early English Text Society, along
with the King Horn and the Floriz, writteo about 1280
or later. In them we find that the Actave Participle in
vage, first osed by Layamon, has almost driven ont the
older inde. The King Horn was written in some part
of England (Warwickshire ?), npon which the East
Midland dialect bad begnn to act, grafting its Plnial
form of the Present tense upon the older form in e(A. We
find also in the Horn, as in the Havelok, snch Midland
forma as ^ei., til, cKildre, he nam (ivit), and ioje (pner).
Forms like fiss (piscia) and digs were foimd rather
later in Oloncestershire. It is convenieiit to diacosa all
the three poems of the one mannscript together ; the
Assumption and the Floriz may perhaps cotne from
WorceBtershire, for we find Layamon's forms feolle
(cecidit), Jutren (condncere), and the Salopian pveference
of the e, as Icenme (genns), keue, meria (hilaris), tenfal^
Middle English: Reparation. 371
tbe -pvitt of the Sonth ia altered into fdte, p. 40 ; it as
jet means rii«re, oot iotqwrt. Tliere U Omnin'B fttcjgie
(emere) at page 4i9. The form fowioeZinj (gennflectio)
is fonad is Layamoa and Robert of Olonceeter. The
writer is fond of tbe w sound, as dupe for Aepe, gud
for god (bonns), p. 60 ; fottt (pea) for fot, p. 4 ; he
baa the Salopian shup (naTia). At p. 27 we aee ires
(anres) riming with tirei (lacrymae), where tbe first
-rowel is prononnced as we aonnd it now ; there is also
strvmeg. The greatest change is that of Iwca swa into ho
so, (whoso), in p. 59 ; the sonnd of the w is already got
rid of, and this spread into Lincolnshire twenty years
later. The v and the ^ are both cast out in the middle
of a word ; we see both loverd and Itn-d, Apelbrw and
Aylbnu ; there is also he haf, as in other parts. The s is
added, for we find wkaimet (nude.) There is a cnrions
interchange between w and b, which reminds as of the
two ways in Greek for expressing the first letter of the
najne Virgil ; the old v»/lm (fervor) leads to the Verb
bitlmep (fervet), p. 59 ; the French boil may have had
its influence here. The )> is written like ;, as nsnsl in
the matiDScripts of this time ; at p. 69 comes hi criej
(clamant).
Among Snhatantives, we see the new kniphod; also
■east (jactas). Horn and Floriz, the heroes of two of
the poema here printed, were bnt children at the ontaet
-of the tale ; ao the title chUd is ^ven to them throngh.
out. This synonym for knight is well known in onr old
ballads, and lasted down to Childe Harold's day. There
is tbe phrase in p. 2, hit teai upon a someres day. At
p. 73, comes, ye Admiral he hid god day ; in the IKgby
Mannscript of tlie some date the rightful Aooasative
i/oilne day is still kept. At p. 52 an AdjectiTe is employed
for a Sabstaotive, heofulde of a hrun ; ' she filled from a
brown (jack);' we now employ broww iorpence. The like
is seen at p. 31 ; Ae wipedg pat hlake of hie gwere ; tiie
blacks are well known to Londoners, At p. 56 we
find fu were ye hetere ; this NominatiTe would earlier
bate been the Dative pe ; a little lower comes, ' hold
him /or more panefoV The old interchange between it
and there comes ont cle&rly in the phrase hit sprang dot
lij^t, (p. 4). In p. 65 stands erJtai me neere atwite me ;
the first me is the Gloncestershire form of the Indefinite
There is a cnrions idiom of a Passive and an Active
Participle being coupled, at p. 70 ; felom inome hond-
hahhvng. At p. 29 we see etrike seil, the first instance
of this. Chiyalrons ideas were now being widely spread
nnder the sway of onr great Edward, and we find that a
Verb has been formed from the substantive knight :
For to kaipi child horn.— P. 14.
At p. 10 comes her aiule ; we often now tarn an
Adverb into a Substantive, when speaking of a man's
■wkeredboitts.
We see the Preposition at supplanting on at p. 61,
because the former was most like the French a ; pleie at
fe eecheler, (chess) ; most of our indoor games at this
time came from France ; there is another encroachment
by at upon wi in p. 36, he at dipe (death) laie. Of
supplants on at p. 69, hire wriji (weight) of gold. The
of was being used as freely as in the Havelok ; at p. 29,
Middle English : Reparation. 373
comes teZ2e me ol o/)>tns s^elle ; the partitive use oE tbi^
«/ailer sum must ]iftve been the model followed here.
We now light on senp (pera), which comes from the
Scandiaavian eireppa, and jiore (Bpeetare), akin to the
Swedish yaZa. Mr. Wedgwood points to ^ala i en bok
(pore on a book) ; we have the Yerh peer as well aapore,
like deem and doom. There are also three words akin to
the Dutch or German; clench (onr clink), ^«f(er, and
gtteM ; the latter means ' to weigh or calculate,' and has
long lived as an expletive in America, much as Wicklifle
osed it.
Many of the Poems, which remain to as in the
Harleian Manuscript compiled about 1315, seem to be-
long to 1280; so old a form as mat/denvton (virgo) is
here found. They have been printed iu the Specimens
of Lyric Poetry, (Percy Society) ; in the Political Songs,
(Camden Socielj) ; in the Poems of WaJter Mapes,
(Camden Society) ; and in the ' Beliquice Antiqnte.' We
may safely set the compilation down to the shire where
the St. Catherine was traualated ; there are many forms
and idioms common to both pieces. The greatest peculia-
rity of the present compiler is his changing to into we ; he
hassi*«nfor»eo»(videre)at p. 100(LiyricP.). We see our
Khou! (monstrare) at p. 196 (Political S.), though this
must have had the sound of the French ow. The v is
cast oat at p. Ill (Lyi^c P.), for devel becomes del, the
Scotch deil. The form quaqve (tremere) is curions, in
p. 348 (Mapes' P.) ; here the first qu is pronoanced in
the English way, the second in the French way.
The old form man km is now altered into monlcwtde
(mankind), p. 81 (Lyric P.). Crop was much used in
374 Old and Middle English.
the sense of tojpui abont this time, 9A in the phrase crop
ani rote ; onr cropper differs not much from header ; the
one belongs to the land, the other to the water. Ched
is nsed in the sense of feUow^ p. Ill (Ljric P.). Sccre
is now used for a written account, p. 155 (Political S.)-
The lad and hoi of the Havelok are here repeated.
Women now bear the names of Magge and MaUe^ p. 158
(Political S.). At p. 349 of the Mapes' Poems, the grave
is called oure long horn.
Seli, in the Western shires, had changed its meaning
from heattM to infelix (like our ^pooi' fellow ') ; this we
saw in the Havelok. An animal unjustly treated is
.W .'iii^^ on that account called the mI •aggtf, p. 198 (Political S.)-
In the next page comes dogged, applied to the wolf ; it
seems here to stand for crudelis. Further on, at p. 203,
we read of a soH wed, the sense that sort had begun to
bear in the Havelok. At 68 (Lyric P.) we hear of a
body beaten hlah ant hlo ; lUce (lividus) is English ; hide
(c»ruleus) is French. At p. 152 (Political S.) we see
the origin of our common as good as, where good stands
for well ; ewe god is swynden anon as so for te swynhe.
We say * that is as good as saying, &c.' ; here we see
how the Infinitive in en became ing. Worthy had
hitherto been followed by the Infinitive ; at p. 71 (Lyric
P.) comes TTidke me worthi that y so he.
At p. 58 of the same, we see the Possessive Pronoun
set after its Substantive ; swete Ihesu, lovei'd myn, as in
the BUckling Homilies. The Indefinite it is extended
in meaning at p. 110 ; ' no wight, unless hit hue the-
hegge.* The ne, even in this Southern shire, is making
way for nouty as we see in p. 111. At p. 196 (Political
I
Middle English: Reparation. 375
Songs) there is a great change ; we see al fhai, whaie hi
emr be. The old swa kwai two, is a thing of the paet ; and
the Nenter Awaf is now used for the Maficaline liwi, or
perhaps for hvn/U. The modem Belaiave sense of the
latter Prononn is gaining gronnd at p. 205 ; the poet
talks of the joy of hearea ; he then begins a new sen-
tence ; to vihoch joi Orut hring ■m.
As to Verbs : but (tn ee) ia in 72 (Lyric P.) ; it
belongs to the Sonth, and was osed three hnndred years
later by the great Warwickshire bard. The mot and
Toost were not quite settled as yet ; in 199 (Political S.)
stands Godit (jTwme meet hi have ; here we should now pnt
may for moat. In p. 203 comes men mot it hide ; hero
we should now pnt rmut for niot. At p. 155, comes y
shal rewen huere redeg ; here rue, as in the Harrowing of
Hell, is employed in onr modem way ; it wonld hare
been earlier me shaU retcen of &c. We see snch phrases
as hetceop aflodqftere»,p. 70 (Lyric P.) ; do wey, 'make
way ' (p. 90) ; and thy wiUe ne Tcelk y ner a fate, (p. 100)
' 1 followed thy will never a foot.' We here see the
beginning of onr idiom, ' to walk the hospitals.' In the
Political Songs, wed takes a new meaning, for it ia nsed
of a priest marrying a couple (p. 159). Bnt the greatest
change in the Verb is to be found in the ' Reliqnira
Antiqa»,' I. p. 122. Long before this time, we saw in
Domesday Book French names such as Taillebosc and
FattagTiam. This compounding of a Verb with an
Accusative is now passed on to English ; an old man
is called by his wife tpUle-bred, or as we shonld now say,
a bread-waeter. This new idiom was to flood England with
new compounds in the Keformation age ; though it is
376 Old and Middle English.
now but little used ; our grooms call a horse a crt&-Hfer,
not a hite'Crib ; we hare in this stuck to the old Teutonic
way of compounding. Almost six handred years sepa-
rate spUle-hred and know-nothing ^ the last similar French-
born compound that I can remember ; it was a^word of
great American renown about 1855. Another imitation
of the French is seen in a piece of this age, in the
* Rehquisa Antiqusd/ I. p. 133 ; we read of animals called
the gO'hi-dichj the stele awaty and many such. This
idiom was imitated by Bunyan in his Mr. Dare^not^lie,
&c, ; the name Praise Ood Barehones was once well
known. We now talk of a drink as a * pick me up ; ' a
slow man is called ' old stick in the mud.'
At p. 94 (Lyric P.) we meet with the so needlessly
set before an Adjective, the idiom well known to our
ballad-makers :
Levediy seinte Money so fair ant so hriht.
Wei is used for rihte in p. 80, stond wel under rode, re-
minding us of the old well nigh.
At p. 68 (Lyric P.) we find the love of the ; we have
before seen thi love. But this of was giving way to on ;
at p. 91 we see the old idiom rewe o^me ; at p. 90, comes
the new rewe on me, Thjs idiom is repeated in the
Alexander and the Piers Ploughman, compiled in neigh-
bouring shires. In the Gothic, ama with the dative
sometimes follows Verbs of emotion. (Matzner, II. 371.)
In the Mapes' Poems, p. 347, comes al o fure^ and the
Alexander, rather later, has setie on fyre. With is now
used like the Latin ah before a person ; thou art toayied
(watched) with fader a/nt al my kynne^ p. 91 (Lyric P.) ;
Middle English: Reparation, ^yj
this wiih is employed in the aame nay in Piers Plongh-
man ; we still say, ' I was taken with him.'
There are some new Tentonic words ; the pains of
hell are said to he tyhel, p. 346 (Mapes' Poems) ; we still
speak of a ' ticklish bnainess.' At p. Ill (Lyric P.)
comes drynke of fol god bone, wheoce comes our hoozy.
At p. 150 (Political S.), we hear of men that j^yieiA the
pore fvl clene ; this is akin to the Dutch picken. At p^e
157, we light apon those ■who polketh a parogghe in pyne ;
hence comes onr Verb poke, which is found often in
Salopian writers of the following age with the I cast ont ;
this also is seen in Dutch. At p. 158, we hear that a
woman is by-modered (distraught) ; hence perhaps our
muddled, with the usual change of r aud I.
About this time, 1280, English was making a new
start. Some of the pieces iu the Lyric Poems, especially
those in pages 80, 90, and 110, foreshadow the wonder-
ful power and ease that our tongue was soon to display.
1^ English Hymn, as we now commonly have it,
was beginning to appear: some specimens are to be
found in this manuscript : the four lines of each stanza
-end in one rime. I give an example, from p. 70
(Lyric P.) :—
Jbesu, wheo icli tbenke on the,
Ant loke upon the rode tre,
Thi auet« bod; to-toren j ee,
Hit maketh heorte to smerte me.
To this time, about 1280, belongs the tale of Dame
Siriz, a translation from the French ; it is printed in
Wright's 'Anecdota Literaria.' It was written somewhere
on the Great Sundering Line, from its mixture of
- \
378 Old and Middle English.
Northern and Southern fonoB. We find, as in the
Havelolc, ^ar, '^a-ng, I num. hethen (benoe), thou bet
(eris), Qoddot, fair and fre, we hdpen, til, have ; there is
also tenne (peccatnm), elarc, and noeeting ■ all Severn
forms. Perhaps the poem was written in Sonth Staf-
fordshire ; the Sonthem thilke, muehel, and vamon
(mnUer) appear ; and also the Accosative- of the Adjec-
tive, have goine dai, a very late instance ; both (rifa
and mU:e express talis.
Bed (jnssit) keeps its voweUsonnd to this day. The
h is wrongly prefixed, as in Aon and howusnrteis; r is
added to Omnin's old uppo, for we find oppon ; here
there mnst hare been some confusion with on. Besides
the form Sirix, we see Sirith (p. 9), which rimes with
grith ; this confusion we have already seen in the York-
shire aeetred.
At p. 5 comes the expression tretne as atel. The e/i
sone of Dorset now becomes effU(mes (p. 11), At p. 7
an old woman says, I bidde mi palemotter and mi cnde ;
this Possessive Pronoun has since been used of books
that men ought to read ; ' I have studied my Oibbon,'
says one of Mr. Trollope's heroines. At p. 8 appears the
origin of the cnmbrons ' if so be that,' well known is
onr Bible ; if kit he so thai them ms helpe.
In p. 7 we see go telle mi sereue (sorrow) ; here atii
should have come after go. At p. 6 comes God ike
t-&{em; in the next page this is shortened into hlem
the, bteste the! Forms like 'save us' and 'curse it^
were to come lat«r. The old umbo was now being'
dropped for aboute ; at p. 4 comes ich am i-gon abottte to
tpeken; the idea of earnest purpose is here prominent.
Middle English: Reparation. 379.
and this lasted down to 1611. We find phrases suoh as to
do /or the (rem gerere pro te). The old ^ef h&d hitherto
meant adipUd; it now leans towards the meaniiig of
tvadere ; ich tjette hire to mi wille (p. 8), There is a new
sense of the verb run in the next p^e ; we hear of eye«^
running. A cations idiom, which we saw in the Chro-
nicle of 1096, is fonnd in the following lines, in p. 9 :
I aha) insk a lesing
Of thin heie renrnng ;
that is, 'I shall tell a lie abont thine eye mnning.'
Here the Verbal N'oan has a Snhstantire prefixed.
Some would wrongly say that the renntng was an Infini-
tive, following the of, jnst as the French de takes an
Infinitive after it.
As to Prepositions : we hear of a man being from
liom (p. 5) ; this is a relic of the old fra/m ^0, 'apart
from thee,' in the Psalms.
This poem is a translation from the French ; we are
not sarprised therefore, on finding bote (bat) naed like
the French mats at the beginning of a sentence (p. 7) ;
maU <nii is a truly French idiom. And had been long
used to English si as well as et : a distinction seemed to
he called for ; so in the middle of p. II we see the d
cut off and an (si) used for the first time. In the third
line of p. 12 we fiud and if used for d ; the two words
are coapled, and this usage lasted down to 1611, for but
and if (sed ai) begins a sentence in onr New Testament.
We here find not only the proper name Wilekin,
which had long been known, but also Margeri.^ The
' Ths English MargeH sMins eommoD-plsM bj the side of th«
c
380 Old and Middle English.
fair of Botolfston is mentioned, whicli is not as yet cat
down to Boston; the prefi^p: Saint has been dropped. Wq
see for the first time the French words pepis (pips),
mustard, and juperti (jeopardy), p. 9.
Along with Dame Siriz are printed a few other
poems from the Digby Manuscript ; they seem to
haye been written about 1280, much farther to the
South ; for there are forms like axseth (rog^t) and bug&i
(emere). In p. 90 we see the phrases Jier and there,
-eijjte werof thou were loverd ; here whereof is nsed in a
new way. In the next page comes to hen agast, tests &c.
In another poem from the Digby Manuscript, The
Thrush andNightingale (EEazlitt, * Early Popular Poetry/
I. 50) we find sheme for shame, filde for feld (campus),
just as we now pronounce these words. In p. 57 we
see a well-known proper name altered into Bedlehem,
whence comes Bedlam,
The last piece that seems to belong to 1280 is the
Tristrem (Scott's edition), a poem which we owe to the
North; it was transcribed fifty years later, most likely in
Salop. ^ The Northern forms are gif (si), titly, thou set
(vides), meii sets (aiunt), swclIu (passer), untrou}eandj
Jiftend, warld, tan (captus), h^te (calidus), hist (emis), ye
(tu), which last is always coming. The poem may have
been written in Yorkshire, not far from the Lancashire and
Derbyshire borders; for we find hye (ilia), also Orrmin's
thou was (eras), and han (habent). The doun right of
the Northern Psalter is repeated. Verbal nouns abound,
aoUer Scotch Marjory, A wonderful difference is mado by forms of
spelling.
* I give a specimen of this in Chapter VIL
Middle English: Reparation. 38 1
a sore mark of the North. But the PaBsive IWticiple,
with the final n clipped, has made its way npwards ;
the Poet certainly wrote miglit have be in p. 173, as
we see by the rimes; the Soalbem dra^e has also
come into Yorkshire (p. 181). The chief tokens of the
Transcriber's alterations are to be found in to, ieh,
hoaihe, hrelhem, no, where twa, ilk (idem), hathe,
brether, and na mnst hare been written. He Bometimee,
bat not always, tarns again (iteram) into oyain; ia
p. 100 tlio (qnnm) has been tamed into though. The
clearest marks of transcription are to be seen in the last
lines of the two stanzas in p. 152. The Salopian form
herme (genas) has been snbstitnted for hiniie at p. 82,
maoh to the injury of the rime ; and of life (de rita)
has been tnmed into olive, which makes nonsense, in
p. 105.
As to Vowels ; the old ttshle (docoit) now becomes
taught; onr form ilain (ctesas) comes at p. 93. The
old (fiewe (cantos) ia foimd, and also the new gle, (p. 82).
The poet had no scmple in using Southern forms,
when he wanted a rime ; kende (genns) comes in p.l50,
and the Plaral dayn (dies) in p. 153. At p. 30 we see
penie, a word cut down to pens in the next p^e. We
at last come upon onr ought (debet), which had been
long in gaining its abiding shape ; there is also anough
(satis).
There is a strong tendency to cast oat Consonants ;
the Verb dronJxn (mergere) of the Northern Psalter now
becomes droun (p. 90), out drown; the old Verb noogan
isBeenasfitroun(p. 16). The digrdp of former days, the
rope by which you sHe up, is now written iHrop. The
382 Old and Middle English.
old Icelandic mithla was nsnaQj meddle in English ; but
at p. 189 we see, ike euntre wUh hem meldy a great con-
traction ; onr slang word miU (pognare) may oome from
this; Scott writes, dare ye meU wP Donald Caird. The
French melae is well known. The former ^eAoU (castel-
Inm) is pared down to hold (p. 168), our hold ; ihe French
coneiHorie becomes eanstori. The old darep (jacolam),
is now dart. On is pared down to a in a bed, a fat, and
a loft; we now ran the Prepositions and the Nouns into
one word. The waj/u (fluctus) of Lajamon'a Second
Text now become wawesy a form that was to last nntH
Tjndale wrote it waves. The old verb siftan (cribraie)
now forms the Noon sive (p. 114), which was written
nft in Norfolk so late as 1440. Enough might even
in the North be pronounced without the guttural at
the end, as we see by the rimes in p. 182. The intru-
sive n appears in messanger^ p. 151.
As to Substantives : the Verbal Nouns are fieust in-
<nreasing; we find his wining, p. 53; her hlod leteing,
p. 126, and many others. Orrmin's endeda^ now be-
<K>mes ending day, p. 102. We hear of something being
done opon a somers day. We have seen Sir, Dame, and
Child prefixed to proper names; we now find maiden
Blaimcheflour, Instead of see, have a sight of is used in
p. 38. Trland side is in p. 61 ; here the last word is not
needed ; it shows the origin of our phrase, the whole
cov/ntry side. Drink of main (p. 97) is used for a mighty
d/rvnk. We see au idiom well known to our ballad-makers
in p. 112 ; gavisus est is Englished by glad a man was
he. In p. 32 the old honda (colonus) gives way to
■hushondman ; the poet has elsewhere a new meaning for
Middle English: Reparation. 383
hovd ; at p. 55 Gomee, to lontf icAoce &en Iwr bond, ' too
long I have been their thrall.' Hiuhonde of old had
meant only eonjux and paterfamiliat ; the confnBion ot
the derivative from the Scandinavian htia with the
derivative from the Old English hindan is Ukely to puzzle
the modem stadent. It is strange that the servile mean-
ing of bond should be found first in a Bhlre much peopled
by Dfuiea. Already, in the Northern Psalter, bunden
(vinctns) has been changed into bottden.
There ia a tendency to nae Adjectives as if they were
Substantives: at p. 179 cornea Yionde men caUeth that
Jre ; here lady ahonld follow the last word ; we know
Hood's 'one more unfortunate.' This bold (p. 116) re-
minds us of the French ce brave. At p. 57 ia thai
leylden into the wide ; jnst as we talk of tite open. At
p. 170 we see the old liflie (vivax) gain a new meaning ;
it is here applied to imf^es that resemble life ; we now
make a difference between lively and U/e-Uke. Orrmin'a
ge^nlike is now seen as gain (promptus), p. 51 ; and the
word ia still well known in Yorkshire. The Adjective
long is altogether dropped in the phrase, the vjand wa»
tuelve fete, p. 147 ; something like the idiom common in
the oldest English, he wobs twelfwintre (eald). A new
idiom of time is seen in p. 154 ; a pair live in pleasnre
for tuelmoneth tkre wmtkes lot ; this wonld earlier have
been ' less by three weeks.'
The Pronoun his was now used freely without being
coupled to a Noun ; in p. 57, two men sail forth, each in
his own ship,
Moraunt band his beude.
And Tristnm lete his go.
384 Old and Middle English.
There is a new form for the Reflexive Pronoan ia
p. 18 ; t\ai maked hem houn ; we still saj, ^ I lay ma
down.' The Indefinite it gains ground; in p. 98,
Tristrem wonld have been slain, no were it for the king ;
Orrmin wonld have written ncare for no were it. The a#
was being nsed for the Latin qtu)d, jnst as our lower
class still nse it ; an hUle as hs hadde mett^ is in p. 154.
In p. 151 comes a poetical idiom that Chancer loved : —
Who was blithe in halle,
Bot Ysonde the quen f
A touch of this lingers in Scott's * Peveril,' chapter xxiii. ;
Everett says : * he was who but he with the regents.'
In Verbs : did is coming in ^ist ; as thm dede obade^
(manserunt), p. 54 ; [this revived idiom was making
way elsewhere, as we see in the Havelok. The mosty in
the sense of oportety had travelled up from Dorset to
Yorkshire within forty years ; in p. 94 is nedes he most
abide ; the most is also used for licuit (p. 164) ; ye moten
is used in the sense of oportet^ in p. 106. The French
idiom, first found in St. Katherine's Legend, is repeated
in p. 160 ; we there see Tristrem went, withouten coming
oyavn ; here the Infinitive comen takes the form of the
Active Participle.* We should never, I think, presume
that this ing after a Preposition represents an old Infini-
tive, unless the Prepositions answer to sans^jpour^ or de^
which govern an Infinitive in French. We hear of men Wi-
in^out of haven; of laying money on a thing; these remind
' An OT e7i becomes ing, just as the old Abbandtm is now Jbing-
doTtf and some people turn captain and garden into capting and
garding.
Middle English: Reparation. 385
ns of BoandiD&Tia. We read, moreorer, of irea&tnir
heads ; of dealing etrokea ; of letUny a child to lore.
The Verb bitakeit, naed for b-ad^e in I^yttmou'e
Second Text, was now pared down to lake ; at p. 21
comes, gehe lake Bouhctnt a ring ; at p. 92 comes,
Trwtrem take asaiit to thai dragwm; we still saj, 'he
took him a crack on the head.' The old Verbs lere
(docore) and lent (discere) are no longer kept distinot ; '
in p. 24 comes, he lemd him. At p. 14?, ttamd gets,
as in Scandinavia, the sense of /eire as well as stare;
kie ttrok may no man stand.* Layamon's Verb dash
had been transitive; bnt we now find, over the bregge
he deste, p. 149. At p. 25 comes the enqniry, 'What
wilt thoa lay ? ' tlte answer is, tuenti sckiUingee to
sat/; we should now put, say tw&nUj shillings. In p. 36
conies the challenge, who better can tat so ; we shonld
now B&y, let us see ; here the us is intmsiTe. The
I^st Participle of ttician (pnngere) had always been
Weak ; it is now confused with the Strong Verb sleken
(claadere), and we see mine hert hije hath y-sleke (p. 177).
Y trowe is nsed as a mere expletiTe in p. 182 ; this is the
Scandinavian trui eg ; y wene was elsewhere coming into
nse in the same sense. The Verb is dropped, after the
Fi-onch fashion, in the request, swete Ystynde, thin are,
(bestotr pity), p. 123.
We see snoh Adverbial phrases, as, 'to mate /air,'
' he was fast by,' 'owi, traitoor, of mi land ! ' (p. 50),
' she wende al vrrong,' ' he hated him dedehj,' In the
' I hare saen Um calted the PaimTe V(ac« of Ifrc.
' Abont the tsof 134S thiro -was a great dispute as to whether
I ' wsa a phlBae of CrDmveU'B lime.
386 Old afid Middle English.
last word, we see the loss that England was nndergoing.
now that in the Dano-Anglian coontay she oonld not
mark the distinction between an Adjectiye and an
Adverb. The old hrcBdlice (protenns) is now seen as
redUy (p. 39) ; this does not come from Orrmin's r(Bdii
(paratns). Them (tone) is employed mncb as a Nonn,
for we find er than and hi than, a nsage which comes
down from before the Conquest. The old GomparatiTe
of feor (procnl) was ferre, which may still be heard in
Scotland as farter \ this was now confounded with
fwrfher'y and ferther (p. 94), onr fcvrther^ is the result.
The old Adverb cwicliche is pared down to quih at p. 98.
We have seen stiUe nsed as adhuc three hundred years
before this time ; the idiom now comes up again ; it was
long peculiar to the North, and only slowly made its way
to London. At p. 117 we find, yif he loveth the stiUe.
At p. 18 we see over hord used of a ship. The replac-
ing of into by cm or in is again seen ; it hr<ut on peces,
p. 92.
In p. 175 we find wel in the sense of the French eh
hien at the beginning of a sentence, weH^ whi seistow
80?
Some Scandinavian words appear; such as hush
(parare), from hua sig^ 'to betake himself; ' sttU^ from
the Swedish stylta, a support. To hohhle, which is here
found, is akin to a Dutch word meaning ' to jog up
and down.' Stout is also pure Dutch. At p. 42 we find
stormes histayd hem; this new form, something like heset,
is akin to the High German.
There are rimed versions of two supposed Charters of
King Athelstane's to Beverley and Bipon ; these seem to
Middle English: Reparation. 387
belong to 1280; they are In Kemble's CoUection, II, 186.
The forms are very like those of the Yorkshire Psalter ;
the e is often doabled. We fiad the line cUltIc, prert,
parson, or eherel ; pericma was Ei^lisbed by pargim, fol-
loTring the French nsage. The j/e was wrongly written
■for you; fan tay lye; give I ye. There ie na num tat
have at do ; the last two words, a Scandinavian form,
have become the parent of our a^ ; we have tnmed an
In6mtive/acereintoa Nonn Cornegotivm.
THE EAST MIDLAND DIALECT.
(1290.)
To this date seems to belong the Debate of the Body
and the Sool, printed in the Poems of W^ter Mapes,
334, (Camden Society). It may have been compiled
somewhere near Rngby, for there is a mixture of
Southern and Midland speech. Some of Ornnin's forms
are repeated, as thou v>aa, sumwat ; the Participle
jlotoende ; his ner (neqne) now becomes nor, p. 334.
There is thertil, ding, to and fro, Mrke, retme, are, as
in the Havelok ; and the trotevale (nonsense) a pecnliar
word found a few years later in Sonth Lincolnshire.'
Arise ia cnt down to sise, another link with that county.
Cloches (clatches) is seen ; it came before in the War-
wickshire version of the Ancren Biwle ; to ride on /letje
horse (p. 337), is repeated in the Alexander, a few years
later ; that poem too may belong to Warwickshire. On
' Hu the kit «;Uabt« aiiTthuig in eonunon with tillg vailg,
DpoD Thich the Lurd of Moakbonia dUeoane* so learnedlyf
388 Old and Middle English.
the other hand, the Soathem forms in the present work
are luidy i-hud^ hahhe, niSj honden^ he (illi). We find
both svwiUc and sumche for talis ; als and a«, unih and
Ttiity mtkkel and michel : the poem is a work compiled
close to the Great Sundering Line.
The aley (sapiens) of the Havelok now becomes d^,
p. 339 : and god (boDUs) becomes guod, p. 334 ; wo see
the Vowel in its passage from the old sonnd of o to our
modem sonnd t», the French ou. The Consonants are
much clipped ; sawe (vidi) becomes sau ; the old si^fcm
(post), is pared down to sin^ p. 335 ; and this, like
frotevcdey is repeated in a South Lincolnshire work, a
dozen years later. Bidnt (fedsti) becomes diat. There
*is a curious combination of consonants in jotf^e (joy).
The hrunstan (suUur) of Northern England now becomes
hruTnston, p. 339 ; the u was elsewhere changed into t.
An I is inserted into Lajamon's Verb sturten, without
changing the sense; in p. 835 is come thotg;^ sterte-
liiide ; the meaning here is rather different from our
sfartle.
The Adjective minde now adds a new meaning to its
old sense meinor ; we hear at p. 336 that a man is mynde
(inclined) to the world ; this is repeated in the Llncoln-
sliire work above referred to. We still say, * I have a
good miud to <fec.' as well as ' mind you do it.'
In Verbs, we light upon our expletive ic setf^e (I say),
coming at the beginning of a sentence, p. 335. So lost
was the governing principle of the old inflexions, that a
new form of the Auxiliary Verb is struck off; ic mot, yt(
moat^ were not understood, and thou mostist (debuisti) is
seen. We have ^enfiedde as a new Perfect of the Verb
Middle English: Reparation. 389.
fi&m (fugere) ; this is now found as the Past Participle,
tiling frervl heonjledde, p. 334. We have already marked
in the poems of 1270, hetwe u tholie^i. than Tnomen; this
Infinitive was now made to imitate the Active Participle ;
at p. 338 ctanea merei criende Iviel availede, crying mesrcy
(peteremiaericordiam) little availed.'' After this, it was
easy to look npon criende, not as a Oemndial Infinitive,
bnt aa an Active Participle, and to write it crying. The
whole of this sabject is perhaps the most debated point
in onr English tongae ; I hope I have in this work thrown
some light npon it. Within the last six bandred yeara, a
great load has been cast on onr ending ing ; it reprracnts
(1) the old Southern inde, the ending of Active Parti-
ciples ; (2) the old ung of Verbal Noims;(3)the old Infini- '
tive an and en, aa in the case jtist quoted. All three nsageB
are foond in the one sentence: ^Searing the roaring,
witJiODt stirring, I looked.' No. 1 and No. 2 seem to be
jumbled together in the phrase, ' They left beating of
Panl.' Owing to this confusion, a wholly new English
idiom was prodacedaboat 1770. Where the English Gtos-
pels of 1000 have wyfeAe/omn(St. John vii. 35), Wiokliffe
has, heiito gotjinge. Dr. Morris traces this usage down
to aboat the year 1500. In the Poem now discnssed,
p. 336, we find the contrary form, to mtme was my kinde,
' it was my nature to ain.'
We have already seen with osed to express the Latin
ab ; and in this poem, p. 335, comes btaaen with the idnd.
' In tii» Ettex BmiiUt ot 1180, p. i9, ve tni to wunifude . . . .
and to driven ; both of these fonns alike represent tlie old Qerundial
InfinibTe. Hiitzoer (III. 77) gives maoy FoDTteentli Centu; ex-
ftinples of the nw of this perpleiiog iitg.
390
Old and Middle English,
In the page before, this wiih seems to express the Latin
^>er ; noto 'wiili iki sehe thott:^ art forlorn,
A French idiom here appears in English, something
like 8% vieux horn com estes; onr cu Beems to get tbe
meaning of quamvis. The poet, in p. 839, says, ' Christ
shielded me, a sunful num as I lay thore.*
At p. 337 we hear of a hoilidere in charge of sheej^ ;
this new word reminds ns of the dwellers in a Scofcch
hothie. In the specimen that follows, hw is written ^tr.
THE EAST MIDLAND DIALECT.
(1290.)
Jwan I bad to leve pride,
thi manie mee,* thi riche schrond,
The false world that stode biside
bad the be ful quo jnte and proud ;
Thi fleychs with riche robes schride,^
nou^t als a beggare in a clou^^t ;
And on heije horse to ride,
with mikel meyn^ in and oujt
Jwan I bad the erliche to rise,
nim on me thi soule kep.^
Thouj seidest thouj mijtest a none wise
forgon the murie morwe ^ slop.
Jwan je hadden set your sise,*
ye thre tray tours, sore I wep ;
Ye ladde me wid oure enprise,
as to bothelere doth is schep.
Jwan thre traitours at a tale
togidere weren agein me sworn.
Al ye maden trotevale '
that I bayed seid bifom.
•feast
cover
thoaght
' momiog
• made your
airaoge-
ment
'mock
Middle English,: Reparation.
Je ledde me U douue uul dale,
ftB an oie bi tha hom,
Til ther ab him is browen bale,
tlier Ilia throte Rch&l be edioni.
THE CONTRAST TO THE EAST MIDLAKD.
(1290.)
We redeth i |>e holi ^odepelle ol to dai jntt are lord
ihesn crist yede one time into one ssipe and Ibo deciples
mid him into |)e see. And bo hi were in )>q sBipe so aroe
a great tempeste of winde. And nre lord waa i-1eid him
don to slepe ine ]>o Bsipe, er ]>ane ^ t«mpeete aroos.
Hise deciples hedde gret drede of fise tempeste, so ava-
kede bine, and seiden to him, lord, save as, for we
perisset. And ha wiste wel )>et hi ne hadde nooht gode
beleave ine him; fK» aeide to hem; what dret yw, folk
of Utle beliave. po aroa op nre lord and tok pane wjnd
and to see, and al-so Ta)>e hit was stille.
This forma a part of the few Kentish Sermons,
printed hj Dr. Morris in his 'Old English Miacellany'
(Early English Text Society), p, 32 ; they are translated
from the French. We see the old forms, especially the
Article in ita three Gendera, lingering on in Kent, long
after they had been dropped elsewhere. This ehire,
where Hengiat landed, preserved hia apeeoh with pecn-
liar carefalneae ; nearly two hundred years after 1290,
as Caxton tells na, the Kentish tongne sonnded most
atronge in the eats of other Knglishmen. We here
find forms that remind as of the Homilies of 1120, snch
as fer (ignis), lenne (peccatum), furti (qoadraginta),
392 Old attd Middle English,
apiered (visns est), where tlie te of the South East is
forced into a French word. The Vowel-combinations in
thi&fy leaf^ reef^ havebnt one sonnd (formerlj the French e,
bnt now the French t) ; the three forms come from dif-
ferent parts of England, much to the puzzlement of
foreigners. The tirgen (fatigari) of East Anglia now
becomes targi (morari), p. 86 ; the Old English word has
got confused with the French targier ; we now make a
difference between tire and tarry. In the same page we
find ywre (auris), and something similar is written in a
famous Kentish work fifty years later ; this seemB to show
the oldest pronunciation of the English eare. So strong
was the Southern leaning to o in the place of a, that the
foreign angel is here written ongeh The Dorsetshire "u
had not replaced i in Kent, for we find toyman and
"trdchel. The o is doubled^ as in goodman. What had
been written Giwes is now cut down to Oeiis^ just as we
sound the word Jews^ p. 26.
On turning to the Consonants : we see that Kent,
like East Anglia, employed forms like sal for shaUf
theftey maden (fecerunt). There is both loverd and
lord ; the old guttural in laghe (lex) is kept as strictly
as in Yorkshire; but there are tokens of a coming
change, for we find both feUighe (socius) and feh/reAe,
p. 31. The nicht (nox) and nocht (non) still keep the
guttural. The new Participle in ing had not yet ovemm
Kent, which is &r from Worcestershire. The h at the
beginning of a word is sometimes clipped, and some-
times wrongly prefixed. The v instead of / was Tyi^^lring
way. There is siche (talis) as well as 8wiche ; and the
former may still be heard in our days. In p. 82 bMU
Middle English: Reparation. 393
is pat for ahaU ye ; this is the forenumer of a cor.
rnption now widely spread, lite 'do'ee now.' The sound
of the fr had become so softened in many instances, that
tojanes ia written for togeaTies, p. 26. The form ittn(
(rex) shows how strongly the g in king was qonnded.
In Substantives, there is a falling away from the
old standard ; the writer prefers fer of helte to helle-fer.
The word yldo had been used of old for both (elai and
aenectv* ; we see in p. 35 a budding tendency to express
the latter by elde, and the former by the new French
word dge, already employed in the Horn. Sefeneue is
ased in p. 26 for the old ha^enne»; this looks like a
copying of the French ending.
TheYerbal Noons were coming in everywhere; ieTMM^e
stands for birth, in p. 26. The old kalend had long gone
ont ; heUre appears in its place, which had already been
nsed twice before this time. The preacher addresses
his fiook as hrdinges and levedit ; we should now say,
' Ladies and gentlemen.' A new word, goodman, p. 33,
Englishes pateTfamUias. It is worth while to trace how
a meaning leaps from word to word ; I place the old
sense above the new sense in each :
{1. BoDus homo.
S. Faterfajnilias.
12. OobnuB.
Sonde . . il ^"''"'™-
Here we see three English words, all within the Thir-
teenth Century, add wholly new senses to their old
Goodnuui
394 Old and Middle English.
meanings. This shifting of ideas >£rom word to word is
most strange.
An Old English idiom is kept np in, a mX; man seyde
' Lord, Lord,* ha seide ^., p. 31 ; this repetition maj be
still heard.
A new idiom is fonnd in p. SO : leckerie^ sptubreeke,
roherie, yarch wyche yinkes, Ao. ; here a new Sab-
siantive, thingsy is conpled with the Relative, to represent
seyeral other Snbetantiyes.
There is a strange nnion in p. 28 ; we read si mine
signefiet vfuUnge go ine pelrimage .... and to do aOe
|>d gode, Ao. Here we have the Verbal Noun, the pare
Infinitive, and the Infioitive with to, all governed hj
one Verb.
The 9wa of the Bliclding Homilies starts to life
again, in the sense of igitur ; in p. 32, ' thej feaied, so
ihej waked him.' The word al-so is nsed for gictU in
p. 28, a renmant of the Old English form edbwa;
elsewhere this cdso stood for etiam. There is a new
Verb, glare, akin to the Low Grerman.
In the Egerton Mannscript of this time ('Old
English Miscellany,' p. 198) we see the new phrase, of
pe hifig he mede^i (made) game.
The Digbj Mannscript seems ta have been drawn ap
abont 1290, and contains poems of the previons twenty
years: like Layamon's Second Text, it may belong to
Hertfordshire; for, amidst many Sonthem forms, we
find sad for shcUl ; tU ; and the writer has gone out of his
way to write pat (illnd), in the Harrowing of Hell,
p. 35. The Passive Voice was widening its bonnds, for
at p. 21 comes, he was don some (shame). Lording is
Middle English: Reparation. 395
pat for loeerding, in the East Anglian way. The old
r,iaKr<eden, manrede (honu^) was at this time well
understood 'm, the ITorth, and long snrnTed in 9ootoh
I&w deeds as manrent ; bat the meaning of the word
had been loet in the Sooth ; the present compiler has
altered moored^ at p. 26 into mani redet, making great
nonsense of the passage. It was the North that kept
old Teutonic words, whOe the Soath let them slip. The
Poet conld not understand fou inlevett aU fin one in the
same page (manes tn solas), and so tarns it absurdly
into you letett |>e alone.^ He has the Soathem forms
hy (ilH), torewen, undo (not undon), and the old Accasa-
tive . of the Article, pene. The French form neweu
(nephew) is preferred to the Old English nefe, (p. 21) ;
and this became common all through Sonthem England.
Some Herefordshire pieces, from the Ljiio Poems
and the Political Songs (both qnoted above at p. 373),
seem to belong to 1290. The old Imperatave llawe had
become first hloioe and then blou (p. 51, l^rio P.) ; the
coromnnity of sound between ow and ou conld not be
more strongly marked. The old Areow (crndns) is now
pared down to rav! (p. 37, Political S.). A new idiom,
repeated afterwards in another Western poem, that of
Piers Plonghman, comes in p. 52 (Lyric P.) ; we hear
of leggesifet, ant al ; here aU has a backward reference
to sereral foregoing Nouns. We find the phrases,
IwynghfTig of an eifi, y inake moivmyng. At p. 52 (Lyric
P.) comes Chd vjolde hue (ilia) were myn! Here the
Kolde is Optative ; a few years later, we shall find the
■ Neither Hallivell, nor ereo Gomett (bm bis Emay>, p. 121),
could nodentand this pBsaaga in its flrstr shape.
396 Old and Middle English.
two first words tnnsposed* In p. 54 we read, heo wdUe
dele of bote with ihe ; this new idiom with the of seems
to come from the French dispose of, partake of. In p. 106
tip becomes almost a Verb ; tip ant he god chamipiomL
The proper name Goljn appears; also the Icehuidic
byke (canis), still in Yorkshire nse. There are the Low
Dntch words momel (mnmble) and poU (caput) ; there
is also pale ; it may come from the plai crown of a
priest's head. There are the Celtic words, eopeZ (cahal-
los), and goblin (p. 238, Political S.) ; this last comeR
afterwards in Piers Ploughman, who wrote not fiaor from
Hereford.
These Herefordshire poems lead to the mention of
an Old English Charter, modernised not long after tiuB
in the same connty, (Kemble, lY. 218); aboat thu
time the French faverable must here have been inserted.
In the Rubric the document is said to be, carta in Ungud
Saxonicd translata in linguam AngUcctnam, This is one of
the first instances of the mischievous distinction made
by our wiseacres between the English of 1066 and the
English of 1300 ; the Germans and the Irish have been
too wise to write nonsense of this kind ; they set some
store by the continuity of the names of their respecttye
tongues. Bobert of Gloucester, about 1300, opposes,
though most seldom, Saxons to Normans; the Chro-
nicles of 1066 talked of English, not of Saxons. In a
Catalogue of Glastonbury Manuscripts, drawn up in
1248, the old national Homilies, a sealed book to that
generation, were described as Sermones Anglici.^
' See Seinte Marherete, notes, p. 77>
Middle English : Reparation. 397
Aboat 1290, the long poem called the ' Cnrsor
MuDdi ■ was translated from the French ; most likely in
the North of Torkahire.' We have not the original
banslatioD, for eren the oldest rersiou we poBBeee often
mistakes a word. The Scandinavian element is roost
obrioDS ; there are forms like f Am-, Oai these (p. 24), a
phrase that long lingered in Scotch law papers; also
Qoddote, in p, 220; Jv,r$alem, p. 530; with other snch,
hereafter to be noticed. In p. 1240, the Icelandic form
ttanga (pangere) is preferred to the English gtingan.
In p. 792, heliand, the loelnndic heiland, stands for the
Verbal N'onnAeoJiru)'. The piece cannot well be dated after
1290 ; for tiiere are five obsolete Teutonic words in every
fifty lionns, Verbs, and Adverbs ; if we looked only at
the obsolete Tentonic, we must date the piece abont 1260;
if we looked only at the vast proportion of French words,
we most pnt it as late as 13^. In this strange propor-
tion of the Old and the Kew, the Gnrsor Mundi stands
alone in English; no more important piece has ever
been printed, and Dr. Morris has done it fall jnstice.
Id the Cnrsor Mnndi, it is moat important to pay
attention to the change in the sonnds of the Vowels : this
change soon prevailed all over Northern England and
Scotland; it made its way to London aboat the year
1600, where it altered the sonnd, bat not the spelling, of
' The plaioest tnces of the French original maj be fbnnd in
p. 1272 ; where we are told Uiot Franch kings ought to wield the
Bomsa Empire:
For in >aa kingea sal it stand
Ai to-quiU W ar lostand.
The laat uf oil Jtoman Emperonia to be > King of France, who vitl
go to Jrra*alein, and there jield up his crown to Christ.
39^ Old and Middle English.
Englisli words. Nortiheni words and idioms had Iod^
been working down Southwards; the sound of Northern
Vowels was, about 1600, to make the conquest of the
South. A here replaces e, as 'hared (yastavit), fear (re-
motus), warren (pugnare) ; rces (cursns) becx>mes rus, 1
replaces t, as Moai yee (scitis) p. 996 ; it replaces o, as gwary
(juravit), a corruption which l^dale has brought into
our Bible. In some words the Southern a was nov
sounded in the North like the French S ; there is n(d»
(uuIIub), sten (lapis), draif (pepulit), der (aodeo). The a
replaces y in p. 710, where kyrwe becomes Aarti^ our har-
row. The a is dropped altogether in * he drogh him haky'
p. 908, andmon^ (inter), p. 698 ; also hide (manere). The
French pandysie is cut down to parlesi^ p. 678, and was
long peculiar to the North. We see by the rime that in
Ys'Ori all three vowels were distinctly sounded. The aft
seems to have been pronounced like the French ott, for the
old ldku}ed (indoctns) is here written laud^ and Baulamd
stands for the French Botand, p. 8, showing the inter-
change between o and otf. Thee was sounded veiy
broadly in the North, as we find yeit (adhuc) ; Orrmin's
Jude ( Judflsa), is repeated here, and is still known as
Judee in America ; the e replaced the o of the South, for
we find enefU (anent) ; it was dropped before «, for
there is Hehru ; the e at the end of a word vanishes, as
in hridod ; also at the beginning, for we find Spaigvve for
Espaigne^ the lepanie of 1087. The i replaced e, as in
this are (haec snnt) ; the Icelandic bUnda (caecare)
comes instead of the Old English hlendan^ gli (gaudium)
instead of gU ; winnes (putat) instead of toenes ; stUe^ hir,
are to be found, the sound of which we keep in steel and
Middle English : iteparatioti. 399
here. The Perfect ^tette becomeB ipitt, p. 776, whicli
is still improperly nsed by as. J replaces u, for the
hnautan, (snlphnr) of the Northern Psalter now becomes
hringtfOM, p. 170, not far from our brifiuUme. The old
oaeU (ocddere) now becomes cole, oa the way to our
}e3.l ; in the Sonthent Tersion, it is replaced by tpille,
p. 186. What had been written am (sagitta) in ths
North, is now eeeo as oro, p. 576, just as we now pro-
noniioe the word ; /ofloio, harrow, and snoh like words
were to take their new sonnd rather later. On the
other hand, £he u or ou was making great encroach.
menta oh the 0 ; we find /oid (gtnltae), buk (liber), dm
(facit), pur (paoper), lun (moz), dam (jndicare), bute
(remedinm), Itnuen (Bolvere), and many ench ; this is
repeated later in the Townley Mysteries, which belong
to Torkshire. Oar donbling the o to express the eoond
of the French ou reminds ns that these words above
cited once had the sound of 0. The tt is inserted ; fiefm
beoomea fathom (fathom) at p. 136. The dettru at
p. 378, ahowB what waa the old sonnd ot onr detiroy.
The old celmesie becomes aZmu«, the amnovs of Scott ; see
p. 1132.
As to the Consonants : h ia clipped at the beginning
of a word, for heturue becomes tuvt, p. 404 ; bihea/ding
becomes he/ding, aa in ' hanging and heading : ' um-
heAwile ia seen as uniqtthile. The p is inserted, as detapt
(damnatos), p. 1316 ; this most be an imitation of the
French form. The / is cast ont, for oncfeni becomes
enent (anent), p. 1316; this letter in gifan is mndi
manled ; in p. 38 we see j/m (dat), and in p. 304 gin
(datum), jnst as the Scotch sound these words now.
400 Old and Middle English.
We find the proper name Steven^ with the modern
sound of the last three letters. The g diaappeais
altogether in the middle of herherd^ herhergean^ (har-
boured), p. 886 ; we find forms like sigh^ laghter, and
rttgh (rongh) ; sometimes the g^ttnral at the end is
dropped, as in ^ (ramus), and fou (quamyis) ; noU is
replaced by not The French nirage becomes ouirake,
p. 244. The e is inserted, when sufilh (talis) becomes
squHk, p. 194; and this insertion is most common in
the Lancashire version of the poem. It is curious to
find the old form biicop still lingering in the North,
p. 1208. The d is cast out, godspel now turning into
gospel ; the t often stands for the old d at the end of
Verbs, as in lent^ reft^ wont. The noght but of the North
now becomes 7iobot (tantum) p. 1300 ; a word that
Wickliffe loved. We find mell (miscere), p. 1294, which
may come either from the Icelandic or the French.^
The tendency to contraction is shown in an Apostle's
name being pared down to BartiUnieUy p. 762; hence
comes our Battle, There is a fondness for casting out
2, m, and n ; carman replaces carlman (homo), and/o^e
(p. 692) stands for folk much as we now sound the
word. A fiamous Northern form is first seen in p. 1292,
where a, riming with fra^ stands for all. At p. 318,
forme fader follows the Scandinavian forfa^r^ and be-
comes/or/oder, oux forefaiher \ this form was unknown
in the South, and is written in the Southern Version,
formaste fadir. The n is dropped at the end of mine and
ihime^ even when they come before Vowels ; we see forms
like \i aueti, p. 224, and mi (9ght, p. 392, the old oh
> Wicklifife talks of * wyn wtecWrftrf with myrre/
Middle English: Reparation. 401
wiM.am, is now emedd, our amid, p. 66. The r is added
to words ; the old lenge (moisri) beoomea lenger, p. 42 ;
and nitA«me«{ (inSmne) is seen as nethamuut, p. 532. We
also find the r inserted in ansrit (anli, only), p. 1318 ; the
allenarly of Scotch law docnineDts is well known. The
r is transposed in the middle of a word; the old furUn
(perforare) becomes lhril,ji. 678 ; the/twiner, (pr«ecarsor),
at p. 758, is a most shortened form of onr fore-rmrner.
There is the carious French form of writing a; for s,
(Dens, Dex), so often found in the ' Paston Letters '; _^ezs
is here written torfiesh. The a is clipped at the end
of a word ; for rtkdeU (esnigma) becomes redel at p. 412,
thongh the old form lingered on in the Sonth. The
Latin Julim is pared down to Jvly, p. 8; whence
comes one of onr months. On the other hand, « is
added to alnoay, for we lig'ht on our aireai*, p. 356. The
10 is thrown out, for we find wantun, p. 666, for tibe old
vHtti'iiowen (lasdms).
As to SabstantiveB : we hare already seen how netn
was employed in the Korthem Psalter as a favonrite
ending ; we now find new coinages, snch as seline» and
drednes; bUmednes (blessedness) appears for the first
time, p. 976. At p. 436 it is hinted that Ooliath trusts
in his winnet (armour) ; and this word rimes with
wrangwimes, formed after the pattern of rihtiovnet. On
the other hand, the new form In-hede (p. 250) expresaes
Jndaism; there is also tdkenhid (significatio), p. 1242.
We find new SnbetantiTeB, like d&nfaU (downfall), ineom
(entrance, the Scandinavian innkvdma), starmatt (Scan-
dinavian st^nkasf), windmgelalh, step, ttini, crak; /ate
man, already nsed in the Lindis&me Qospels, is mtw
402 Old and Middle English.
repeated. But on the other hand, the old nesa is sometiines
cut off; the former wid/rves9e now becomes widey p. 104,
(the Scandinavian vidd) ; it is on the road to our wid£h ;
the old foreseownes (providentia) appears as forsightj
p. 1138; ecipgehrociB sciphreging^ p. 1200.^ An ^wder-
hte^ p. 126, is the full form of what afterwards became
lout ; the Northern phrase a mUtt comes at p. 1072,
and is altered in the other versions into a whit and a
deed ; this sniitt (fmstom) may be the parent of snUthe-
reen. The old half is making way for side, pp. 532 and
436, when family pedigp^es are discussed, and when
one person takes another's part. In p. 698 we find the
Nonn hnaulage formed from kyww ; it seems here to mean
acknowledgment, and the age is not a true French
ending, bnt a confasion of the French form with the
Scandinavian leikr^ as in kunnleikr. The Southern
version, about sixty years later, turns this kn4iulage into
hiowleche. There are new phrases, such as, the Lord o
mightes (Lord of hosts), p. 1300; side and side^ p. 110,
like our neck and neck ; * the feild (victoria) beleft with
him,* p. 442 ; ' they sought them don and dale ' (high
and low), p. 1008 ; fat tim it was, p. 1341, like Orrmin*B
on da^ ; I etemy fill, p. 210, like the French mangi*r
son soul ; a tvLelfnoth stage^ p. 424 ; gaf a scift to, p. 602,
whence our made shift to ; km and kyth, p. 734 ; vidke
his wai, p. 1324 ; wit wil, p. 832, whence ' do it with a
win ; ' 0 preching had he na inak (match), p. 1126 ;
tokens 'pat es na nede all reckon, p. 1088. The old pith
> Our wreck is seen in King John's Latin Charter of 1200, Stnbb's
Documents Illustrative of English History, p. 304 ; in our Bible we
read that ' ships were hroken^^
Middle English : Reparation. 403
fmediilla) takes the farther meaning of viret, p. 48.
"We aee the phrase mans vxrmh, p. 38 ; in the South, wmnh
had begnn to be reBtricted' to women. "We have already
heard of OhUd Horn ; in p. 1114 St. Stephen's mnrderers
hand over their clothes to 'a chUd hight SaaluB.' In
p. 784 we find beggar used as a term of reproach 'for
the first time; 'this beggar wishes to teach ns,' say
the Jews. In p. 470 comes the phrase fere (sanus) dU
ajUehe, and in p. 682 we find hale swn ani Irvte ; we
still have tbe expression ' sound as & roach.' In p. 1330
fare adds to its old meaning iter the new sense of viclus.
In p. 704 we see, I think for the first time, an haltdai
connected with play. In p. 1320 an old phrase is pre-
served, fid mel is him fat &c. (bona fortona est iUi) ;
this phrase, 0 weU is thee, was inserted in onr Prayer-
book by Coverdale, aTorkshireman. The I«tiii Jacob-us
is Englished by Jacob, at p. 728 ; but we also hear
of Jam, at p. 720. The Substantive is sometimes
dropped to avoid repetition, as in p, 1232 ; of three
crasses, they knew not which was the Lord's cross
and which moght fe thevea be ; here the Substantive
crosses is dropped before the last word. In p. 1312
a potter spoils his vessel, and then tries for to mak a,
better.
A new Adjective is formed by adding i to the root,
as suTini, p. 1334 ; this was not understood in the
South, and was altered into somer (summer) prefixed to
day. Les is added to law, as lavles (axlex) in p. 146, the
Scandinavian loghnus ; there is also unhappi, uriU, nede
(panper) ; new Adjectives are formed by aAiingful, to the
root, as treuftd, wofrd. The uglike of East Anglia now
f
404 Old and Middle Engiish.
becomes ugli. Kind had hitherto meant naturalis ; in
p. 1146 it gets the fiirther sense of henignus ; sua khtd csr
fou is addressed to the Virgin. These two senses lingered
on side bj side for nearly 400 years, as we see in Mxlton.
The dignfied fus seems to get our modem sense aijust^
in p. 18, where it is applied to Martha ; in the Sonthem
version it is turned into hisy. Sad seems to lose the old
meaning aatur, and to get the new sense of fessus^ not
far from our trigiis, when Adam is said to be sad cf
hiviself, p. 80 ; this sad becomes made in the Southers
version. The old gemcene kept its sense of cammtmf
in the South ; in the North, the Icelandic meiwn (vilis)
was coming in; in p. 762 mene men are opposed to
lords ; this sense reappears in Manning, the Lincohi-
shire bard. In p. 282 we hear of redt peniis^ whence
our ready money ; Orrmin's redi^ in the sense of jam,
is repeated in p. 998. In p. 1100 we hear that the Jews,
who were eager to seize the Apostles, icfvr ai curst ; the
last word, to judge by the context, seems here to get
its Shakesperian meaning, crdbhed. In p. 70 we read
of a ded ass ; in p. 226 of a nere cosin ; in p. 1288 of
dumb hestes; in p. 1080 of a colour that is nwte brun]
in p. 200 of a mmitel of rede. In p. 36 comes the
line —
Frafid hei hefeUfid law.
We Hght on a phrase well known to oar ballad-
makers ; in p. 1162 St. John was a ful sari man ; here
the Adjective might well stand alone. In p. 184 we
hear that Esau was a/reher wit best of an, a most curious
idiom that was unknown to the Southern transcriber.
i
Middle English: Reparation. 405
In p. 378 the people were war (aware) o Moyseg. It
IB seldom that Adjeatives ending \aful form their Com-
parative like the lorfiiUer (tristior) of p. 1332,
As to Pronouns : we here first find the greeting mi
Jevedi ased to the Virgin ; this mt ia cat ont of the
Sonthem Vei'aion ; and the term was not applied to an
earthly miatrees till aboat 1440. The process first seen
in Orrmin goes on ; in p. 1146 stands Mrs am I; in p. 850
■we find ani of ars (any of onr people) j yonri is also nsed
without any Snbatantive in p. 291; this is repeated in
p. 1034, fwght wit pair -might hot kia of heven; the last
three words are most terse and concise. In p. 742
Christ is said to fast kig Lenlenlide ; this Possessive hit
is still very common in this sense. This his now begins
to be nsed to erpresB the Genitive, as in p. 1220, pe
Jtret his ffreff; not ' the first's greff.' The form pai fai is
nsed in p. 1206 for the EVench on dit. The old distinctive
Mascnline and Feminine endings of Substantives had
mostly gone oat ; we now light on the cnmhrons
Scandinavian idiom that was to replace these endings ;
in p. 44 is the line —
pe bettet all, bath too <md kt.
We afterwards hear of a &e latnhe. Still in p. 590 we
read of bairns, ne mai ne knaoe. It ia nsed in our Inde-
finite sense ; ' all onght to believe, nnless it be Saracen
or Jew,' p. 1298. We have already seen that there
threat ; we now find this gilt here, p. 58. We know how
in Latin hie and Hie are opposed to each other ; in
p. 1350 the contrast between the righteons and the
wicked is drawn ont For thirty lines by the employment
4o6 Old and Middle English.
of the Scandioayiaii \ir (hi) and the English ]>ai, the old
\(i (illi). This Yorkshire nsagemiich pazzled the Lanca-
shire and Southern transcrihers. The Relative idioms
abound; there is an evident imitation of thoFi^ench liqydi
(lequel) in ^e \e law, fe quilk &c. ; and this comes
very often in this translation. The Relative is dropped
altogether after a Noun, as in our easy waj ; Loth ye
herd me tell of, p. 174 ; here Loth should be followed \fs
that The steward talks, in p. 194, of Isaac, and to him
the following Relative refers : at (to) sehe a vnif to warn,
I fare ; this cumbrous construction was unknown earlier.
The old hwoBper (uter) was unluckily dropping out of
use ; two children are spoken of in p. 206, and it is
asked quilk o pir tua ; the rightful hwceper remains in
our Bible. In p. 534 comes the remarkable new
phrase, he cun kna/u quilk es quilk (which is which) ; ia
the Southern Version this is altered into fe ton to knom'
pe toper fro, for two things are spoken of. We hare
seen Orrmin's ewillc an; we now read, in p. 840, quHk o
mi gode dedis an ? Another idiom of Orrmin's is carried
a step further in p. 982 ; axk quat pou wUl ; this is &
great paring down of the old swa hwcet stva (quodcnn-
que). There is a new form in p. 1122 ; priests ought
to preach, in als mikel ah in paim es ; we now drop the
first wordm ; forasmuch was soon to arise in Gloucester-
shire. There is a new phrase in p. 1210 : fat folk Ukan
ivald ofer stenim; in our *they stopped each other/
each is the Nominative, other the Accusative. An had
already been used for man ; in p. 1030 we find it coupled
with an Adjective, pat so nvy^ty oon; this Northern
phrase was used by Wickliffe long afterwards, as, a
Middle English: Reparation. 407
ynxgoon (a yoxmg on). In p. 162 we find an allan
(one alone) ; hers t>he one cornea twice over. We are
omnsed wben we find in Sooteh writers, snoh as Alison,
phrases like ' the whole men,' instead of * all the men.'
This ifi seen in p. 178 ; he taid- Aw mm, kale (omnes suoa
TOCATit). In p. 972 we find the old nokt tamed into a
SubstantiTe ; it were dU a Ttoht. A new idiom is seen
in p. 989, seven myle and a half; this wonld have been
expressed earlier, like in Gennan and Scandinavian,
b; eigktk half; and the older idiom lasted down to
14^. In p. 254 a woman wishes to hear a word or tita %
hero the a plainly stands for an (one). In p. 1^02
there is a new Ifiimenil form, which makes an Adjec-
tive stronger ; ' it was not \e tend part ea clere ; '
in p. 1352 we find, an hitndret nth fairer. In the
sentence hU fader wat nwiety and nine, p. 162, there
is a remarkable dropping of the old form of ninety-
nine years, and this is a wholly new nse of the Car.
dinal Domber. The word tcore was coming in as a Nu-
meral, Abram viaa fivesarr and nine, p. 160. In p. 1136
we read of a linen cloth four tquar, a moat concise
phrase.
The nse of did with the Infinitive, te express the Past
tense, is not so common here as it became abont 1300.
There is a smack of French in the fallowing : ' they told
birri what tree it fuld ha bene (erat),' p. 1234 ; hence
our 'whom should I meet, but &c.,' which stands for
' whom did I meet. 'The Verb jnon seems to be changing
its meaning &om erit to oporiet ; in p. 276 comes fe folk
DWn dei ; in the Soathem Version shul de^e is sabsti-
tnted, not -wil de^. In p. 1342 we see yai tal cun t^
408 Old and Middle English,
(potemnt dicere) ; this curions fomi lasted to about
1500, with the sabBtitution of mow for ctm. In p. 1132
there is a translation of ^^enni etre^ for toel max he oomeB
in the middle of a sentence. The old idiom had been
ic hU eom, bnt in p. 778 we find fat ilk esl; here, how-
ever, the 68 is perhaps the Danish for the Latin sum, as
in Fse a lad (sum pner) . ^ There is a new-born oonciseneBS
ia the phrase I a/m and ever sal be hir thrally p. 1146.
Can-not is seen, with its two parts joined, in p. 538.
The Participle Absolute had hitherto always been in
the Dative, and this lasted down to 1400 ; bat in p. 500
comes, SCO laid it be me^ and I slepa/nd in bedd. The Past
Participle of a certain Verb is now used much like a
Preposition, and has held its ground in Sootk^d ; in
p. 314 we hear that nothing was left, ute-toM pe Icmdes ;
this is the first hint of our except. There is a French
idiom in p. 806, where Wei ansucurd (bien r^pondu),
begins a sentence. A curious idiom with the Infinitive,
standing for an exclamation, is seen in p. 890 ; St. Peter
says, I to leve fe pus ! hence our ' to think of that ! * '
There is a great shortening in the phrase lok j^ do
ftu, p. 160. Became had long stood for /actus est ; a
further advance is made in p. 626, he es hicummen sun.
The change from esse to fuisse^ after a Verb, has been seen
already in the Havelok ; in p. 1026 a man comes,
fat Bemed wd to have ben eremyte.
» Wickliffe has the old j£ it hen, that, in St. Luke xvi. 16. Tyn-
dale has here, ye are they, whieh.
' There is something like this in the ChomseB towaida the end
of iEschylus' Eumenides,
Middle English : Reparation. 409
In p. 998 appears the strange idiom uie «aZ yetld Joi^h
t/ee sal se ; this was not oaderstood in the South. Another
instanoe of a now familiar phrase crops ap in p. 746 :
pit VHU not he, yee moI ^u, or, as we should say, you must
hncne ; in the Sonthem Version it is altered into wUe je
wde. In p. 1358 standa ' there are manj of ns, 1 ^ede,
that &ci ' this most hare been a peculiarly Yorkshire
phrase, for the lancashire and Soatbem Verraons have
altered it. In p. 1058 stands $ue» we sal haf halden,
Omnin's new form of the SabjunotiTe mood, which we
most likely owe to the French, and which long sonnded
strange to English ears. In p. 856 Christ says, m-i suiw:
stamdes me for noght, an nnnsnal form. The old phrase
'man sends for me' was now dropped in the North; it
was being replaced by the Passive voice ; in p. 806 comes
he fat was matt forgiven tUl; in p. 814, 1 am sand after.
This is one of the eaxly instanoee of the wonderfnlly
free handling that the Passive Voice was to undergo in
England; Lord Palmerston wrote in 1848, 'he was
offered t^i be Nnncio at Paris,' (Life, by Ashley, I. bl).
In p. 138 comes a doable Accusative: he reft fam
liif; as we still say, ' he fined him a pound.' We come
upon such phrases as, he gaf a bateU, to set ahoate, he
tok hit til hert, she did him to be spUt, he hUte an (xun,
folk fell to pair lare, they ware metle, pie forsaid Mori,
penis mUk ids ran (such as were current) ; yee er made
freindes, tak til ur wittnes, the wat takes tw, saiaind mi bede
(my prayer), com to hand, nil we wil we. We must
remark in the Cuisor Mondi the following, which
smack of Scandinavia. ' To give back' (regredi) reminds
□a that gefa upp means eessare. ' Tok his flight ' brings
4IO Old and Middle English^
to mind the phraae iaika fl6tia* *• The dais was ranna
nte ' (in the South, were al gone^ p. 869) ; we know thst
the Scandinavian renna was transitiYe as well as intran*
sitiye. * It fell Petre to call,' reminds us that the Scan-
dinavian faU to means accidere. We find * to head or
hang;' the first Yerfo is the Scandinavian hoflku The
word get adds to its old meaning of adipteci that of tir,
something like niman ; in p. 456 the mancal is ordered
to see that Uriah ndd never gette a/wax. This Torkshire
phrase is often found m the Percival, which belongs to
the same date and place. The Scandinavian getn tjd
means * get to <fee ; ' here the get means something like
venire. Long afterwards, get acqnired a third meaning,
that of fieri ; in our every-day talk, we work this Verb
get very hard. The Verb Uetan (sinere) takes a fresh'
meaning, for in p. 1138 a cloth was laten (let down).
The Verb hredan had meant JoveTe\ in p. 1202 it
means edneare^ for St. John is there said to have been
hred by Christ. The Verb win gets a new sense, jperrc-
iiire^ in p. 1214; this is common in Scotland. In p. 1224
hersteii (bnrst) adds the sense of mere to its old sense
of ruvvpere. In p. 832 Omnin's word dwell (morari)
is used in the farther sense of hcdntare ; this word was
to drive oat the old Verb won. Spare, in p. 1322, means
something beyond parcere ; it is aliis prcehere ; this \&
something like one of the Scandinavian senses of the
>vord. The old reafian (rapere) gets the farther
meaning of trahere ; in p. 1006 stands he es reft awat ;
the French ra/vist is nsed in the same sense ; it comes a
few lines lower down ; the one word may have inflaenoed
the other. In p. 1016 a man is bidand (ezpectans) to
Middle English: Reparation. 411
Be ; this InfinitiTe after bidand was not nnderstood bj
the compilers of the three other versioiiB. In p. 1066
u» is prefixed to a Participle, vndeiand (undying).
In p. 1084 we find to muth a langage ; this new word
for loqai (it is the Scandinavian mwfifa) was not
nnderfitood in the South, In p. 64 |>u gafe (dedisti)
is cormpted into ^ou gafs ; we hare seen this change
before. In p. 74 cnawen (notnm) is tnmed into kncmd,
which may still sometimes be heard. In p. 114 a
French Verb takes a Strong Perfect in English, a thing
almost unheard of; ne hear that the lain ne fane
(fined not, non eeteavil) ; the Scotch verdict, not pro.
veil, is in our days the nearest approach to this Strong
form. So common had the use of ye for to become
in the North that it influenced the Imperative mood ;
in p. 270 is mat, gir, tat noght &c. (ne capias). The
Verb is sometimes dropped for the sake of avoiding
repetitions, as in p. 1140, ' Comelins fears the Lord, na
nuxn more.' The Passive Participle Hade (constitntus)
comes over and over again in this work ; in p. 90 it is
written ttaid ; perhaps our Verb slay may come from
this, as well as from the French eHaier. In p. 136t>
comes ^(vr es na mending f>e ttat. This is a further de-
velopment of the Transitive Verbal Noun ; the Accusa-
tive now comeaafter it, notbeforeit.asin&tiai'n-cennwi^.
In p. 1344 the new Noun heing is formed from he, to
express ettetitia.
Among Adverbs, we find/or^ut put into the middle
of a sentence, just before a reason is given, p. 92 ; hence
the cos why that we so often hear. We have now an
expression, ' it is the best thing oat ; ' this may be seen
412 Old and Middle English.
in p. 98, )>e sm l^ai fcm was tUe (in being). In p. 830,
each man holds his office, h%8 iuelvemoth tUe, This kst
word supplies the loss of the old purh formerly prefixed
to Verbs; hafyee fe doM al fasten ute ? p. 380. We see
in p. 728, the first hint of the Irish ataUataXL (omnino);
fsBS heneete of aX amd al ; this is the Scotch ooo. Tbe
Scandinavian of aUt means, ' in every respect.' The
poet is fond of dropping the ne that should come before
hut; folk wit hut foil do, p. 108; the hut was now
Englishing tatdwm, as we saw much earlier. Another
form of this, whence comes the Yorkshire nohhut, is
found in p. 1216; ]>a/ was noght hot for to Jlei in tbe
other Versions, for comes before the noght. The old
ails lomg sai (swa) 'as long as,' appears in p. 1170;
but the other Versions have ijtered it into to-g^dUs
and whiL We use as for pretty often now ; it is seen
in p. 156, I might hold it als for mine. In p. 196 tbe
Adverbial ending is fastened on to the Active Parti-
ciple; sittandliky which in the Southern Version is
altered into sittyngly. In p. 330 comes sin quen (since
when) in a question ; and fra fis time forth is in
p. 240. Behind is used in a wholly new sense, that of
deficiens ; a man es hehind for poverty p. 352 ; as we
say, ' he is behind with his money.' The old hecefta^
(post) is now changed into o haft, our sailors' ahqfi.
The cuway was used to express intensity ; he dried away
(tabescebat) p. 690. We have seen hal in the sense of
integer ; a new Adverb is now formed from this, to re-
place the lost eaUunga ; he sal he hali given is in p. 502 ;
the Southern Version puts hool for this new hali, our
wholly. Still comes again in the Northern sense of
Middie English: Reparation. 413
Umjoarsy p. 742. Wti find contra Englished by on ofer
aide, p. 748 ; this is of a woman balancing argiuuents.
An Adverb might be oomponnded by simply adding t to
a Nonn, aa develi, p. 824; we use now the more
oambrouB diabolieaUy ■ there is also fotili (stnlte) page
1332. In p. 824 we hear of a person being ra migkU
mehe, whence comes Pepys* mighty merry ; swi^t (valde)
was now unhappily going ont. In p. 830 we hare the
first hint of onir doing things htm about.
The confusion between Adjectives and Adverbs is
very plain ; a honse is eommU dight, p. 870. In p. 1054,
a man is said to be ungodli (inhoneste) gert. The
Danish awn is used for the English noa or at; in p. 936
is the phrase ta frir le rum I can (as &r as I can see).
In p. 1336 comes the new form Au nem ecer (how so
ever). In p. 1028 comes, he may gate hit no toayet ; the
last word stands for the old vrige. We find phrases like
frajerr and ner, go vn-mig, negh at hand, far apon, her-
eJUrward. In p. 402 is a wholly new adverbial form,
quen pat fai yede ; a similar High German form is fonnd.
By the side of the old lofli, a new word for verh crops np ;
in p. 284comes, lyow $a4 trali ; this in the Southern Ver-
sion is altered mto taiUerhj. To thu day onr true wiU
EnglifA both^jldur and venti ; aooth has almost wholly
dropped out of sight. A true man (not a thief) keeps
the <rfd sense honeitvs ; so wb have bad to invent tntthfal,
to express another shade of meaning. The word namli
had hitherto meant preeeipui ; it is now made to repre-
r
414 Old and Middle English.
sent the Norse ne/ntZi^a, (by name, expressly) ; we see
in p. 1094 \a SaduceiSf — nanUi yat lede ijr., (vide-
licet).
The Preposition of is nsed in new senses ; U smelles
o piement, p. 218 ; fay had might 0 fa/m selven^ p. 206 ;
hence Pope's mistress of herself ; Adam waxed sad (fessns)
of himself, p. 80 ; toe m/ik urfd of wrfreimdy p. 1076. In
p. 1304 comes the eild (age) 0 thritte yere. We have
already seen to miss of a thing ; we now find, p. 682, tofaU
of ur a/rt ; this is strange, as the French /atZZir was not
followed by de. This of is prefixed to Verbal Noons;
8t. Panl is called a wessde 0 mi chasing in p. 1126. As
to at, we come upon ai ese, p. 112 ; at OAfi acord^ p. 1344 :
ut fair talking "pa/m tenid sare (irati snnt), p. 1094. To
is not &r removed from at ; we here 6nd, it lay to ha/nd^
p. 148 ; bete him to "pe hlod, p. 926 ; kest of al to his seric
(shirt), p. 1232. In p. 1104 comes mani sehe (sick) uato
fam soght ; this foreshadows onr version of Denteronomy
xii. 5 ; * nnto the place shall ye seek.' The Icelandic
scel^a tU means 'have reconrse to.' We see the thai
dropped afber a Preposition in p. 164 ; fou sal ha/oe ham
hi I cvm, A new phrase is nsed to express intention ;
something is done, ' hi wai to do l^e for to se,' p. 1128.
With is mnch nsed ; wit quam it es noght at ham,, p. 252 ;
mad offi wit his godd^hed, p. 1076 ; hetohhis hin (lodging)
wit Nichodeme, p. 1012 ; wit fi leve, p. 984 ; quai yee wiU
wit me, p.ll40 ; the French mnst have had mnch inflnence
here. The vp is nsed in the Scandinavian way, to
intensify a Verb, as pe folk mon dei up, p. 276, like our
follow up, use up ; thongh we may also say hiU doum, A
new phrase comes in p, 426 ; seven suns in aU, On^ as
I
Middle English: Reparalton, 415
tiBnftl, marks hostility ; dome et given on us, p, 951 ; it also
marks a state of fatare activity; the Apostles higan to
fed apon a gret (fletns), p. 890; Defoe would have
written it, ' to &11 a weeping,' an idiom which lasted to
1790. The French idiom pour (qnod atlinet ad), already
seen in the St. Eatherine, is repeated ; he *al for me be
bwulen ; the Southern transcriber was puzzled by the
newfangled idiom (which is also the Scandinavian fyrir
}aer) and wrote bifore me. The Doreetshire in slede is
now made one word, in-ited a, p. 74. Two Prepodtiona
are coupled, in the phrase, ' he took them to betide the
cross,' p. 12i6.
In p. 818, we see or nsed as it often is in poetry now ;
it is prefixed to two different Noans in one sentence ; qua
trove m me, or man or wUf, ]>ai sal ^e.
There are here many new Interjections, derived from
the rr6iich,that have taken root in oartongoe. It is this
class of words that the poorer classes are most apt tocopy
from their betters ; French Inteijections are easily pro-
nounced, and give a supposed air of refinement to every-
day talk. In p. 248come8 ha ! quat ^aa hestee war hene !
it is plain that the two first words of the French original
mast have been ha que. In p. 286 comes ha, ha,
IraituTg ! in p. 662, this is, Aha, traitu/r» ! Herod, who
utt«rs this in his torment, deals in mnch hearty French
abnse, like fix ap'ttaint. In p. 696, they all cry ho! &
Scandinavian Interjection. In p. 256 is Oodd/orbedd I
snld him auike ! this became afterwards so idiomatic that
it was used to English the firi yivom of the Greek
Testamcmt. In p. 1286 stands A Laverd! at the begin-
ning of a sentcmce, jost as Fepys nses Lord I when be is
4i6 Old and Middle English.
astoniflhed at anything. In p. 34 comes herk (hark)
for the first time ; it is addressed to a mob. A new
phrase is in p. 242 ; lo qttar pe dremer es cwmmen^ where
h is followed by an Adverb. Our why is here used
simply as an expletive; in p. 222 comes m, quaikin
consatl mai Ifegwe f In p. 1186 stands oTUM^for schame!
here the/or mnst stand for the Latin oh ; we now use
the Interjection for shame! withoat the alaSy whicb
governed it.
Some English words are farther developed: thus
from the old crwmb (cnrvos) is formed crumpled^ p. 466 ;
gruhy^ a new form of the old grafan (fodere) is- seen ib
p. 390. The Verb swedel (swaddle) is first seen in p. G44,
coming from the old Noan stoepel (£EUicia). We hear
of a snau dnf for the first time in p. 570 ; and of a
scott (a shot, missile) in p. 576 ; this last is Scandi-
navian. In p. 532 comes to-name (agnomen), a strange
form common to both Yorkshire and Lincolnshire. The
cove (specos) of the Lindisfame Gospels is repeated in
p. 666, Some pnzzling words are now for the first
time fonnd ; snch as had (mains), lass (paella), hall^
(calvns), midwife y which is said to mean ' a woman who
comes for meed.' In p. 28, a thing is said to be done
faster than eye may wink ; we shonld now say, ' it was
done like winking.*
There are some English words here common to the
Dutch and German ; snch as- dvken (mergere), Iwrnp^
creul (serpere), poke (tradere), hlow (plaga), layu
> Locke tells ns that gruff was the Mendip minen' name ftr a
pit. See his L\fe, by Mr. Fox Bonrne, I. 125.
Middle English: Reparation. 417
(Ugnla), p. 908, onr la»h, loere (vapor), our whiff,
p. 1310.
Th6 ScandiTiaTiaD words foand here are, hark (cor-
tex), «cow, tpar, squeal, ivmvp (tnndere), cleft, fell
(mons), groveUngs, p. 674, asliwi, hartk (harsh), tkirt,
tcail, item (dstere), tlight, miiU, trump (tnba), foil
(stnltns), oar fond. The Scandinavian gcevnu^ gives
birth to yomem, p. 184 ; it is here evidently used for ' an
able-bo43ied man,' and we still talk of ' doing yeoman's
eervice.' The word often appears as yetnan in later times.
There are a few words of this kind, still fonnd here
lingering in Scotland, as »tot (bncalns), gUy (limia ocnlis
speotare). A kirk is said to teale (disperse); this
word, fbond in the Cursor, is the Oanish verb thSU.
Onr phrase, ' I have no time,' comes, not fix>tn the Old
English word, bat &om the Scandinavian UnA (otiam),
as seen in p. 130. The Old English aeeapmd (creator)
row makes way for the Scandinavian tea/per (shaper),
p. 740. Scutk now means abdere and not laLetcere, as
in the Nortbem Psalter. Bi (oppidnm) in p. 868 shows
whance come onr bye-la/w».
The Celtic words erag and bran are foand in p. 568
and p. 888. Bid stands for mistaJte in p. 1218 ; this
noon does not appear again, I think, nntU Milton nsed
it in his ' Apoli^y for Smectymnnns.'
To Yorkshire belong the Perdval and the lenmbrae
(' Thornton Romances,' Camden Society) ; they seem
to have been compiled about 1290 ; they have mnch in
common with the Cnrsor Mnndi ; saob phrases as give
tnoay,ttot,pitk (viree), soman, werpaste, serve (tradare),
41 8 Old and Middle English.
come once more. The Yowel-cliaiige is seen as usual in
the Noi*th ; gat (capra) is seen as g<M^te ; and this sound
is preserved in Oateshead (caput caprso) ; there is ali0
mere (equa) ; u often replaces o, as gude fcnr fode, lube
for lohe ; we see the thoronghlj Northern louse (solvere)
for the old losian^ p* 72 ; ^ Scotland the change is in
onr time carried a step farther, and the word is there
pronounced like the GFerman ZatM.
As to Consonants : we see how hnawlage (this came
in the Cursor) was pronounced, in p. 41 ; the g was
sonnded hard, for the word rimes with make, take^ hlake;
the ending, in spite of its form, was more akin to the
Teutonic Iclc, as in wedlac, than to the Romance damage.
The former swiftlxker (citius) loses its k and becomes
swiftliere ; I see that some of our best modem writers
are now reviving these Comparative Adverbs, and
are disusing the cumbrous more swiftly. The letter m
is inserted, for midlest becomes medUmaste, p. 96.
Among Substantives, we find the old Plural gode
(bona) turned into gude^f our goods ; folkes are used for
merif p. 45, and hodys have the same meaning, p. 44 ;
hence comes our somebody, nobody, &c. This use of
body appeared in Gloucestershire about the same time.
In those days, knights won their schone (shoes), not
their spurs, p. 61. In p. 77 we hear that a club's head
was twelve stone weghte, the first instance of this meaBore.
The phrase a sevenyght long (p. 84) was coming into
use. Verbal Nouns are mainly due to the North ; thej
are found in the Plural, as sygheyngez (suspiria), p. 90.
The word top was already used, in composition with
other nouns, as a sea term ; the toppe-casteUes of a ship
Middle English: Reparation. 419
are mentiooed in p. 07. Scare is ased as a plural noon
in p. 44; elleven« Mcore of-mene.
Aa to AdjectiTsa.- we heat of the thUcketU of the
jprege, p. 44. In p. 51 comes a sadde Hrohe ; the sad
had taken the sense of gravis, besides that of taiur ; in
the North the^ still talk of tad cake. la p. 92 stands
tlie phrase ' alle als nakede als they were home.'
The Adverb right was encroaching on the old »tOT)i«,
as is plainly seen in the Percival ; a new sense of the
word is in p. 31, where a man is cast reghte in the fyre.
The Northern sense of siHl is perhapa fonnd in p. 18;
it is hard to say whether tranquHle or toujoun would be
the right translation here ; unmoved is the connecting
link between these two senses. Even had hitherto meant
aqtie ; being confused with the Scandinavian jafiU, it
here takes the farther meaning of recti, much as we
now use jtM( ; the latter indeed actually appears in p. 11.
In p. 45 is evene over hym hs rode ; in p. 4fi, tille it wot
evtne at daye lighte ; in p. GG, he hitt hym evene on ih«
Ttefei-ftorae; we should now substitute just for even,
though we still say even so, and the e'en is common in
Scotland. The Superlative innemesie had always
existed ; we now find a new Comparative innermare,
p. 48. Two Interrogatives are coupled in p. 81 : he asked
wherefore and why he banned. In p. 114 comes one*
appone a daye; the once here stands for olim, as in
Orrmin ; not for semeL
Among the Pronouns, we remark the Yorkshire seho
(ilia) ; thate (illi), which we saw in the Northern
Psalter, is repeated in p. 50 ; yon, standing by itself, is
sometimes used for the those or those ; a usage found «.\wt
■ ■3
420 Old and Middle English.
in the GuiBor and still kept in the North. The old
meaning of hivylc (qualis) was now dropped in York-
shire, though not in the Sonth ; in p. 8 we see the word's
place supplied bj trhat manere of thy tig may this heef
Cnmbrons indeed is onr version of St. Lake tu, 39.
' know who and what manner of woman ; ' this we took
from Wickliffe ; the translation, 400 years before him.
yvsa ' hwiBt and htcylc* 8^c. In p. 61 we see ane employed
to save the repetition of a previons Nonn; ' if I be not
yet knight, make me a^ie ; ' this idiom was now coming
in. We know onr curions phrase ' a jewel of a man,'
which seems to be French ; ' the earliest instance of this
that I know is in p. 75 ; the stahcorthest geanl of (mt,
where one. mnst stand for man.
There is mnch to remark in the Verbs : the disnse
of the Indicative m, also found in the Northern Psalterf
is carried further ; \ch4ii may this hee^ p. 8. The Im-
perfect and Pluperfect tenses of the Subjunctive are
oddly coupled together in p. 15 ; he tcened aU c^Oter
horsez were (mares), and hade bene caUede soo. He hade
a father to he slayne, p. 2^ is a continuation of one of
Orrmin's idioms. The get, as in the Cursor, has come
to mean venire ; he getis nerey p. 85 ; more of the old
meaning lingers in he get owt (extsnadi) hys swerde,
p. 79; in p. 20 is he cotUhe not gett of (ezuere) tbe
armour. The new sense of cfo is seen in p. 53 ; wUh oSr
that folke hade he done (finished). We see the Northern
phrases, fall to thairejude, p. 51 ; hold on his way, p. 84;
> Herodotus, in one of his Earliest ckapten, talks about 'a great
thing of a boar.'
k
Middle English: Reparation, 421
wyna (pervenire) tUle towm, p. 95, a phrase that liners
in Scotland ; whale es yottr wilh with vte ? p. 107. The
Old English wegan (weigh) was traDsitive, bat its
ScaDdinaviau sister might be intransitiTe ; bo, in p. 77,
we find the clohe mlieyked reghte wele.
We still nse the Old English for aU thia, where for
translates the French malgre ; in p. 34 cornea, for ougkte
that may betide, I Kill §rc. The teraenese of the fntnre
New English conies ont in p. 8 ; agat/ne Air (one 30ii« ;
that is, ' against the time that her son could walk ; '
the Prepositions ere and for had been treated in this way
in the foregoing Century.
There is a cnrioos combination, in p. 95, of the Mid-
land lo or til and the Northern vihil, each of them
meaning jWgu'd ce que; be itille, to wh3i Ifech^, ^e.
Among the Intoijections are Peter.' Lorde! A, dere
Ood! Sow! and the old -established What! A cnrions
new idiom is in p. 11, ' tltat ever eolde I dry gorowe!'
before this time, eala or some such word mnst have
stood at the head of this sentence.
A new word is seen in etremour (vexJWam) ; there is
also elovite (ictos), akin to the Dntch khtsen. ; crokede,
which Englishes amtis, is the Scandinavian brokoltr:
hail had been nsed in connexion with the bear in the
Harelok ; it now means simply to feed, p. 8.
Abont 1295 many Lives of Saints were translated,
almost certainly by Robert of Gloncester, whose rimes
are in the same dialect. Anything connected with the
language of this shire is of interest, when we remember
that Tyndale was bom there, not qnite two hundred
years later. The Lives of St. Thomas (Becket) and
422 Old and Middle English.
* St. Brandan,' have been printed by the Percy Society ;
many others of the Lives we owe to Mr. Fnmival)
(Philological Society). I shall hereafter call attention
to the French idioms, which abound.
In Beckei's life, the Vowel a replaces e ; her&oe
(vectula) becomes harewe (barrow), p. 44. We follow
the at of this piece, rather than the Eastern et^ in our
Perfect for eat. The old idded is now shortened into
ideldy onr dealt. The aw, so common in French words,
is nsed for the broad a in Teutonic words ; in p. 76, hxd
is written for hale (trahere), and we still keep both
forms ; though they no longer have one common sound,
as in 1300. The name Saleahwry^ the first Vowel of which
we pronounce like liaul, is seen in p. 18 ; the proper name,
as usual, keeping somewhat of the old sound of a, Tlie
Willam of earlier times now becomes WilUem^ p. 2d,
just as voUlan and wUlian (optare) might both he
written. The author has a practice of inserting i before
another vowel, and also of turning eu into ue; he has in-
duced us to write Tuesday^ p. 57, instead of the rightfol
Teusday or Tiwesday ; he has wne (novus), thue (servus),
and many such. The u or w ia thrown out altogether
in ho (quis), not fax from our hoo^ as we now pronounce
the word. In p. 75, the English wnea^j^ gets confused
with the French ais^, and unese (difficilis) is the up-
shot. We see how our pronunciation of the fourth day
in the week arose, when we find Wendesdai in p. 57.
Our way of handling the Genitive of a Noun that ends
in s is foreshadowed in p. 19; (he did) Thomas heste
(ThomsB jussum) : there is also TJuytnas men^ p. 43.
The r and the n are both inserted in one word, for the
Middle English: Reparation. 423
old Sempigaham becomee Symprittgham, p. 55. The'
r and I interohan^, when Sarum, or Sarithury becomes
8a.legbury ; Bishop Jewel long afterwards used the r, ia
writing the name ot his diocese. The Teutonic hlenck is
now confonnded with the Frenoh^^Aw; we see in this
piece hlench, hlmeh, sad'fleeehi ; we may now nse either
blench OT flinch.
As to SabetantiTeB : we see sow and then a change in
the form of words. In the Tristrem, bond had meant
senmg ; in this new |aece, p. 27, the word becomee bonde
nton with the same meaning. In other shires, as in the
country near Bntland, bondeman still bore the old sense
of coloniw and nothing more. In p. 34, the word end
(finis) gets a new meaning, that of pwrpOK. In p. 49,
ia the adjoration merei, for Qodet love ! that is, ' for love
towards God,' as we see by a like paasage in p. 2.
Here also is foand, heo sej Aire iyme, ' she saw her time,'
that is, opportimity.
The Adjeotive >eli continues to nnite to )ts old sense
(beatos) jnst the contrary sense infelix, or onr poor, as
in the Havelok. Heniy II, when attacked by his sons,
is called a eeli olde 'man. In p. 94 the word may bear
either meaning. We see for the first time in p. 3 the
Snperlative Adjective employed like a Substantive ; hi
dadt here bat (they did their beat).
Among Prononns, the old he hwa (qoisquis) of 1220,
is changed into he that ; he that swteneth laneee, haveth
the nnne, p. 84. The as (as in St. Juliana) is used as a
B«latiTe ; in p. 5 comes Ihulke hous at he was inne ihore ;
again in p. 39, ynowi lu to thvlke daye (qnod spectat
ad). When wefieethephra8e(p. 43),som(nna8)ufAaf
424 Old and Middle English.
wole teUe^ we perceive how the old oZ OAxd sum, answers to
onr one aiid aU. We find a new phrase for the Latin
non is qvi ; lie nas noj;t the inan that wolde ^c, p. 111.
In p. 95 comes six ^er a/nd a month ; an had split into
two forms ; and of these we should have expected one^
not a, here. The Old English form of expressing time,
nti wees Uvd gear^ is changed (an imitation of the French)
into this was tene ^er after that §^c. p. 95. We can under-
stand how our ' a fortnight ' sprang up, much earlier,
when in p. 123 we find a/n eipe dayes. In p. 98 comes
the tueye of hem, (the pair of them) ; here the Numeral
seems to stand for a Noun.
Among the Verbs are found phrases like hreke prisoun,
cry him milce (mercy), set hond on (attack), set sames
(the appointed Psalms, p. 54), his hurte hvm jpf ^i,
p. 60 ; we can now only say, ' his heart misgave him
that.' There are also hit faith to {he (te decet) ; taiketm
(procedere, p. 69), nom a/n honde (suscepit, p. 4) heo
com of gentyl blod, hold thi mouthy the sonne (sun) is over-
cast. In p. 98 comes a phrase common enough among
us now, but which is an evident translation of the French
vous savez; Archehischop ich am, ^e wite, as toeZ cuhe; our
you know is in our time a never-ending expletive. In
p. 113 we hear that the monks woke a corpse ; this is ft
rare instance of a Weak Verb taking a Strong Perfect ;
it is put here for the sake of the rime.
As to Adverbs : we see forasmoche as, an Englishing
of powr autaM que ; )m mi^t as wel heo stille, p. 49 ; heu
hit ever hifaUe, p. 79, hence our shortened however, A
new Adverb is formed from brad (this survives in Brad'
ford), ahrod (late) ; ahrod (foris) came from the Span-
Middle English: Reparation. 425
dinATian; 'to noise abroad,' and 'to traTel abroad,'
mean tsij different things. It is seldom that we
compound a with an Adjective in this ^Bhion ; with
SabstantiTea it is different. The first hint of onr
' follow ap' is in p. 18 : the friends of a murdered man
swdfe up Iwtn (the morderer) ; this v/p began now to
be often tacked on to Yerlw ; it is a Scandinavian
usage.
As to Prepositions: ihe fo is employed as in the
French deferer a ; tbmde to al that hoU ehureke wolde,
p. 28. Another French idiom is, aryved at Sandwych,
p. 93 ; nothing can show more forcibly how pl^nly the
French d (ad) and the English ai are bnt two forms of
one old word. In p. 63 is, the Kinget m^rt were at
him; a new phrase marking hoatilify,
A word, common to ns and the Datoh, is fonnd
in p. 5; Beoket'a mother, wandering about London
. and nnable to speak English, is called 'a tnopiMh
beet.'
In the Life of St. Brandan, we see herfeti (messiB)
become hofrveH, which stands for what we now call
Autvmn. In p. 2*i, we hear of hvliet blowing ; can onr
bvUy come from this ? It is the Western form of IxBlg,
belloais. An is pared down to a, for a Godet name often
comes. We see fur ire (fire iron), p. 30 ; fiehes, p. 21,
are said to float at one hepe (in a mass) ; hence onr
* strnck all of a heap.' In p. 30 we hear of an otter's
hynder fet and his forthere fel, (fore-feet,) expressions
altogether new. In p. 24^ a mountain is said to bom
gtron^.
In Mr. Fnmivall's Lives of the Saints, we may
426 Old and Middle English.
remark the disappearance of the e in )>e befoi« a Yowd,
as pen* (the air) ; Cazton was fond of this usage. The
words tmrafpe (ira) and wrap (iratns) are distinguished
in p. 98. The old Swmersete is now written Somandey
p. 49, where many other connties are mentioned. Tlie
WUtonesohire^ Slohschire^ and Dunholme of 1260 now
become WUteschire^ Schropschyre^ and Durhcum* Tbe
Kaiser of the Ancren Biwle is written Oezar^ p. 113 ;
the former term was confined to the office, the latter to
the family name ; the c must have been in the seoood
instance taken from the French original of this poem.
The n is inserted, when Iptinge (fdlgnr) is seen as
Upnmgey in p. 117. The h is cast out, for clemde is
written for cUvihed, in p. 51. The n at the end is
clipped, for we find gredire (gridiron), p. 65 ; the old
gescoten is pared down to schet, oar Participle shot, p. 118.
Serin now becomes schriuy p. 47.
Among the Substantives, we see one English woid
encroaching upon its synonym in p. 80 :
' In ano]>er half of ))e chuiche, al in ])o]7er Me,^
The former of these Nouns was soon to drop in this
sense. The old Plural of cu (vaoca), c^, is still used
in the North ; but we find a new Plnral of the trae
Southern pattern in p. 53, hyn ; a third Plural, cov;h
was yet to come ; all three Plnrals are still used in onr
isleudd ; this instance, I think, is something quite by
itself. It may be, that men thought they might talk
of hine^ since they already used the Plural swive. There
is another most pronounced Southern form, eirmonger
(egg-monger), in p. 45 ; Caxton's tale about eir and
Middle English: Reparation. 427
ejps, nearly two himdred years later, is well known.
There is the notm nuue (error), p. 107; and the ex-
presEiiona neete h-uaie (sweetheart), p. £1 ; jiiti his
maeehe, p. 59 ; -menie a moder child (mother's son),
p. 104. In p. 83 comes gode un^, addressed to a.
woman ; nothing now mora enrages a female in the
witness-box than to be addieseed by the opposing
counsel as ' my good woman.' In p. 95 St. Katherine
addressee a most bloodthirsty tyrant as gode vmn,
something like onr ' my good fellow,' In p. 71 we hear
of gode men and tme ; here true bears the meaning of
honegttis as in the Peterborongh Chronicle; a true man
is opposed to a thief. In p. 63, we first light on our
gattliche (ghastly) ; this word, nnlike ghotlly, has never
changed its first vowel, and comes from agaelen (terrere).
In p. 94 is Qod' almipie-ei spouse ; so confused had our
inflexionB now become, that the Adjective, and not &e
Substantive, here takes a Genitive form.
There are such new phrases as the li^t vim oute ; he
niakede moehe of gode reule, p, 35 ' ; moehe ajen his untie ;
hit fader were belere hahbe, &c., p. 109 ; like Shakes-
pore's ' you were best go,' where the Pronoun is in the
Dative. In p. 53 oomes \e valey ferdotuie ; we should
now say 'down there.'
As to Frononns : the sharp distinction between )>»
and je, made in Lincolnshire about this time, had
not yet found its way to the Severn; in p. 59 and in
p. 91 a superior nses both pit and ^oure in one line, when
addrassing an inferior. The Virgin tells the Devil,
> This phtBse oomea io TTQdala's vsrnoD of St. Luke, Tii. 2.
'thou beast, your power :b too great,' p. 59. In p. 114
gum on replaces the old «uni man. In p. 80 we he&r tliat
BD rain fell, to distnrb a manes mad ; here man, with the
Indefinite Article prefixed, stands for aliquiti this is
something new. In p. 50 comes, no pe wars him tiat;
we shonld now say, 'he was not the worse,* altering tiie
As to Verbs : we see find out, hou gop pig T makA
hire mid eiUde, kov, tehal ic do (valere), p. 97 ; hence our
' bow do yon do P ' In p. 105 the phrase it be is used
as a kind of expansion of eisi ; gumme pe^ hit beo fevf.
The Terb gtoear, when used of a fatare event, goTenu
an Accnsative, hit dep he hadde inoore, p. 116 ; we also
find in p. 51, bispeke hit dep, a new sense of tbii
Verb. We know Person's clever bat nnfair lines,
beginning.
The OermaDS in Oieek
Are sadly to aeek.
In p. 78 we hear of the Devil, noping to siehs (seek)
he nas (non defuit). Oar phrase 'cast np ooooants'
is foreshadowed in p. 77, eaite hig num&re. In the same
line draw gets a new meaning, ' draui figures ; ' this is a
Scandinavian sense of draw. When St. Dnnstan wu
enraptured in p. 39, he sat as he were ynoms ; this is &«
first hint of onr modem numh, coming &om the old
mwBon (capere).
Among Prepositions, we find, take erisample bi, lake
€hd to witnegg, for nought, no love bituene hetn, hi wen
Mpe (apon) him.
In p. 83 tiie old d, slightly changed, begins to be
Middle English: Reparation. 429
used as on Affirmative ; a qneetioa is asked, and tbe
answer is aje, gin (aye). Oar ugh of disgust: is seen
as ou in p. 115.
We find vrriek, onr wriggle, in p. 36 ; it is akin to a
Dateh word. Sbakespere talks of poshed eorpsea ; this
oomeB &oin the Scandinavian fosik, fonnd in p. 98.
In Sejn Julian, (published by tbe Early Engljah
Text Society), we see mane (mednlla), «trupe her ntJced,
make ife tigne of fe cr&is, and tresies.
Tbe liiie of St. Margaret was published by tbe
Early English Text Society ; the version of the year
1295 may be found in p. H, a wonder^ contrast to the
version pnt forth ninety years earlier. We find in p. 25
seh^ (ores) ; in p. 27 is chui (elige), and in p. 28 rufe
(misericordia), just as we now pronounce these three
words. In p. 29 is atom (domi), just as we now slur
over the h of tbe second word ; the Scandiuavians said at
hiin. In p. 32 comes asbmed, long afterwards inserted by
Tyndale in the Bible; it is a compound of the English
aeUmdian and tbe French estontwr. In p. 30 the French
cacche becomes catehe, with the t in the middle. The
proper name Laurens, in p. 24, foUowe the French and
not tiie Latin form ; the name Stevene does just the
reverse. We see the phrase, the hlod ran hi sb-emeg j
this is a new meaning attached to 6t. The use of the
of in phrases like of age is fnrUier extended; in p. 29
comes a ■man of mi ttrengpe. Do, attached to another
Verb, was becoming very common ; as ptt do*i lede
(ducis).
From the same Manuscript comes a Treatise on
Science, published by Mr. Wright, p. 132. Sdr (canus)
430 Old and Middle English.
becomes hor (hoar) ; / replaces h in Jwi/ (per), as it did
before in f o^, J>o/. We see, in p. 138, a seeming pre-
ference of French to English endings; swearer and
tvaJcer become sweriere and wakiere, Robert of Olon-
cester, the probable author of this treatise, has howicf
(bowyer) in his Chronicle ; this Gloucestershire crotchet
comes out again in Tyndale, who sometimes writes
lawear (lawyer) ; Chancer has man of law. The Western
Poet speaks of his forehead as his for^top^ p. 137 ; our
seamen use the word in another sense. In p. 139, the
phrase comes taipiime fourti dayes and in lasse ; here
the Substantive is not repeated after lasse^ an instance
of English conciseness. In p. 140 the soul gop to gode^
that is, * to heaven ; ' here the Adjective stands for a
Substantive. On the other hand, souls may heo in Upere
weye (be in a bad way), p. 140 ; this is an early in-
stance of a phrase common now. We know Pope's line
ending with all that, meaning * all such things ; ' this is
foreshadowed in p. 133 ; many vices are named, and we
are told that a good man may cleanse himself of aUe
}ndke. Tyndale has often put in our Bible the corrupt
shined (micavit) as well as the rightful shone ; schgfide
is seen in p. 133. The Verb begin is followed by an
Accusative in p. 132 ; ich wole higynne pe names. We
find huttoky akin to the Dutch houty and sUib of ire
(massa), which has puzzled the wise.
We now tnm to Robert of Gloucester's Chronicle,
published by Hearne. We may safely call it a trans-
lation from the French, when we see such forms as the
March (Mercia), Picards (Picts), Daneis (Danes), fe
Londreis (Londoners), Fountfreit (Pontefract, Pdmfret),
Middle English: Reparation. 431
p. 505; Mvhert de Burgh is altered into Hubert de Born,
p, 523. The Fi-ench par (where ab would have been
nsed in Latin for the agent) is Englished hj pora in
p. 271, The original author bad to explain in two
long lines the meaning of the old word Afehptg, as
applied to Edgar, p. 354. Homage is quite wrongly
tomed into mankede, not manrede, p. 421. The poor
translation, ^0e for vition, is seen in p. 355. It is in
this poem that we first find the habit of opposing the
word Santons to Kormans, p. 363, thongh after all
Englith, not Baaons, is the nsnal phrase employed. The
8axott* and the Englya»e both alike wage war on tlie
Britons in p. 225. As to Ejiglisch (lingoa Anglica), we
are told in p. 125, that fe Saxaws speche it was, and
porw hem yeome yt ys ; jnst what King Alfred says, if
Te wonid only believe him.
The letter a replaces e in the proper name '^ame-
moupe, Yarmouth in the Isle of Wight, p. 164, thongh
the old spelling is kept in p. 227; a replaces <b, for
cemete (emmet) becomes amet, our ant (formica) ; there
are also grot and brak, as in lAyamon. Au is found In
aid, which is no longer written awel or iU ; we find both
Mold and Maud, the short of Matilda, The e replaces
y, as in Weltte (Welsh) for Wyliae ; gle stands for gleow
(gaudium). The i or y comes in often; at p. 370 we
see the proper name Oecyly, which we now call cither
Oiody or Cecil. The y or t slips in before Vowels in Teu-
tonic words, as we saw in the L^ends of the Saints ;
in p. 416 comes the Verbal Noun bodyynge, our boding •
in p. 541 is howiar, our bowyer ; we need not derive this
ending from the French ; it is one of the Severn coontr^
432 Old and Middle English.
forms. The o often supplaQts t», as in Layamon's
Second Text; it stands for 6 in toorrede (pngnavit);
there is also con for ken (scit), p. 364 ; hence * to con a
lesson ; ' 0 stands for eo, as ssoppe (shop) for suoppa^
p. 541 ; it stands for au, as Morisse for Maurice^ p. 516.
The u supplants i, as in Wurcester ; we stiU keep the
old sound of the u in this proper name ; Paul is writ-
ten Poul. We see the curious compromise between the
Southern u and Northern yori that makes us write gwM,
hmld, and such words; in this Poem we haye Jw/r
(ignis), pruyd (superbia), and Bruyt (Bmte). This
usage was continued by the author of Piers Plough-
man, another Western writer. Hugo is now written
Hue f the ue standing for eu\ a proof how fondly England
clung to her old sound eow^ the French iou. In p. 116
Layamon's ywong is pared down to ]>on^.
As to Consonants : the / or v is cast out of afm
(vesper), which is seen as ene in p. 394, Holy Thore*s
em. We see the old targynge in p. 207, and the new
tarie (morari) in p. 109 ; Tyndale was fond of this
word. The g is moreover thrown out in neyde (neighed)
from the old hncdgcm^ and in ninteriej where the first
syllable has replaced nigon. The h is cut away from
the old toh, which is now written tou (tough), p. 175 ;
the South no longer pronounced the guttural at the end
of words. The old rruioa (socius) becomes mate,
p. 586, just as we find both condicio and conditio in Old
Latin ; the relationship of tfimvulus and ctmmlus is well
known. The ^ is dropped in the middle of Norfmc,
which now becomes Norwiehe ; forftoeard is seen as for-
wcardf p. 17, and it may, in our days, be often heiurd
Middle English: Reparation. 433
prononnced farrad. The nune we now call Etketheri is
seen as EyHryt, p. 238. The iat«rch&iige beinreen I and
d is seen in p. 447, where the OardoU of p. 4 is written
Carloyl. The I is sometimeB cast out, for pilk (iate)
and Walter become ]nke, p. 27, and Water, p. 563. The
final n hss been clipped in tme Soathem &shion in a^e
(itenun), p. 548 ; on the other hand, yreatef (minatnr)
is first seen as yretnep, p. 457. In Proper Names, we
tad b^nn to follow French rather than Latin ; SergiuB
is pared down to Sergy, p. 255. We also see Jude, Nel
(Niel), Qemee (James, p. 534), Oeorge, Bamahe, Uinfray.
King Biohard's enemy was Dnke of Ostrich, not Avtlria.
There are forma of English places aa yet new to English
poetry, as Boucegbre, Exetre, Brittotoe, HartipUchire, Qla,8~
it/nbttry. Nolhyngam has lost the », which used to stand
before her first n ; this alteration may be seen in Latin
Charters of the foregoing Gentnry. Gmunfebrt^^e becomes
Camhrvgge, p. 6, thongh the old form lasted a hundred
years longer. In p. 44 the Poet explains why Ltide's
town is now slightly changed ; tm clepe^ it London, fat
y» lifffer in pe mouji. Theee last six words give a cine to
the reason of tbe alterations in many an English word.
Armorica is called pe latse Breteyne, p. 95, and is held by
Brii<m«i. The old Burh becomes Petresbont, p. 283. We
hear of Ih/vytei (Devizes), p. 448 ) in p. 523 this becomes
The Vise. The old Eadgyf, which had already been mnch
mangled in Domesday Book, is written Edyfe, p. 331.
A man named Sobelcin was hanged not long before the
battle of Lewes, p. 544 ; Halberi must have been very
early pared down to Ho&. All Saints' Church in Oxford
is called Alle Halwen, p. 541 ; this old Genitive Plural,
'»•
:t
I
4 >'■'.
' r
'^ hart o/l
poem we see
'eminine. 5
^*»-»». p. 109.
«* out in p. jj
^'M formed fit
^^'^oan.eso,
*'J'.mei,thonJ
n ^«^
^ P* -io aaoiis ;« ^
Middle English: Reparation. 435
seen in p. 305. In p. 266, King Alfred leama the
alphabet ; he cou)« y» aheae, a phrase used hj Tyndale
later. There are such phntses aa Tiente (take) kerte ; oute
of hom and hovs, p. 375 ; these noims we now transpose ;
fot folc (infantry) ; smoke is pnffed against the heathen
ri/p in her owe (their own) tep, p. 40?. In p. 541 comes
a phrase dear to Tyndale, men viere atte mete (at meat).
In p. 555, Sir Edward grants a garrison Uf and lime. A
mortel wonnd is translated defes wiynde in p. 49 ; Lord
Uacanlay, in his Lays, called it a death wound.
Among Adjectives, we find Ure (vacnns), p. 81 ; it is
carious that this old word shonld have died ont of
England, except in the Sonth West, after 1310 ; it may
still be heard in the months of Somersetshire peasants.
In p. 119 a »ely wenehe is opposed to a lioli prechour ;
sehj here may perhaps bear the new meaning atulttu. In
p. 95 comes an gixti \ou»and gode ; we should now make
good the second word. In p. 393, a Prince borrows a
hnge sum of money, and pat was emndel stare, like onr
' coming it strong.' In p. 430 a girl is described as a
fcii jw old, a wholly new phrase. Bold pe more comes in
p. 566, because pe bolder wonld not salt the rime.
As to Pronouns : yl refers to a Mascnline Antecedent
ID p. 411 ; a Prince thanks it too mach ti-oublo to be
King, and xayde fat he nolde he yt nop. In p. 420 comes,
* he was pulke pat ; ' this Sonthem pidke (that one) is
convenient here, as preventing pat coming twice over.
In p, 409, the Crusaders helde Iter Ester (kept their
Easter), a new sense of the Pronoun. In p. 435 some
tijme is nsed where we shonld say ' once npon a time ; '
tbe mm and an were synonyms of old. In p. 561 comeR
436 Old and Middle English.
viani an o}fer, a new form. In p. 532 we read of mucle
folc ; the phrase mtich people is kept in oar Bible. In
p. 509, we see ifW^t for nait ; here the first stands for
onr not, the last for oar nought ; the old word had else-
where been split into two different forms, as two shades
of meaning had now to be represented. In p. 449
comes * they knew not wat to do',' the French qiie fain
is preferred to the Old English idiom of the SubjuDC-
tive mood. A new French fashion of dating tiise
comes in ; we see in p. 363 the phrase : in ye j/ere o/
Grace a Ipousend and syoee and syxty ; here the Cardinal
nnmber stands for the Ordinal ; the Old English way
of reckoning by winters was being dropped^ In p. 995
comes the Dorsetshire hii were at on ; the very Sontheru
phrase, ' to set at one/ is in our Bible.
Among the Verbs, we may remark many new French
idioms. We find bicomen fr&iides gode, Ood yt schyld me,
p. 58, (Dien me defende) ; ^eve hym hatail ; smyte a
hatayle ; do hataile ; to segge ssortlyche (shortly to say) ;
sette on fuyre ; lie pleyede king ; here armes ; myn herte
ys on hym. Some Verbs undergo alteration ; thus in
p. 29 a man falls from a great height and pitches ; tbis
last verb had up to this time been transitiTe ; much in
the same way, men are said to spi-ead about, in p. 288 ;
withdraw is intransitive in p. 388. Set also loses its
active sense in p. 400, where two hosts sette togadere in
fight. On the other hand, to swear a many is in p. 348 ;
to turn your hand to, is in p. 101. We see, it was vorj)
ipult (proclaimed) ; it com to pes (peace) ; they adde the
stretes tier (they had, i.e. made, the streets empty), p. 541.
We now talk of mooring a ship, but in p. 409 the verb
Middle English: Reparation. 437
IB used of woods, which are mored rtp (rooted np). A
town is bamed al adouH in p. 294 ; up and doKi>t are both
used in our day to ezprees inteneitj-, aa ' to knock np,'
and 'to kill down.' In p. 354, Harold made hys wey
(attained his end). We see a cnrions proof of the con-
fusion between the 7erbal Nona and the InfinitiTC in
eri, for in p. 291 we bear of a token poJ to comyng teas;
it aboald be to comen. (veutaram). There is a strange
idiom in p. 343 ; he mat viel ymg to he k'jng ; it is a great
advance on Orrmin'a ' good enough to do a thing.' In
p. 419 we hear of Rnfiia' end ; then comes the moral,
giich yt y» to he tsretoe (a shrSw) ; here a thing seems
to be omitted after the sticA. Onr easy idiom ' he swore
he shonld hang ' comes in p. 448 ; no that follows the
first verb here. The Verb is altogether dropped, to
save a repetition ; in p. 523 foar nobles ' fonnd knights,
ech of horn on' (each of them one). This idiom is rather
hazy, and is not easy to constme at first sight. One of
our Biblical phrases is seen in p. 515, «o it was that ^c,
' it was so, that.'
Among Adverbs, the nse of a« is mnch developed.
The old ewa rwa, had been used of yore, when a notion was
to be ezpressed, illustrated by examples ; this svja. twa
now beoomcB as. Thus we hear, in p. 359, that the
Gonqneror built abb^s, as Teoheshunj imd Oeeneye. As
is farther used to English the French comme ; in p. 37
Cordelia takes the kingdom as pe rijp eyr. In p. 216
a hero carries oS a man's body, ded as yt icim. We
know the phrase, ' as at this time,' in our Collect for
Ohristmas-day ; something like this is seen in p. 552,
' they made peace on the twelfth of May, as in a
438 Old and Middle English.
Tywesday. In p. 56 comes 'on a hill, as (nbi) many
rocks were ' ; another mannscript has tJier for the above
05 ; it is easj to see how thereas and whereas arose. Yet bad
hitherto been used of time ; it is now employed to restrict
an idea : in p. 35 we see ' he 'is come with bat one man,
and ^et yilke in fehle wede.* We find oversore (nimis),
which replaces the old overswipe ; also asyde, Wei ynou
(p. 284), means valdefeltx. One of our intensive forms
is out ; this we see in p. 121, ' they forsook the king al
out ' (utterly) ; we find in this poem seek out and hwy ovL
We see more 8ou)^ used as an Adverb in p. 386. King
Alfred^s clce^ie (omnino) becomes clanliche at p. 100.
We see up and doun^ p. 552, but there is another form
in p. 333, where a man ]>reu up to doun (feU upside
down). This is the first hint of a new English phrase,
due to the West Country, which is further developed in
1320 as upsodoun ; the scribe most likely did not under-
stand the phrase : it also occurs in Seyn Julian. The
preu here, like the Verb pitch, becomes intransitive.
The word hid now answers to the Latin quin ; ho^
mype we bote be overcome ? p. 306 ; here the French ^
must have had an influence. Wheii answers to qwmifm
in p. 47 ; wen we hep of on hlod.
As to Prepositions : o/stands for considering \ 'strong
of her age ' is in p. 110. A law phrase is seen in p. 510,
to hold vor him and vor his eirs.
The Interjection Ow^ Lord, pe noble folk ! comes in
p. 56 ; the common O here got the sound of the French oa;
the meaning is, * 0 Lord, what noble folk/ &c. This
Lord is still a favourite Interjection with us ; it seems a
translation of the French Dam (dominus).
Middle English : Reparation. 439
Among strange worda, haA appears, as in the North.
Orderio Vital had long before written about sterilensii'
vumeta ; we now find a certein tume of sterlings, p. 563 ;
the word ia said to come from Germany.
The Sonthem Yersion of the Castel of have (Philo-
logical Society) dates from aboat this time ; it resembles
Robert of Gloncester in forma like pruide and ktiinde ;
we here find welfare, p. 9, outriht, p. 13.
Other poems of this date are in the other Volume
of the Society, after the Pky of the Sacrament. In
p. 16 we see destrei (destroy) ; the oy in English, as in
French, had the sonnd, sometimes of the French i, Bome-
times of the French on or owe. The Verb loh, in p. 14,
has the sense o!ferire.
The long poem of the Alexander (Weber's ' Metrical
Romances,' Vol. I.) seems to hare been translated from
the French abont the year 1300. We may safely refer
its translator to some shire near the Greati Sundering
line. The dialect is mostly Southern ; but certain
phrases, such as sket (cito), that (iste), they dispises,
p. 70, tU (ad), han (habeut), bigge (not hugge), unmis-
takeably smack of the North. The tninslator seems to
have lived not far from Gloncestershire, for he repeats
the new form lewyn (tscceb) ; on the whole, Warwick-
shire seems the most likely place of his abode. We
seem to have a foreshadowing of Sbakespere in words
like horeson, p. 41, and in p. 52 comes
Swithe mury bit is in belle.
When the burdes (beardB) wawen alle.
As to Vowels : a replaces eo, as darling ; also e, for
440 Old attd Middle English.
snacche (rapere) replaces the snecche of the Aiicren
Biwle; also t, as in mangle, p. 303 (in the medley),
hence onr vningle'fuatigle, E replaces y, as 'he had
yment ' (in animo hahnerat) ; here the old verb myntm
jnfets confosed with moenan (significare). The cole (ocd-
dere) of the North makes way for kill^ p. 159. The Old
English frea (dolor) becomes throwe in p. 78 ; in the
North it is thraw^ following the Scandinavian frd. The
oi has the sound of the French ou ; for hu (puer) stands
in p. 45 for what was called in the Havelok hoy.
As to Consonants: we find 'the upper Ynde' in
p. 285 ; this of old wonld have been ufor ; the old fonns,
upplica or up-flor^ may have had some influence on the
new term. Overton still survives as the name of many
a village. There is something like this in p. 272, when
the Adverb down is supplied with a Comparative douner;
there are such new forms as roughs laugh, trough. The
<jh seems not to have been sounded in the middle of a
word ; we find tighed, (ligatus,) loonyghing, (habitatio).
The expletive he gan with the Infinitive now becomes
can; he can chaunge (mutavit), p. 50. C turns into i,
for the old strcec (directus) is seen as streyte^ whence
comes onr straightway ; this form must not be confounded
with the strait gate, coming from the French. The n is
clipped at the beginning of noedre (ang^is), and adder
appears. As in the Tristrem, the Infinite in en changes
into ing, a confusion with the Verbal Noun ; in p. 28
comes withoute doyng ; in p. 284 comes withotUefi lesyng.
This is an advance on the huten ewt to leosen in the
Legend of St. Katherine, at p. 259 of my work ; the
French sans, governing the Infinitive, was evidently the
Middle English: Reparation. 441
model in all theee cases. The r is inserted in tcWl,
which is now seen as thTxlX ; some say follering instead
oi following. When we see a form like icrike (vagire),
it is easy to imagine that the very common change of
the r into a 10 would long a^rwards prodace aguedk.
The s replaces the r when loren becomee lo»t ; the old
loron (amisemnt) remains in p. 152, The e is added to
words ; amidde becomes amiddet, onr amidat.
We find such new Substantives as brother-in-lam,
a bowe-ichote, ciiS-m^n, p. 71. BriMebridge is formed,
jost as ipilbred, had been. What had hitherto been
Jvpiter in England is now called Jotai, p. 18. The
old fdawe is used in the two widely different senses
that still prevail: the abnsive one is in p. 172, 'Fy,
felaw, tbeof;' the friendly one is in p. 115, 'He was
ryght good felatee' A noble top becomes in p. 74
a top ofnobleys; a strange constmction. The oldpawa
(pavo) is seen as jpecoch ; and calketrappe (caJthrop)
appears. Doppe, the bird named by us from its dipping
or ducking, is mentioned in p. 239 ; tboagh the form
ende (in Latin, anat-is') lasted a hnndred and forty years
longer. The Verbal Nonns come in fast ; in hit doyng is
in p. 311. As in the Cursor Mnndi, they govern the
Accusative, bearing witness to English conciseness. This
case may now be Flnral aa well as Singular; in p. 57
we hear that thar wot tteden lesyng, losing of steeds, In
p. 325 we are told of dn/ffor the body heoriing, ' burying
of the body.* The Accusatire Absolute is often found
in this poem, aa she rod, theo keved al nakid, p. 13.
We see fine stand before another Adjective, jnst as
we use it ; in p. 204, fyne hardy men. In p. 263 we
442 Old and Middle English,
bear of a cite, on of the tiohlest in Cristianite \ this is a
new constraction of the Superlative.
Among the Pronouns, we see the Nominative put for
the Accusative in Ypray ye, inaister, in p. 22 ; the French
vovs was here translated.
As to Numerals : hundred takes a Plural for the first
time; tlie tayl they hit of hmiArodia fyve^ p. IBo.
Among the Verbs, the use of have is mnch developed.
In p. 55 comes they hodden leovere steorve, they had
rather die ; here have reminds us of the Latin imhi est,
and the leovere is a Nenter Adjective. The use of the
iXi-c ^c^ Infinitive, an idiom so contraiy to Old English, is
now further extended ; it follows Adjectives, as tvorthy
to he hongid, p. 75. In p. 47 a lady grawntid to heo spoused,
a verj French idiom ; in Old English "pat with a Past
tense would have been used after the grauntid^ The verb
do is freely used ; in p. 11 comes do (put) to theo sioeord;
in p. 84 is do you honour. The corruption of the Second
Person Singular of the Strong Perfect goes on; in p. 164
we find thow snwtest, instead of the old smote ; so peculiar
a phrase proves the translator to have lived not fiEU* to
the South of the Great Sundering Line. In p. 154
cleave (findere) makes its rightful Strong Perfect cfe/;
in p, 151 its Participle is corrupted into the Weak
clevyd ; we have happily kept the old cloven alive. There
are the new Verbs bestir, hewray, overthrow.
As to Adverbs : we have seen Orrmin's forr ^
ncmess (for the purpose) ; this sense now slides into/oJ"
the occasion', in p. 20 a lady sees something, and is
agrisen (frightened) for the nones. The old hwil, as at
Colchester a hundred years earlier, takes the usual
Middle English : Reparation. 443
modern e» at tbe end and becomes vshiUt, (wbilst). In
p. 249 appears here-to-fore ; we aUo find ah fer as, aloud,
and aside. jlZon^ is now used as an Adverb, p. 141. The
old cwielieJie is p&rad down, as in the Tristrem ; the gates
weoren qwyk ytischut, p. 116.
There are new uses of Prepositions. ' To bid (ask)
o^aman;' 'the place shon of brightness;' hence our
' smack of,' ' savoor of.' In p. 270 comes the to of com-
parison ; ther n'yg to hym no best so feloun ; hence onr ' he
was a fool to this fellow.' We follow the French in the
idiom, p. 182 ; this was to Qrece a sory fall. To had from
the earlieet times the meaning of secuytdicrri ; we now find
in p. 307, folk that beon to yow honour. In p. 41 is fy
<m the, and in p. 79, to tume on Sarie. In p. 69 is »eo»
him in face, which is veiy tVench ; as is, teZ me, bylweone
the and me, p. 68, We find word for word, to-fore alle.
The old idiom wonld Imve been ' before his horse's feet
and nnder : ' this is now changed to onr freer nsage,
tofwe and tmder his horses fete, p. 136. The old inter-
change between of and on comes ont, when we see
afhutigred changed into anhangred ; a phrase inserted
by Tyndale in our Bible.
The Int«ijection so ho! so ho ! may be found in
p. 154.
There are many works, akin to the German, now
first cropping np in onr island : snch are girl, mane, pin,
scoff, shingle, top (tnrbo), and the Verbs cower, ctirl, dab,
plwnj), scrub, stamp, rotle (rnstle) ; there is also hedlingo
(pneceps). The word dally appears for the first time.
The new Scandinavian words are fling, raggedy
tumble, sturdy, show.
444 Old and Middle English,
The Celtic words (we are not very far from the Welsh
border) are, hicker, hoistotis (boisterons), watly hog, gun;
this last was most likely some engine for darting Greek
fire.
I may here point out that it is seldom that we can
express one idea by four words, representing the four
races that have ruled our island since Boman times.
But foTjplangere we may nse, (though there are shades
of difference) either the Welsh wail^ the English moon,
the Danish ehriekj or the French cry ; this is indeed a
wealth of expression. We can often find three repre-
sentative words of this kind, but seldom four ; either the
Welsh or the Danish synonym is commonly wanting.^
The source of derivation is sometimes puzzling. Thus,
our word cost may come either from the Welsh costiaWf
from the Icelandic kosta, or from the French coustet \
there is, moreover, a Low German hosten ; it is the same
with j^ot.
We have now traced the three periods of Middle
English for 180 years : we have seen its CultivatioD,
fi^m 1120 to 1220 ; its Neglect, from 1220 to 1280 ; and
its Reparation, by translators of French works, from
1280 to 1300: We have seen the old Inflections pared
away at Peterborough in 1160 ; the disuse of Old English
compounds, to be remarked in East Anglia, about 1200 ;
the rush of French words into English, abont 1280, has
yet to be explained. A greater contrast cannot be
imagined, than if we compare the Legend of St. Juliana
(1220), with the Havelok (1280).
' Bard, Makers Scald, Pdet, are something similar ; but the first
•comes to us from the Welsh through the Latin, and not directly.
Middle English : Reparation. 445 ■
Let a line be drairn from Whitby throagb Tork,
Shrewsbnry, and Hereford, to Weymouth. To the
Soatb and East of this line sprang up tbe mauy
idioms that we hare jnst coneidered ; all of which were
iu process of time to convei^ at London. The rough
chnrls of many a eliire were shaping the language, that
in the fulness of time was to be handled by Shakespere
and UOton ; while the better-educated priests were
traDsIating and bringing in French idioms, fresh from
the mini over the sea. A strange jumble of words and
idioms. Old English, Scandinavian, and French, goes to
form the New English that we now speak. About one
third of the changes arose in the Saxon shires, to the
South of the Great Sundering Line.' About two thirds
of the changes come from the shires that lie between
Colchester and York, 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
ore of such first-rate importance that they are worthy of
having a Chapter to themselves.* After his time there
came in but few new Tentonic changes in spelling and
idiom, such as thoso that had been constantly sliding
> I wish that the different idioms in FrsDCh and Garmiu coaid
be trsMd to thsir local 8onK«*, in man; an ontlTing nook. Here
is s work veil beStting tome patriotic scholar.
' llie Hercion Danelagh has clums upon architocb! as wall as
upon phik)logeTB. A rich treat aw&its the trareUei who shall go
from Northampton to Pet«lboroitgh and Stamford, and so to Hull,
turning now and then to the nght and left. Host of the noble
cbutchea be will «ee, in hia joomsj of 120 milet, date from the time
between 1260 and 1360.
446 Old and Middle English.
into onr written speech between 1120 and 1300. There
had been a fixed Standard of Old English, the lasfc traces
of which may be seen in King Hemy the Second's
Charter, about 1160. There was to be a fixed Standard
of New English, the first traces of which we shall find
in 1303. Bat between these two dates, there was no
Standard of English common to the whole land ; eyeiy
man spoke and wrote what seemed him good.^
' I return once more to the hard question of the Verbal Noom
in ing and the Infinitive at «;». I advise the reader to look care-
fully at page 269, at page 384, at page 389, at page 411, at page
441, and at page 466. Let him moreover rememoer the vast influx
ence exercised by translators from the French.
Tke Rise of the New English.
CHAPTER VI.
THZ BiaE OF THE NEW ENQLISB.
(1303-1310.)
We Iiare seen the coiraption of speech in the Mercian
Danel^h and East Anglia : a cormption more Btrikingly
marked there than in the shirea to the Soath of the Great
Snndering Line. We shall now weigh the work of a
Lincolnshire man who saw the light at Bourne within a
few miles of Butland, the writer of a poem begun in tho
year that Edward the First was bringing nnder hia yoke
the whole of Scotland, outside of Stirling Castle. It
was in 1303 that Robert of Bmnne (known also as
Bobert Manning) began to compile the Handling
Synne, the work which, more clearly than any former
one, foreshadowed the road that English literatnre was
to tread from that time forward.' Like moay other lays
of King Edward the First's time, the new piece was
a translation from a French poem; the Manuel des
Pech^B had been written abont thirty years earlier by
William of Waddington.* The English poem differs
in its diction &o)jn all the others that bad gone before
' This wofk, with its French origin&l, has been edited for tli«
Bazbnigh Clnb b; Mr. FnmiTatl.
* The date of Woddington'a poem is pretty well fixed bj & pauage
la page 24S (Boxbnrgh Club edition of the ffaiuilyng St/nnt), He
writes B tale in French, and his tcanBlstar says that the sad &Kii
referred to bapptnad ■ in the time of good Edward, Sir EeDiy'B son.'
448 Old and Middle English,
it; for it contains a most scanty proportion of those
Teutonic words that were soon to drop out of speech^
and it therefore stands in marked contrast to the
Cursor Mundi. On the other hand, it has a most
copious proportion of French words. Indeed, there are
so many foreign words, that we should set the writer
fifty years later than his true date had he not himself
written it down. In this book we catch our first glimpse
of many a word and idiom that were afterwards to lire
for ever in the English Bible and Prayer-book, works
still in the womb of Time. The new Teutonic idioms
that took root in our speech after this period were few
in number, a mere drop in the bucket, if we compare
them with the idioms imported between 1120 and 1300.
This shows what we owe to Robert Manning ; even as
the highest praise of our Revolution of 1688 is, that it
was our last. The Handlyng Synne is indeed a land-
mark worthy of the careMIest study. I shall give long
extracts from it ; and I shall further add specimens
of the English spoken in many other shires between
1300 and 1350. We are lucky in having so many English
manuscripts, drawn up at this particular time : the con-
trasts are strongly marked. Thus it will be easy to see
that the Lincolnshire bard may be called the Patriarch
of the New English, much as Cadmon was of the Old
English six hundred years earlier. We shall also gain
some idea of the influence that the Rutland neighbour-
hood has had upon our classic tongue.' This was
' Robert seems to haye been oooscious that he was an innovator,
for in p. 267 he asks foigiveness
For foole Englysshe and feble ryme,
Seyde onto of resiin many tyme.
The Rise of the New English. 449
remarked by Fuller in his time; and in our day Dr.
Latham tells ns that ' the labouring men of Hautingdon
and Xortbamptoti speak what is asnally called het^
EngEsli, because their Temacnlar dialect is most akin
to that of the standard wnters.' He pitches apon the
conntiy between St. Neote and Stamford aa the true
centre of literaiy English.' Dr. Gnest has pnt in a
word ibr Leicestershire, Mr. Freeman tells as (' Norman
Conquest,' Y. 543), that when very yonng he noticed
how little l^e common language of Northamptonshire
differed from Book English. Our classic speech did not
arise in London or Oxford ; evea so it was not in the
Papal Court at Borne, or in the King's Palace at
Naples, or in the learned Universiif of Bologna, that
the classic Italian sprang np with sudden and marretlous
growth.
The Handlyng Synne shows bow the different tides of
speech, flowing from Southern, Western, and Northern
shires alike, met in the neighbourhood of Bntland, and
all helped to shape the New English. Robert of Brnnne
had his own mother-tongue to start with, the Dano-
Anglian dialect corrupted by five generations since
our first glimpse of it in 1120. He has their peculiar
use of viman for the Latin ire, and other marks of the
East Midland. From the South this speech had bor-
rowed the chimge of a into o and c into cA (hence
Robert's moc^,' ec^, taififche, evrgch), of se into th, g
into u>, and o into ou. From the West came to him one
■ I visited Stamfonl in 1872, and found that the letter A -wm
RiuUy misiued in her Htraets.
I His moche wns need by good wri(«ra dovn to Elizabeth's time.
450 Old and Middle English,
of the worst of all our corruptions, Lajamon's Active
Participle in ing instead of the older form : Bobert leans
to this evil change, but still he often uses the old East
Midland Participle in and. With the North' Bobert has
much in common : we can see by his rimes that he
wrote the Danish fefew (p. 81) and rmjkel (p. 253),
instead of the Southern \&n, and mochyl, which have been
foisted into his verse by the Southerner who transcribed
the Poem sixty years later. The following are some of
the forms Robert uses, which are found, many of them
for the first time, in the Northern Psalter : ehtlder, fof,
ylJca, tane, ire, gatte, hauh, slagheter, handmaydenf lighten,
wrecchedy ahye, sle, many one, dounright, he seysj than
sweres, shy (coelum). He, like the translator of the
Psalter, delights in the form gh ; not only does he write
sygh, lagheteTy doghe, nyghe, neghbour^ but also hneugh
and na^heer (our knew and nowhere). This seems to
show that in Southern Lincolnshire, in 1303, the gk had
not always a guttural sound. He also sometimes dips
the ending of the Imperative Plural ; ' but he tunis the
Yorkshire thou has into thou hast. In common with
another Northern work, the Sir Tristrem, Bobert uses the
new form ye for the Latin iu ; he has also the new senses
given in that work to the old words smart and crom.
He employs a multitude of idioms, that we saw first in the
Cursor Mundi ; the same Danish influence was at work
in Yorkshire and in Lincolnshire. like his East Midland
brethren at Colchester and Norwich, he has no love for
Prepositional compounds. He holds fast to the speech
^ This is as great a change as if the Latin inteUigiU were to be
written iiitelUg.
TJu Rise of the New English. 45 1
of hia forefathers when writing words like yoZe, Idrh, til
loerre (pejus). For the Latin tifem and viucte he has both
same and yche, (probably written ylk,) both ky and keyn.
We can gather from his poem that Eng:land was soon to
replace jetJe (ivit) by went, o^er by seamd, sipe by time ; that
she was soon to lose her siaitke (valde), and to substitute
for it right and full : very is of rather later p«wth.'
Almost every one of the Teutonic changes in idiom,
distingoishing the New English from the Old, the speech
of Queen Yictoria from the speech of Hengist, is to be
found in Manning's work. We have had few Teutonio
changes since his day, a fact which marks the influence
he has had npon onr tongne,^ In his writings we see
clearly enough what was marked by Sir Philip Sidney
almost three hundred years later; 'English is void of
those cnmbersome differences of cases, genders, moods,
and tenses, which I think was a piece of the Tower of
Babylon's cnrse, that a man should be put to sohoole to
leome bis mother-tongae ; bnt for the nttering sweetly
and properly the conceit of the minde, which is the
ende of speech, that it hath eqnally with any other
tongue in the world.'* The Elizabethan knight ought
to have been well pleased with the clippings and parings
of the Edwardian monk.
As to his Vowels : Robert is inflnenced by the Scan-
' Tha idea of tuiUhe is kept in Papys's ' mighty merry,' asd cha
common pbnwe, ' yat be flmin heaT;.'
' lU, unJfJw, beltnij, tomthoia, t^ptrmoii, imUide U, byt and hyt,
he £1 being beaten, having beat beaten, oaing to thie, are out main
Tentonic clunseB since Mancing'a time.
■ Quoted b; !Uanh, Lectaret on EnglM Langitagt, p. 88.
452 Old atid Middle Englhh.
dinarian tradition, and sometimeB clips the a at tbe
beginning ; he thus makes eyse (oar nia) ont of atiyie,
p. 289 ; epistle loaen its first e, vhich retninds as of I
Orrmin. In p. 251 Robert replaces t by o ; the Verb |
' they vnleii ' beoomee ' they leote,' though another copj ,
of the work has the form wele. He also replaces a by
o ; Iddiitan (daz) is tamed into lodemian, something
like loadstar. We see net, and sometimes not (non),
instead of the Southern nout. In lady (domina) be
throws the accent upon the last syllable, as is so often
done in oar ballads :
For to be holde Jw feyrvst lady.— P. lOS.
In this piece, the y having lost its old sonnd, is constantlf
nsed for t, as in lady. The old Iteah (celsos) now becomtf
kyglie \ we keep the older sound in ' heyday of yonth.'
The M is used for other letters : we find »unn«r, not
scmer (citios) ; tug, not teogan (trahere) ; ry^icvt, not
rihtwis (jnstns). This last shows ns why the Dnke o(
York in 1452 wrote rigJdiioiis (Gairdner, ' Paston Let-
ters,' I. lixi), and why Tyndale, seventy years later still,
wrote righteous ; French words like plenteuovs had nn
infinence here. The hade (potoit) of East Anglia is now
spelt coude, p. 133 ; we have thmst an I into the middle
of this, from a fiilse analogy. The »om of the GnrBor
Mimdi is now written torow ; of conrse, the souid is
onchanged. The old /ol (stultns) is written /oyfa,
p. 94, thus agreeing with the Yorkshire ful in pro-
nunciation. The old teopa (decinue) is seen as JyK
p. 288.
There is mnch paring of Consonants. We see ihtut
Tlie Rise of the New English. 453
and khm( for oor sAouWegf and woitWesi; asondre and
afora replace older formB of tlieee words, the a, comiug
instead of on. The h, ts clipped, for he or ha. becomes a, in
Mrs. Quiokly'a style, Orrmin's forrfU (prseter) appears
asforhj/, p. 361. In p. 374 jtmfre is pared down to neere,
at the end of a line. Y felte (sensi) is in p. 380. We
Lave already seen leogan as tiig ; another form of the
word appears, to express dalliance :
\ai make]/ nat a mye Jie toye. — P. 2i6.
The Lindisfame Gospels, St. Lnke, p. 151, bad lotad vnsa
for perditus e»t ■ this Participle is now written loet, p. 94,
as in the Alexander. The old [m lure (perdidisti) is seen
as pou losUet in p. 373. There was stUI some nncertainty
abont the new sonnd for the hard g ; Bobert has both
eye and owe for timor, riming with seye and gawe. In
p. 208 gate (via) rimes with ^ate (porta). Bnmo, the
German who became Pope Leo in Hildebrand's early days,
is seen as Bmnyng, p. 286 ; Cazton, long afterwards, used
Broionyng as well as Bruyn for the bear. Hence comes
a well-known iBnglish Bnmame, The most startling of
of all oor clippings and parings is seen in p. 325, where
St. .^thelthiyth is shortened into St. Andre ; the poet
had donbtless knelt at her shrine on his way to Cam-
bridge. Still later, Botolphston was to be cat down to
Boston ; we know how we shorten words like Oholnion-
deley and Cxrenceeter.
There is moch to remark in the Substantives. The
Verbal Nonns are often repeated ; as J>e metmig (signi-
ficatio), p, 138, he made hyg endyrtg (mortans est), p. 200.
There are phrases like serving man, p. 28 ; inelk nU-pe
454 ^'^ ^^^ Middle English,
(milksop), p. 18, meaning a bag for milk ; a lioly wdf
clerk, p. 360, used of an ignorant priest. The Substan-
tive is dropped after the Participle, for le mart is Eng-
lished by pe dede, p. 74, and in p. 197 we hear of fe
dedys ryjjt ; we find the Passive Participle used in this
waj before the Conquest, as the accursed. We see tbe
true Old English idiom of time-reckoning, when, at
p. 154, de cine am esteit is turned into wcu hut fyf^
wyntyr olde. In p. 281 stands U7ito pat tyme tvslvemontk
end\ in Layamon's Second Text a would have oome
after the word tyme. The bench of Magistrates is fore-
shadowed in p. 171 ; je stywardes atv benche. The old
half now becomes behalf; on Qoddes behalve is in p. 281.
Score seems to get a new meaning, that of ratio, at
p. 346 ; apeke oute of shore. We see the cause tchy, so
often used by our lower orders, foreshadowed in gods
skyl why, p. 6; resun why, p. 131; these come in the
middle of sentences. In p. 276 stands at alle endes,
where we should now use the kindred phrase, at att
events. In p. 361 comes : ' I have shewede myn owne
lyfe, none oufer mannes y wyl dyscrye.* This Englishes
ma vie, ne mie autnie ; Robert's sentence becomes veiy
concise by dropping lyfe after mannes. In p. 86 we hear
of Loivdun toune, a continuation of the Old English
idiom used before the Conquest. In p. 194 is the lioo
Ne slepte onely a lepy wynke,
Eton Bucks is the name that used to be given to the
lads bred at King Henry the Sixth's renowned CoUege.
In the Handlyng Synne (p. 102), we see how the Old
English bucca (hircus) came to mean a dandy.
Tlie Rise of tlie New English. 455
, And of J>eBe berdrde buckt/i also,
Wyp hem self )>ey moche myBdo,
pat leve Orystyn meDii;8 Acyee, \
And haunte alle pe newe gjee ;
per whjljs pej hade )>at gjta on honde
Was neTBre grace ju pys lande.
These are Robert's own rimes ; for Waddington, wiiting
earlier, had not thought it needful to glance at the heard
movement, thongh he bore hard on the ladies and their
dresB. The Scandinavians nsed hokhi, mnch like onr
' old book,' ' old fellow.'
London thieves speak of their boot; as ewag. The
word of old meant nothing bnt a bag ; the connexion
between the two ideas is plain ; Bchoolboys still talk of
hogging their mates' goods.
pare wu a wjcche, and made a bagge,
A bely of le)iyT, a giete twagge. — Page 17.
A SnbstantiTe may be employed almost as an Inter-
jection. In p. 322, a man, in sore need, wants a
virtnons priest ; he calls oat, nsing no verb :
A preat I a prest of cleue lyfe I
Among the Adjectives, we see migproud, bostfal.
From pit6 is formed pitiful, and also pilifutnesB, which is
nowfonnd ; the &>Tmpitow (piteons) was nsed in Kent.
Eight is employed in a new sense in p. 359, 0 ry%t vyleyn !
something as we nse regular.
We have already seen the Old English god wer am!
rihtwu ; Bobert slightly alters this by inserting a before
both of the AdjectivfB ; ' a gode man and a ryjt stede.
feate,' p. 74.
456 Old and Middle English.
In Pronouns, we are stmck by the sharp distinctioii
now first drawn between fhoa, and ye ; the thou is used
by a husband to his wife, (alas for the age of chiyafay !)
as to a person beneath him ; the ye is used by a wife to
her husband, who is above her. * See the long dialogae
in p. 322. More than a hundred years before this time,
Nigel Wireker had complained of the English students
at Paris, who drank too much and were far too familiar
in speech :
Weueil et drinchail, necnon penona secunda ;
Hiec tria sunt vitiB quss comitantiir eos.^
That is, the English would not lay aside their
national and straightforward \ni, thouy for the polite
French vcms: The change was at length efFected hy
1303, and the distinction now made lasted for three
hundred years. In 1603, an ignorant Irish servant, we
are told, will tliow his master, and think it no offence.^
Coke told Raleigh on his trial that he ihou^ him.
Rather later, the Quakers held it wrong to make dis-
tinctions between persons, and they therefore thawed
every one, from the King downwards ; they clave to the
old Teutonic fashion, that had never been encroached on
down to 1200, and they made an earnest protest against
the Frenchified foppery of later times. King Alfred had
used fjeon like the Latin i$te, but always with a Substan-
tive following ; Robert uses yon by itself ; * Yole, is yone
Vj pS'ge ^ ' P- 13^ ; ^^ idiom is still heard in Lincoln-
shire. Our poet is fond of repeating a Pronoun after a
• Wireker, p. 56.
^ See Ellis' Letters, vol. I. let Series, p. 194.
il
TJie Rise of the New English. 457
Nona ; aa rere sopers, Jtey he ^., p. 226. The phrase oi
beo (qnamvia) had been used in the Ancren Biwle ; hyl
is now added in p. 241, and onr albeit is atiil alive. The
body of OlonceetierBhire is in foil use, aa eum body, p. 120.
We Bee fyrd and latl, p. 161 ; one or owpar, p. 205 ; one*
for ever, p. 300 ; one» or IvTyys, p. 263 ; see no more of him,
p. 341 ; one of fijs dayys, p. 105 ; this last is a thoronghly
French idiom. In p. 170 ia pey greve hym, alle pat fey
koM. In p. 324 comes a common idiom :
As to Verbs : the tkall ia employed in a new sense,
which lasted to Addison's day, and ia even now need by
those that affect qnaint speech. In p. 258 ia ' an old
fool skal become a dystowr, (a prater),' where the idea is
semper fit, or solet fieri; 'yon shall find so and so,' was
most common in the SeTcnteentb Century. In p. 334
comes every man shidde have po^l ; this Pluperfect Sub-
janctive seldom fonnd before, was now coming in. I
have already pointed out that will is nsed to eipress
intense earnestness, as in the case of a - threat or a
promise ; as ' I'll have yon flogged ; ' ' I'll be down on
yon.' There is, in our daya, one exception to this mle,
whenever the Verb be ia followed by a kostiU Adjective ;
we may say, ' I will be merciful,' or ' I will play the
tyrant,' but not ' I will be harsh.' Bnt in 1303, this
exception was not allowed, at least in the North, for we
find in p. 180:
J wyl be WTO^, and )>ou ehal be me ]o]>.
Here the speaker is intensely earnest, bent upon work-
4S8 Old and Middle English.
ing oat hie own salv&tion. There is a groat difiisreiice
between the North and Soath in this most difficult
qoeetion of thall and will. In p. 256 comes hyt may
weyl be for fartatte : this ia the Scandinarian md vera.
We find, not only the Optative, Qod undde, but the more
long-lived wulde Qod. A Verb ia dropped in p. 3S5;
piyu mayst ms save, and (et) y have hele; here of old
another may would have followed the ^ ; we see the true
New Engtifih conciseseBS. The do and did before an
Infinitive are often found, as in Gloacestershire ; we do
jangle, 'fe -neliles dyde byk.^ The Infinitive to he ia
dropped in p. 163 } better were ^ chylde wtbore, than
fayle chatiygyng. Sometliing of the same kind ie seen in
p, 299 ; and also the phraae so vntm/ge for to erygtene ;
we should now Bnbstitute ae for the first Preposition.
The Infinitive represents wA«n with a Snbjnnctive, in
the sentence at p. 8 ; ^ dede outrage, to viaJce pe devyl
omage. Orrmin's neden (egere), replacing the old paif,
is now followed hj the Infinitive ; rtedy]i ye take entantple,
p. 40 ; still tereer Is, JepMhdh avowede, and nedyd naghte,
p. 92. When we saj * he need not,' there is an attempt
to imitate the old Irregnlar Verbs, like can and dare,
which had no s at the end in the Third Person. There is
an attempt at forming the Fatore Participle in p. 40 ; {nhi
art yn weye he hrogJite to peyne; ' he is about to tempt
thee,' in this Poem, denotes not the simple Fntnre so
mnch ae intense earnest pnrpow ; this last sense lasted
nntil 1611, ' Why go ye about to kill me ? '
■ In Somereetehire, tbe; say 'ho do be' for e$t. Mr. Earle
{Philology, p. 492), g^rcs instances of this idiom from the old
Romance of I^t and Grime.
Tlie Rise of the New English. 459
The Passive Voice makes farther strides ; any Eng;-
lish writer before 120U wonld have shnddered at snch a
seiit«noe as, a man may he H/ve (given) penawtce, p. 3S4.
The Passive Infinitive is put for the rightful Active
(Orrmin had done this) in p. 50, pey bep to 6e blamede.
To kone changes from scire to diieere in p. 38, following^
the Scandinavian kynna; hence, to eon a lesson. To
lore stands for both docere and dUeere, as Uam had
Stood in the Tristrem. To win adds the sense of
ailvxre to that of acqwrere ; to wymte a man fro gt/nne
to godenee, p. 151. Set has, besides poiiere, the new
meaning of mitimare in tet at nojt, p. 24>2 ; the old sense
remains, for we hear of a lady setHiig her eroket (arranging
her chaplet), p. 102 ; in onr da; she wonld set her cop at
a man. In p. 200, execators endiya (moriuntar) ; in
p. 21 1 lAzams wishes to pjie crummes ; like the Salopian
picke (peck, of a bird) in 1220. In p. 246 dwell means
hahitare aa well as morari ; a new sense of the word that
was now coming in. The old vw/ve had meant tortjuere ; it
now means deserere : in p. 258 the Sonthem transcriber
has written /orsoite above this Danish word, which was
not understood in the South. In p. 305 a woman is said
to zyve (give) here to foh/e ; this idiom is coomion to
France and Scandinavia. In p. 332 comes she dede
(acted) for kym; this we have seen in the Daiiie Sirix.
In p. 334 stands pey syiike here »yMie (forget it) ;
hence onr sink the thop. There is another French idiom
in p. 340; pe fame ran. Mr. Tennyson's Northern
fiirmer complains of his parson easHiig vp (objicere) about
a bairn ; in p. 366 the elder Lincolnshire bard has, fey
kaste ajens pe prest, fat S/v. ; this is true Scandinavian.
46o Old aiid Middle English,
In p. 393 the new iwnt, gapplanto the old Mxoryan {vertert
or rather ,^eri) ; we see io turn bright, the meaning which
the Torkehire get waA to acqnire. The verb knoio taken
the farther meaning dietinguere ; none know ymre fro oure
bonei. There is a new sense of buTst ; Y hriut on la^lieter,
p. 288. We have seen in the Cnreor Mondi ' the feast
was done;' we now find, in p. 31, the Imperative with
no Accusative following ;comi/)ta2{«ft<»n«,an4J^ii^}i dmm;
hence the well-known hct done, do ! of our lower ordere.
Wed takes no Accnsative in p. 55 ; fte hay wedded ynm fy
kyn. Bnt, on the other hand, run takes one ; he ran hyt
eot(r«,p. 81,like theScandinavianrennas^S. Pufstands
in the place of the old do in p. 89,j>«t him to ewere ; in p. 186
is yey awerejt }farto ; the Old English bind was followed by
to, and seems to have had inflaence here. A. new verb
is formed from night in p. 241, he nyghetede, where we
should say, ' he was benighted.' There are phrases like
Ydar Kt/e, aytte up at nyghte, holde her tunge, tmuxtyng. It
Jaliee hint (accidit) is a Scandinavian sense of the verb,
already seen in the Cursor. Shrew seems to become k
verb, for in p. 155 we hear of ghrewede sonys (filii) ; the
verb beshreiD appears in later writers of the Centnry. The
poet was nsed to write troupe both for Veritas (as in the
Cursor Mundi) and for pigwm. The last is described in
p. 330 as (roMfe yn hande wyp hande leyde. From this he
forms a new Verb in p. 56, fey have troapede ; onr hetnih
was to come a few years later.' The old ireow»ian had long
been thrown aside. This remindsusof whathas beensaid
above, that often in onr language a word is dropped, leaves
a perceptible gap, and then is revived in a slightly different
form. Onr common he berey fe hel is first seen in p. 135.
Tlie Rise of the New English. 461
Among the Adverbs, we remart a tendency to cnt off
the e at the end ; as the love^ trew, swore fait ; irubj
stands for vere in p. 359. Neodliee is pared down to
nedly, p. 350; there is also ruefully, formed &om the
remipful of the Ancren Biwle. We see the two seoBes
of htsty, the bad Ubidirwsue and the good kilaris ; a luety
PyTig, p. 245 ; y drank lustyly, p. 101. Well is nsed for
ganut, as we see in p. 324, he was weijl. We find awn
tyme (olim), p. 241;' fro henne forwarde, p, 220; be
tymei, p. 221 ; (oW it wp and domino, p. 332 ; oftyn tyme,
p. 388 ; yn dede (en effat, vere) p. 12. There is a form
akin to what we have seen in the Cursor :
For yn ai mochr )»t she douji men synae,
Yn BO moche shal she have pljghte ynne. — P. 110.
The sense of qiiantum here was soon to slide into that of
qutmiam. The ao forH atui 10 feor of 1200 now becomes eo
fer fuTp - and this may be seen in Tyndale ; we now cut
off the last word. In p. 85 comes onr Indefinite phrase,
he hap do so or so. la p. 213 the omission of ne before but
prodnces the effect of the Latin tanlum, as we saw many
years earlier ; he dyde frut Itte an hounde hym to ; the
use of do is a norelty. In p. 247 comes how at evere ;
there is also what as evere ; the eo and the as are bnfc two
fomiB of the old swa. The everihwar (ahiqne) of the
Aucren Riwle is replaced by onr cormpt every where.
The trae English conciseness is seen again in p. 298, ^f
je krmTMt, (know not) lemep how to awve t>at Ife.;
here kun has neither Accnsative nor Infinitive after it.
Among the Prepositions, for stands instead of the old
■ Wb may compare auin tymt and mlMu, vhUum; both of them
.BxprMs aii^uanda and oHm too.
462 Old and Middle English.
to ; as, it was for no gode, p. 172 ; the French pour had in-
fluence in a phrase like he menep alle \ysfoT man, p. 225 ;
so, to answerefoTf p. 231. The French a clearly prompted
the poet's ' set at noghte ; ' ^0 or on would have been used
earlier. In he redy tvyf my cldpys, p. 41, it would seem
that some such phrase as when dealing should go before
unth; it is a curious English idiom.' In p. 836 stands
shepe goun wrong hesyde ]>e pa]> ; here beside adds to jtuUa
the ^irther meaning of extrOj and we have the key to
Festus' phrase, *thon art beside thyself.* We are told
that harm is done, p. 846, hetwyxe fals ande covey t^u;
the Preposition here implies the agency of more
than one cause ; what with one, what with the other.
We see the old Genitive making way for of; and
this was further developed by the great writers of
the Fourteenth Century, rather later ; in p. 275 fe sy$is
of here comes instead of her sight, like Orrmin's lufe
off himm.
The Interjections are, the scornful Prut for 'py cursyng,
prest ! p. 96 ; ' Lorde ! what shall swych men seye f p. 137 ;
this in the French was Deu ! and we have seen it in the
Cursor. The French hei of 1220 has now given waj to
the Scandinavian cs or ay \ ey comes in p. 121, and this
is the ehj now so widely prevalent in the Northern shires,
standing at the beginning of a sentence, and expressing
astonishment. In p. 136 is what devyl I why ^c. ; this
is Kobert's own, and is not translated from the
* I knew an Engilishmaii, who thus addressed a waiter abroad:
* Sojoz vite avec le dinor.'
2 Prutia is a ScandinaTian verb, ' to shout, when drrving honss.'
The Rise of the New English. 463
French ; fy a dehlee was a common phrase in French
writinga.
The Scandinftvian words are : first, the form fow
are (ta ea), p. 162, which comes more than once ; there
are besideB,
CuDDJiig (sdentia), from the Noree kannandi.
Ekeoome (mcknune), from the Swedish oknamn.
Lowly, from the Nowe ItlgUgr.
Nygun (nifTgard), from the Norse nyggja, to scrape.
Flank, from the None planM.
Stumble, from the Norse ttumra.
Sqnyler (acuUion), from the Norse tktila, to wash.
In connexion with this last, naele (lavare) is also found
in the Poem.
The Scandinavian Verb gekke was not nnderstood in
the Sonth ; for the transcriber writes over it Jyl pe bag,
in the following couplet —
pe whylea pe executouis tekke,
Of fe sonle fey ne rekke.— P. 19S.
We have still the phrase (rather slangy), to saeh a sum
of money. The Verb hap is oBed, coining from the Ice-
landic ; Iiayamon had nsed the word only as a Noon,
The Verb burble represents the later bubble. There
is the Celtic Nonn maltoe.
There is a well-known bj-word in p. 286 :
The nere Jw cherche, )>e ffrjira fro Oode.
In p. 76 stands ' many smale makep a greto.'
In p. 161 is —
He pat wyl nat whan he may,
He shal nat when he wyl.
464 Old and Middle English.
The last tine is a good instance, bow skaXl implies ^aXt,
■will implies desire.
We have another Poem, which is almoet certainly bf
Robert of Bmnne, belongmg to die same date.' This
is ' The Uedytacinns of fie Soper of onre Lorde,' a tiana-
lation&om Cardinal BonaTentnra's original. There an
some Northern forms, which have been lefl by the
Sonthem transcriber, sach as them and nor. In line Hi,
the original )>e ijlc has evidently been tnmed into |>eie. In
line 673 the Nortbem eeys (dicnnt) most have been writ-
ten hy Robert, riming with dyetTOj/ea (ta evertis) ; these
have been altered into the Sonthem leyp and dygtroyf,
mnch to the Iobb of the sense, as regards the last V^.
The Southern transcriber msy have been a Kentishmao,
for he has a ver (afar), and teren (lachrymae). I have
given at page 473 the close of the Poem, the part which
is Robert's own, and no translation. There is here
hardly a word, thai, cannot now be nnderstood.
In p. 35 we see the insertion of gh, a form beloved by
Robert, in the Teutonic strait of the Alexander ; streyght
is accordingly fonnd, which we have bnt sligbtlj altei«d.
Hampole writes it etrek, in the tme old way. The isiBow
of the Severn has an » at the end, and becomes svmtn,
as we still sound it.
The Verbal Nouns abound, snch as i/n here ser/ng
(visus), J>e dowyng of ^., just as we now prononnM
doing-, these are both in p. 17. We hear of a mysdoer
in p. 16 ; in the same p^e people go £y a hypcLp ; thir^
' Printed b; the Eaily English Text Societj. At p. rvii- of thit
work, I bare Bet out my reuom for giving the satboiship of the pieM
MEobBTtof Bmnns,
The Rise of the New English. 465
^ears later Moaning was to write of a biwey (bye-way)
in anoUier Poem of hie. Here a Nona and Preposition
form a compound. In p. 2 we read, (it) i/s hyg dyeyplee
Jete xoaiabyng; a cnriona instance of packing three
Nonns together ; a foretaste of onr ' Commons Enclo-
anre Act.'
On tnming to the Adjectives, Omuin'B wur'^fvl is
replaced by a longer word, for we find teurickypfuUett in
p. 15 ; the ful with a Saporlative ending is something
new. The beautiful word homely is now coined from
home, to express St. John's familiarily in sleeping on
Christ's breast, p. 9.' Al is prefixed to heyl (salve) in
p. 12.
Among the Pronouns, we see both tbe Southern hetu
luid the Ifortbem peni, riming with eaoh other in p. 12.
The jotp (tos) is nsed by the poet in addressing our
Lord, just aa it had been employed in the Havelok, which
was written not fkr off.
As to Verbs, shall and will are confused, or rather
sJiall is used for' mittt, in myn herte ahulde ha bro»le
{burst), p. 32, There is a new idiom in p. 6 ; ya gayng,
he thaeei ohedyent; this mast be a translation of the
French Participle preceded by en, and it is something
altogether new in English ; we need not here search
for an Infiaitive or Verbal Noon. In p. 12 comes,
OS |)Du Utt (sicut tibi placet) ; before this time, the
Dative fe wonld have been used. In p. 26 oomee jf
wyl do ^ai ys yn me (what I can.) In p. 28 is )>ey
' Bvidie DiDmoot, after kiMing Hiss Lnej, escawa\uLiii9^'Ni1
■aying, ' tbe C»ptain'a BM hstnel;, h« gnsaii«iOT^V\imwi^
466 Old and Middle English.
lakhji\ slreng]>e; here again the Dative fem wonid hare
been formerly naed after lakJcee (deest) ; the Verb nor
gets the sense of carere. He gan had long been nsed as an'
Auxiliary Verb ; in p. 35 it stande as an Imperative;
gijn Tce kym cfrete. She rose is tnmed into she rytt, in
p. 32 ; hence the rii that may sometimes be heard now.'
A Weak Intransitive Verb becomes Strong; the old
ttician (hffirere) made its Perfect etieode ; bnt in p. 19
comes the Perfect, pe nayUK itohjn yn pe tre ; wq have
Been something like this in the Triatrem. On the othei'
hand, in p. 31 comes melted instead of the rightful
molten ; the first form is now used of the mind, the latter
of metals. There are phrases like say grace, bring eibovi r
there is also the Scandinavian farewel ; in p. 4, the
expletive y seye comes in the middle of a sentence; vtf
now use it at the beginning of a sentence.
A new Adverb is formed by adding ^ to a Past
Participle, as hrokedly, p. 18 ; aach a form as lavtjhin^lif
had been long established. The East Anglian tonafeif
now prodaceB/e^)>/uUi/e, p. 9 ; the ending ful is in cod'
stant use, and is a pet form of Manning's. The where-'
/ore comes in, referring to a foregoing sentence, tike the
Latin quamolretn ; an instance of this may be fonnd in
p. 12.
When we see in p. 27, y prey jow offrenshepe, the of
lepresents the Danish a/, which stands in the same way
before Abstract Monns; the French de is used in tb»
same way. Hence comes ' of yonr charity,' ' of his owk
accord.' The use of for is extended ; the fyl aa for dedc
' Coleridge uses rist (saireiit) as a rime.
The Rise of the New English. 467
(dead), p* 27 ; the ScandinaTian fyrir (for) Bometimes
stood for our m ; thus, ' to knoT for certain.'
There ia anew Terb, wrap, akin to tha FriBian, in p. 31 ,
In my specimens taken from the Handlynge Synne,
I have choeen parts that are wholly Bobert'a own and no
translation from the French. I giro first a tale of the
great Bishop of lancoln, who died bat a few y^rs
before onr poet's birth : I then give St. Paul's deecrip-
tion of Charity, a well-known paas^e, which may bo
compared with oar Version of the Bible pat forth threo
hondred years after the Handlyng Synne .■ next comes
a peep into English life in Edwardian daya : next, a tale
dt a Norfolk bcmdeman or farmer ; last of all comes the
bard's acconnt of himself and the date of hia rimes.
Had the Handlyng Synne been a German work, marking
on era in the national liteiatare, it would long ago hare
been given to the world in a cheap form. Bnt we live
in England, not in Germany, I conld not have gained
a sight of the poem, of which a few copies have been
printed for the Roxbargh Clnb, had I not happened to
live within reach of the British Mnsenm.
Page 150.
y shall ytyi telle as 7 have herds
Of pe bjBshope Seynt Roherde,
TIjs toname * ys QniBteat
Of Lynkobe, so aeyji fa gest."
Ife lovede moche to here |)e horpe ;
For mannya wyt hyt mBkj|i aharpe ;
Next hya chaumbre, besyde Ii;s stodj,
Hia harpers cbaumbre was fast )ierhy.
B H 3
468 Old and Middle English,
Maoj tymee be nygtjB and dayja,
He had solac« of notes and IsTys.
One wkede hym 003^,* remn why
He hadde delyte yn mynstrsl^ :
He answerede hym on {>ye msnere,
Why he helde Jw harper so dere :
' pe Tertu of ]>e harpe, jTu^he skylle and ryj^
Wyl deatroye J>e fendes myjt,
And to J>e croya by gode skylle
Th ]»e harpe lykenede weyle.'
Anoper poynt cumforteth me,
pat God hs)i Bent unto a tie
So mocha joye to here wy)> eere ;
Moche |>an more joye ys )«ie
Wyp Ckid hym eelfe )>ere he wonya,'
pe harpe {lenif me ofte moDes,' —
Of fe io3-e and of f>e blya
Where Gode hj-m self wonyB and ys.
pare foi, grode men, 30 shni leie,'
Whan je any glemen here,
To wimchep Gode at ^oure powens,
As Davyde eeyy yn |>e sautere,
Yn harpe, yn thabour, and eymph&n gle,
Wunchepe Gode, yn troumpee and sautre,
Yd cordys, an oiganes, and bellya tyngyng,
Yn al J>ese, wurschepe ^e hevene Icyng.'
Page 222.
8e now what seynte Foule seya
Yn a pystyl, Jie same weys,^
' poghe y apeke ae weyl wy{> tung
Ae any man or aungel ha)i song,
And y lyve nat wyp chaiyte,
No ]>yng avayle)) hyt to me.
For 5 4o ^en Tyj,V* «s\ft\ira».
And u \^ X^^xa, \M.'Ww* -^tt-.
The Rise of the New English. 469
pe brw to ojwr ^jref grete sown, '
And bet hym self up and down.
And )>oghe j Bpeke al yn prephecre,
And have y« kunnyng of every mayrtrye,'
And wy)i gode belove myghte aeye
pe hylles to tame yn to pe valeye,
Eyf hyt ne be wyf charyte wroghte,
EUea, he sey)) )>at y ud noglite.
pog^ y jyre all my -wnrldee gode
Unto pore mennys fode,
And Jyre my body for to brenna
Oputly o{i<iT men to kenne,'
But Jjf ' Itir be charyte wyf? alle,
Jiy ro«de pariore shat be ful smalle.'
Lolie now how many godene^ee pet are
Wy)) oute charyte noghta but bare.
Wylt pou know py self, and se
Cyf |>Du wone ' in charyte P
' Ohaiytc au&e)> bop ^de and y1,
And chaiyto ya of reid'ul wyl,
Chaijte ba)) noun envye.
And charyte wyl no felunnye ;
Charyte ya nat irus,
And chaiyte ys nat coveytous ;
Ohaiyte wyl no bostfiil preyayng;
He wyl no^te but ryjtwya pyng ;
Charyte lovep no fhntome,
No pyngn pat evyl may of come ;
He hap no joye of wykkedneH,
But lovep alle pat aothefast ■ es ;
Alle godenes he up berep ;
Alle he suflrep, and noun he derep,^
Gode hope he hap yn ryghtewys pyng,
And alle he euateynep to pe endyng ;
Charyte ne faylep noghte,
Ne no ^yng pat wyp him ys wroghte.
When alle prephecyes are alle gone,
470 Old and Middle English.
And ftUe tonges are le jde echone,
And alia cmftja foido' shul be,
pan lastefi Btad&st duurte.'*
pus Bej|> aeynt Fonle, and moche more,
Yn pyE^l of hys lore.
Page 227.
Afi y have tolde of rere * eopere,
pe same falloji of erly djners;
Djneie are oute of akyl and tesun
On y^ Sunday, or hje mesee be doun.'
pogbe ^u hare haste, here ^ a mesee,
Al holy,^ and no lease,
Andnat eymple a sakare,* •tbaooiw
For hyt jB nat ynow for fa, pS*"
But I" hjt be for lordjB powere " nni««
Or pjl^yiDage )iat hA|i no pere.
Are fwu oghte ete, pya ys my rede,
Take holy watyr and holy Irede ;
For, yn aventuie kas, hyt may Jie save,
Cyf houael * ne ehryfte ]foa mayet have. * I^chiti :
AJle o|>er tytnea ys glotonye
But hyt be prete encheaun ' why. , ra«ioii
On ofieT hyghe dayys, ^ |)at ou may,
poghe ]iat hyt be nat Sunday,
Here )>y mesae or |nn dyne,
Eyf )iou do nat, ellyaya hit pyne;» ■"««
Lordes [lat have preete at wyl.
Me (wnte)' J>ey trespas ful yl
pat any day ete, are Jwy here megee.
But Jjf '■ hvt be Jjurghe harder dystresBe. ' nnl^
■ In these twenty-two lines there are thirteen FrMich words, not
coantuig repotilians; !□ our VersioD of 1611, there are but twelTo
FrsDch words in the same passage.
' Bn appeoTH in this piece as or and art.
Tke Rise of the New English.
pe meD {wt are of hoi; cherche,
pey wete ■wej-1 how )wy shul ireivhe ;
But ewych ' y telle bki^yly,
pat swycb a preeta dou]) glotonye
pe levy)> bye messe on ^ auter
For to go to a dyner.
So ne shulde be do, for no liyug,
For loTB no awB of no lordyng,
But jyf * hyt were for a grete nede
pat ahnlde bym &Ue, or a grete drede.
Page 269.
Td Northfoli, yn a tounne,
"Wonede a knyj;! beeyde a persone ; ■
f^l byt BO, )« kny^tea manere '
Was cat fro ^ cherche ful fere ; *
And was byt J)au, aa oftyn Mies,
Brake were |ie cberche ^erde walles.
pe lordes byrdea ofteD lete
Hya bestys yn to )« chercbe jerde and ete ;
pe beatys dyde aa )iey mote nede,
Fylede ' overal («re fey jede.'
A bonde man My' («,t, aode was wo
pat f« bestya ahulde {>ere go ;
He com to )>e lorde, uid seyde hym fiyg,
' Lorde,' be aejde, ' joure beatyn go my»,'
Ijoure byrde dof wrong, and joure knavys,
pat late joure beetyB fyle ))ub ^em gcavys ;
pere mennya bonye abulde Ije,
Bestea Bhnlde do no vyleynye.'
pe lordes answere waa eumwliat vj-le,
And fat lalle)> evyl to a man gentyle ;
' Weyl weio hyt do " ryjt for )>e nones
To wurechyp ' swycb cherles bones ;
'Wbat wurscbyp abulde men make
^boute swycb cberlea bodyea blakef
2 Old and Middle English.
pe bonds man aiiswerede and sejde
Wurdya to (tedjT M weyl lejde,
' pe Lorde {«t made of er|>e erlea,
Of |7e eame erF>e made he cherlee ;
Erles myj^t and loidee atut '
Aa cherles shal yn er|)e be put.
Erles, cherles, slie at ones,
Shal none knowe joure fro oure booee.'
pe lordo lestenede |>e wuidee weyl
And recordede hem every deyl ;'
No mote to hym inilde he seye,
But let* hym go fur]>e hys weye ;
He aeyde |)e beatys ehulda no more
By hys wyl come fwre."
Se)>en° he clo»ede )>e cbeKhe^erde eo
pat no best myjt come (larto.
For to ete no fyle )>er ynne,
So [lojt hjTU Be|«D |»t hyt was synne.
pyr are but fewe lordee now
pat turns a wide so wel to prow ; "
But who 8ey|> hem any ekyUe,'
Mysaqre ajen ' fouly pey wylk.
Lordynges, fyr are j now of fo ; '
Of pjntyl men, ])yr are but fo." '
Page 3.
To alle CrvBtyu men undir sunne,
And to gode men of Bninne,
And Bpeuoli alle bi name
pe felaushepe of Symprynghame,
' la DDO copy of the Harrvmug of &II, Christ calla Satao
'lording.' In the Genesis aad Exodus, Uoees calls his nbal»
'tordings/
The Rise of tlie New English.
BoWd of Brunue greteji jow
In si godeoease ])at may to prow.*
Of Biymvoke jn Kestevene,
Syia myle beeyde Symprynghwii erene
"Y dwellede jn )» pryorye
Fyfteno jere yn comp&nye.
D&DO Felyp was mayster |nt tjme
pftt y began )>y8 Englyssh rynie.
pe jerea of grace fyl '' |mn to be
A ^uajnd and {ve hundrede and ]ire.
In |»t tyme tuinede y )>yB
On Englysslie tunge out of Frankys,
Of a boke as y fonde ynne ;
Men clepyn )« boke ' Ilandlyng Syime.'
MEDruciusB OF TSB SopEB OF OURS LoRSE. — P. 36.
Thenk, man, and ee Cryst aftyr h}-H de|i ;
For fy Bynne streyght to belle he ge)t,
Cute of pe fendys bonds to |>e (re,
And |ie fende bonde to make to Jw.
penk, also, )>e grete dede of hys powere :
He tajp, ba sent an angel to save us here,
But )^D of oure salvacyiin we ahulde nat )>anke bym,
But calle f« aungel saver of alia mankyu.
parfor hys &dyr so hertly loved us,
lie xave us hys owene gete • sone Ibesus ; * •"go"*™
pan we onely hym {)anke and do bym onoure,
As fadyr, as former, socoure, and savyoura.
paok we now ouie aavyoure, pat salve us hap hrojt,
Ouio syke Boules to save, whan synne hap hem eojt.
Of hya grete godenea gj-n we hym grete,
Seyyng pe wurde of Sakarj'e po holy propbete :
' Lorde God of larael, bleseed mote pou be,
' Py peplu )«u hast vysyted and bojt hem to )>e.
'4 Old and Middle English.
' Whydi Betyn yn detkenea of def and djsese,
' pou ly^test hem and ledest yn to !» W6j of peae.'
To fftt pas perelee we prey f>ou us bryng,
pat levyBt and rej-nest withoute endyng.
KORTH LINCOLNSHIRE.
(A.D. 1338.)
Now of kyng Ro1:»n salle I ^t speke more,
& bis bTo)ier Tomlyn, Thomas &1b it 'wore,
& of Sir AliBandere, |iat me rewes Bore,
pat bo))e come in akandere, for dedes )iei did {lore.
Of arte lie had ]w maUtrie, he mad a cotren Igng
In Cantebrige to }« clergie, or hiB bro[ier wore kyng.
&i]>en waa iieTer iion of arte au |nt sped,
Ne bifore bot on, \M, in Oontebrigge red.
Robert mad his feet, for he was ^re jiat tyme,
& he Bauh alle )ie gest, ))at wrote & mad )ds ryme.
Sir Alisnnder was hie dene of Glascow,
& his brojwr Thomas ^ed spiand aj bt throw.
Where our Inglis men ware not in clerke haUte,
& son wild he spare, bot destroied also tite.
porgh }ie kyng Robyn )>et ^ede )« Inglia to epie,
Here now of Jier (yn (wni com for t«t folic.'
> Hearae'B Langtoft't Chronicle, II. 33S. The lines were wriltca
bj Hanning, t-aae tbirty years after hie HanJigng Sytiae, at a tin*
when ha lived farther to the North. The Northern dialect is most
apparent. We here read of his f^etCmg a glimpse of the Bruce family
■t Cambriiige, aboat the year 1300 or earlier. I can trace the Nertb
Lincolnshire dialect to IftlS. la Ih« eceountB for building Lontli
Broach come the words gar, n't, tigging, ipvn (rogaro), liey Jku.
Poole's Eeelaiettical ArchiUcture, p. 360. Mr. TeDnjBou'a Korilun
FoTJtier ahonld also be studied.
The Rise of the New English. 475
YORKSHIRE.
(About A.I.. 1340.)
Haxfole.
San waxee his hert hud and hevy.
And his Iteved feMe and djaj ;
S&D w&iea his gMt seke and sare,
And hk &c« roimdes, ay mftre and mare ;
His mynde as short when he oght thynkea,
HU neae ofte droppes, hie hand stynkes,
Ills ught -nax dym, )iat he has,
Hia h^ waxes cioked ; Btoupand he gaa ;
FjDgera saA taes, fote and h&nde,
Alle hia touches er tremhlande.
Jlie ■werkea ibr-worthes that he begynnea ;
His hare nioutee, his eghen rynnes ;
His eres waxes deaf, aud hard to here,
His tuDg faylee, his speche is noght clere;
His mouthe slaTera, his tetbe rotes,
His wjttes fayles, and he ofte dotee ;
He is Ijghtly wrath, and waxes fraward,
Bot to tume hym &a wrethe it ea hard.*
DURHAM (P).
(About A.11. 1320.)
Siuij.'b Metrical Hokilies.
A ttd of this fest haf I herd,
Hongat it of a widou ferd,
That luld OUT Lefdi sa welle.
That scho gert mac hii a chapele ;
■ Horns, Spteimau of Early Ri^iak, p, 172- This poem ihoald
be compared with the A'orthem PialteT, at page 317 of my work.
476 Old and Middle English.
And ilke day deuotely,
Herd scho mease of our Lefdye.
Fel auntour that hir prest was gan
His erandy and messe hayed scho nan.
And com this Candelmesse feste.
And scho wald haf als wif honeste
Hir messe, and for scho moht get nan,
Scho was a ful sorful womman.
In hir chapele scho mad prayer.
And fel on slep bifor the auter,
And als scho lay on slep, hir thoght
That scho in tyl a kyrc was broht,
And saw com gret compaynye
Of fair maidenes wit a lefedye,
And al thai sette on raw fid rathe^
And aid men and yong bathe.
LOWLAND SCOTCH.
(About A.D. 1320.)
(Thai) has grantit (and) has letin (the) partenanncis
evin in line thritti wyntir iere bi iere fomtin oni mene
foloand, that thai sal g^rind for their fode, (and) sal ^f
grayting (and) nphalding abate thaim, (and) sal tak
faayl (fram) tha that comis in thair stede, (giQ ^^^^ ^^^
mister (of) gres, water, and other richtwis profitis;
(thai) sal ger be made (and)" be yemit gaynand biging.^
' These, the oldest Teutonic words written in Scotland that hare
come down to ns, were set down orer the Latin words in a Charter of
.Scone about 1320. See the lAhtr de Scon (Bannatyne Club), p. 104,
where a fac-similo of this Charter is giren. I have strung the words
together as well as I can. There are also the words, four and
titefUiand/ai (ras) ; autveschipe (senritium) ; laverdscape (dominium).
TIte Rise of the Nav English. 477
LANOASmRE.
(About A.D. J360.)
Sib Ga WAYNE.
' Where Bchulde I wale ]«,' quoth Ghuad, 'where is ^ place F
I wot neTer where |h)u wonyes, by hym pat me wiojt,
Ne 1 know not |>e, koj^t, |>y cort, ne )n name,
Bot teche me truly \eTU>, &. telle me howe Jiou hattea,
& I Hcbal wue all my wyt to wynne me ])eder,
& |iat I Bwere {« for Bo)>e, & by my Beker trawep.'
'■^at ia bmogh in nwe-;cer, hit nedes no more,'
Quoth [le gome in |>e grene to Oawan |)e hende,
' Qif I )w telle triwly, quen I [>e tape have,
4 pou me smopely hatj amyten, amarUy I f>e teche
Of my hous, & my home, i mj-n owen nome,
fen may |<oii frayst my fare, and forwarder holde,
& if I speude no speche, feirae apedey Jwu J>e better,
For pou may leug in py londe, & layt no lyrre,
bot elokea ;
Tft now py grymnie tole to fe,
& let ae how J)ou cnokej.'
' Gladly, syr, for boJ«,'
Quoth Gawan; hia ax he BtrolceB.'
SALOP.
(About A.D. 1360.)
WlLLIAlt AHD ISB WerWOLF.
llit tidde after on a tjme, as tellus oure bokea,
As {ne bold bam his beates blyjieliche keped,.
' Hoiria, Speeimem, p. 233. In AUiteraliTc Tfrae obs
alv»yi aliMmd.
478 Old and Middle English,
pe riche emperour of Home rod out for to hunte,
In ]>at faire forest feij^elj for to telle ;
Wi)> alle his menskfiil meyn^, ]>at moche was & nobul \
pan fel it hap, ]>at )^i founde M sone a giete hor,
& huntjng wi)> hound & horn harde alle aewede ;
pe emperour entred in a wey eyene to attele^
To have bruttenet ]>at bore, & ))e ahaie sej^jien.
But mifisely marked he is way & so manly he rides,
pat alle his wies were went, ne wist he neyer whider ;
So ferforth fram his men, fe]>ly for to telle,
pat of horn ne of hound ne mi^t he here sowne,
& boute eny living lud lefte was he one.^
HEREFORDSHIRE,
(About A.D. 1300.)
pilke that nulle]> a^eyn hem stonde
Ichulle he habben hem in honde.
■ • ■ • •
He is papejai in pyn that beteth me my bale.
To trewe tortle in a toiur, y telle the mi tale.
He is thrustle thryven in thro that singeth in sale,
The wilde laveroc ant wolc ant the wodewale.
He is faucoun in friht demest in dale.
Ant with everuch a gome gladest in gale,
From Weye he is wisist into Wyrhale,
Hire nome is in a note of the nyht^gale.
In a note is hire nome, nempneth hit non,
Whose ryht redeth roune to Johon.'
' Morris, Speaimena of Early English, p. 243.
* Percy Society , Vol. IV. 26. Seo the Preface to this Tolume,
'where the writer of this Poem is proved to be a Herefordshire msB.
He here mentions the Wye. He in this piece stands for heo (ilia).
The two detached lines at the beginning come from the Tersion of
the Uarromng of Hell, in the same manuscript.
The Rise of tfte New English.
WARWICKSimiE (?).
(About A.D. 1300.)
The kyng Eijgh, of that cit^.
That they no mjghte duyre :
They daascheth heoiit in at the gate,
And doth hit schutte in hast.
The tb.j\ they kyt of hundrodis fyre,
To wedde heo lette baoro lyve.
Theo othie into the 'n-allia atj'gh,
And the kyngea men with gonnei sleygh.
Theo AX6 upon the see Gtod ;
And hat is al Alieaimdrea blod :
He hot his folk, so a wod wolf,
Aeaile the cit6 on the see half.
So thej dude with mjf^htly hond.
The pore folic of the load,
And ladies bryght in bour,
Seyen that heo ne myghten dure.
Hy stolen the bayea under their yate ;
The kyng there hy leten in whate,
And fellen aknowe in the stretu,
Tofote and under Ha horses fete.'
GLOUCESTERSHIEE.
piu come, lo 1 Engelond into Nomunnes honde.
And ^ Normans ne cou|>e speke )io bote her owe speche.
And apeke French as dude atom, and hero chyldien dude also
tecbe.
So fat heymen of fys lond, fat of her Mod come,
Holde|> alio ]iulbe apecbe, fat hii of hem nome.
> Weber's Metrical Somanctt, I, 135.
480 Old and MidiUe English.
Vor bot« a insa cou)>e French, me to1t> of hvm wel lute.
Ac lowe men holde^ to EnpkBS, and bo her kimde Epeche ^te.
Ich wane ]>eT ne be man in world countreyes none,
pat ne boldeji to her kiude speche, bote Engelond one.
Ac wel me wot vorto coune hothe wel yt ye,
Vor !« more )>Bt a man con, Jie more worp he vs.'
THE ENGUSn P.iLE IN IRELAND.
(About A.11. 1310.)
Jheau, king 0' haven fre,
Ever i-hle«dd mot thoa be 1
Loverd, I beaech the,
to me thou tak bede,
From dedlich sinue thou ^em me.
while I libbe on lade j
The maid fre, that here the
so swetlicb under wede.
Do U8 to se the Trinity,
al we habbeth nede.
This sang wrojt a frere,
Jheeu Crist be is aocure !
Ijoverd, bring him to the toure !
frere Michel Ky tdare ;
Schild him tnm belle bouie,
^VhoQ be sal hen fa» t
Levedi, flur of nl honur,
cast awei is care ;
Fram the schoure of pinis sure
' tbou slid him her and thare ! Amen.<
' Hmrne's Bobert of Glotuxiter, I. 364.
= Seliguia AtUiqiut, II. 193. From the Southern dialect of thii
pieca, we might Teadily gather, evan if history did not help as, that
the early Knglish Bsttlere in Ireland came, not from Qiester, but
from Brislul and ftom porta neur Bristol. Tho Wasfbrd dialect it
«aid to be very Viie ilial. tS ?«rai«i»«, iaA."^y(«(&.
The Rise of the New English. 481
SOMERSETSHIRE (P).
(Aljout A.D. 1300.)
'Whsifore ich and Annas
To-foDge Jhefliis of Judas,
Tor thrytty panes to paye.
"We were wel faste to helle y-wronge,
Vor hym that for jou was y-etonge,
in rode a GodeMdaye.
Man, at Mlojt, ss clialibe j-rad,
Thy mule ys Oodee hous y-mad,
and tar ys wasacbe al clene.
Ac after fullou^ thoruj fulthe of Bytine,
Sone U mad wel hory wytbinne,
alday Ikit b j-sene.'
WILTSHIRE.
(About A.11. 1320.)
Four tonnes tber beoth of bias,
Al for sothe thus hit was;
Feole tbinges tber beth ynne,
Oraftilich ymad with gynne,
Quic 1»nuuston and other alsuo,
With wylde fur ymad therto,
Salgemme and «alpetn,
Salamiouiac ther ys eke,
Salnitre that ys briht.
Berneth bothe day and nyth.
■ftUgttiajfn/tgiM, U. S42. The eJ<iU«(ich habbf) remindi ns of
Edgar's dialect in Leax, and of the Somenstshire Ballads in JWvjr'f
Seligna. The word bad (mains) occo» in this piece, which made
its fint appeuance in the Curtor ilvndi: it is alea {tfuA \tl BtAivi
4jf GloucaltT and the Haxdij/itg Si^nnt.
482 Old and Middle Bri^lis/i.
This yp in the tonnes vdou,
Ant other thing^B moni on.
Berneth bothe nyht und day,
Ah never quenchen hit re mav.
In four aprun^s the tonnes lig^th,
Ane litis philosoplires sugg^th,
The hete witliynne, water wilhoule,
Ikfaketh hot ol aboute.
The two Hprunges umetii yfere ;
Ah the other tuo beth more clere ;
'therof ys maked, fill ywis,
ILal liynguBbnthe ycleped vs.'
IIAMPSHIKE.
(About 4.II. 1330.)
Eveiyeh anUere of bred in Jw hejjestrete of Wyn-
chestre, Jiat is oDt of frannchyBe, shal to pe kynge to
cnstome, by |>e jere, twey shullynges, aad to t>e clerk &
peny, jif he sellef- meche by jere ; and jif he aeUef laase,
npOD |te qnantite. And at ojier stretes, sex pans ojwr
J>re, oppon [>' handworke ia. And do(> to wetynge, f*
non of hem ne ebolde fecche here bred, bat fere fe kpen
Btonde)), upon peyne of |>e amercy of pe byggere and of
fe aellere, to fore ]ie tyme of none. And Jtat non of hem
ne fecche no bred of non bakere whaune hii ne mowo
habbe no warant; and jif hii do, |>at hem self hyt
waranty. And |>at everych bakere habbe hys eeai
y-knowe upon hya loff, pat he ne mowe wilisegge jif hr
is oftake o|>er fan weel.'
' This piece partieularly mentions Bath, HttlnubuT;, lAjoKk,
and DeTiEes. 1 tliiok it may be put doirn to Wiltshire. It » i«
Jtitson's Bomaucts. II. 377.
' Old ueagea of Wiuohesler, Enc/IM Gil<h, p. 355 . EmIj. Engiiik
The Rise of the New Engiisk. 483
OXFORDSHIRE.
(About A.D. 1340.)
That is fro old HenaiBlade ofre the cliff into stony
londy wej ; iro the yraj into the long lowe ; fro the lowe
into the Port-atrete; fro the atreto into Gbarewell; bo
aMr strem til it shntt eft into Henaiatade — De Bollee,
Coaele, et Hedyndon. Thare beth hide londeymere into
Cooelee. Fro Charwell brigge andlong the atreme on
that rithe. . . . This privilege Traa idith in Hedington
.... mjn onne mjnster in Oxenford. There seint
Frideawide .... alls that &edome that any &einynstre
frelnbeet .... mid aake and mid socna, mid tol and
mid teme .... and in felde and alle other thinge and
ryth that y . . . . belyreth and bid na for qnike and
dede and .... alle other bennyfeyt.|
KENT.
(i.D. 1340,)
Aye )>e Tondi^ea of fe dyenle zay pis fet volje];.
' Zoete Jean )iin holy blod Jiet (ion aseddest ane |>e rod
Tor me and vor mankende : Ich bidde ^ hit by my Bseld
TeztSodety. These usages leem to hare been oompled about 1360 ;
the docDment ia the most valuable thiog in the vhole of the thick
Tolnme relating to Gildi. We here Me what Standnid E^lish mnild
hsTe been, had not London sappUnted the older capital of England.
The tMche reminds os of Alfred's mule and Aveb.
' Eemble, Codex Di^. III. 329. This Chart«r is a late fbigeij,
and seems mnch damaged. The proper names in it iri]l be lecog-
idsed b; Oxford men.
484 Old and Middle English,
ayoreye ]>e wycked vend al to mi Ijves ende. zno bj
hit'
pis boc is Dan Michelis of Northgate y- write an Englis
of his o^ene hand, ]>et hatte : Ayenbite of inwyt. And
is of ]>e boc-honse of saynt Austines of Canterberi, mid
)»e lettres : G : C :
Holy orchanle MicbaeU
M. C. G. Saynt Gabriel and RaphaeL
Ye brenge me to ]x) casteL
per alle zaulen Tarep wel.
Lhoid Jheeu almi^ kyng. {vet madeet and lokest alle l^iig.
Me |>et am )n makyng. to ]7Uie bliase me ]h>u hiyng. Ajnen.
Blind and dyaf and alsuo domb. Of zeventy yer al vol rond.
Ne 88olle by draj® to ))e grond. Yor peny vor Mark ne Tor
pond.^
MIDDLESEX.
(A.D. 1807,)
Of Syr Edward oure derworth kyng,
Ich mette of him anothere faire metyng.
Me thought he rood upon an asse,
And that ich take God to witnefiee ;
Ywonden he was in a mantell gray, .
Toward Rome he nom his way.
Upon his heyede sate a gray hnre,
It semed him wel a mesure.
• • • • •
Into a chapel I cum of ure lefdy,
Jhe Grist her leve son stod by,
On rod he was an loveliche mon,
* AyenhUe of Inwyt (Early English Text Society), page 1. Here
we most read a for s, »h for m, and /for v.
Tke Rise of the Netv EngUsk. 485
Whom wil epeke mjd me Adam the marclial
Id Stntfotde Bon% he ia yknown and over al.
Iche tie scbewe nou^t this for to have made,
Dot fen Ood aJmi^es drede.'
BEDFORDSHIRE (P).
(About A.D. 1340.)
Godjs BODS ^t was so &e,
Into ^ world he cam,
And let hym najljn npon a tre,
Al for jie love of man ;
His &yTe blod ^at waa so fie.
Oat of his bodj it ran,
A dwelful sj^ it was to se }
His body hang blak and wan,
Wi)) an O and an I,
His coroune was mad of \ara
And prikkedo into his panne,
Botha bybinde and a-forn ;
To a piler j-bowndyn
And Hufiede many a wownde
pat echarp and betere wore.
He hadde us evere in mynde,
Chanoai. Ths tiAk (ills) held its gnnmd m thia d^ for 140 jchi
longoT. Compare this piwe with ths oldsr London poem at page 8(10
of my work.
486 Old and Middle English.
In al his haide Jnrowe,
And we ben so unkynde,
. We nelyn hym nat ylmowe,
Wi]? an 0 and an L^
NORFOLK.^
(1329.)
This ys ye status of ye gylde of ye holy apostyl sente
peter, bygnnnyn in ye tonne of Lenne, in ye wrchepe of
god and of onre lavedi sente marie, and of ye holy
aposiyl sente peter, in ye yere of our lord MCCGXX.
nono. And yis gyld schal have fonre mome-spechis in
ye yer . . . And qnoso be somnnd to any mome-speche,
and he be in tonne, and wyl not come, ne make non
atnme for hym, he schal a peny to ye lyihe . . . And
ordeynid it is, y* y* catel of y« gyld y* alderman schal
delyvere to y* skeveynis, be sufficient boms to biyngyn
y* catel ageine. . . . And y« dene schal 'have, for is
travalye in y® jere, vi.d.
Jis is y* verye copy of ye gylde of sent Petyr y*
apostyle, holdyn in Lene aforeseyde, wrytyn on y* feste
of seynte hillari, Anno Domini millesimo GCO^ octo-
gesimo octavo.
> Legends of the Holy Bood (Early English Text Society, p. 160>
This piece seems to me to be the link between Manmng^s Eamdipg
8yfm$ and MandmnU^s Travels sixty years later. It has fauns im
to both, and seems to have been compiled half-way between Bntlsnd
and Middlesex.
* Biifflish CHlds (Early English Text Society), p. 62. We here
see the East Anglian ipto for who ; in other Norfolk papers of the
Gentoary, we find am (sunt^ and everilka (qnisqne), Jkirlif sal, cjfrmdt,
iipkald, toy (duo).
Tlie Rise of the New English, 487
We see what wild anarchy of speech was raging
thronghont the length and breadth of flngland in the
first half of the Fourteenth Century ; and this anarchy
bad lasted more than two hundred years, simply because
the old Standard had been swept away by foreign con-
<que8t. But at the same time we plainly see that the
dialect of the shires nearest to Rutland was the dialect
to which our own classic speech of 1877 is most akin,
tand that Robert of Brunne in 1803 was leading the way
to something new. In another work I hope to weigh
the causes that led to the triumph of Robert's dialect,
though this triumph was not thoroughly achieved until
« hundred and sixty years after he began his great work.
Strange it is that Dante should have been compiling his
Inferno^ which settled the course of Italian literature
for ever, in the selfsame years that Robert of Branne
was compiling the earliest pattern of well-formed New
English. Had King Henry the Eighth known what we
owe to this bard, the Lincolnshire men would not have
been rated in 1536 as follows : ' How presumptuous are
je, the rude commons of one shire, and that one of the
most brute and beastly of the whole realm, and of least
•experience ! ' ^
* I talk of the dialect of the ' Rutland neighbourhood ; ' this
rtakes in Leicester, Stamford, Peterborough, and Branne ; a fact to
be borne in mind.
488 Old and Middle English,
CHAPTER VII.
THE INROAD OF FRENCH WORDS INTO ENGLAND.
Cloth of gold^ do not despise,
Though thou be matched with cloth of friese.
Cloth of friese, be not too bold,
Though thou be matched with cloth of g^Id.*
Thb nearer we approach 1303, the more nmnerons be^
come the French words upon which the right of English
citizenship was being bestowed. In the Thirteenth
Century was made the greatest change that ever played
havock with our tongue. A baleful Century it was, when
we look to English philology; though a right noUe
Century in its bearing on English politics and English
architecture. The last word suggests a comparison : if
we may liken our language to a fine stone building, we
shall find that in that wondrous age a seventh part of
the good old masonry was thrown down, as if by an
earthquake, and was withdrawn from mortal ken. The
breach was by slow degrees made good with bricks,
meaner ware borrowed from France; and since those
times the work of destruction and reparation has gone
on, though to a lesser extent than before. We may put
> It is not, I need hardly say, the words used by us in commoQ
with the Frisians, that I should call < cloth of f rieae.'
Inroad of French Words into England. 489-
up with the bailding as it oov stands, but we cannot
help sighing when we think of what we have lost.
Of old, no conntrj was more thoroaghly national than
England : of all Teutonic landa she alone set down her
annals, year afler year, in her own tongne ; and this went
on for three Centuries after Alfred began to reign. Bnt
the grim year 1066, the weightiest year that England has
seen for the last twelve centuries, has left its mark deeply
graven both on our history and on our speech. Gvery
time almost that we open our lips or write a sentence,
we bear vritness to the mighty change wrought in Eng-
land by the Nonnan Conqueror. Celt, Saxon, Angle,
and Dane alike had to bow their necks beneath a grind-
ing foreign yoke. It is in English poetry that we can
trace the earliest change. Foetiy always clings fast to
old words, long after they have been dropped by prose;.
and this was the case in England before the Conquest.
If we take a piece of Old English prose, say the tales
translated by Alfi«d, or iBlfric's Homilies, or a chapter
of the Bible, we shall find that we keep to this day three
ont of fonr of all the Nouns, Adrerhs, and Verbs em-
ployed by the old writer ; but of the Nouns, Adverbs,
and Verbs used in any English poem, from the Beowulf
to the Song on Edward the Confessor's death, abont half
have dropped for ever. Prom Harold's death to John's
grant of the Charter, English prose did not let many
old words slip. Bnt it was far otherwise with Eng-
land's old poetic diction, which muKt have been arti.
ficially kept up, for long before 1066. Of all the
weighty words' used in the Song on the Confessor's
> Subatantiveii, Adjectires, Adrerbs. and Yerbs, I oill '^fM^S:^
490 Old and Middle English.
death, as nearly as possible half liave dropped out of oar
apeech. In the poeros written a hnadred jeara after the
Conqaest, say the rimes oa the Lord's Prayer published
by Dr. Morris, the proportion of words of weight, now
obBolet«, is one-fifth of the whole, mach as it is in
English prose of that same date.' In the poem of 1066,
nearly fifty ont of a hundred of these words are clean
gone; in the poem of 1160, only twenty ont of a
hundred of these words cannot now be anderatood. I
think it may be laid down, that of all the poetic words
employed by English Makers, nearly one-third passed
away within a hnndred years of the Battle of Hastings.
Henry of Huntingdon makes langhable mistakes, when
he tries to turn into Latin the old English lay on Briinan<
boi^h fight, though its words mast have been in the
months of poets only fourscore years before his time.
English poetry conld not thrive without patrons ; and
these, the Abbots and Aldermen that thronged the Win-
chester Court of old, had been swept away to make room
formentbat cared only for the speech of Bonen and Paris.
The old Standard of English died out : it Chroniclea
were written at Feterborongh, or Homilies still farther
to the South, they were compiled in corrupt English, at
which Beds or Alfred wonld have stared. As to English
poetry, its history for one hundred years is all bnt a
blank. Old legends of England's supposed history, it
vordB ; ' the; may alter, vhile the other parta of EpFseh (except
Inte^ectiom) hardlj change st all. I canDot see the use of eonnting,
a> Hamh doee, eveiy ef and the nnd him, id order to And oat the
proportion of home'bora Engti'h in different anthocg.
' Moiria, Early Eni/lith HaoUlitt. Fii^t Scries, I. 55 (Ewly
English Te»t Society). I gitve n Bpocimoa »t page 170.
:2^
Inroad of French Words into England. 491
IB tree, Bnch as thoBe that bear on Arthur or Havelok,
were drcBsed up in verse ; but the verse was French, for
thaa alone could the minstrel hope that bis toil wonid
be rewarded. In 1066, England's King wae praised in
pood ridging English lines, that may have been shouted
by boiateronB waasailers around the camp fires on the
eve of Hastings ; sixty years later, England's Qaeen
waa tenght natntal history in French verse, and was
complimented therein as being ' mnlt bele femme, Atiz
nnm^e.' ' Little more than a hundred years after the
battle of Hastings, an English writer gave the names
of the wise English teachers of old, Bede, Cuthbert,
Dnnstan, and others ; he then complained how woefnlly
times were changed — new lorda, new lore :
[Nu is] peo leore forleteo.
and |iet folc is forloreo.
nu beo)i o)ire leoden.
))eo lee[rep] ure folc.
and feole of )ien lor]>eiQea IaBie|i.
and |wt folc for)) mid.'
What waa it that enpplanted the old lore, thaa
forsaken by tiiis forlorn folk P We natnrally tnm to
the Chronicle, aa the earliest record of the change referred
to. It is easy to understand why the French word
eastel should be asedforamncb-bated foreign building.*
' Wright, FopulaT Triatats on Science, p. "■1-
' Page G of the Worcester Mannacript, referred to at p. 200 of
this woA.
* About 1200, OinniD uses eamtell in one and tli« same page
(U. 277) ID two seDses. He Brat applies it to a village, that of
Balim, folloviog the LsUn it the Ooapels, a seiue in vogue irith nt
long before the Norman Conqnect. Be then applies it to i fortreu.
49^ Old and Middle English.
But why should the Chronicler of the year 1066 write
the outlandish corona^ instead of the old dnehehnj that
had heen good enough for all onr Kings np to these
times ? ^ Its new wearer is called WjUelm Bctstcurdj in
that awfal year. Englishmen soon got into the way
of using needless French words, which supplanted their
own old terms. The ancient cweartem makes way far
pTrieun in 1076. The utterly unneeded French word
heandon comes in the Peterborough Chronicle for 1069.
French and English Nouns are componnded, to form
castelmenn in 1067. In 1079, a soldier is shot with an
arhlasL A little later, we hear of the mynster est \<BTt
Bataille (Battle Abbey), hallowed in 1094; three
years more bring us to the wall built by Rufas about
the Tdr 'in London ; the old form torrj a relic of the
Komans, was making way for a new French form. The
first French Verb, naturalised by taking an English
ending, was duhhade, in the year 1086 ; we next find
acordedan in the year 1119 ; demohiliser is, I think, the
last French Verb that we have admitted to the rights of
citizenship ; it recalls our watching the Russians on the
Pmth early in 1877.
It is curious to mark the changes of foreign words
in the Chronicle. The FiUppiu of 1075 becomes
PhUippe in 1087 ; the Frana^ice of 1085 becomes France
in that same 1087. The TJngerland of 1057 is seen as
Sungrie in 1096. We get some idea of the old French
which we ought to build against the Deril ; this is the later French
sense.
* G>rona,b.ow«VQT, h&d. beeu used in the Lindisfame Gospels for
our Lord's ctowiv oi X-Votia.
Inroad of French Words into England. 493
pronunciation, when we find Dnglislimen writing Baius,
Ouy Teitevin^ Alveamie, Mortoin^ Angeow^ Blais, Puntitc^
for well-known Fronch proper names. In the Bunan
(Bonlogne) of 1096, a relic of the old form Bononia still
remains ; in the same year Oosfrei shows ns the earliest
English form of our Godfrey, A Vowel-sound, new to
English ears, is first heard in the account of that
year ; the Crusaders tarry in Buille ; this is the
Normans' way of sounding Apulia, the rich land con-
quered hy them sixty years earlier. It might have been
written Poille, for the two forms Corhoil and Oorhuil are
found in the Chronicle. The old Sexlande of 1129 becomes
Alamanie thirty years later ; the Heanrig of 1105 appears
as Henri in 1107 ; rather earlier, we hear of Flandres
and Natimid^. The months of the year lose their old
Latin form ; in 1097 comes August ; and rather later,
Moms montey Junies mon^e, and JuUes mon^. The form
Johan (John) is found in 1114 The names of Saints,
if in common use, were shorn of their Latin endings ;
in 1087, we hear of the Abbot of St, Augustine ; two
years later, of Martvnes mcBssan (Martinmas) ; here there
is no Saint prefixed ; in 1098, we read of the Abbot on
8^ JEdmu/nd ; here the byrig is suppressed. The word
evangelistaf applied to St. Luke in 1119, shows the first
inroad of the foreign isty which now too often supplants
the true Old English er ; some choose to write pldlologisty
instead of phUologery and I suppose astrologist will soon
be reckoned the correct thing. About 1120, we had
begun to prefer French forms to the older Latin ; for in
the Homilies of that time, we find iscole written for
the former scolu.
494 Old and Middle English.
The Old French most always commaiid earnest
attentioa from a student of English, and we have a fine
Bpeoimen of the language that was fashionable at King
Heniy the First's Court abont 1120. Philip de Thami's
works have been printed by Mr. Wright ('.Popnkr
Treatises on Science,' pp. 20 to 131).' We here find
such good old forms as, Damiiei-Des (Dominos Dens),
meig (mensis), praier, Cristien, »alveur, pronounced Uke
the present French galvioitr, one of the noany French
Boands that England has preserved more faithfully thsn
France herself. The sonnd of the old ai may be easilj
guessed, when we find both crois and cruu, Join uid
Junie; there is also hull, which the French usually
wrote hoil; poi stands for the modem peu; bloie for
bleu. In Doomsday Book, the English Gruland (Crow-
land) appears as Croiland and Cruiland. The French
have kept the true o]d sound of the oi in j'owtr ; they
have lost it in joie. We must have reconrse to Littr^'s
noble French Dictionary, if we woald know the old
sound oi oi or oy in French and English. SecviUr and
reeoU were once pronounced alike. When we compare
the Latin btitiire and bottdlir, its present corruption in
Northern France, we may safely say that the u orouwss
pronounced in the first syllable of the word from first
to last. Tet the word was written boH by French
authors in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Century; the oi
was therefore one way of writing u or ow ; it came to
England soon after the Conquest ; we have already
seen HoUant written for what is now Sulland.
' In s Tork on English, it is better to ezaniine thia poem of
about 11^0, than (o go back to earlier French poeios, mieh H the
H;mD of St. Eulilie of 900, or the I^egeada of luSO.
Inroad of French Words into England. 495
Of all the cormptiona of Nortbeni Oanl, none is
more aetonnding than that of o^ua into what is now
pronoonced as o. In the preaent work, p. 45, we Bee
that acva, ama has already become hve, aa tegui, sequere
became suivre ; a farther step is taken in p. 36, where
we find the Plural eices, for v was oft«n confonnded
with M or w ; in this shape the word came to England,
and was written ewe in 1320, whence comes onr
The confnsion between o and u is Seen, for Uume re-
places Rome ; nune st&nds for n(me (noon). In p. 42,
quod becomes que, and two lines onward 31*1 becomes ki.
We see the insertion of 6 in numbre and trembler. In
p. ?5, there is both the old demoMtrame and the new
demuttre ; we English have both moTistrance and mvsl^,
coming from the same Latin word. Filiua has already
become fiz, p. 83 ; and a few lines later, David loses its
last letter in the Scotch fashion. Camem is seen both
as com and charn; horas loses its first letter, and is
written Tire* (hours) j we English write this h, but do
not sound it. In p. 124, there is both hume and ume
(homo). Baptize, in p. 109, was perhaps the first word
in Me that was adopted in England; the ontlandish
ending is now far too common. Tirant takes the intrn-
sive t at the end. We ace the confusion betiveen the
letters 1* and v, for the old Judeu and the new Juev,
p. 124, are both fonnd ; the form Jueu was adopted in
England, while Franco held to Juev, afterwards Juif.
We have treated lieutenant in exactly the contrary way.
Quarre (carr4) is written in p. 75 ; hence onr quarry,
irhere we keep the old French soand.
We have seen Daiimea (dominns) ; when this word
496 Old and Middle EngluJu
was used of a man, it became dwMt^ p. 37; and the word
Dan was applied to monks in England, down to the
Reformation. We find, en vain^ vereiy remanarU^ Parait
(Paradise), hruUe^ cots, Tnde, deseroivy gravel, etUfU
(qnaint), mave (mavis), sa per (his peer, equal), rickeites,
Tei and sei are written, not tot and sai. Eetre stands
for a Substantive, and led the waj to oar being. Defendre
(p. 112), alreadj stands for vetare. Juste is used in p. 84
for prope ; it was employed later in England for eren.
The favoxirite Interjection Deiu is in p. 21. Prise (prize)
is in p. 76 ; we have now bat one word in English for
both CBstimare and navis capta. Ma^ister was always of old
connected with learning ; hence in p. 86, tnaistrie stunds
for scientia, a meaning it long conveyed in England ; in
France, it farther expressed dominium at this time. In
p. 94 we see both of the forms for venari, cocker and
chacer ; whence onr catch and cJuice ; the hard c comes
fix)m Picardy, the soft ch from Bargpindy ; chcutel is in
the Song of Boland of the Eleventh Century, and lasted
in this shape for five hundred years in France.^
The speech of the English castle and the English
hovel for two hundred years after 1066 was almost as
distinct as the Arve and the Bh6ne are when they first
meet. We see, however, that a few French words very
early foimd their way into English. A shrewd observer
long ago told us how ox, sheep, and sudne came to be
called beef, mutton, and pork, when smoking on the
board. Treading in his steps, I venture to guess how
our bluff forefathers began their studies in the French
^ S«e \Xift -^lotd. va lAttc4 8 Dictionary.
Inroad of French Words into England. 497
We ina^ imagioe & cavalcade of the new
ariBtocracj of England, ladies and knights, men that
perhaps fought at Hastings in their yontb ; these alight
from their steeds at the door of one of the chnrches,
that have lately arisen tfaronghont the land in a style
unknown to E!arl Qodwine. The ridera are accosted by
a crowd of beggars and bedesmen, who pnt forth all
their little stock of French ; ' lAdy Counter, ctad in
£Tra.va6 and tabeXim, look &om thy ■pcAfretj. Be largt of
thy treaxwre to the 'pix^ and feeble ; of thy charity
bestow thy riekea on ns. We will pnt np our oHsom
for thee, after the manere and cwtwa of onr religion.
EatB oar poverlg in some measure ; that is the best
penance, as thy chaplain in his sermon says. By all
the Prophets, Confessors, Patriarohs, and Virgins, show
as mercy. Feed ns from thy rents and gamers,
«&<uten the glvdenerie of jogeloure, and sew (follow)
after Paradise.' Another speech wonld rnn thns:
■ Worthy Baron, thou hast honour at Cowt ; speak for
my son in prison. Let him hare justice ; he is no robber
or lecher, that men should blame him. The sergeatU*
waited for him in the market ; he paid them noth-
ing, BO these ealehpoki have wronght him sore tnlseite
behind the bars. Mend all this ; so Christ accord thee
jpeaee at the day of Uvreison ! ' A priest would talk
learnedly of the fntt of the sacrament, the archangles,
t^toltteion, the miracles, the processiun to the sepulcre,
ihefeste of the Cireameitiun, the tables of the Law, tho
tapers to be lighted ; and he wonld explain the Crede.
The word Baptist, with its strange ending, wonld becoma
K K
498 Old and Middle English,
funiliar.' Not one of these sixty French words was m
English Dse before the battle of Hastings ; but we find
every one of them set down in writing within little mora
than & centnry after that date, so common had tfaeytlieii
become in English mouths.* Those of the needy, who
knew hnt little French, must have learnt at least howto
bawl for justice, charity, mercy, on seeing their betten.
The first letter of the word justice shows that a new
French sonnd was taking root in England. The words
Umperiee and mercy, nsed in these times, bronght in
new hissing sounds ; the » in English came already
qnite often enough.
In the Homilies of 1160 we trace a new chaage.
Foreign proper names had hitherto for the most put
nnbendingly maintained their Latin form in England.
They were now being corrupted, owing to French in-
flnence ; at pages 47 and 49 we find mention of jSeinf
Qregori. At page 9 we see both the old form /oie 4
ludem and the new form pe Qiwia (Jews). Maria and
Jacobm now become Marie and Jam€. French words
were being brought in most needlessly ; thus we readtt
page 51, ' crabbe is an ifiaii«re (kind) of fissce.*
In the Essex Homilies, the French is seen elbowing
out the Latin from proper names. Andreas and Midtheie
become Aiidreu and Matkeu. What was of old written
leo is turned into leun (lion) ; almegse into altatti
' We have already seen Bi-angelinf. Now and then a French nt^
punlps an English gcrilie ; thns barrage is written for banai
(barRo), in the Esffx Homiliet, p. 133.
' They muy be found in the Saxon Chnmide and in the SrnM of
Inroad of French Words into England. 499
tnarma, into marhehtone (page 145). Deciph replace^
the old learning knight ; it bad appeared as diacijpul in
the Lindisfarne Gospels. An intruding letter is seen in
common words ; mazere is found at page 163. This z
did not become common in England for nearly three
hundred years. ^ Layamon wrote his long poem the Brut
about 1205 ; but, though this was mainly a translation
from the French, he seldom employs a French word, and
hardly ever without good reason. In this poem we find
Admiral, astronomy^ hue (in our phrase hue and cry),
messagere, montainej nornie, pilgrim, image,^ We have
seen that elep-hde was known to our fathers as ylp^
Layamon borrows a new form, olifant, from the French ;•
the older English form of the word lasted down to 1230,
the later French form to 1550, about which time the
eagerness for classic learning changed Skelton's oUfarU
into elephcmt, as we see in Udall's well-known play. Thus,
within little more than two centuries, we in England
employed three different forms of one Latin word.
Layamon sometimes writes claro instead of derc, and we
have followed his pronunciation; Da/rby, instead of
Derby, had come earlier.
Orrmin is even more Teutonic than Layamon in his
Bcom of outlandish words. About this time, the days
of King John, one fiflh of the weighty words in a pas-
sage Are such as have become obsolete in our days«
Under John*s grandson, this proportion was to be woe*
fully altered. The only thing that could have kept up
1 See the ' P&ston Letters ' (Gaiidner), I. 610.
' I have mentioned here only the moet common of Layamon's
'words, borrowed from the French ; he has many other foreign terms
X X 2
500 Old and Middle English.
a purely Teutonic speech in Eogland would hare bsea
Bome version of the Biblo, a standard of the best Riy.
lish of the year 1200. Bat this was not to be ; Popt
Innooent III. and his Prelates had no mind to Amisli
laymoQ with weapons that might be so easily turned
against the Church. She was widely diSoront now
from what she had been in the days of those old
translators, Bede and Aldhelm. Omnin himself tells oi
that muiy fbund faalt with him for bringing Scrip-
ture trath down to the level of the common folk. We
have missed mncb ; bad be ^ven ns a ^ood venion of
tite Soriptnrefl, accepted over all England, onr tongw
wonld have had the present flexibility of the New E^-
lisfa, and wonld have kept the power of oomponsdiDg
new words oat of her own stores, the power that be-
longed to the Old English.
We may now glance at the Hali Meidenbad, about
1210 ; a few French words in it may be here mentioned.
The word fru^non is used not only in its Old EogUali
sense (deficere), whence comes trvckU, bnt also to
express the French troquer, whence comes the tmci
system. The foreign beatt had become so common,
that tbe Adverb beoiteliehe (p. 9), was formed. As to
this word, I may remark that the Irish have kept its
tme proniiDoiation, which has been dropped by Fnnce
and Ei^land. Ctesar brongbt his Italtan betfitt to tlie
Seine ; William brought his bette to tlie ThantM ; ud
StMugbow's soldiery bronght heate (bayste) t» the Mfej.
France has dropped the Consonant a, England bas cor*
E^pted the soand of the Yowel e, bnt Ireland keeps tlie
word just as it was first given to het. Tbia is a eeod
Inroad of French Words into England. 501
imtsDce of tJie way that an oatlying colony will keep
words and Bounds dropped by the parent conntry; this
waa remarked of the Irish Pale by shrewd observers
in Elizabeth's days. The same observation holds good
of the American Colonies in oar own time.* The
old •^ojia.n, now takes a new sense; hitherto it had
meant ' to try ; ' at p. 23 it means ' to make clear ; '
a third sense, ' to tarn ont,* was to come fonrscore years
later. One French word, now always in onr months,
may be seen in p. 41 ; om»Mio is there Englished by
al owite. Sometimes a writer wonld tarn his English
into French ; thus in Sawles Warde, p. 247, stands,
' mefe, fat me meom/re hat.'
The Ancren Riwle, written about 1220, is the fore-
FTumer of a wondrous change in our speech. The
proportion of Old English words, now obsolete, is therein
much the same as it is in the writings of Orrmin and
Layamon. But the new work swarms with French
words, brought in most needlessly. What could we
want with such terms as cuntinuelement, Bevleset (God
knows), helwmi, Tnuericorde, and cogitaciun F The anthor
is even barbarous enoof^ to give us the French ntleiaent,
where we shonld now write only. I set down a short
sample, underlining the foreign words. 'Heo weren
itenled, and Jmrah fe tentaciuns ipreoved to treowe
fi&otT^'utu, and so mid rihte ofserveden kempene crune.'*
• Ths noiM KmjM
old Bome than the »
oflUdzid.
' Page 3S6 of tha Camden Societj's edition. I have not noder-
Used proved, u that fi>ieigQ TOid wna in English ase before tha
NonDBn Conquaet.
502 Old and Middle English.
JMany a word^embodied in the English Bible and Prayer-
book three hundred years later, is now found for the first
time in our tongue. These words were accented in the
French way, on the last French syllable ; the usage held
its gpround for four hundred years. ^ Indeed, it still mles
us when we pronounce urbane and divine.
As to Vowels, the French au is much employed
to produce the broad sound of a, as saumple, hatmeki
avaunce ; all that love pure English should sound the a in
these words as broadly as in father, '^ We see batne and
sauter ; in these an Hs dropped. The e of the Chronicle
becomes a in Amperur (emperor), p. 2|4. The ea was
the favourite way of writing the French sound S all
through the South West of England ; one copy of the
Ancren Biwle has beast for the French heste^ p. 58.
The foreign oi is sounded like the French ou or ou-e ; in
the Ancren Biwle, the ot has not the sound of the French
e, as in Moreioin, What is written angoise in p. 212
appears as anguiae (anguish) in p. 110. In p. 94 ami
(annoyance) appears in one copy, annu in another; a
third has ennia.' Noise is first found in p. 66 ; ereaU*
(crucem) comes often, though it could not drive out the
Danish Jcross ; we still keep the old sound of the French
(H in crusade. It was not till about 1290 that oi was
commonly used in England to express the IlVench i.
' One of these words, accented in the French way, is preserred
in the old rimes, ' Mistress Mary, quite contrary*
' I know some people, well educated, who sound hath someUiiflg
like bay-eth; a horribl^ travesty of a fine old sound.
* How few sxxav^^ ^"^ ainnmi «»d emntt are but two fonns of
one word ? tiie fiiat ioTm^aa^ftft. ^^-^ra. xa \^^ \n.'%TKQ(»^.
Inroad of French Words into England. 503.
As to CoDBon&nts : urei (horse) is written withoat
ihe A. Delit ia written without the gh, which we long
Afterwardu inserted, to imitate the Latin deleclor. The
<»ld regala, a Benedictine word, had hitherto beeo written
regol in England; we were now to throw aside the Latin
for the Frencb.and to writ«it riio^e (mle). Three hundred
jeare later, Tyndale was to bring in regiment (imperinm) ;
■ODT physicians have long talked of a Tegimen ; and in
onr day, the British pennj-a-liner writes regime for what
in 1860 was called rufe, government, or tyttem? Here
are five different forms, coming from the old rego,
applied to common life, as distingQished from royally .
The old capitle, founded on the Latin, was written
in Norfolk down to 1440; but in the Ancren Riwle the
French form ehea^tre (chapter) is adopted. The French
«orniption of capitale is seen in p. 224 as chelel (chattels) ;
the other form, cattle was not set apart for beasts nntil
after 1400 ; we may also talk of capital. In p. 42 we
see the stages in the cormption of a well-known word,
/mtiphona, anteinpne, antefiie ; anthem was to come later.
When we find forms like leieune and noblesce, we see the
sourcB of snch forms as taion. We long kept the Old
French quarrel (bolt) ; we remark in p. 62 the more oornipt
form qttarreait, prononnced like qjtarriou. When we find
eruelte in the Ancren Biwle, we see at once that England
has often kept Old French words in a pnrer form than
France herself has done. Awattie in p. 174 shows as
how strongly the u in aguetter was once prononnced id
' Id my jonth, we tAlkfd of the F«iidal Sjatem ; the apes of
flhnio cpfinpmant now talk of Ibe Feodal Rig^me, «\i\t\i ■«tiAi 'Nsbx*
.aatonished HoJlaai.
504 Old and Middle Eiiglislu
France; the form oumtter still lingers in Lcnrraine.
The Willelm and rdiqutce of the Chronicle now become
Willam, p. 840, and relikesj p. 18 ; Latin was thrown
aside for French.
Among the Substantives, we find mte (via), helam
(long a familiar English term of greeting), deitUe^ Qiwerie
(Jewry), which shows how g came to be softened in Eng^
lish. The French Verbs give birth to English Verbal
Nouns, as in his departunge^ p. 250. We see jnake drupie
chere (vultus), p. 88 ; in aiicre persone (in an anchorite's
person), p. 126 ; trusseau and trusse stand for bundles in
p. 168; dame is used for mother. The inroad that
French was to make even into the English Paternoster
is foreshadowed ; in p. 26 dimitte nobis debita nostra i»
Englished by * for^if us ure dettes, al so as we voijive^
to ure detturs.* We still pronounce these words in the
French way, though hundreds of years later we imitated
the Latin, when writing them. Many technical terms of
religion come in, as silence and wardein. We light upon
spitel (hospital) and mester (ars), afterwards corrupted
into mystery y a confusion with a well-known Greek word.
There is givegou (gewgaw) and beaubelet (bauble).
Among the Adjectives iafolherdi. We must turn to
p. 316, if we would know the source of m^ike a fod </
myself; we there find ich liahbe tbeon fol of ms tvke%
(de me ipso). In p. 46 we hear of 'a large creois;'
this shows that the Adjective was adding the meaning
of magnus to that of prodigus. At p. 202 we see the
source of our phrase, ' he is but a poor creature ' ; for
the term, cowardice is there said to embrace the p(mre
ifceorted. In t^. \^ ^«5 "^ Sss^a^ 'CsMik ^^osAa^ ^fgtiiHe
Inroad of French Words into England. 505
ia%nMnen. Long before the Norman Conqnest foreign
words bad been forced to take Englisli endinga before
tliej conld be natnraliaed, as heeh/sam, and regoUice ; in
the Anoren Biwle, Frencl; Adjeclives have to take the
English signs of comparison, aa larger and ten4rust.
Among the Verba is enUrmeten (meddle), p. 172, a
word well known in Scotland ; also /oil, laee, and cry.
This French crier is now beginning to drive oat the Old
Gnglisb gridan.
If it be tme, aa some tell as, that the mingling of
the Tentonic and Bomance in our tongue make ' a happy
mairi^e,' we see in the anthor of the Ancren Riwle
'die man that first gave out the banns. He was, it
wonld seem, a Bishop, well groonded in all the lore that
Paris or Rome could teach ; and he strikes as as rather
too fond of airing his French and Latin before the good
ladies, on whose behalf he was writing. For sixty years,
no Englishman was hold enough to imitate the Prelate's ■
BtjlB of composition,
Oue corions effect, due to the new French worda^
must be pointed oat, I have already said that crier was
driving ont gridan t these kindred words are often fonnd
alongside each other in this Century ; and, nnfaappily,
it is usually the French one that has held its gronnd.
It is now and then hard to teU whether some of our
commonest words are home-bom or of French growth,
so great is the confusion between the Teutonic words
bronght to the Thames by Hengist, and the kindred
words bnragbt t« the Seine by Clovis and afterwards
Itome acroBB the Channel by William iha Go>an^«TiiT.
The kinsmansiup in meaning and bouc^. 'm,'a&\> '^a.^e
So6
Old and Middle EnglisJu
bespoken a \7el00me in England for many of these
Fi^ench strangers that follow.
Teu^ontc.
JSonkztictf*
Aheatan
Abattre
Acofrian
Recouyrir
Aff»red
Ai&aie
Alecgan
Aloyer
Ange
Anguisse
Astiindian
Estonner
BefcOan
Defouler
Beom
Baron
Bigalian
Guiler
Biwieten
Bias (blue)
Bitraie
Bloie
Blencan (Uenc
jh)F16chir
(flinch)
Bord
Borde
Band
Bounde
BoUe
Boule
Brand
Brande
Br^c
Breche
Bregdan
Bricke (Old
Dutch)
Broder
Brique
Bryean
Bruiser
BiiflVr (Old
BoAche
Norse)
Burgher
BuTf^
Butten (Old
Bouter
Dutch)
Oempa
Chamjpoun
Oeosan
Ghoisur
Onif
Ganif
Cocer
Ouivre
TekUtmic.
Jionumce,
Cost (Old Dutch) Gouster
Ouppa
Darei^
Coupe
Dard
Deman
Damner
VAp
F.ise
Facen
Feoh
Feign
Fief
Feorme
Ferme
Feorren
Forain
Ferae
Fraiche
Fin
Fin
Fladra (Old
Flatter
Norse)
Flatr(Icehmdic)Plat
Frakele
Fraile
Gaeta (Ice-
Guetter
landic)
Gafol
Gabelle
Gagn (Icelandic) Gagner
Geard
G^ardin
GenUfene
Oommune
Gesamnian
Assembler
Gote
Gk>uttito
Gridan
Orier
Ham
Hameau
Hasti
Hftstif
Hatian
Hadir»
Healsbeorga
Hauberc
Heard
Hardi
Hereberg
Herbier
Hreinsa (Old
Kincer
Norse)
Hrothgar
Koger
* The Tdutonic words in French are mostly High German ; but
Aadir (odisse), now hair, is an exception ; it is plainly deriTod firom
the Low Germsji; from Katian, not from kasam. The Franks liTed
on the botdei "b^stWWti \3ti<ft Vs^i ^gCfi^X. Vstona takl^^nsas^ nsi^a^
Inroad of French Words into England. 507
Teutomc.
Tmtmdc.
Romane
Hurlen
Hareler
Sinder
Cendre
Hnrten
Hurter
Solian
Soulier
Ino
Ire
SwDdan
Ileapende
iBila (High Oei^ Isle
Speja (Ice-
Ei^jjier
ram)
landic)
lAfian
Laver
Spillan
Spuiller
Estable
L«g«
Lei
Rtafiol
T^
Lac
Stedja (Ic8-
Siaier
Line
Ligne
laildic)
Logian
LoftM
Stoppan
Ertufer
M»nii^
Maing
Strsc
l^streit
MearT
Marche
■strib
i:atrif
Uerac
Marais
Strudan
Destruir
MiSls (Ice-
MeBler
Syfer
TWgen
Sobre
landic)
Targier
Murlwr
Meurtre
?T
Targe
Nefe
Neveu
Tent
Nesh
Nice
Trahtnian
Trailer
Pearroc
Pare
'ZE,""^
Trompe
Pme
Peine
Pom
Pocbe
Tumba (Old
Tomber
Prisa (Icelandic) Pns
NorM)
Biet
Bat
Turnan
Toumer
Rinff
Rang
Wmven
Weiver
Beaf
Robs
Weardan
Ouarder
Seafian
Ravir
Wearnian
Ouarnir
Eic
Riche
Weddian
Gafier
Kypere
Robeor
Westan
Guairter
S^
Escornir
Wimpel (Old
Guimple
Sceoh
Eachuir
Dutch)
Seam
Sumptei'
SercW
Wise
Guise
Secao, sechen
Wyrre
Guerre
Sikei
Secure
We fnrtber see the English er and the Frenoh ier
alike nsed as endings, and the English mit employed aa
a prefix side by side with the French met. The English
»n answers to the French en. In the Ancren Biwle we
find kantiler (conncillor), he»thj, ungraciu*. French and
5o8 Old and Middle English.
English ending^ and prefixes begin to jostle each other;
in the Wohnng of onr Lord, we find both debonairte and
dehonairship.
Some of the terms, in the long list set oat pp. 506-7,
have an obvions resemblance to each other ; bat it may
be doubted whether the best philologers aliye at this
time — whether even Giraldns Gambrensis or Boger
Bacon, snspected that the French dame was akin to the
English tamer, and that ad and at, pottr and for, were
bat different forms of one old word. The year 1220 is
a turning-point ; not only did shoals of French words
cffbct a lodgement in the English of the Ancren Riwle,
but many French idioms were transferred into the
English Life of St. Catherine.
The Old English poetic word-store, a luxury that
must have been unknown to the great mass of the
nation, had passed away immediately after the Conquest;
the Old English prose kept its old words and its power
of compounding fairly well (except in the neighbourhood
of East Anglia), long after 1200. The reason is, that
all through the hundred and fifty years after the Con-
quest, some degree of cultivation had been bestowed
upon the language. The mighty William, his son, and
his great-grandson, sometimes worded their Charters in
English.^ They were statesmen in the highest sense of
the term ; they had none of that vulgar and overbearing
spirit that finds its choicest trophy in sweeping away an
> Some of these are set out by Hickes, ThetoHruM, L 15. In one
Charter, about 1160, eow (vos) is written ^eau; this eeemB to shov
that the French eau had then the sound of their modem ton, and
ezplains how we came by bewty.
Inroad of French Words into England. 509
old language; this bratish itjie of despotism vpaa
reeerved for the masters of Poland and Litlmania in
the days of railwajs and telegraphs.
Jn the England of the Twelfth Centmy, religion did
not It^ hehind statecraft. More than one version of
(he Gospels was pnt forth in the English of 1150 ; and
in the same way M\fnc'B Homilies were altered so as to
snit more modem hearers ; this went on, as we have
seen, all throngh the Twelfth Century. King Henry II.
himself, though he was anything bat an Englishman,
seems to have understood English, as we learn from
a well-known tale in Qiraldua. About this time the
English Chronicle was copied out at Canterbury, and
the old inflections were preserved in writing, if not in
common speech. From 1200 to 1220, ayest quantity ttf
English, both prose and verse, was given to the public.
Orrmin and others were the champions of religion;
Iiayamon undertook to handle history, according to his
lights.' A brilliant fatnre seemed to be in store for oar
tongue in 1220 ; mnch pains was being bestowed npon
its cultivation : if it conld outlive the Xorman Con-
quest, it need fear nothing ; so at least we might have
deemed. But affairs took a very different tnm ; English
was thrust back, at the moment it seemed about to
recover the gronnd lost a hundred and fifty years earlier.
The next sixty years are the most disastrous in our
history, from a philologer's point of view.
English and Latin had mn on, side by side, as the
two exclusive vehicles of the langu^e of our government,
■ People complniD of bia ArtJiurian Legendi; but ereu tboao
wen better than no Engliih HiBtor; at. &I1.
5IO Old and Middle English.
firom 600 to 1160 ; &om the latter dale to 1215, Latin
reigned withont a rival. No Englisbinaa could fake
offence if the language of the Ghorch, revered alike \>j
himself and hj hie French-speaking neighboar, were
used as the organ of government. To come down to
oar own daja, there was little strife between Croat and
Magyar, when Latin was the official ton^e of the whole
of the Hongariaii realm ; the dianse of this tongne, a
eiUy innovation, was one of the causes of the bloodj
civil wars in 1848. In England, linguistic enmities
never rose to the boiling-point, as on the Danabe. On
the contrary, in that renowned year 1215, a third
official langot^ was seen; the Great Charter is said
to have been put forth in French, not in Latin.'
French and Latin henceforward ran on side by aide
down to 1362, when English was once more made the
language of the Law Courts. It was no insult to the
English of the Thirteenth Century that public affiuis
should he discnssed and set forth in the tongue of
the higher classes, who were doing their ntmost for the
common welfare of all, and who were working for
the hovel every whit as much as for the castle or the
monaateiy. True it was that the nobles in England
talked French among themselves ; bnt they wen more
drawn to their English-speaking neighboare than to the
Court fiivonrites that came over here from Poiton and
Savoy. The time, when another langua^ besides Lads
appeared as a monthpibce of the English government,
ushera in the darkest days of the history of oar language;
' Earlo, fhilokgg, 63.
Inroad of French Words into England 511
its onltivation all but ceased ; after the Ancren Biwle
comes au ugly gap of sixty years that the philologer
inost ever hold accursed. No long original English
poem, except the Owl and Nightingale, was put forth
from 1220 to 1320. There is no English prose treatise
at all (written in the easy idiom of the day), &om 1220
to 1340, except a few Kentish scraps. Strange it ia
that the same period of time, which heaped upon
England political boons unparalleled in the world's
history, shonld have mangled England's speech in a way
nnkuown to the literary records of other countries.
What was the reason of the great change between
1220 and 1230, the Second Division of the Middle
English, the period of Decay? I answer; all English-
men, high and low, were flinging themselree headlong
into the chase after foreign fashions. Our Nobles and
Bishops spoke French in their own homes, though they
4<oald make ehift to understand the English spoken by a
neigljbouT or a vaasal. In 1215 they did a priceless
service to England ; they acted boldly in the teeth of
King and Pope alike. Never did any aristocracy so
nobly earn the thanks of the whole laud ; and this stout
patriotism never slackened for generations. The wicked
John, the weak Henry, the mighty Edward, all alike
had to bow before a majesty greater than their own.
Well may we be proud of onr Bigods and Bohuns. It is
no wonder if England imitated her leaders' speech ; in this
coaiBe burghers and priests would be the most forward.
If anything ever was fit to draw forth national poetry,
it was the great struggle that was going on about 1260.
Of this date we have many Poems, in which the platform
512 Old and Middle English,
of the national leaders is set ont, and the English heait
pours forth its patriotic fire ; but all these Poems, witii
one short exception, are couched in French and Latin.
If none of the great Enropean literatures, as HaUam
has said, was of such slow growth as the English, the
reason is not far to seek. The French, Spanish, Prc^
Yen9al, Italian, Norse, and Oerman literatores wan
fostered by high-born patrons. Foremost stand the
great Hohenstanfens, Emperors of the Bomans, ew
August ; then come Kings of England, of Norway, d
Sicily, of Castile; Dukes of Austria, Landgraves of
Thuringia, Counts of Champagne ; together with a host
of knights from Suabia, Tuscany, Provence, and Aragon.
A far other lot fell to the English Muse : for many long
years she basked not in the smiles of Eong or Earl ; her
-chosen home was far away from Court, in the doistsr
and the parsonage ; her utterance was by the moutiiB ^
a few lowly priests, monks, and friars. Too long was sbe
content to translate from the lordly French; in tlist
language her own old legends, such as those of Havdok
and Horn, had been enshrined for more than a hundred
years. It was in French, not in English, that Stephen
of Canterbury preached and Robert of Lincoln rimed,
good home-bom patriots though they were. In oar
island there was no acknowledged Standard of national
speech ; ever since 1120, each shire had spoken that
which was right in its own eyes.^ It was not until after
> Many standard F^nch anthon, who litned before 1526* are oov
commonly reprinted ; we reprint for general use two English antbott
Alone, Chuucex end Mallorj, o£ all that wrote before that date.
Inroad of French iVords into England. 513
1400 tliat all the land to tte Sonth of Trent came to
acknowledge one Standard, the King's English. The
Court at Winchester might have made English the
fiiehion, after the loss of Kormand; in 1205; the
slightest adrance in that path wonld have been enough.
Unhappily, the Coort did not take the decisive step ;
onr tongoe had to plod on for 150 years longer,
before any English King wonld deign to smile upon
She had a dangerons rival on the other side of the
Channel. Ever since the year 1200, the French Conrt and
nation had been waxing more powerfol than erer before ;
their influence was felt from the Tay to the Jordan. Pope
Gregory IX., inl239,Iikened France to the tribe of Judah
overtopping all others as regarded valour and piety
French knighta were in request everywhere ; to stom,
Constantinople, to prop up the falling kingdom of Jerusa-
lem, to champiou the Pope's cause in Southern Italy, to
root out the heretics of Langnedoc, to make head againsi
the German Kaiser, to save England from the ruthless
grip of her tyrant, Rome's new vassal. French learning
kept well abreast of French prowess. Hundreds ot
Englishmen went to study at Paris ; little comparatively
was thought of Oxford or Cambridge scholarship before
1230.' French architecture was at this time (1200-1260)
pushing its conqueste in all directions, as may be seen
by any traveller who shall visit Leon in Spfun, Casa-
mara in Italy, Cologne in Genttaay, Westminster in
514 Old atid Middle English.
England ; churclies all begun about this time.' It iras
France that taught other countries how to write.
Italians such as Martin da Ganale at Venice^ and Bro-
netto Latini at Florence, threw aside their own mother
tongue and wrote in French, the best vehicle, as tliej
thought, of polite speech. Bather earlier in the Gen-
turj, Germany was seeking inspiration from French
sources. There are no fewer than three German
metrical Romances extant on the tale of Sir Tristrem;
Gottfried yon Strasburg is careful to tell us that he
searched for his theme in books both Latin and W^ijn^
(French).^ Still more did Englishmen, as was natural
turn to France, the marvellous centre that has always
had a kind of magnetic attraction for those bom with-
out her pale. In Paris seemed to be united, at this
particular time, all the learning of Athens and all
the valour of Rome. Furthermore, a little later on, it
was at Paris that a King ruled, in whose person (so it
might well seem to Englishmen) their own Alfred had
started once more to life; this foreign King was chosen
to make an award, famous in our history, between con-
tending Englishmen. Legends about the mighty Charle>
magne, who was fondly imagined to have been a typical
Frenchman, were widely spread. From Paris came all
the lore, the art, the chivalry, the fashion of the day;
something of the same kind may be remarked much later,
in 1670.' If an English scholar were minded to win ft
' We still fled at WestmiiiBter two distinct inioads of Fiench
aichiteetare ; that of 1060 and that of 1245,
* See Soott's Bit THf^rem, p. 254.
• So\n o^i cr^i^^i,\\. ^^ "'^tkiv^ ^.Val «n^^Iies the English
Inroad of French Words into England. S I J
-name for himself, he had to write either in French or
in Latdn. There was no Standard English that might
be ondorstood alike at Durham and at Exeter; any
patriot handling English (a few snch there were),
translated his short little piece for the Ze7(vZ me,n <ii
his own Bcighbonrhood, and not for ontsiders. Onr
shires had become intensely local in their speech.
The Northern Psalter coald never have been aught
bnt a puzzle in Warwickshire ; Layamon's Brat mnst
have fallen flat on Lincolnshire ears. When the great
Bishop of Lincoln wished to teach the whole of
England, ho wisely wrote his Oliaeteau d'atiumr in
French ; fifty years after liis death, it had to be tnmed
into both Northern and Soathern English. Yet, for
all these French leanings, Bishop Bobert wae the beet
of patriots, and could make nse of his mother-tongue
to shame the greed of Papal underlings, athirst for the
good things of England.' In the English Legend of
St. Edmund the Archbishop, another great Ghnrchman,
we find it stated, as if something wonderfol, that he
ottered a sentence in English on his deathbed. The
famons English Proclamation of the year 12-18 iU
plainly the work of some clerk, who tries to imitate the
style of the old Charters, and who can only produce
stilted stnfF that was never spoken ; the piece has been
compared to the English that a Bengalee, taught ia the
dovemment schools, might pnt forth.
thsatro; onr plajwiigbts tr»nalat« (I beg their paidon, ada^)
French pieces.
■ Surrexit et confesuna eet Anglici &c. Sea the story in Thomw
of £ccleitoa, Monumaila FranciKana, (Muter of the Boll*).
5i6 Old and Middle English.
It cannot be too often repeated that the disnse of
English for sixty years after 1220 was the effect of
fashion, not of governmental effort ; and this disuse was
compatible with sound political feeling. Something of
the like kind may be seen in Bnssia now : the higher
classes at St. Petersbnrgh will speak nothing but French
among themselves ; yet, let some danger threaten their
country, they will show as much public spirit as tiieir
neighbours, the uncouth boors, who have never heard
of Voltaire. To return to England : one sign of the
times was the loss of her old Interjections ; for this I
account in the following way. The great Lady of the
Castle must have been the glass of fiEishion to all the
neighbouring Franklins' wives who might be admitted
into her august presence. The worthy women would
take as careful heed of Madame's Court phrases as of her
dress itself: of her 0, her aky her ailaz^ her ^6t, her Deu^
and her ^ar ma fai} These charming ezclamatioBS,
coming with the weightiest authority from such well-
bred lips, would speedily put to flight the vulgar old
Teatonic eaZa, walawaj and such like. The women,
humble missionaries of Fashion, would soon din the fine
new phrases into the ears of their husbands and children.
Of all words, an Interjection is the easiest to pick up
and imitate ; and we have been always adding to our
store of these expletives, from 1160 downwards.^
' The 0 and a may be seen in the Homilies of 1 160. A-weUatosyr
an ingenious combination, may be seen in the Essex HomUies, p. 18S.
' Miss Martinean tells ns in her Autobiography, published ia
187 7i that she iras much struck by the peculiar feminine oaths, relics
Hi the £\g\LVA«u\i^x^«siV.'<Qai«>)XX«^ and other ladies
Inroad of French Words into England, ^if
Long before tbe Conquest, the ladies had discovered
tbftt homel; Teatonic words coald not expresi the deli>
cate articles by whieb the feminine mind sets most store.
In an English lady's will of 995 we find the foreign
-words Tiwatel, iuneca, cuffian.* In later days, Paris and
Bonen became the oracles of the fair sex. These cities
supplied articles of dress, wherewith the ladies decked
themselves so gaily as to draw down the wrath of the
pulpit. One preacher of 1160 goes so &r as to call
smart clothing 'the Devil's moa&etrap ;' yellow raiment
and hlanchet (a way of whitening the skin) seem to have
been reckoned the moet dangerous of snares to woman*
kind, and therefore also to raanldiid.' In the Essex
Homilies an onslanght is made npon the Priest's wife
and her dress ; we bear of ' hire chemise smal and hwit,
hire mentel grene, hire nap of mazere.'* The Ancren
Riwle does not dwell on this topic of dress so mnch as
might have been expected ; only a few French articles
are there mentioned. A little la(«r, the high-lnred darnel
are tbna assailed :
peos prude levediee
pat luvyej> drywories
And brekep spusynge,
For heore lecherye,
Nnllef here sermonye
Of none gode fiiuge.
bom sbont the sama time (VoL I. 3S0). I ODce heaid of ao
Eoglishnian, who bod his aoDi taught t« swear in French by •
Freach tntor, hired for that purpose only.
■ Eemble, Codex Difi. YI. 130.
' Homiiia, Pint Seriet, p. S3.
* Homitia, Second Series, p. 163,
51 8 Old and Middle English.
Heo drawe]) lieore wede,
Mid seolkene ]7rede
Baced and ibunde.^
In the days of Edward I., we find scores of French
words, bearing on ladies' way of life, employed by onr
writers. Many were the articles of Inxnry that came
from abroad; commerce was binding the nations of
Christendom together. The English cJiajmian and
manger now withdrew into low life, making way for
the more gentlemanly foreigner, the marchand ; the old
seamer was replaced by the tailor. Half of our trades
bear French names ; simple hnes like red and blue do
well enough for the common folk, but oar higher classes
must have a wider range of choice ; hence come the
foreign scarlet, vemiilimi, orange, tnauve, and snch Uke.
But other agents of change were at work in the bud
after 1220. Few of us have an idea of the wonderful
revolution brought about in Latin Christendom by the
teaching of St. Francis. Two Minorite fHars of his^
Century, the one living in Italy, the other in England,
give us a fair notion of the work done by the new Brother-
hood, when it first began to run its race. Thomas of
Eccleston and Salimbene * throw a stronger light upon its
budding life than do all the documents published by the
learned Wadding in his Annals of the Minorites. Italy
may claim the founder ; but England may boast that
* Old English Miscellany, p. 77.
' The work of the Englishman is in Monumenta F^oHciscanot
published by the Master of the Rolls ; that of the Italian is in
Monumenta ad l^vincias Parmensem et Pl^uxntinam pertinentia, to-
be found m \«\v« '&cv\A%V!L^>3A«vca!L.
Inroad of French Words into England. 5^9
she carried ont Hs work, at least for fourscore years
after his death, better than any other land in Christendom.
It was she that gave him his worthiest disciples ; the
great English Franciscans, Alexander de Hales, Adam
de Marisco, Roger Bacon, Dims Scotns, and Occam, were
aneqoalled by any of their brethren abroad, with the two
exceptions of BaonaTentara and LnlU. Some of these
men songht the mainland, while others tanght in their
school at Oxford; ander the new guidance the rising
University shot ap with giant's growth, and speedily oat-
did her old riral on the Seine. The great Riobert himself
(ho was not as yet known as Lincolniensis) lectured before
the brethren at Oxford. English friars, being patternn of
holiness, wero held in the highest esteem abroad ; when
reading Salimbene's work, we meet tbem in all kinds of
nnlikely places throughout Italy and France : they
crowded over the sea to hear their great coantryman
Hales at Paris, or to take a leading part in the Chapters
hold at Bome and Assisi. The gift of wisdom, we are
told, overflowed in the English province.
It was a many-sided Brotherhood, being always in
contact with the learned, with the wealthy, and with
the needy alike. The English Friar was equally at home
in the school, in the bower, in the hovel. He could speak
more than one tongue, thanks to the training bestowed
upon him. We may imagine his every-day life : he
spends hia morning in drawing np a Latin letter to be
sent to the General Minister at Oxford or Paris, and he
writes much ae Adam de Marisco did. The friar of this
age has no need to fear the tongue of scandal \ sa va. ^Ida
afternoon he visits the Lady ot the CBBdfi,v^u»» ^vosciAi
520 Old and Middle English,
wish is that she may atone for the little weaknesses of
life by laying her bones in the nearest Franciscan
Church, mean and lowly though it be in these early
days. He tells her the last tidings from Qneen Eleanor's
Court, points a moral with one of the new Lays of
Marie, and lifts up his voice against the sad fnaks
played by fiekshion in ladies' dress. Their talk is of
course in French ; but the friar, having studied at Paris,
remarks to himself that his fair friend's speech sounds
somewhat provincial ; and more than a hundred years
later we are to hear of the school of Stratford-atte-Bowe.
In the evening, he goes to the neighbouring hamlet, and
holds forth on the green to a throng of homy-handed
churls, stalwart swinkers and toilers, men who earn their
daily bread by the sweat of their brows. They greedily
listen when addressed in the uncouth English of their
shire, English barely understood fifty miles off. Sach
burning words they never hear from their parish-pnest,
one of the old school. The friar's sermon is full of pro-
verbs, tales, and historical examples, all tending to the
improvement of morals.^
A new link, as we see, was thus forged to bind all
classes together in godly fellowship ; nothing like this
Franciscan movement had been known in our island
for six hundred years. The Old was being replaced
by the New ; a preacher would suit his tales to bis
listeners : they cared not to hear about hinds or hns-
* This last sentence I take from Salimbene, who describes the
new style of preaching practised by the friars his brethren. Italy
and England must have been much alike in the Thirteenth Contmy
in this respect.
Inroad of French Words into England. 521
baiidmen, bat about their betters.' He would therefore
talk abont ladies, knights, or stateBmen ; and when diii-
coursing abont these, he mnst have been almost driven
to interlard his English with a few French words, snoh
as were constantly employed by his friends of the higher
class. As a man of learning, he wonld begin to look
down npen the phrases of hia childhood as somewhat
coarse, and his lowly hearers rather liked a term now
and then that soared a little above their understanding :
what is called ' fine language ' has unhappily always had
charms for most Englishmen. It woald be relished hy
bnrghers even more than by peasants. Many ft-ee men
mast have known French aa well as English. The
preacher may sometimes have translated for bis flock's
behoof, talking of ' griik or pait, rood or eroiz, Heeen or
voii, lof or praite, gwikeldom or tricherie, stead or place.' *
As years went on, and as men more and more aped their
' OoT humbler dtiues dow prefer tbe fictitiona odveiitiirea of
some wicked Marqnia to all the sajiugs oad doings of Mrs. Gamp or
Mn. Foym.
' I take the following sketch from MiddUmarch, ill. 156 (pab-
liihed in 1872) :—
' Mr. Trumbull, the anctioQeer . . . was on amateur of eaperior
phrases, and nerer used poor iangnage without immediate); eorr«et-
ing himaelf. "Anybody may auk," says he, " anybody may intar-
rogate. Any one may give their remarks an interrogative turn."
He calls ImnAoe "a vpry superior publication, it commeneee well."
Thiugs never bega» with Mr. Trumbull ; they always annmea«ed,
both in private life and od his handbills ; " 1 hope coma one will tell
me— 1 hope «ome individual will apprise me of the facL" '
Uany of our early Franciscans must have been skin to Mr.
TmmbnU, Our modern penny-a-linen would say that the worthy
auctioneer was a master of ^iglish, and a better guide to folW
than Bunyan or Defoe.
522 Old and Middle English.
betters, the French words would drive oat the Old En*
glish words ; and the latter class would linger onlj in
the months of upland folk, where a keen antiquary maj
find some of them still. The clergy were the one class
that wrote for the people ; they could therefore make
our Literature whatever they chose. So mighty was
the spell at work, that in the Fourteenth Century French
words found their way into even the Lord's Prayer and
the Belief; the last strongholds, it might be thought, of
pure English. It was one of the signs of the times that
the old hoda made way for the new prechur; ^ prayer
eoid praise both come from France.^
But the influence of the friars upon onr speech was
not altogether for evil. St. Francis, it is well known,
was one of the first fathers of the New Italian ; a friar
of his Order, Thomas of Hales, wrote what seems to me
the best poem of two hundred lines produced in English
before Chaucer.' This * Luve ron,' addressed to a nun
about 1250, shows a hearty earnestness, a flowing dic-
tion, and a wonderful command of rime ; it has not a
score of lines (these bear too hard on wedlock) that
might not have been written by a pious Protestant.
Hardly any French words are found here, but the names
of a string of jewels. English poets had hitherto made
* How often does the word predicai (prsedicari) occur in the
journal of the Franciscan, who afterwards became Sixtus Y. !
^ Kzasinski tells us, that when the Jesuits began to sway edaca-
tion in Poland, the language was soon corrupted by a barbazoos
mixture of Latin phrases. — Reformation in Poland, II. 202.
* Old English MiaceUany, p. 98, (Early English Text Society).
Br. Morris thinks that the friar wrote in Latin, which was afte^
wards Englished.
Inroad of Frmck Words into England. 5^5
bnt little nse of the Yirgin Maiy as & theme. But
her worship was one of the great badges of the Fran-
ciscan Order; and from 1220 onward she inspired many
an English Maker. HowCTer wrong it might be theo*
logically, the new devotion was the most poetical of all
rites ; the dullest monk is kindled with anwonted fire
when he sets forth the glories of the Maiden Mother,
To her Chancer and Dnnbar have offered some of their
most glowing verse.
The second copy of Layamon's Bmt was written, it is
thoDgbt, abont 12C0. Scores of old words set down
fifty yeare earlier in the first copy of 1205 had now
become strange in the ears of Englishmen ; these words
are therefore dropped altogether. Some French words,
unknown to Layamon, are foand in this second copy.
We have an opportunity of comparing the Old and
the New school of English teachers, as they stood in the
Middle of this Century. We find one poem, written
shortly before 1250, abont the time that Archbishop
Edmnnd was canonized : this mnst have been composed
l^^ a churchman of the good old St. Albans' pattern, a
preacher of righteousness after Brother Matthew's own
heart. The rimer casts no wistful glance abroad, but
appeals to English saints and none others; he strikes
hard at Borne in a way that would have shocked
good Franciscans. He may have been a patriot, zealous
for the old tongue : for he is an exception to the common
rule ; the proportion of English words, now obsolete,
in his lines is as great as in those of Orrmin fifty
years earlier.' Most different is another Poem, written
1 Old Engluh Miacellany. p. 89.
524 Old and Middle English.
in a manuscript not later than 1260. The Maker may
well have been a Franciscan ; he pours out his wrath on
priests* wives and on parsons ; he handles the sins of
Jankin and Malkin in most homely wise. He has some
French words that he need not have employed, such as
sire and dame instead of father and 7n>oiher ; his propor«
tion of obsolete English is far less than that which we
see in the lines of his brother-poet.^ I suspect that the
Ancren Biwle (it still exists in many copies) must have
been a model most popular among the friars, who per-
haps did much to bring into vogue the French words
with which it swarms.
Long before the friars had fairly buckled to their
work in England, a great change connected with our
baptismal font had taken place. The old national
Christian names had died out soon after 1066, and had
been replaced by French names; boys and girls aHke
received newfangled appellations. Proper names are
the words most of all under Fashion's swaj. Here and
there parents might hold to the name of the special
patron of their shire, as Northumbria to St. CuthberC,
the West Midland to St. Chad, East Anglia to St Ed-
mund, and all England to St. Edward. Still, allowing
for these exceptions, there was a general craving after
Norman names ; the Teutonic fiEbther was always giving
his equally Teutonic son a fine French name ; and tbis
holds true even of villeins. We came across WQleki»
and Eobehin in 1190. When the author of the Ancren
Briwle wishes to forbid the divulging of the names of
* Old English Miacellany^ p. 1 86.
Inroad of French Words into England. 525
particular sinners iu Bhrift, he writes, ' yoa need not say
W^lom or "WaUr ' (Walter), p. 340. Wlien a teacher
thirtj years lat«r wishes to brand the sins of young men
and maidens in general, he talks of Bobin and Gilot ;
Jack and Gill were to come long afterwards.' Robert
of Bmnne has occasion to mention names that may be
given in baptism ; he at once refers to ' Robert, Willyam,
and Jonn.' (Handlyng Synne, p. 297.)
Matthew Paris is a name dear to all tme-hearted
Englishmen; bat we sbonld hare set the good monk
upon a still higher pinnacle had he only trodden in the
footsteps of the earlier Peterborough Chronicler uid
written in English. Down to 1220, the clei^ had
fostered oar earliest Iiiteratore with earnest care; after
that time, with few exceptions, they seemed to throw it
aside or to con-apt it. Of all the agents that wronght the
great change id oar speech, between 1220 and 1280, tbe
&iars, I anspect, were the class most mighty for evil.
Law, learning, fashion, and chivalry are topics confined
to the npper classes ; bnt religion comes home to all men
alike, to high and to low. Hence, when the Old English
theological terms were dropped, the worst kind of mis-
chief was done. We see something of this evil in onr
Bible at this day ; the Qospels and most parts of the Old
Testament are readily understood over all the land, for
they deal with erery-day life. But the Epistles abound
in deep theological terms, which repel rather than attract
' TheM DBmei have replaced the old tjpical names for tbe eexee
in BngUnd, Oodnc and Qodgifa. See f reemaD, Namutn Canqaat,
V. 9tI2. Our jtb, I belieTB, has been derived &«m Qilot. We know
onr common ' ereiy man Jack of them ; ' see Qowsr, U, 303.
526 Old and Middle English.
the common folk. Here Wickliffe and Tjndale, when
they translated the Scriptures, could not help themselves;
they were driven to use Latin terms, such as «anc^t/icaftofi
and regeneration, owing to the evil anti-national influence
which had been at work in the Thirteenth Centoiy
long before their day. A poor man, unless he knows
Latin, cannot understand the fall force of the word
Bedeemer; but the old word ^^ain2»u^er explained itself.
Such a word as propitiation must be an utter puzzle to
the great mass of Englishmen ; even though something
like it appeared in the Cursor Mundi, so early as 1290.
In our day, if writers on religion would be popular,
they must be like Mr. Byle, intensely Teutonic. An
English word, that is understood by high and low
alike, must take higher rank than an English word that
<;ommends itself to none but Latin scholars ; overlying
and outcast stand high above superhwumbent and eli-
minated. The lovers of the Newfangled may talk as
they list, but they will never convince us that England
was not wounded in the tenderest point of all, during
the Thirteenth Century; that age so righteously revered
by the statesman and the architect, so accursed in the
eyes of the philologer.
There is yet another way in which we can measure
the harm done in this Black Century. Yillehardouin
and Layamon were dictating or writing much about the
same time, soon after the year 1200. Any fairly well
educated English lady will now understand the old
Marshal of Champagne with the greatest ease, after a
little practice; but the Worcestershire priest, though
her own countryman, will be a standing puzzle to her.
Inroad of French Words into England. 527
nnless she already knowa Bomething of Old Eagliak*
The reason for all this is plain : France lias always had the
good sense to hold fast to her old tongae, and not to
follow foreign fashions ; in her literature there has never
been any ogly gap since 1100. Silly England, for sixty
disastrons years, threw aside her own home-bred speech,
and thought of nothing but Parisian ways. In oar day,
a translation is always suppKed for all Knglisb works
written before the year 1220; after that year a few notes
are all that is judged needful for learners.
About 1160, onr inflections were rapidly yanishing
from written English, at least in the Dano-AngUan
country ; in Kent, many of them lingered on down to
1340, and traces of them may be found in Somerset and
Dorset at this day. One eSect of the Conquest was,
that the writing of Chronicles was no longer in the
hands of learned men, bnt was given over to peasants.
The Peterborough Chronicle of 1160 answers to what
an TJmbrian monk or peasant might now achieve,
if ha had a slight smattering of Latin lore and
essayed to imitate Cicero. The preservation or loss of
inflectionB is the great mark, whether a language be
Old or New. Of the three great changes in written
English, the loss of Inflections (at least in books) dates
from 1160 ; the loss of the power of Gompoanding dates
from 1200 in the East Midland, which was to :iet the
fashion to the whole laud ; the wholesale rush of new
French words into our tongue dates from 1280.* I may
■ Any Eogliah writer of 1300 would have been pimled, &Imoat
as much aa mj imaglnBrj lad;, bjr I^yamoD's poem.
* The jjncna BiaU abonnda is French worda j but it was not
imitated tot aizty jean, u thia respect.
f
528 Old and Middle English.
well call the whole of this period, embracmg these three
dates, Middle English ; it differs alike from what went
before, and from what was to oome later. A prose piece of
1120 is nearer to King Alfred than to an East M'^V^^'^
piece of 1160 ; an East Midland piece of 1803 is nearer
to what is written under Qneen Victoria than to what
was written in 1250.
But the worst blow of all, inflicted by the sixty years
of disaster, is the all bnt entire loss of the Old English
power of compounding. We need not sigh over ow
lost Inflections; they were waning away in the East
Midland so early as 1160, as we see in the Chronicle ; and
the more part must have gone, sooner or later, even had
Harold conquered at Hastings. Owing to their departure,
our speech is now the most easy and flexible in the
whole world. But the loss of the power of compounding
is a very different thing. This power is the truest token
of Hfe in languages. It was found in the Onnulum as
much as in the Ancren Biwle, in the Dano-Anglian
country as well as in the Saxon shires. But in the first
thirty years of the Thirteenth Century, in the East Mid-
land shires that have ruled our New English, we may
remark a distaste for words compounded with Preposi-
tions ; they become scarcer and scarcer, though we have
kept to this day some Verbs which have fote^ oirf, or«',
and wader prefixed.^ This 1 have already remarked.
What a noble instrument of thought and speech is
the Greek, where every shade of meaning can be ex-
pressed by simply prefixing a Preposition, to some root !
1 We sometimes even prefix these to Romance words, as Jotc-
ordain, out-generaX, over-balance, and under-mine.
Inroad of French Words into England. 529
Ifothmg can make amends for England's loBS in iihis
Tespact. We have now to borrow from tbe Frencli or
Latin brick-kiln, instead of hewing stones oat of onr
own quarry. How stands the matter? A jonth
has his right arm shot ofE; it is replaced by a fine
piece of French mechanism ; yet we are told by some
wiseacree that any regret for the loss of the kindly old
limb is a token of B«trogressive Barbarism. Bnt a
remnant of oar old faculty is left to ns. We have still
kept, in some measure, the power of componnding with
the weightier parts of speech ; though here Participles
are more employed than SabstantiTes ; we may talk of
hone-feeding Argos, bnt not of fair-viomaned Acbaia.
When Shakespere speaks of fiery-footed steeds, we see
at once that he is possessed of a noble power of striking
off new words, a power that was denied to Dante uid
Coraeille. English poets should stir np this gift, and
shoold never weary of bestowing Bpcm ns new and
happy compounds. The bards of our day set a worthy
example, which should be followed by prose*writers.
We must weigh the proportion of obsolete Teutonic
words, found in English writers of tbe Three Periods
into which we hare divided the Thirteenth Centary.
Es^riments shonld be made, by taking a passage in
each anther's osoal style, containiDg fifty Nouns, Verbs,
and Adverbs. In such a passage, written between 1200
and 1220, ten or nine words will be found to be now
obsolete ; in such a pass^e, written between 1220
and 12ti0, from eight to four words will be obsolete ; in
such a paast^, written between 1280 and 1300, the
530 Old and Middle English.
obsolete Tentonio will comprise only fonr or three
words.'
Onr store of bomespTUi terma, aa we see, was bdag
more and more narrowed. Compare Lajamon's Brat
with Hobert of Glouorater'a Poem ; we are at onoe
astounded at the loss in 1300 of crowds of good old
English words, though both writers were translating Ae
same French lines. It is mnch the same in the las-
gnage of religion, aa we see by oomparisg the Ancren
Biwle with the Kentuh Sermooa of 1290, pnbHshed hj
Dr. Morris. One seventh of the Tentonio words used
here in 1200 seems to have altogether dropped oat of
written composition by the year 1290 : about this &ct
there can be no dispnte. In the lifetime of Heniy the
Third, &r more harm was done to onr speech than in
Ihe six hundred years that have followed hia death.
I now approach the Third Period of Middle English,
reaching from 1280 to 1303 ; which 1 have called the Tiioe
of Bepamtion by translators. In the sixty years beSn<
ISSO.thengliest gap in the whole of onr literatnre&om
Hengist down to Victoria, a vast maltitnde of Eagliib
words had vanished for ever ; the power of componndiiig
wasallbntgone. fiatabontl280,aBndden tnraoffortnw
directed the eyes of all tme Englishmen once more to
their mother-tengoe, which had been of late so shame-
folly neglected. One long original poem, and but
one, that of the Owl and Xightiugale, had been pot
forth since 1220;' besides this, there had been some
translatioDS, mostly religions, from French and latin;
< See \ay T^Um at p. SB7.
* At Inat, it ii tLe oolj one tJut has come down to us.
Inroad of French Words into England. 531
these had been few and for between. At length, about
1280, men began to Bet themaelres eteadilj to translate
long poems from the French, snch aa the Havelok, the
Triatrem, the Cnrsor Mondi, the Lives of the Saints, the
French Pooma on the History of England, the Alexander,
the Mannel des Feches, the Chostean d'Amonr. Trane-
lations were better than nothing at all. From 1280 to
onr own day, English Literature has been thoronghly
well cnltivated. Abont 1320, England took a farther
step in advance ; she began to pnt forth long original
Poems of her own ; soon afterwards Hampole, Minot, and
the author of Piers Plooghman, fell to work. Both before
1220, and after 1280, works in English abound ; the
interval between 1220 and 1280, it shoold be well nnder-
stood, was the black gnlf of rnin. The wonder is, that
any one shonld have taken the trouble of modernising
Layamon's Poem at that particular time, when, as Lord
Castlereagh would hare said, English Literature seemed
to be turning her back upon herself. The few men who
wrought at Engliah in those evil days should be regarded
as respectfully as that handful of patriots, who kept up
true English feeling in the score of years after Charles
the Second's return home.
Edward the First, whatever he might have been in
his youth, turned out a truly national King ; and what
we owe to him is known far and wide. One thing, how-
ever, was wanting to his glory : he never made English
the language of his Gonrt, though he afTected to fear
that his wily foe at Paris was plotting to wipe
out this despised speech. It was not until long after
Edward's death that onr language could win Royal
532 Old and Middle English.
&Tonr. In his reign most lettaro were written, not
in lAtin, but in French. He loved ohiTalty, toormi-
ments, and single comb&ts ; Le bad a high idea of French
refinement, and this doubtless tended to throw back onr
speech. The coortly tongue drove alt before it. For
instance, a word like ending (princeps) was well under-
stood in 1240; sixty years later, its meaniog had to be
explained to Englishmen.' Still, with everv possible
abatement, Edvrard's reign is every whit as great a laod-
mark in English Philology as in English ConstitntioDsl
History. Now it was that the great mah of French
words came into our tongue ; wo cannot call it ' an ugly
rush,' when we think of the gaps that had to be filled
up. Any one that reads the Cursor Mundi, the Beclcet
Legend, the Alexander, or the Handlyng Synne, will
throw aside all his early ideas about Chancer, who was
long falsely supposed to have been the great corropter
of English. So much sound Teutonic stuff had been
lost before 1280, that vast repairs had to be undertaken,
if our language thenceforward was to be copious. French
was not needed in 1220 ; it was badly wanted in 1280.
One evil resulted, that we grew careless of our old
national endings, the lie, the dmit, the tuiii, the t«e, and
othere ; and we ceased in a great measure to attach them
to Teutonic roofs, since we had always French eynonjiM
ready at hand.^ Furthermore, the evil habits of Heuij
' See tho QU EnglisA Miectllany, p. 106 ; ajid then awawn
Bobtrt of Glouee^ter, p. 35*.
» WomBjstillUltof/oi*, but we onnot employ /oWic,>Hx,
anj many other wopde derived (iODi that root. Henco it ia that «
Inroad of French Words into England. 533
the Third's reign conld not at once be Bh&ken off; there
was a gradnal loss of old words, even nnder Edward the
First. Inl280, the proportion of Teutonic Nonns, Verbs,
and Adverbs, now obsolete, is four ont of fifty ; in 1290,
it is bat three out of fifty. About the latter year a firm
check seems to have been given to careless dealing with
old words ; comparatively few of them thenceforward
were lost. The New English, as we know it, was now
all but formed in the East Midland shires. Its loss of
inflectionB, its neglect of the old power of compounding,
and its substitution of French words for Teutonic terms,
the three main changes in oar speech, all these tendencies
were as evident in 1280 as they are six hundred years
later. Edward did not encourage English; hence it
came that onr Standard speech sprang up, not at his
Court, but in cloisters on the Nen and the Welland.
StiU, Edward's reign was a time when all classes
were drawing nearer to each other. The ballad on
Lewes fight, in which a few French terms are used,
seemed to bear witness to the onion of the high and the
low. The long political struggle of the Thirteenth Cen.
tnry knit all true men together, whether they spoke
French or English. From Edward's time dates the
revival of the glories of England's host, which has seldom
since allowed thirty years to pass without some donghtj
deed of arms, achieved beyond onr borders ; for there
were but few quarrels at home henceforward. Now it
was, as 1 said before, that a number of warlike French
use Miltimal, knd benee nofion has encioBched upon JoXk. Hnndredi
of othar good old Tentouic -words are in thit plight.
534 ^^^ ^^^ Middle English,
romances were Englished. The word adventure, brongbt
from France, was as well known in England as in Ger-
many.* Our 'per aventure, having been built into the
English Bible centuries later, is likely to last. Old Teu-
tonic words made way for the outlandish terms glory,
renoion, victory, army, host, champioih, England was be-
coming, under her great Edward, the most united of all
Christian kingdoms ; the yeomen who tamed Wales and
strove hard to conquer Scotland looked with respect
upon the high-bom circle standing next to the King.
What was more, the respect was returned by the nobles :
we have seen the tale of the Norfolk £Bkrmer at page 471 ;
and this, I suspect, could hardly have happened out of
England. France has always been the country that has
given us our words for soldiering : from the word caetel,
used as a military word in 1048, to the word mitraUleuse,
brought over in 1870. Englishmen of old could do little
in war but sway the weighty axe or form the shield-
wall under the eye of such Kings as Ironside or God-
wine's son ; it was France that taught us how to ply the
mangonel and trebuchet. We have always been a war-
like, but never a military nation.*
* Our word adventurer seems to be sinking in the mire. A lady
told me not long ago that she thought it unkind in Sir Walter Scott
to call Prince Charles Edward ' the young Adventurer.' Thus, what
hut sixty years ago described a daring knight, now conyeys to some
minds the idea of a scheming knave. It is a bad sign for a nation,
when words that were Once noble are saddled with a base meaning.
We should bestow some attention on the changed meanings of the
Italian pctnitentia and virtus.
' The Editor of Sir John Burgoyne^s lAfe^ in 1873, complains of
the poverty of the English military vocabnlaiy, when he talks of a
:>
Inroad of French Words into England, 535
The knighta were, moreover, the great patrons of
Heraldry, whioli is altogether French in its diction ; it
was an object of interest to all who laid any claim to
nurture ; the lion couchoTit, or, argent, &c., must have
heen in the months of every low-born man who aapired
to gentility, and tried back for a bmily. The French
poem on King Edward's siege of Carlaveroc bears .
witness to the cnltivation bestowed on this science in
England.'
The nobles long clave to the French : I have already
qnoted Bobert of Gloncester's lines abont England's
high men speaking one tongne in 1300, while her low
men spoke another. After 1307, Piers of Bridlington
compiled in French his long Chronicle of English
history. In 1310 Master Banf de Bonn compiled
another Chronicle in French, at the request of the Earl
of Lincoln. About 1332, a prose Chronicle, also in
oDvp dt main and an allague bnagtUe, Vol. II. S4S. Even ao late as
IU2, 'we wen foiced to call in Fiench and 0«naan eDginsera, at the
ontbraakof thsCiTil Won. I am eony to aee that the rank of Gmet
JoTce aixl Eiuiffn NoTtherton has been arept away ; va are hence-
forwatd to talk of ttiMieiitntanti. Why ahould Engliah History and
Litentnre b« bd matiled ?
' Whan deacribing war, pTin poftrj muit uae Preneb words : u
io ByroD'a piece, that begins thoa :
' Warrion and chieft, should the shaft or the awoid
Pieret me whan leading the hott of the Loid.'
Onr naval tenni are rery difierent from thia. Bnt not long ago, I
aaw the crta (as Nelson called it) described bj the Brltiah penny-a-
liner as the ' ptnonnd of a vessel.' Onr aeaman were of yore stoat
A. heart and aoond of limb ; they are now said to be ' canspienons «A
for theic mcrale and pbytique.' Hoe tga mm agittm t
536 Old and Middle English.
Frencb, was pnt forth, and was called ' The Bmte ;' ^
this many copies still exist. ^ The Scala Cronica was
drawn np in French prose b j an English knight, about
1362. Still later, the courtly poet Grower made Iris
first attempts in French, and most of the letters d
Henry the Fourth afe written in this language. Manj
of the Onilds all over the land drew np their laws in
French ; as was done at Bristol in 1416.* There is t
French poem on the death of York, the father of
Edward the Fourth, in 1461. The fashionable tongae
waa hard of dying i. OTir land.
For many years did French and English run on Bidfi
by side. I have already remarked on what we owe to
the collectors of the literature of the day. Of these,
the most praiseworthy of all are the scribes that
flourished in the Evil Sixty Years, the men that drew
up the Cotton Manuscript about 1240, the Jesus Manu-
script about 1260, not to mention Layamon's secozid
transcriber. Between 1290 and 1440 some well-known
English manuscripts were compiled : the Digby, lAnd,
Ashmole, Harleian, Auchinleck, Yemon, and Thornton
compilations are &mous names. 1 would here call
attention to the Harleian Manuscript, drawn up rathff
before 1320. The compiler travels over the forgoing
sixty years, and sets down Latin, French, and Englisb
poems alike with impartial pen. In some of these
works the three vehicles of English literature jostle
each other. Thus we have a Hymn to the Virgin :
> See Mr. Skeat's Pre&ee to the Hdvdok, vi. xiii.
* English GUda (Early Eziglifih Text Society), p. 286.
Inroad of French Words into England. 537
Mitfden moder milde,
oliet m/ ortyunim,
From B}ioiiie thou roe ahilde,
tdtly malftloim.
Fot loTe of thine childe,
me mena de tretoiun.
Ich weg wod and wilde,
on lu enpri*ouii\
A lady of more eartbly mould is Urns described :
Ele eit si bete et geute dame egrijfia,
Cum ele fiiet itnpa-atoriiij3ia
De beol BemblBnt etpidcra cimtintnda
Ele est Itt flor in omni rtgii curia.
Indeed, it seemed as if no English bard conld do fiur
justice to a lady's charms, vithont a copions sprinkling
of words drawn from the fashionable language of the
Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries. I take the fol-
lowing frtmi the same Harleian Manuscript ; A«o is what
we now call she -. —
Heo is dereworthe in day,
I, stout, and gay,
' Lgrie Pottiu (Farcy Society), pp. 97, 65. Another mnniiBcript
(OM Bugluk Mitediamy. 191) has the foilowing:
Of on ^t IB so fajr and bri^
vtlad rnaru iteUa.
Brij;ter tan )« day-ie lijt,
parau et pudla,
Ich cria to t«> )>oa w to me,
Levedi, prej H sone for me,
tampia,
pat ic mote come to tx,
Maria!
538 Old and Middle Englis/u
Gentiljjolyf^ ihejay
• • ■ •
Heo is coral of godnesse,
Heo is rubie of rihtfulnease,
Heo is cristal of clannessey
Ant b€mer of health,
Heo is lUie of largessey
Heo is parvenke of prouesse,
Heo IB solsecle of swetnease.
Ant ledy of lealtS.^
The same Frenchified style is applied to the descrip-
tion of the feasts and the amosements of these fair
ladies and their lords; we read as follows, in the
Hayelok of the year 1280. The heneyeun is said, and
then the guests see before them
KraneS; swannes, veneysun.
Lax, lampreys, and god stui^gun,
Pyment to drinke, and god clare,
Win hwit and red, ful god plente.
• • • « •
Of fe metes hidde I not dwelle,
pat is fe stoiie for to lenge.
It wolde anuye ]7i8 fiiyre genge.
Afterwards, men might see
pe mosto joie pAt mouhte be.
. • • • *
Leyk of mine, of hasard ok,
Romanz reding on fe bok,
per mouthe men here fe gestes suoge,
pe gleymen on )w tabour dinge.*
» Lyric Poetry, p. 52. » Pp. 47, 65.
Inroad of Freitch Words into England. 539
The old hvrUilere now began to be called a Tnitiitrel.
The singers of gettes, since 1220, had followed Frencli
rime, and bad forsaken the Old Engbsb alliteiutive
rhytbrn. In a poem of abont 1230, sixteen lines mnning
end in the sound eie or eden ; this is clearly an English
imitation of one of the poetical effects, npon which the
French bards prided tbemaeives, as is well known. In
the Havelok, fifty years later, nineteen lines end in the
same sonnd eiJej lines87-105. A vast number of J<>ench
words mast have been brought in by translators, simply
to help themselves to a rime ; thus, in the Horn of 1280 ;
)» stones beojj of Buche grace,
pat pu ne echalt in none place, &c.— P. 17,
J>e knijtes jeden to table
and Home jede to stable. — P. 17.
Il is the same In the Floriz and Blancheflnr, of the
same date : —
fo porter i« culvert and feluD,
for^ he wule setteD bis resun,
and bete upon |>e felonie,
and »eg^ )iat Jm art a spie. — P. CO.
We further read in tbis poem : —
)>anne sede |>e bui^is,
fat waa wel hende and curtais.
Leaving the Minstrels, we pass on to other ministers
to the pleasures of the great. The Tristrero, translated
about 1280, abounds in words of banting ; in pages 33
540 Old atid Middle En^^lisk.
and 34, we learn all the technical names for the parts of
a stag, when cnt np; in p. 165 we liear of the honam
knight, who bides repair e in the forest^ who began ckad
an hart, and blew priis. Onr sire and datn^ now oas-
fined to horses, are a relic of this age ; also a brace d
birds. In 1280, it is hopeless to ea:pect anything bat
French when the amusements of noblemen are set forth;
in p. 170 of the Tristrem comes this stanza:
So it befel acas.
In Seyn Matheus toun,
That a &ir feat was,
Of lordes of renoun :
A baroun that hight Bonifiis
Spoused a levedi of Lyoun ;
Ther was miche solas,
Of al maner soun,
And gle ;
Of minstrals up and doun,
Bifor the folk so fre.^
The technical terms of games of chance, like Chanoer's
dnk and treye, belong to the French-speaking class. *
Cookery is a science that has always commanded the
attention of the great; indeed, it was as important a
business in their ejes as war or hunting. Several of the
French words used in this art may be read in the Lay of
Havelok, who himself served for some time as a swiller
of dishes : we here find pastees, wastels^ veneystmj and
many other terms of the craft ; our common roaat^
> Contrast this with the intense Teutonism of Kr. Swinburoe
and Mr. Morris when riming 600 years later.
' Our ^r^y keeps more to the true old Vowel Boond than the modflca
French trots, just as our deuce preserves the old sound of deux.
Inroad of French Words into England. 541
frij, ht<Al, toatf, greate, Ijraien^ larder, bear witness &8 to
which race it was that had the control of the kitchen.
We have spoken of the I^dy, the Knight, and the
Friar; we now come to the Lawyer.' The whole of the
^Temment was long in the hands of the French-epeak-
ing class. Henry the Second, the great organiser of
English law, was a thorongh Frenchman, who lived in
oar island as little as he could ; the tribunals were in
his tune reformed ; and the law terms, with which
Blackgtone abonnds (^lei'ne forte et dure, for instance),
are the beqnest of this age. The Iloman law had been
studied at Oxford even before Henry had begnn toreign ;
and Canceller was one of the earliest foreign words that
came in. The Legend of St. Thomas, drawn np about
1300, swarms with French words when the Constitotions
of Clarendon are described i and a Charter of King
Athelatane's, tnmed into the English spoken rather
earlier, shows how many of onr own old law terms had
by that time been snpplanted by foreign ware.^ Onr
barristers still keep the old French pronunciation of their
technical word record; the oyez of onr courts is well
known; when we talk of an heir male, we use a SVench
construction ; we do not begin, but commence an action
at law. A bard of 1220, (■ Old English Miscellany,' p. 76)
' Thosa who ftdminialriced tb« law wfK eithsi cborchmeD or
kaighU.
' Kemble, Cod. Dip. V. 235. We here find grantye, eonfirmm,
aod ciutume$. W« are therefore oot Bnrprised to lean, that few or
DODe in ITIS could expUia the old English law temiE in the Baron
of Bradwardine'a Charter of 1140. 'saca et eoca, H thol et theam, et
inrau^bief et outfnngthief, sire haad-habend, tire bak-barand; '
these had toad* waj for Fteoch tertne.
542 Old and Middle English,
sets before ns the playdurs^ bo keen in their red and green
garb, men who give nnright dooms ; for this they will
suffer in the next world. We get another picture of the
lawyers in 1280 ; there is the old fellow, who is the best
sire; his clerkes, who pink with pen upon parchmeiit,
while they hreve a man. Then there are somenmn
(hence the proper name Sumner), who are the plagaeof
the parish ; priests come to the County Court and boast
of their privilegie from the Pope. Evil deeds are done
at the chapitre and the constory ; this is the writer's
experience, * seththen y pleide at bisshopes plee,* ^
In the Floriz, of the same date, we hear about —
Feloufi inome hond-habbing
For to suffire jugement,
Bi])ute answere o]ier acupement. — ^P. 70.
The stately word Parliament is French, while King is
Teutonic. The same rivalry may be seen in Lords and
CoTrmumSf JmigTUs of the shire and burgesses, aldermen
and may or f horough and ciiy. Since 1660, French bas
replaced Latin as the general language of diplomacy,
and has therefore given us many new words and
idioms, that would have astonished Bossuet as much as
Dryden.
We must now return to the clergy, who did not
confine themselves to preaching ; all the lore of the day
was lodged in their hands. Roger Bacon's life sets
before us the bold way in which some of them pried
into the secrets of Nature. One of the means by whicb
* Political Sotigs (Wright), pp. 166-159. Is there a pun hew od
the English play and the French plaider ?
Inroad of French Words into England. 543
they drew to themselves the love of the common folk
was the practice of medicine ; In tiie friars the leper
foimd his only friends. To these early forefathers of
our leechcraft wo owe a farther change in onr tongae.
There are nutny Enghsh words for snndry parts and
fonctions of the human frame, words that no well-bred
man can use; custom haB nded that we must employ
Latin synonyms. The first example I remember of this
delicacy (it onght not to be called mawkishness) is in
Bobert of Gloucester, writing about 1300. When de-
scribing the tortures inflicted by King John on his
subjects in 1216, and the death of the Earl Marshal on
an Irish field in 1234, the old rimer nses terms borrowed
from the French that he was translating, instead of
certain English words that would jar npon onr taste.'
But a leech who flourished eighty yeara after Robert's
time is far more plain-spoken, when describing his
cures, made at Newark and London.* Indeed, he is aa
■ On thb bead thete is s great di9^r«iic« betireen Germany and
England. Teatonic woids that no well bred Ei^liahman conld me
before a womaii maj be printed by grave German faiMoriani. See
VoD Baumw'a account of the ai^e of Viterbo in 1243, GacUcAle
der Hoigattaufitt. Of conrse I know that this does not prove Oel^
mana to be one whit more indelicate than Englisbmen ; cnatom ii
eTerfthing.
* John Aideine'e Acoount of him»el^ Stliguia Antigua, L 191.
Cbarlei II. was the beat bred Englishman of his time, jet ha write*
to hia Biiter : — ' Poor O'Nial died this afternoon of an alcar in his
ffuti.'—Curry'i Cirii Wars til Ireland, I. 808. So Swiftly does
fashion change ', The amusing Life of He Bee. P, SitU'M waa pub-
lished so late as 1792 b; a worth; Irish clergyman ; still, this con-
tains many phrases at which oar more squeamish age wonld cry ont,
BoBwell osad a term atrnck out by Croker fort; years afterwards.
544 Old and Middle Engti^
little mealy-mouthed as Orrmin himself. It was not,
however, until very late times that j^etvptro^ion replaced
in polite speech the English word akin to the Sanscrit
wida^ or that &eZZy was thought to be coarser than
The leeches, like the lawyers, knew very well what
they were about when they couched the diction of their
respective crafts in French or Latin, far removed from
vulgar ken. A sad picture is drawn in the Cursor
Mundi, about 1290, of the diseases of King Herod :—
)>e parlesi (palsy) has his a* side. * one
. • ■ . a
In his heved he has \^ scall,
pe scab oveigas his bodi alL
• ■ • • 0
Wit )w crache him tok ]« scurf,
pe fester thrild his bodi thurgh,
pe gutte (gout) ]>e potagre es il to bete^^ ^ mcod
It fell al dun intil Ids fete.
Over al ])an was he mesel ' plain, • iqw
And Jnirwit had fever quartain ;
Ydropsi held him sua in threat.^
So early as 1220, we read of the desputinge of scoU-
maistres in the Legend of St. EZstherine. The beefc
English scientific treatise of this Century is * The Pit
of Hell,' printed by Mr. Wright ; it deals with the
shaping of the human frame. It is strange to contrast
* Cursor Mundi, p. 678. As to the last evtt, j^dropsi^ iElfric hd
called it watersieknesa, when describing the same eTent. I may
remark, that the common folk always talk of a tloetor, but would be
puzzled by the word leech, used by Scott and Byron, This is on«
of the few instances in which a Teutonic word commends itself mon
to the high than to the low.
Inroad of French Words into England. 545
the diction foand here with the obsolete English of a
treatise on Astronomy, pot forth three hundred years
earlier, and printed in the same book of Mr. Wright's.
A Poem by the author of the ' Pit of Hell ' gives ds a
peep into Oxford Ufe in the days of St. Edmund the
Archbishop ; we are first told, that he forgat aot his
oreitoaa for no stadie, ne for ^of,t of letsoun ; he soon
nndertook arithmetic, thongh he was not a Cambridge
Of art he radde six jer contiauellicbe ynou^.
And Bi])}>e, for beo more profound, to arsmetrike he droo^,
And arametrike cadde in couie, in Oxenford wel fiiste,
And his figours droug al dai, and his ttumbre caate.
Arsmetrike is a lore ]iat of figours al is,
And of droustes as me drawe|> in poudre and in numbre
^Ifric had employed some I^tin terms in his day,
hnt he wonid have been astonished at the number of
these that were flowing in, could he have come to life
again abont the year 1300. Science in onr land has
always held fest to foreign words. The Old English
hyge (mens) had given birth to many compounds ; none
of these seem to have outlived Layamon's day. Science
spumed the Teutonic and clung fast to the French and
lAtin, We are even driven to borrow the French
sa/vant, to express *a man of lore' in one word.* A
■ Lif' of Si. Edmtmd (Philological Societ;), pp. 7fi, 77.
* When the tavaaii onbend in the ereoiug, after a Congreu,
they go to a ConversatUme. Kothing protM the otter banenneM of
£ngliiih Bodal life more than the fact, tbat ire have had to borrov
thU Itidian mnd.
V K
546 Old and Middle English.
Social Science Congress would Bhndder if atUArapoZa^
or biolo^ were to be Tentonized. We now find it prettj
easy to nnderstaud the Chronicle or the Gospels of
the year 1000 ; while King Alfred's Translation of the
Pastoral Care is stiff reading indeed. This is betsow
tlie changes wrought in the Thirteenth Century wen
pecotiarly hostile to the Old English terms employed ia
philosophy and deep theology.'
Architecture was another craft in which the cla^
took the lead ; Alan de Walsingham by no means stood
alone.* English words were well enough when a cot or
a farm-honse was in hand ; but for the building of »
' It would be easy, I tliink, in onr day to writ* a btwk on Me*
phyBiCH, vberein there should not be one Teutonic Ifono nr Vttii,
eicept am. it. nhall, nnd HMcb like. But it is hatd to <ee rtj
Natural History iihould resort to foreign temiE, which sevm tboara
on purpose to confine thi^ study to those who know L«tiD titi
Greek. A child in the Nationul schools repeats like a parrot vonli
like ttidaibi nnd gmnU'iity'roite ; lie would at once attach a clear iilti
to gnawer* and grata-catiag. Our benutilHil old Eugliah namet of
plants and flowers have been supplanted liy Latin words ; ariarvtl-
(lira is one of our latest gems. Any man, who would Tenloniaa tbt
name-systeni of certain ndences, would play Che part of a eODsd
English pntiiot. We have made a beginning; i;ompare lb'
plain-spoken works on EHt/litA Hittory, which are now selling ^
thousands, with the bombastic stuff that was i n vogue twenty ymn
ago. The prig aud the pedant wail ovar the chnn^ ; but our natioB.
taken aa a whole, ie much benefitted. Why should not otber
branizltes of knowledge be promoted to the level of Hiatoiy ? I hsn
teen it remarked that children are no fools, bat that their teadiM
T«ry often are fools. Dickens, in one of bis works, draws a good
■keteh of Mr. Maccbokemchild, an inspector of sehooU.
' The clergy wen also great engineers in war. as w« read in tht
BCCDnnta of the Crusadaa against the Albigenaes and EeediB da
Itumauo. Tbe renowned Chillir:^'»urlh vvuntod to play tlie nws
part at the siege of Qloueester in I6tS.
41
Inroad of French Words into England. 547
caetle or a cafbedral, scores of French technical words
had to be called in : at Ganterbnry, William the Eng-
glishman doabtless employed mach the same diction as
hie predecessor, William of Sens. Indeed, the new style
of bnilding, brought from France more than a hnndred
years before the time of these worthies, must have nn-
folded many a new term of art to King Edward's masona
at Westminster. The u-pprr of Glastonbury Chorch,
which beheld a monmfal scene soon after the Conqneat,
has long since taken the name of trlforium. In onr own
day, the great revival of Architecture has led to a won-
derfol enlargement of diction among the common folk;
every working mason now has in his mouth scores of
words, for the meaning of which learned men forty years
f^ would have searched in dictionaries.'
In the Cursor Mnndi, the Tower of Babel is said to
have been bnilt
Wit tile and t«r, witiiMn stan.
Ojier morter was |>er uan ;
Wit cord and plum \a.\ wn^ht sa faei.
They thus imagined their work :
I rede we begin a Uboure
And do we wel and nitike a loure,
Wit Huire and Bfantilon ra aven,
pat may reche hegliur |ian heven.'
The Tristrem had already employed more than two
hundred French terms of war, hunting, law, Iccchcraft..
' Our vonla oBsd in pninting, Rcnlptore, and mnsie, cobm front
Ittlj, not from Prance.
» B. laa.
548 Old and Middle Englisft,
religion, and ladiea' dress ; bnt ihe inroad of foreign iroi^
was to continue. Abont the year 1290, we find Chureh-
men becoming more and more French in their speech.
Hondreda of good old English words were now lost for
ever ; and the terms that replaced them, having been for
years in the moathe of men, were at lengtJi being set
<]own in manuscripts. The Life of a Saint (manj sncb
KK extant, written at this time) was called a Vie} la
that version of the Harrowing of Hell which dates front
the aforesaid year, the transcriber has gone oat of his
way to bring in the words delay, cotamaiuimeni (thii
conies twice over), and serce : all these are crowded into
five lines. Still more remarkable are the few and short
Kentish Sermons, tranBlated from the French about the
same time, 12!)0.". Sever were the Old and the New
bronght face to face within narrower compans. We see
the old Article with its three genders, »e, «, pet (in Sans-
crit $a, »«, tat), still lingering on in Kent, though these
forms had been dropped everywhere else in Eoglanii.
On the other hand, we find about seventy French wonk,
many of which, as verray, defenden, tignijiance, orneilui,
commewxment, were not needed at all. When reading
the short sentence, ' this is si signefiance of the miracle,'
oar thoaght« are at one time home back to the abode of
onr earliest fore&thers on the Oxos ; at another time
we see the fine language of the Victorian penny-a-liner
most clearly foreshadowed. After 1290, we hardly ever
■ Long befora this, the Legeai of Si. Juliana begins, ' her «■■<■
teV (commeDce^) )ie vit, Sx,' In thie piece CaUev rtudi for
Ch&ldfB.
■ Old Englui SliixUany, p. 26 (Earlj English Text Sodetj).
Inroad of French Words into England, 549
find a passage in which the English words, now obsolete,
are more than one seventeenth of the whole ; ' the only
exception is in the case of some Alliterative poem. This
fact gives ns some idea of the havoc wrought in the
Thirteenth Century.
It waa to translators in Edward the First's time
(this cannot be too often repeated) that onr New
English owes its present Frenchified gniae. I shall
now give two passages from the Cursor Mnndi, which
will show, first the motive of the average translator,
and next, the flood of outlandish words brought in by
pia ilk bok its translate
Into lug'lis tong to rede,
For the love of Inglis lede (people),
luglis lede of Inf^land,
For the commun at understand.
Frankis rimes here I redd,
Coniunlik in ilk sted,
Mast es it wroght for Frankia man ;
Quat is for him na Fnudds can P
Of Ingland the QScion,
Eb Inglis man {>ar in commun ;
pe Bpeche |)ftt man wit niant may epede,
Mast {>arwit to speke war nede ;
Selden was for ani chance
Praised Inglis tong in France ;
Give we ilkan {Mtre langage,
Ale think we do ])ani non outrage.
' We mnet count ool; the Nonns, Verbe, and Adverbs.
* We may remark hor thU Torkshiremsii clings t« the rightful
old iVaaiti, irhich bad been proooonced Fretifih in the Sonth, e»er
since Idjamon'a time. The Northern poet even toms the foreign
charge into cork. — P. 1314.
5S0 out and Middle English,
To laud kA IngliB man I spell
pat underatandes }>at 1 tell.— P. 20.
Oar poet thns beara witness to the fact, that there was
mach poetry in the England of 1290, but that this poeby
was all in French, unless some one took pity on the
Ifwd folk and translated for their behoof. Of the effect
of these translations the following is a specimen. I h»TB
nnderlined the French words, which form more than
one third of the Nouns, Verbs, and Adverbs: —
A taumpul her be {wieni I say,
pat rageg in [lare riot ay ;
In riot aud in rigolage,
Of all I>ere liif apend (wu )« elaffe ;
For now is halden nan in cwg,
Bot qua pat lure caii jxiiamare ;
pat/rfy luve Jwt vauite,
pam likes now nan ot^er gle ;
Ifit neys hot fantum for to say,
To day it is, to moru away,
Wyt chaunce of ded, or chaunee of hert. — P. 10.
This is & Yorkshire poem, aud the passage alone is
enoogh to overthrow the theory of those who hold
that French made great conqnests in the Soath of Eng-
land, hat did not much affect the North. Fifty years
Inter, the Northern Hampole baa thrice as mnch French
in his prose treatises as his Keatish rival.' About 1300,
the Southern translator of Bishop Robert's Ckaeteau
d'Avwur states that we cannot all anderstand Latin,
Hebrew, Greek, or French; still every man oaght to
' There is a mnss of French words, later still, in Barbour aod
■\Vyntijun.
Inroad of French Words into England. 551
nng God's pntises ' wi|> snoh epeohe ob he con leme.'
The Bishop had written fifty years earUer : —
Por cells ki ne serent mie
Ne tettmre ne cle^ie.
This his translator adupts to the changed practice of a
later day —
On Unglisch I chul mi reaim echoiren
For >iini [>&t con aot ilmonen
Noufw French ne I^tyii.'
Mach abont the same time, another French poem
was traoBlated and enlarged, the Handlyng Synne, that
we have already seen. By 1290, the mischief had been
done ; we most not be hard on Colonel Hamley, or on
Blackstone, or on the compilers of the Anglican Prayer-
book, or on the describer of a fashionable wedding in the
Morning Post, or on the chronicler of the Lord Mayor's
feast, or on the Editors of the I^noet and the Bnitder,
becanse they deal in shoals of foreign terms; nearly
six hundred years ago it was settled that the technical
diction of their respective crafts mast to a groat estent .
be conched in French or Latin.* There were about
150 Romance words in oar tongue before 1066, being
mostly the names of Church famitore, foreign plants,
■ Cif^o/ZaM, published by Mr. Wejwoath foe the Philological
Socistj, paga 3.
■ It VBB ODceniy lotto treat <tf a cods of law ; I Bad, oa looklDg
tynz mj book, that Bt least ODe half of mj SnbstantiTes, A^tctlvM,
Adreibs, and Verbi dealing wiUi this aattject, anof LttlJnUrth; ao
inposaible is it for the moat eaneet Teuton to shake oS the tram-
mels lud on Ei^laiid in the Thirteenth Centniy.
SS2 Old and Middle English.
and strange animals. Abont 100 moi^ Homance wor^
got the right of English dtizenship before the year 120>}.
Lastly, 800 other Romance words had become commca
with our writers by the year 1300 ; and before UieK
came in, many hundreds of good old Cn^lish words had
been put out of the way. Fearftil was the bavock done
in the Thirteenth Century ; sore is our loss : but those
of us who love a Teutonic diction should blame, not
Chaucer or WicklifTe, but the foreign fashions of an
earlier age. The time of King Henry the Third's death
is the moment when our written speech was barrenest;
a crowd of English words had already been dropped,
and few French words had as yet been used by anj
writer of prose or poetry, except by the author of the
Ancren Biwle ; hitherto the outlandish words had come
as single spies, henceforward they were to come in
batallions.^
There was no Standard of English, accepted all OTer
the country, from 1160 to 1360 ; and the proof of this
lies ready to hand. Though the Cursor Mundi is mostly
a translation from the French, there is one exception;
the matter from page 1148 to 1192 is copied from a
Southern English poem. As the compiler of the Cursor
says of this particular part.
In Sotherin Englis was it draun,
And tumd it h&ve I till our aun
Langage o Northrin lede,
pat can nan oij^er Englis rede.
The Southern English original, compiled about 1280,
1 If any one -wishee to divide English info two, not into thre*^
parts, I think that 1270 would be the fairest point of division.
Inroad of French Words into England. 553
seemB to liave perished ; but we may gain a good idea of
what it mnst have been by comparing the two Teraions
of the Assumption, printed in the ' King Horn,' pp. 44
and 75. The proportion of French vords is here less
than in the Cursor Mnndi. The Sontbem version
should be compared with the rather later Northern
variation, for we may thns see how the tongne spoken
on the Thames differed &om that spoken on the Tees in
1290, when the great strife between the two kingdoms
of Britain was aboat to begin. We have here an nnn-
snal privilege ; for, though Northern poems were often
done into Southern English, the process was hardly
ever reversed. The Old English heo (ilia) had long
vanished from Yorkshire ; the following Southern lines
had therefore to be altered, even at the expense of the
rime:
' Alas, my sone,' seide heo,
* Hu may ihc live, hu may )nfl beo ? '
These became in Yorkshire,
Southern. Northern Traruiatian.
Wepe Grele
No wundei nas Was na ferli
Sehol loky )>e Sal ta kep to fe
He wakede more Schc wok mar
Kepta Keped
pe whiles hi were To^uils fw lenged
pu were ibore poa was bont
Na Bchaltu beo Tu men nc^ht be
Belamy pou suet nmi
Old and Middle English.
Saaihem.
Ihc bidde )w
Into hire chaumbre
He bitraief
Hem to amendv
pe derel
pu {wledest wo
Witoliem
He clupede
To bifrge
Jelde hit ^on
Of pat ti|niige
Wend Jni n<^
Nahbeti no drede
No 8orej Bchal come
Whei (where) hj be
What U fe P
JVbrfAern TVaiufafimi.
Iprai te
L'Dtil hir chamber
He biBuikee
pam to mend
pefeind
pou tbold wa
poukepepam
Scho cald
Tohii
Fofydild it jTiu
Osuilk bodes
pou part noght
Has nadred
Na wn Bal negb
Quamun )iai be
Quat ails teP
The fatare Standard English, ae we raxj cleftrly see,
was to follow blindly neither the Soathem nor the
Northern variety of speech, bat was to look for her
pattern to something that trimmed between the two ;
the great alep was to be taken rather later than 1290.
If some dialect abont midway between London and
Tork were to come to the front, this would have the
beet chance of being understood all over England, in
the South and the North alike. When we compare the
two versions above, we must see that a Franciscan
Chapter at Oxford or London, including brethren &om
all the Eugtisb shires, conld not well help having reoonrsa
to either French or Latin , if the bnsinesB in hand was to
be nndentood by all the members alike.*
' When the SlaToniani, Eroia Camiola to OaIIici&, met in Ftr-
liament in 1848, the; found it needfiil to tue the b
Inroad of French Words into England. 555.
I wonld here protest against a common liabit of
grammarians ; when they find themselves puzzled in
English, they make the Nonnan Conqnest anawnable
for anything and everything. In this way they account
for the Tentonic gnttoral being suppreeeed in tbe middie-
or at the end of our words ; hvamn is one of the few that
keep the sonnd of the old & (bnhsom) in the middle.
But the FrsDoh speech, as we Bee in the Cursor Mnndif
in Hampole, in Barbour, in Wyntoun, and in Dnnbar,
had quite aa mnoh influence in the North as in the
South of our island. I would suggest that men who
toil in a hilly country, such as extends from Derby
to Edinburgh, are more likely to keep the hard rough
sounds than are the easy-going dwellers in the rich
level plains of Sonthem £ugland.' But it is curiona
that fium 1290 downwards, the North has always kept
a far greater proportion of old Teutonic words than the
South has done ; Dorset must in this yield to Ayrshire.
Yet the Scotch classic writers (as they are called), such
as Hume and Bobertson, had at least as mnch love for
Romance diction as their Southern brethren had. The
common folk in Scotland have kept the beautifnl old
form leal, a French word unknown in the South.
Between 1220 and 1280 the new Freuch words were
but few ; it was about the latter year that they were
beginning to ponr into written English. In the Havelok
the old cvnme, by which a priest's head had been meant,
was now applied to any man's skull; it is our croum.
' Lord BroDgbam'i name vas wnmdKl eometMng like ' Brokham '
in tl)« Yoikshire Dales long after ISOO, s» Profenor Sedgwick
5S6 Old and Middle English.
Tn p. 26 the French mstfne stands for hotJtseholdj whence
comes menial. Dam, the Frencli cormptioii of the Litiii
dominus, is in p. 70 ; it ivas prefixed, as Dan, to English
names twenty years after this, and the title, used
of monks, lasted down to the Reformation^^ Tbe
female dame (domina) has been longer-lived; Bt^^t
Leve comes in this poem, as Sir Edward came twenty
years earlier. The term mayster had hitherto heen used
as a title of hononr ; at p. 35 it is applied to a kitchen-
knave by a King. I remember, ^vben a school boy,
that we nsed to greet strangers with this title when
asking a question : ' I say, master.' The French hurgeiji
is encroaching on the English hurghery p. 40. At p. 79
comes the phrase to crie merci. The word poure (paaper)
here keeps its old French sound, for it rimes with Jhcm
(p. 5) ; there is also lUrage. We hear, at p. 8, that a
King dede sayse intU his hond al Engeland. It is easy to
see how this French law term came into common nse as
a synonym for capere. Stone appears clipped of &o
vowel that once began it, and Jtistice is used for a man
in office as well as for a virtae. The French oorraption
of hceres was taking root in England, and was written
eyr, jnst as we pronounce it. We see the origin of deiu»
in the line
DeuB ! lenunan, hwat may fis be ?
* A priest in Italy onoe told me the rale for the modem iu« flf
the word Jhmimui ;
Ccelestem JDamtNVM, teirestrem dicite DomHmwu
Don is used in Italy, thongh not so much as in Spain. France itXks
of Doi/i Calmet, Ezigldnd of Dan Ljdgate.
I
Inroad of Frtnch Words into England. 557
The dalheit, first fonnd in Dorsetshire, ia in constant
nse. The old Inteijection of oottow, eala ytet! now
takes a French form.
Alias t )«t he shal jierwith fere !— P. 45.
The French allaz, now lielas, is often met with.
In the poem oa the Assnmption, aboat 1280, spaae is
nsed of time, not of place : ' give them space to amend,'
p. 48. In the King Horn the French words are many,
and some of them are forced into English idioms, as I me
dute (p. 10) for I /ear me.' Sir is attached to words
other than proper names, as sire Jcyng (p. 23). We see
he is of age (p. 38) ; there is also iquier, gravel, vnckel,
bitraie; the verb arrive ia in constant use. We hear of
a giant from Faynyme (p. 23), and of an oath bi Seiat
Gile (p. 33). We see gigour (violin-player) at p. 42;
perhaps onr jig comes &am this. There are also eler,
oste (boapes), porter, store. Another version of the
Floriz and Blancheflnr was compiled about twenty years
after this time ; it is printed along with the other poems
I have analysed, and begins at p. 101.* We have seen
that in this Century 01 in English had the sonud of the
French ou or ou-i ; we now find it once more taking the
Bonnd of the French at. At p. 106 the proper name
Doyre rimes with fayre ; soon afterwards the former
is written Dayre. The French ot was sonnded like
their ott-i in boil, and like their at in Im. The old eaint
< We mnj Btill h«ar doiM used fbr/«ar; bi 'I doabt you Wftol
a dose.' The FreDch tued it in this ny,
■ la the second page of this we flitd fadtrlondt ; this long ago
died ont in England, but wm brought otst from Qermsny in onr
558 Old and Middle English,
(cognitas) aboat this time changed from the emk d
Philip de Thaan to queint,^ The old fatble has given «
two words, foible and feeble ; all three mnst have beea
formerly prononnced in the same way.
In the Lyric Poems of 1280 the French words aze
many ; in p. 75 we see atscapen, a combination of tk
English ceistyrtan and the French eschaper. At p. lOO
comes dempjied, a compromise between the Englidi
deman and the French damner. Abont this year, 128(1
the two languages were beginning to mingle together.
We find expressions Hke make my pees (p. 100), h^
coimtey p. 152 (Political S.), compos a life, p. 202. There
are also bailif tax, paroshe, nwtun (ovis), crust. There
is votichsave, which stands alone, I think, as a combina-
tion of an Adjective and Verb in one word. Fine is
nsed for a mulct, p. 202 (Political S.). Trow (trowsere)
may be fonnd in p. 110 (Lyric P.) ; and douse, in p. Ill,
is the French Adjective long afterwards applied to
David Deans.
Many new French words are seen for the first time
in the Tristrem; among them are the Nonns mone^,
^ In France the opposite took place ; for there the ou-i sound d
oi has almost wholly driven out the e sound of oi. After this time
ou-i became ou-e in the Fifteenth Centniy and otf-a in the Sizteentlt
The old/<^ (fides) lost its old sonnd and became f<m-9, fovHi, sad
fo-a. Palsgrave, in 1530, tells us that droit and vtd^otrs were pro-
nounced as draat and victoare. Francois (the name of the nation)
keeps the i sound of ot; Franfoia (the name of the Saint) kMps tli«
en0-€, ou^, sound. Bot/aume, however, as Littri tails us, was pro-
nounced rS-o-m by some even so late as the Seventeenth CentQi7>
On the other hand, even in 1830, Lafayette sounded roi as roul
imitating Louis the Fourteenth and Louis the Fifteenth. See
Brachet, Etymoloffieal French Dictionary, LIX.
Inroad of French Words into Ettglatid. 559
qMirUfr, hwrbtr^ \uh^, present, lodge. Pain is found by
the side of the Englisli pine : there is also the French
nevoii (nephew), which hae now driven oat the Old
English nefa and the Scandinavian nefi, at least from
polite speech. The Old £Vench had two cormptions of
gcamdalum. ; these were eaeandle and eacAandre ; the
former, with its head clipped, appears in the Ancren
Biwle ; the latter is first found in the Tristrem nndar
the form of glaunder (p. 123). Both of these foreign
forms haTe thriven among ns ; and I see that some of
onr fine writers have lately taken a great fancy to the
form esdandre. Mariner is found ; it is one of our few
French-bom words that are more poetic than their
English synonyms ; courser and telle stand on the same
level ; the most earnest of Teutons wonld not, I think,
objeot to the phrase ' hsod of the Leai.' Cattle killed
at Martinmas for winter provision are still called martt
in Scotland ; in onr copy of tiie Tristrem this is written
martin (p. 32) ; it was a word that the transcriber did
not understand. In p. 112 tierfu is nsed for poton/ia; we
still say ' by virtue of this.' The French word aiiUre
had already been nsed by na for patria ; it now stands
for popului ', in p. 148, we hear that the citntre was
y-gadred. A few years later, the word was Ihrther to
stand for rtu. At p. 92 we hear that a blow no vailed
o bokmn (button). The Adverb prest (cito) appears
(p. 183). The Verbs j'oien (enjoy), croiae, wage (wager),
and depart (sunder) appear; also bisage, where the
English Preposition has been set before a French root.
We hear of a fourched tre ; here a French word has the
English Participial ending in ed &8tened on. We first
5fe
PL ISdf
to 1^»: ■OTiTT- W
EiACfL in
csBl Hfeere k a nev idia^ im p. dO : 1^
toitf i>4 {}^) vl-Z^.^ Hkf CcABoer's «^.£# tie dmyl Tk
O ««fi uaed c>cilr be&re a Vocatzre m LsjaBOft; t
now beoGQCs &a eTrarnaciTR. azid no case seed foDov:
O ri' -« #4 :-f;:i (slew) If.Tj* *x (p. 1»),
We see in tbe Triscrczii. even ■Mm tbaa in tJie odtfr
Eitgi^ works of \^<.\ Wv tbe ri ■n|atBniai becwea
Freoch acd Te&:ocie. bcsice^-rcii tt> prerail in <jvr kaiL
kKine carried <xix. The otokj of osr iBocber>tongie,
h^d being ?^^^^^ <>^ ^^^ ursj jeais, wms bov at bd
to be arrested. ^
In the Poem on the Bodj and Soul, tiie remazUbk
Frencii words are ^«Xii':«/^ and Mot^ opposed to maiiifft
p. 33o. The lacier word had hitherto been nsBalhrt |
FTnonTm for J'.*r; r. There is fii«r (epola}, and iitiy
which w^ generailT wrinen oMf .
I haTe airead T remarked npan the manjr new Frenck
words to be foond in the Kentish Sermons; we Uf^
i-^r,tri^] tt^yy ^c. is a cnzioos idiom. We^ find trmrniL
dic'^rty *j^?ki^ d-rrfser-fr, tv n?, et^j*- «f-iV, r^irraf. Cars (car-
pos) faksted in this £cMTn to 1^». There are both jMKitf
' Scrips, IB ^in^ » frwsuzms to the 7i
happf as vke* he 'rT'^**^^ the oU
of HadBv. I will pool ost m ie?
hsfdljso
ttheftiU
ml
>ir. ^ iispv' (jae^Ml). jvfr
cobU
Inroad of French Words into England. 561
(pagans) and Painime whence comes onr Paynim. •
The French word umhle ia first fonnd in p. 30 ; it is odd
that this word ehoald first appear in Uriah Heep'sshiro.
When we borrow French Verbs with an Infinitive in tr,
we form our new words from the Active Participle in
■Usant; wo find jjerusi, not penV, (perish) in these Homi-
lies ; in the next Centnrj the doubled < was to become
th. Our distortion of these Verba in ir is most coriomi.
In the Herefordshire Poems of 1290, we see the French
for the first time encroaching upon English numerals ;
a doteyn ofdoggen (p. 239, Political Songs.). Jolyfis
applied to a lady (p. 52, Lyric Poems), and seems here,
following the French, to refer more to her mind than to
her body ; our jolly girl may be derived from this.
The French jolif is said to come from the Yi4e of the
conqnerors of Normandy ; a few years later, we shall
find the/ clipped. We see bealte (p. 53, do.); this re-
presents an old hellitag; the word had been hitherto
onchanged in England since the Norman Conquest, bat
ill the Twelfth Centnry, hel in some provinces of France
was replaced by biau. This new form came to England ;
the French aw had the sound of their present on,
for about this year 1290 we find heute written as au
English word in Yorkahire ; e-we stood with us for
the French e-ttw (aqua) ; long afterwards, about I6G0,
beau (bo) came to England, representing a third French
sound of the Latin bell-us ; the e in the French word
was no longer pronounced, having been dropped after
' The old pagaaaa lasted dom to 900 in France in the ahapt of
$62 Old and Middle English.
Bezft's tJine,' Wlien we say, 'Mr. Bellamy bas tlie
bewtj of a bean,' we bear witness to the fWt, that three
differeot French corrupt Bounds of bellus hare been
bronght to England in three different e^e. Beanhen
in HaropBhire w stilt called BokIij; Bowfort and Mmcs
were written in England for Beanfort and Meanx doini
to 1470 or so. With this series of varying fonnB, we may
compare onr treat, trait, tract; leal, loyal, legal; candle,
ekaiuller, chandelier; gentle, ijenteel. Gentile.'
The Garsor Mnndi is plainly a translation from the
French. Bot, the French maia, begins an IinperatiTe
Bent«iice abmptly, in p. 1036. Quat ia need to English
the French que, in p. 940; qitat yee er a felun folk!
Three hundred years later, this appears as ' what a felon
folk ye are ! ' The French form Marz, not Orrmin's
Marreh, is used for the month. There are shoals of
French words in the poem. We sometimes find them
with an Enfclish prefix, as vnmesur, unresun, impes ; onr
OAtray is seen as o strai in p. 394 ; there is also a-froH,
p. 906. The French ete was coming in as a suffix ; we
find lettiiess in p. 708. But the Old English endings
were tacked on to French roots, as in faithlesg, elfameti;
there is also faithful, tretunful ; over ia prefixed to ft
Frenoh root, as overpas. The Greek Verb-ending I'w,
which had come through Itoly to France, is now seen
in England, where it was to form bo many new Verbs in
' See Littri for tlie vord btan ; tJie Picards still noand binii
•od bittaU.
■ Theie different fomiB of oae -word seem to ba most ntttactin
to EngliBhmea ; a worthy mas, k Dorice in elusic lore, ha* liulf
put fVirth in print the verb deibieait. not bsini; wtiBfisd with ia
and dedtu* I
s
Inroad of French Words into England. 563
the Nineteenth Cenfcnry. At p. 18 we hear that Jean
haplist Johan, and that the latter was named the baptist ;
wB a]so find evangelist. The Teatonic teaming (admonitio)
IB Altered into warnieaitig, p. 1254, bnt only in the York-
Bhire copies ; this is a confusion with the French giiamir,
garnir, and seems mere affectation. The imprecation
da^eit is seen, bnt was not to last mnch longer - the three
later copies throw it out. The old hal and aund (such
was our love of Alliteration) becomes sauf and tond in
p. 454; in p. 1348 men see God /nee iifit/ace. The word
sir now stands alone by itself, as in p. 590. We find
the English coimptiou of dominvg, upon which I
have abeady remarked; in p. 762 St. Matthew is called
Dun Levi. There is both the old Petre and the new
Peri» (Piers) in p. 764. We see Dijtis and Amhros,
names of Saints. There is Siitumd instead of Simon,
in p. 804, a canons way of rounding off a word ; it has
left it« trace in the proper name Simmonds. We see
both Latanu and the French form Lazar. Among
French words need about 1290 in Yorkshire, bnt not
understood elsewhere, are euneis (canals), p. 114,/raiii;ji-i5-
lain (dominns), p. S12, which is opposed to thairt
(servns) ; pelf (onr pilfw), p. 356. The Substantive
pelf eame to stand for property, just as the Americana
use the word plunder. At Lincoln is a place called the
Qredan stairs ; we see the sonrce of this in p. GOR,
where a Sight of stairs is called a greee. In p. 1230 we
find fe dai 0 pe vuinde ; hence Mannday Thursday. In
p. 1246 we hear of the defend Ire (forbidden). To bail
(dance) was not nnderstood out of Yorkahira (jp.T^"^.
We see the form alend in p. 1248, tbong^ tt»s '««''*
1
$64 Old and Middle Englislu
oommonlj Trritten tend or feni in Yorkshire. The Tab
cu^le had been nsed in England ; but we now first M
the Noun, p. 584. The French save is used for prefer;
in p. 1116 we hear that all fled, sauve \t apodds.
The French Verb sacrer gave us the Participle sacrid,
p. 1116, which we have come to look upon as an A(§eo-
tive. In p. 1142 we hear that Qod regards not muxi
persun ; this is what the prosopan of the Grreek Testa-
ment expresses ; we now often use person for corpii.
Centurion becomes centener in p. 1140. The French
venin is tamed into renim (venom), p. 1204 ; jnst as
the old Teutonic sfiacc (fishing boat) has been bj xis
turned into smack. There is a curious French idiom in
p. 1340 : ' they should have sorrow, es far na date;' w«
should now simply say, no doubt. In p. 1322, a man
makes metides (amends) ; amendment is also found.
We see two forms of one Adverb, in certes and
certainlik. St. John is called in p. 634, a wel goddptee-y
we still speak of a man as * a piece of affectation/ We
were losing our English names for «the Five Wits,'
which we now call senses ; in p. 650 conies the phrase,
* he had his tost toclied of the Holy Ghost.' The word
caitif appears again ; it was quite a Northern phrase.
We now use quantity in rather a loose way, as *a
quantity of goods ; ' this is first seen in p. 712 ; * we al
it lengh (lengthen) a quantite ; ' the two last words mnst
here mean somewhat. The French pari bad abetdj
appeared ; we now find, * tell )>am, o mi parti^ (oU inj
behalf), p. 736. The verb grudge had two meanings:
one Intransitive, m,%irrmirare^ which was to linger on in
commoxL -ua^ lot V\£c^!^ Q^ivWtvs^ '«&Kst:\!b&£sat appeaianoe
Inroad of French Words into England. 565
in the Ancren Biwle ; ' the other Active senBe, that
■of itividere, which we still keep, now firnt appears ; in
p. 760 comee pair heling grocked he pain, noght. Tho
French verb damp (damno) waa replacing the English
■deine, as in p. 788. The word travail stands for partu-
ritio as well as for labor ; Behecca'a pecaliar fnivelling
is described in p. 206, while in p. 212 wo hear that life
seems travail to an old man ; this word seems to have
got confnsed with trouble in lat«r times. In p. 200 wo
first meet with the phrase ' to lose coont^nance ; ' the
I^onn waa new in England. Country had before this
been nsed for paina and populus, it now stands for ms ;
in p. 250, Potiphar goes into the conlre. We find a
common idiom of onrs in p. 910; fe time was past mid-
night ; in the later copies over is inserted before the last
word ; we now use past like a Preposition. The French
viarelie is here preferred to the English i:warc ; and
targe, common to both tongnes, is pronoanced in the
French way ; see p. 574. Pinion stands for pinnacle in
p. 744. There is maunientri in p. 1258, the word for
BuperstitiouB juggling, borrowed from the great Arabian ;
this lingered in England for 300 years. The form
mahdigkt (cnrsed) is an ingenious attempt to fit an
English ending to a French word ; the French des Is
filtered into EngUsh mi^ in p. 858, where inis7nay cornea
instead of degmofi. The technical word for metre,
hastune, appears in p. 854. There is a curious attempt
to turn a French ending into a kindred English ending,
' This old sense ii kept in oar Bible: 'gradge not against one
another, brctbron.' But gntdge, where T^ndale used it in tb\&
laeniHi, has been often stmck out of the Bihle b; vbe \abii lA \%V\.
1
566 Old and Middle English.
when servayid. is written for servant ^ p. 738. In p. ^76,
Christ washes his disciples' feet, and bids them bar
with one another, sin I has fns-gat servid yuu. The
serve here seems to partake of both the meanings thai
we now apply to the Verb ; servire and tractare. In the
earliest Yorkshire copy, we come upon spUe^ p. 890: in
the other copies it is the old dispite ; we here get a hint
of the quarter whence many of onr clippings have come.
In p. 896 siyirit appears as spreit. On reading the line,
to-quils he lai in orisuUy p. 892, we see how the old
French oreisun had to undergo that thoroughly English
habit, the thro^Hing back the accent to the third syllable
from the end. The old Iwnfir is pronounced honuYy line
6567. It is curious that up is coupled with the French
word liver (tradere), liver his maister up, p. 908 ; since
that time the up has been placed after many other
Verbs, in the Scandinavian way. Sometimes an English
and French Adjective, with the same meaning, are
coupled together; as his aim propur might, p, 1074
We see qtiamer, p. 1096 ; in the three later versions this
is altered into comer, the form that we still keep. In
p. 1252 stands * do pair dever ' (duty). In p. 442 come*
* lie pahul hivi to make ' &c., and in p. 1358, * we mU do
ur pain ; ' hence our ' take pains to ; ' but the French
peine usually in England bore a harsher meaning than
that of labor. There is another attempt at a Middle
Verb, repentes yow, p. 1094. We hear of King Arthur's
ronde tahell, p. 8 ; it was this that made rautid so com-
mon a word that it even became a Preposition, and drove
out the old nnibe (amphi). We find the phrase do
jii,«5tice, UTi^ \n\^c> \>cv^ ^^s>^\^^ "^^xVk^v^Xa !j€ hapHsf, *the
Inroad of French Words into England. 567
baptized.' In hrek to peiiveaee a foreign word broaght
in to get rid of the Old English componiid to-brek ; the
North parted with these componnda long before the
South West did. In theHavelok, thepiiecesof this phrase
had been represeDt^d by the English grotea (fragmenta).
Among other new French words are fonnd proUnuj
(prologue), prient (print), dubul (doable), /able, fun-
nel, archer, dinner, foreet, odor, pv/meyor, taseel, force,
simple, rihodi (ribaldry), page (,puer, a word nnknown,
it seems, in France before 1200), itece (niece), cosin,
printig (prentice), faeiun (fashion), still (style), pas
(pace), gjani (tank), monument, tgnar (tenor), jiarcAemt'ii,
vieage, mesel (leper), litter, poudre, flourish,, daunt, front,
affair, allow, meschive, fortune, mer (mayor), bandun
(abandon), try, mace, lege lord, in vain, gpecial, diademe,
enienoal (interval), brai, abortive, surfeit, ffrievaiice, range,
vice, principal, reepile, valley, . tilel, gquare. Idiot is in
the earheat copy alone ; in the three later ones (p. 600)
the word, though at the end of a line, is changed into
fole, and the other line is altered, so as to rime with the
new word. Noab is ordered to have a taardropp (ward-
robe) in the Ark, p. 104. A French word and an English
word are coapled in ternudai, p. ViZd. It is rather
strange to find so pronounced a Latin form as auctorite,
p. 1236 ; but this form lasted in France down to 1600,
though Palsgrave says that the c was not pronounced.
Tyudale has the same form.
Among French words made familiar to ns by religion
are, twpplanler, santuare (sanctuary), propiciatori, sub-
Mtance, respond, task, testament, stature, confund, creatvr,
sesttn, provide, concord, savour, iiengeomce, ImeU t^'nA&^i
V
568 Old and Middle English.
conceive, eirour, avocaty orgoM^ la^np^ covenant, recekt,
violence, confirm, vessel, ravish, translate, transfigure,
crucify, faint, victory, honest, reherce, supper, rems-
siun, resurrecdun, nadun, convert, restore, ascendoHj
langa^e, puplicane, dampnaciun, multiply, condemn,
descend, dissenciun, discord, sauveur (saviour), moMery
avail, conquerour, enchanter, affliction, v/ntment (ointment)i
promission, condivde, communli, getielogi (genenlogy),
etements, scripture, govern, ordain. The saczBment of
haptim, a form that lasted with ns down to the Beformar
tion, comes in p. 730 ; ^ the form seems to show that tiie
French now no longer pr6noanced the s, which they
always wrote in haptesme. We find also in this piece the
Verbal Nonn hapUszing, p. 734.' We see abinie (abyss)™
p. 1286. The old Cristendom makes way for the new
French form cristianite, p. 130. Clergie means sdenUaia
p. 488 ; we know our * benefit of clergy.' But it takes
another meaning, and stands for the Latin cleriei in
p. 1236. Pharaoh's host mount cartes when they chsae
Israel, p. 360 ; but the French chare (chariot) is also
employed, as in p. 302.
As to the French words in the Percival and Isnin-
bras, the most important is onr common just, used in
the sense of right, even ; in p. 11 comes his hode was
juste to his chjnue ; it is curious that just should be
found in this sense before its meaning of equity appeared
in England. The new words found in the Tristrem,
' Littr^ does not give a French infitance of the contraction hcf-
tSmc earlier than Bossuet ; the 8 seems always to have been insertfid,
at least in writing. I think that the Curaor Mundi is the earliest
B^denob a& xa \i}cv<&\«A Ckl>^^'^T«{Ns^ %Sxi^^fi5aiCL<»ixicin^ the word.
Inroad of French Words into England. 569
^enH (pertinere) and bisege, are here repeated. There
are aleo ^aw and cuthimi, I think for the first time.
Haye (rei) is in p. 8 ; the form roy waa often used in
Scothind down to tbe Reformation, but never took root
in Sonthem Engltmd ; egle (aqnila) is in p. 103, tbongh
the old earn mode a long fight for existence, even in the
Sonth. A man is said to pray eaterely (in good earnest),
p. 106; hence the Irish 'I'm kilt entoirly.' Mercy ia
nsed in the sense of heneficinm, p. 89. The word travel,
as we saw in the Cnraor, waa being hard worked in the
North ; the travellamde man (viator) is first seen in
p. 38. We hear of a vjayte (watchman), p. 47 ; the
Nonn is not yet extinct in England. The French word
'ilady now stands for deep thought ; in p. 66 comes ' (he)
wanne owt of study' Fail takes an aocnsative: the
Saraxeiies faylede hym, p. 117 ; certeyne is naed as an
Adverb, p. 74,
Tbe French words in Robert of Gloncester'a
Chronicle abound, as was natural nnder the circum-
stances. We see tbe French ante written aunte, as we
still write the first vowel ; there is also aumferimr. Wa
now began to talk of Germanie and Saxonie ; in p. 162
we £H« told that the former land is Alimayne ; there
is also Qret^e and Oasconye. We hear in p. 441 of the
Abbey of Fonteynet. What we call Brittany is Brutayne
in p. 459. We see both Beavmond and Beuin, King
John's Abbey; the latter word is in p. 493. I have
already pointed out that the old sonnd of the Norman
ea^i (ew) has not yet left the name of ihia Hampshire
place. Ohalew is in p. 113. The oi ia nsed to expreaatbn
French^ as well as ew. Hence arose «n,d\esacxraSa»u3u.\
I
570 Old and Middle Efiglisk,
we see creyserie for a derivative of the liatin crtt-cem ;
all this comes from the French having used 01 to express
two different sounds.^ We see pret/e (praeda), p. 270;
the French wrote it proie, and cormpted their old sound
of this word, while we English keep the true pronuncia-
tion. Estrange loses its first letter in p. 510.
The Latin aer now appears as eyr. In verdyty elit,
and cors, which are all found here, we have inserted Con*
sonants since Rohert's time, preferring the Latin to the
French form. The foreign propos becomes porpos (pnr-
pose), p. 558. The regn (reign) in p. 254? follows the
French closely. In the forms Feverer and Jenyver
(pp. 399, 408) Robert sticks closely to his original;
there is also Jun. Robert Courthose is called ^ua'^ ^
p. 412, showing how the French once pronounced their
present carre. The Fitz, so common in our proper names,
is seen as Fix, p. 551. The form viessinger, with the »
in the middle, is found in p. 128.
Robert was the first man who dated in English from
the ' year of grace.* A fashion is seen of rolling French
and English words into one, as CaurthosSy pecemele ; but
we must remember that gem-stone came long before the
Norman Conquest. There are compounds like Jiauiene^r
vantward (vanguard), a peyre hose, p. 390. Peace is
freely used : ^make his pes,' p. 57, ' sit in pes,'&c. Peer
is treated like a Substantive, as in Philip de Thann's
work : * find here pere ' (their match), p. 103. * Fjte jt
was to ' &c,, is in p. 305 ; in the same page we first hear
of a ' poer (power) of folc,' like Virgil's canum tns. la
' Abont 1630, one of Tjoidale's friends -was knovn as Jay^ /^»
and Gree, 6\ioVvI^^ >iJa3iX. oi ^^a >Qaa\i. ^>i^^^^£C5:i&ssraxtfy«^«s ay in Bngland.
Inroad of Fretuh Words into England. 571
' no manere harm,' p. 350, an 0^ is dropped before the
last word. EngliBh. asBerts ita growing tereeness, even
in translating ; the Northern men had a similar form,
noi-in harm. There are anch very French forma as soiu-
'prior and Sirik Porg, p. 515 -, these are called in p. 51 )>e
fijf portts. The clos and the street are coupled in p. 7;
Scott heartily loved the old term. Onr modem penny-
a-liners are trying to replace howehold by mSimge ; they
may fairly ^peal to a passage in p. 183. The word
rowlier had an awful aonnd in onr fathers' ears ; in
p. 297 it becomes roter, and Tyndale writes it rutter. A,
well-known legal term comes in p. 517; an etVe ofjudige
goes about. In p. 528 we hear of the ctntimune (com-
mons) of the Oxford clerks.
Among the Adjectives we see pur blind, where par
answers to the old dean ; pwre ctene comes in p. 434,
We know Scott's 'gentle and simple' i the latter word is
seen as tmmilis in p. 95. The French form of ne^ciW
is seen as nyce in p. 106. In p. 549 certain men ' hold
themselves defeneahle,' that jp, defend themselves ; hence
comes onr word Fencihlet, clipped in the usual Enghsh
way. This Adjective has an active, not a passive meaning,
which is rather uncommon in words ending in able
or ible. Certain ia used for quidam, not for eerlut, in
p. 107 : 5y eerteyn meseageres.
The Verb fail governs an Accusative, p. 195, as
in Yorkshire. The old Teutonic uHcr is now replaced
by tecvnd, a wonderful change, p. 414.
The Teutonic adverbial ending is added to French
roots, as pitoeliehe, feinieliehe, $odeinliche. In 515 ■^a
see our common scarselicha (yvi) ; eivjiit v& ttMiJSs&'tei.
572 Old and Middle English.
alte fine, p. 2? ; for pe cas fat is a new way of Engliah-
iug quia ; we are not iar from because.
There are new words like inetal, coucabine, detpise,
tilted to, gransyre, obligi, Parletn^nt, maim, fosse, baiteret,
elrnrgian, tnesehaiice, comfort, suit (of clotheB, p. 191),
e-tllar, souple, tpicer, soveryn, tailor, chair, gJose, tai^
onidiii, libel, tretpas, carpenter.
There are phrases like ' marry my daughter to a
bachelor,' p. 30; 'have some colour of right,' p, 313;
' to be in compamj,' p. 429 ; ' to amend such manen,'
p. 533 ; ' to make wardens of TVenchnien,' p. 550 ; ' to
compass a thing,' p. 109.
Milton has a fomoas passage in his ' Areopagitica '
aboat an eagle muing her youth ; this French corruption
oftnutare ia seen here in p. 550, where wardens of castles
are iremewed (changed).
In the Lives of the Saints (Philological Society),
the French Proper Names come in ; anch as Jake
(Jacqnes), Lucie, and the town of Athenes (Athena).
An Archbishop elect speak^ to certain messengers aa
beau freres, p. 82. A child addresses its mother as ma
dxtme, p. 40. There are also the words iinc2e, percke,
heverchieffisicien; this last word I^udale nsed instead
of leech. Contrai men stand for agricoUe in p. 44. In
p. 52 comes hi eas (by chance). In p. 76 a threat ia
made wifi so grel eir; hence, 'give himself great aire.' '
The French _jo?y/ia nsed as we now employ jolly (Itetns),
in p. 46. There is a piling up of the Comparative sign
' Aire waa used for matiiKr in France ii
It ia Btmn^e that this meaDing could ever c
Littre litis & long note on thp point.
Inroad of Fraich Words into England. 573
in nobkrere (nobiiior), p. 55; they could not as yet
qnit« nnderatand how to make foreign worda run
smoothly in English. In p. 78 St. Edmund loaes hia
txidily power, bnt has all his thoaghta deJyvre ; this
Adjective came to stand for the Latin liber, and it may
have inflnenced onr nse of elevsr. We see a French
Participle appear in p. 41 ; a man is repentant of bis
deeds. In p. 7S the French Verb itse supplants onr
own brucan ; {fnii is the kindred Latin word). St. Ed-
mund iisede onr Lord's flesh (the Eucharist). In p. 11?
a man wishes ' to pane an apple.*
In the Legend of St. Bmndan (Percy Society) we
find lierhs (a word afterwards mnch nsed by Tyndale),
jiifor (choir), grape (nva), instead of the old win-berry,
p. 19. This seems to be the tme old French phrase,
now supplanted in France by raimn ; Littre quotes sane
de grape (vinum) from a piece of the Twelfth Century.
In p. 23 comes, ' have a good case of us.'
In the Treatise of Science, belonging to the same
mannscript, the new French words are qttalite, ocean,
deserv" (no longer ofierve), a hare's /wTiie.
In the St. Margaret (Early English Text Society)
come tourmenlz, take consail, be in oreisoju, boil, vile,
npe (at) his cowl, entente, thou hast no part wi|> me,
gigne of f e croiz ; in p. 26 me and grede are found side
by side.
In Hie Becket of th& same manuscript (Percy So-
ciety), we remark that in 1300 we pronounce use mnch
as we do now, for it is there written yuse, p. 23. So, in
this Severn country, ewt was written for imht. TiranU
p. 36, takes the intruded ( at the eM. TlVa ^wcwifwre-
574 Old and Middle English.
ecclegicB, mentioned in the Constitations of Clarendon
130 years earlier, now appear as personeg, p. 124 ; persone
is used for curt'i in French poems of that Century. We
see accounfs, lay fee, advmcson, maner (manor), hold in
chief, aioil, distrain, pardon, blanket, in prejwliee of him,
profeefion, o.hggt, eurance {assurance). There ia the
renowned iieraveiiiure, p. 91, which Tyndale has made
immortol ; also the oath parde, p. 106. There are phraees
likit ' pay his court,' p. 11 ; ' do ns grace,' p. 69. In p. 61
is the cry merci! standing by itself. In the one pa^
31, St, Thomas calls himself both warde (cuatos) and
ward^ijn of the Cbnrch. In this poem, we can watch ibe
change in the meaning of words ; a clerk is iproved fbr
felon in p. 35 ; a son proves (evenit) evil, in p. 121,' In
p. 110 blood runs at round abovie the Saint's head ; this
is a mixture of Romance and Teutonic synonyms. In
p. 21 St. Thomas promises to keep the laws, ' sauvi onre
rijte ; ' in p. 105 this Past Partieiple is tnmod, as it were,
into a Preposition ; ' I love no man more, ea-af his &der.'
A new idiom for the Future Participle was coming
in ; in p. 40 we see he wcu upe tlie poynte to he ica»t;
about to implied intense earnestness; it could not express
the bare Futnre until two hundred years later.
In the Alexander, the chief French words arefairye,
' J^kjH's rineB, puoDing on tbre« different words, are well
IniQvn; when Oarrow, in Court, was in vain tiyiog to badger no
Mg[y old woman ialo the admialion, that a legal t«ndar had been
' Oarrow, forbear ; that tangh old jade
Will Derer^roH a Undtr maid.'
Inroad of French Words into England. 575
ttyoiir, ajnhlant (of a horae), beef and niofottn, p. 218;
bonie (bonny) lundit, p. 161; reirwarde, p. 31?; yer-
J<jrce, ijardin, ierreiie, the remertauiit, launche, p. 155,
distinguished from the other form lauitce ia p, 71 ; the
kyngis permne, p. 305 ; be certeyn, give ataut ; dereworih
is making way for precloite, when jewels are mentioned.
We have seen how rnund was coming in ; it now b^au
to be nsed as a Preposition, ' this is round the mydell
erd,' p. 29. In the Life of Becket, this takes on English
prefix, and becomes around, Lke a gtrai. The French
saviiiz, so well known to Shakeapere, is used in aavaiz fayle.
The word pes (peace) is nsed mnch as an Interjection in
p. 315. Romance Verbs imitated their English brethren ;
thus, 'they hulk passed over a water,' p. 87, is clearly
copied from the Tentonic idiom, ' he is gone over,' &c.
In the Handling Synne, the French form heaute
takes in English the form beute ; see p. 394, where
they stand side by side ; this b another proof that the
French eaw was once pronounced as they now sound iou.
We see the English tendency to contract, when parshe
(parish) appears in p. 12't ; the French word to be
translated was paroehUne. The word parsone (clericns)
comes in the French original, p. 152. The French
deakene (diaconus), p. 275, becomes dekene. In. p. 100,
eeckarniris Englished by stori;, theword nsed byOmnin
a hundred years earlier. In p. 30, les tempeste* cessereiU
is translated by tempeit tecede; we have long confoonded
the sonnd of e with that of s. In p. 109 we see how
liquid Consonants run into each other :
What sej ^e, men, of ladyrs pryde,
pat ^ne trat/lyng over ayde ?
I
576 Old and Middle En^lislu
This in the French is trahiant; thus Bononia beeame
Bologna^ and Lacera was sometimes written Nucera.
Onr language is richer than the French, since we bsTe
hoth trail and train ; the latter is seen in Norfolk is
1440. The desiresse of Robert of Gloncester here
becomes stresse^ p. 89, and this form appears in Noi£)Ik
140 years later. The de in defeiid is clipped in p. 231,
where fende appears ; hence onr fenced cities. French
words, like their English brethren, underwent dipping
in the Danelagh ; enticer becomes tyse in page 4. The
r is thrown oat, when pcdlesye (palsy) is written for
paralysijy p. 370; again in p. 342 sacristan is written
sekesteyn^ whence comes sexton. The French Verb
chaustier is sometimes translated ckastyy bat in p. 152 it
becomes chastyse, without any need of rime ; this most
have come from seeing the word written chasti-^en ; the
3 (onr y) was mistaken for a z ; Orrmin had alreadj
done this.
There are new words like orryble, properties, tew-
ment, prayere, renoun, morsel, try/yl, usurer, valeu,difa%T,
affynyte, dysport, pompes, vycary (vicar), p. 360, c^giiay-
mmas (squeamish), moreyne (pestis), pestetens, affray
(tamoltns), customer (solitns), p. 273; proverb, enJter-
hide, dance, carol, creme, abasched, hutch. Age stands
for senectus in p. 239 ; it was to drive ont eld for many
years. Onr bard finds it needful to give long explana-
tions in English rime of the strange words mattoh,
sacrilege, and miner (pp. 31, 266, and 331). There are
phrases like on cU manere (by all means), p. 62 ; oute of
resoune, p. 71 ; make mention of, p. 324 ; tnake hym \i
THOioe, p. V2.b, ^\sffias5fe «$««» VW \\\T«ee * make moaths
Inroad of Freitch Words into England. 577
at me,' in oiir Prayer-book ; ' ' rerers to holyiies,' p. 3t8 ;
•yn comune,' p, 322 ; 'ageoil a man ehar,' p. 360 ; ^ go
home a gode pas (pace),' p. 322 ; ' crge joaj m^'oy,'
p. 275 ; ' Gode is of huge traffraunce,' p, 302 ; ' know for
cerleyn,' p. 265 ; ' jywe lijlel fors of ftijm,' p. 318 ; aa
exact tranBlation from, the French, though we now Bap-
plant/iTTS by account ; the former word was in this sense
to last down to UdalVa time.
The fashion now begins of conferring the mascoline
geuder npon French Snbstantives ending in S 01 ie^
Byron, Bryant, and Longfellow, have continued this
custom ; Robert speaks of Charyte as he, in p. 469 of my
Book. The old word sijfemes ia dropped, and the kindred
French word eobrete is translated by eoherte, onr sobriety.
In p. 149 TU/cete stands for folly ; it was soon to get the
farther sense of toantonneis, which it never h&d in
Fiance. In p. 56, joly stands for riotous ; yf a man he of
johf life. In p. 228 there is a piling op of Franch and
Einghsh synonyms ; on maniy man»r dyvers un/te. In
p. 273 en le qeor is tnmed into yn pe chawneeL We find
our eojintij court in p. 276, where the ¥rench seouier jilai,
oum ett cwite, is tamed into lay court, or ellea eotmte. In
p. 75 the word party gets its modem meaning;
pys aperyng, yn my svyB,
Avaylede to bo]>e partys.
In p. 229 tingle is opposed to married; simples horn
is Englished by tengle knave. Lap. 152 a$tyse stands for
a fr-ioZ before a Jadge; it had bome this sense in £Vance
578 Old and Middle English.
in the Twelftli Century. In p. 359, geste seems to add
tlie meaning of ^ocnis to that of historia ; the Magdalen
langhs neither for game nor for geste. In p. 108, we
learn that women set their hearts on being called Jfo-
dame or Lady; 'wnrdys of wnrschyp.' The Sir was
freely nsed; we hear of Sir Sinumy, pp. 173-174; *fe
parysshe prest Syre Bohert,* (the first instance of tliis
clerical title of honour in English), p. 285 ; it was to
last for 300 years. In p. 340 stands Syre Symahu the
Pope; in p. 346 folk are said to wed for the love of
Syre Kateyl (propputy, propputy) ; in p. 363 the poet tcDs
of his own experience, in reproving sinners : —
Some sey, as y have herde,
' A ! Syre ! so sinnef alle Jje worlde.'
In p. 224 we further hear of Seynt Charyte, a phrase
that lasted down to Shakespere's time ; ^ in p. 149
charyte stands for alms, as in the French original ; /<k
charite luy enveia. The word derc is used, not of »
priest, but of a notary, in p. 180. An English ending
is fastened on to a French root in the case of Uurgenetf,
p. 219, and pityfuUyy p. 49. In p. 72 we see the unhappy
French word, which has driven out the true English
afeard, at least from polite speech. Fu tant affraie is
there turned into he was a frayde? In this poem we
further see the French peyne driving out the older pi^-
> Tyndale, p. 21, not far from the end of Vol. II., has to defend
hia philology from More's attack, and bo gives all the senses borne
by charity in 1530 ; the whole passage is well worth resding. He
mentions ' sweet St. Charity.'
• In Isaiah Ivii. 11, comes, *of whom hast thou been afraid (ff
fcaredV
Inroad of French Words into England. 579
We find new Verba like discvmfyte, jiele (spoliare), deyn,
suppose, aim (festimare), revyle, trenUe, maxter (vincere).
A child ia daunted (dandled), p. 154; hair is dressed,
p. 136; we come npon to amount wtlo syn^ie, p. 141;
' quit thee well,' p. 296, thongli the Verb here means no
more than liberare.
In p. 95 we see a sense that has long been given in
England to the French loueh, ' to speak oi;' y lauchede
■of yys yche lake. In p. 325 we light on the old coverde
(convalnit) ; and in p. 222 we see the new French ionn
recovere. In p. 352 comes pou »haU liaste hyt, a tnms-
lation of the French transitive verb.
There are both verement and verryly ; the first in its
foreign adverbial ending points to mind, the second in
ita English adverbial eading points to lie (body).
In p. 323, we Bee the beginning of what was to
become a well-known English oath —
' Ye,' he seyde, ' grauntt mrrcy.'
In the Medytacynns of the Soper of oure Lorde, the
new French words are real (verns), devoutly, array,
carry, accept, pryme. Dame is nsed of a hen, p. 10 ; we
now make a great difierence between dame and dam.
The Vocative teres, onr girs, comes in p. 27. Prewe had
hitherto meant laudare in England ; in p. 11 it stands
for ottimaTe ; we now expresa this meaning of the Verb
by prize or appraise. In p. 13, a French Past Participle
takes the English adverbial ending ; amjsyhj (advisedly).
In p. 11 the meaning of the Latin quia ia expressed by
hy cause \mt, an improvement on the Gloucestershire
/or ^e eaa ^at. In p. 29 comea the sentence, ' the otherd
580 Old and Middle English.
bore all, save his mother bare liis hand ; ' do tliai corner
after the savQ \ and Horace's excej^io qtiodj &c. is thus
pared down in English. * Be of g>ood cam/ort,* is in
p. 35.
I again retnm to the Handlyng" Sjnne, for I have
kept to the last the greatest changes of all that are found
in that poem ; in p. 321 we find a French ActiTe Parti-
ciple doing duty for a Preposition :
Passyn4/ alle fyng hyt haj> powere.
Mandeville has 'passjnge old'; and sixtj years later
this French participle was to be used like an Adrerb;
later still, like an Adjective. Chancer has * he is a
passyng man.'
In p. 180 comes
My body y take fe here to selle
To sum man as yn bondoffe.
This bondage (called handehede in the Lancashire versioir
of the Cursor Mundi, p. 314) is the first of many word»
in which a French ending was permanently tacked on to
an English root. I say permanently, for Bobert of
Oloucester had already coined the word reverye (spoliatio)
to rime with robbery, meaning the same, p. 193 ; but tlus
term was not employed later in England ; shretvard bad
also come in 1264, being coined to rime with Edward;
but it never took root. We see lestagium (lading-toll)
in a Charter of Henry the First's to London.^
A great change indeed was coming over England
about the year 1300, from the Severn to the Hnmber ;
the old Teutonic sonrces of diction had been sadly dried
* Stu\)\)&, DotumwvU ^WiMfcrolvot of Enw^Udl BUtory^ p. 103.
Inroad of French Words into England. S8l
wp, and conld no longer supply all her wants ; Germany
was to have a happier lot, at least in speech. Nothing
can more clearly set forth the inroad of the French than
the following sentence, which ia made np of words in
the every-day use of the lowest among ns :
' In the mean time of courie I immediatdy, at half pait four,
walked quite roand the ucond of the walle, beca^ue perhapi it
uiig-lit have baon very we*k,_;(M( as it wed to he.'
We shonld find it hard to change these foreign words in
italics for Teutonic equivalents, without laying ourselves
open to the charge of obsolete diction. England, too
careless of her own wealth, has had to draw upon Franco
«Ten for Prepositions and G on j auctions. Aft«r reading
snch a sentence as the one above, we are less astonished
to find words like face, voire, drei"', Jtoicer, rircr, itncie,
eoutin, pass, touch, pray, try, glean, which have put to
-flight the commonest of onr Teutonic words. Strange
it is that these French terms shonld have won their way
into onr hovels as well as into onr manor houses !
So barren had our tongue become by the end of thia
unlncky Thirteenth Century, that henceforward we had
to import from abroad even onr Terminations, if we
wanted to frame new English Noons and Adjectives.
We were in process of time to make strange componnds
like godd-egg, forbear -anee, odihity, fiiyg-ard, npliear-al,
starvation, tnat-e6,fv,ljil'ment,latclt-et,w}inrf-inger, hing-
let, Jish-ery, beliata-iour, tiu-Um, love-able, mhiina-ical,
ialk-aiive, dumbr-mu} What a falling off is here ! what
a lame ending for a Tentonic root !
' Lot ua keep happifff at bay '. The "BOMt Mjm'5(ra.tA\ CRet uiW-
582 Old and Middle English.
Desinit in piscem mulier formosa supeme.
We were also to forget the good Old English Ad-
jectival isc or isliy and to use foreign endings for proper
names \^q Alger-ine^ Gael-ic, Syri-ac^ Ohui-ese, Wyhelmm-
istf Wesley -an^ Irving-ite, Bant-esqu^.^ Cromwell in his
despatches talks of the Lincoln^eers,
By-and-by French Prefixes drove out their English
brethren, even when the root of the word was English ;
we are now doomed to write einholden and enliqhtenj and
to replace the old edniwian by renew. We keep the old
mynan in ' mind you do it ; ' but inyTiegian has made
way for remind. Mistrust has been almost wholly driven
out by distnist. I remark a tendency in our days to
substitute stib for under in composition, and non for un ;
as suhlety non-jpossessive. We have happily two or three
Teutonic endings still in use, when we coin new Adjec-
tives and Nouns ; one of these is ness. It had English
rivals in full vigour at the end of the Fourteenth Cen-
tury, but they have now dropped out of use ; what our
penny-a-liners now call inebriety might in 1380 he
Englished not only by Chaucer's dronhenesse, but hy
Wickliffe*s drunJcenliede, by Mire's dronkelec^ and hy
with was moh-ocrocy. I half foar to point it out, lest the penny-a-
liners should seize upon it as a precious jewel. What a difference
does the Irish ending ecii make when added to inquire I In Misi
Marthieaua Life^ Vol. III., we find such American gems as egy-cnd-
m ilkism, ant i-amalgamationist,
* In this last word the old Teutonic ending isc has gone from
Germany to Italy, then to Frince, and at last to England. We get
some idea of the influence Home has had upon England, in Tsnons
ways, when we find no less than four de^i^•atives : Boman, Bomisbr
Inroad of French Words into England. 583
Gower'a d/mnkethepe.* Onr lately-coined jngkeadednesa
and longwinded/oMg show that there is life in the good
old ness yet ; we shoiild always write oduUaMeneM,
prcmiptneeg, exactjtesa, not advisahility, promptitude, exaet-
itiide. The old «r is well preserved in vmeioner ; the
common people call a Belgian a Belger. Sach new Sab*
stantivea as Bumbledom, and ragetddom prove that dom
is not yet dead ; and snch new Adjectives aapeekuh and
n^hUhy show a lingering love for the Old English
Adjectival endings. I have lately seen, not only wordy,
but vietcy. There is a wonderfn! difference between a
good book and a goody book.
More than one Englishman might when a child have
given ear to the first Franciscan sermons ever heard in
Lincolnshire, and might at fonracore and npwards have
listened to the earliest part of the Haudlyng Synne.
Snch a man (a true Neavina), on contrasting the number
of newfangled Romance t«rms common in 1300 with
the hundreds of good old Teutonic words of his child-
hood, words that the rising generation understood not,
might well monm that in his old age England's tongue
had become strange to EngUshmen.* But about this
time, 1300, the Genius of our langnage, as it seems,
' Other roots, irith all theso four endings, maj be found in
Stratmaiia's DiclionaT^.
* ialath« apeMb of leligion, compan the Creed at page 303,
with the descriptioD of Charity at page 469 ; yet cJtere are bnt sixty
yean betveen them. In later times, Oazton says that he found an
amariiig difference between the words of his childhood and those of
his old age; Kobbea, Cibber, and I«ndor miut hare remarked the
Eama, as ta torna of azprassioD. Langoagn is so fleeting a tiua^
that it is wrong to talk oifimng it.
584 Old and Middle Englislu
awoke from sleep, clatched his remaiiiing hoards wiiJi
tighter grip, and thought that -vre had lost too many old
words already. Their rate of disappearance between
1220 and 1290 had been most rapid, as may be seen bj
the Table in page 587; had this process been con-
tinued at the same rate after 1290, we should not bare
had a single Teutonic Noun, Verb, or Adverb left
by 1830. Some hundreds of these words were un-
happily doomed to die out before 1520, but the process
of their extinction was not speedy, as the same Table
will show. After 1300, the Franciscans began to forsake
their first love ; one of the earliest tokens of the change
was the rearing in 1306 of their stately new Loudon
Convent, which took many years to build, and where
hundreds of the highest in the land were buried. It
arose in marked contrast to the lowly churches that bad
been good enough for the old friars, the first disciples of
St. Francis. Their great lights vanished from Oxford ;
the most renowned name she boasts in the Fourteenth
Century is that of their sternest foe. About 1320 ihey
were attacked in English rimes, a thing unheard of in
the Thirteenth Century. We now learn that a fiiar
Menour will turn away from the needy to grasp at the
rich man's gifts ; the brethren will fight over a wealihy
friend's body, but will not stir out of the cloister at a
poor man's death ; they
' wolde precbe more for a busshel of whete,
Than for to bringe a souls from belle out of the hete.' *
* Political Songs (Camden Society), p. 831. Cbaichmen, lawyers,
phy8ic\ai\s, Vm^V«., v«v^^Q"^^«^"^^'«^^"e>Ji^^^s&<dUd in thie piece.
Inroad of French Words inta England. 585
These rimea were written abont the date of Wiok-
liffe's birth. Chaacer, rather later, brands the brethren as
impoBtorB ; and a bard sixty years farther on prefers still
worse charges againet them.' The Fiunciscans had by
this time done their work in England, though they were
to drag on a slnggish life in onr shires for two handred
years longer. Gnrions it is, that the time of their fiery
religions activity coincides exactly with the time of
England's greatest loss in a philologer's eyes.^
Robert of Bmnne began bis Handling Synne, as he
tells ns, in 1303 ; he mnat have taken some years to
complete it. We possess it, not as he wrote it, bat in a
Sonthern transcript of 1360 or thereabonta; even in
this short interval many old terms had been dropped,
and some of the bard's Scandinavian words conld never
have been nnderstood on the Thames. The transcriber
writes more modem equivalents above those terms of
Robert's which seemed strange in 1360. I give a few
specimens, to show the change that went on all through
the Fourteenth Centnry : —
Bobert cf Hit Tran- Robert of Hit Tran-
Bmnne, teribrr about Si-unne, tenber about
in 1303. 1360. m 1303. 13«0.
Groa Dred bale aorow
wlatya lofeji vn lowe fyre
wede (insaniu) made lay]) foule
' Let a fresT of snin ordnr tecum pernoctare,
Odur tbi irTff or thi doughtou hie vuU vulan.
See Beliquia JiUiguie. II. 247.
' Happy hud it been for Spain if her begging Mars, attont the
jear 14S0, had been as eluggish and tolerant ai theii Bd^i^
brethrsD.
586
Old and Middle En^-lisk.
BcheHof
His Trmir^
Robert of
His Tran-
JBrunney
scriber, about
Brunne^
9criber, aUmf
in 1303.
1380.
in 1303.
1360.
wryjtee
carponters
fyn
ende
were
kepe
]>annys
giittys
mote (curia)
plete
mone
wame
ferly
wndyr
warryng
cursing
cele
godly
mysse
fayle
byrde (decet)
moste
wonde
spare
eati'e
toune
dere
harme
yrk
Blow
teyl
scome
mayn
strenkj?
tyne
lese
liamefi
bravn
pele
perche
grete
wepte
myrke
derke
whyle
iyme
seynorye
lordshyp
yeme
desyre
roufl
proud woidyr
TOILS
boflte
aghte
gode
qued
shrewe
hals 1
swyer J
nek
aywhoie
ever more
vnup fe
most
cunt^dk
debate
weyve
forsake
bote
vowe
fifate
loJ>e
wey
ferde
jede
harme
mpQ
sone
he nam
he jede
flytes
chydep
he nam
he toke
y-dyt
sioppyd
stounde
tyme
syde
lonff
drede
lape
haste
awe
kenne
teche
dryghe
wlate
suffre
tarne
wenche
steyn
Some of Eiobert's words, that needed explanation in
1360, are as well known to ns in 1877 as those where-
with his transcriber corrected what seemed obsolete.
Words will sometimes &11 out of written speech, and
crop up again long afterwards. Language is foU of
these odd tricks. ^ It is mournful to trace the gradual
' Malta renascentur qa» jam oecidere, cadentque
(X^QOb V^'Hv Bk^TL\. vDL\tfst«st^ ^Ki«5s2w^aa.^ ^x ^^lat uaos.
Inroad of French Words into England. 587
lose of old wordfl. This cannot be bettor done than \fj
compariug tbree Engliah veisioiiB of the Elereu Pains of
Hell: one of these seems to belong to the year 1260,
another to 1340, another to 1420.' Each snccessiTe loss
was of course made good by fresh shoals of French
TCords. Steady indeed was the flow of these into English
prose and poetry all thrcngh the Foorteenth Centnry, as
may be seen by the following Table. I take from each
anthoT a passage (in his osnal style) containing fifty
Nonns, Verbs, and Adverbs ; and this is the proportion
in which the words are employed :*—
Teutonic
Word* that Ramanct
are now Woni»,
Old Engliflh Poetry, before 1066 .
Old English ProBe, before 106» .
Oimiin and LayamoQ, sbout 1200 ,
Ancren Rjwle, about 1220 .
Qeneris and Exoduit, Bestiary, about 1230
Owl and Nightingale, about 1240
Northern Psalter, about 12fi0 .
ProTerbe of Hending, about 1260
Love song (page 341), about 1270 .
U ivebk, Harrowing of Hell, about 1280
Kentiah Sermons, about 1200
Cursor Mundi, about 1290 .
Kobert of Gloucester, about 1300 .
Robert Manning, in 1303 .
Shoieham, about 1320 ....
Old atid Middle English.
Tfuttnac
Wordt that Somantt
tire titw TPbrds.
1300
Auchinleck Rouieuces, about ISHO
Haiupola, about 1340 .
Minct, about 1350
Piers Ploughman, in 1362
Ohsucer (Pardoner's Tale), ii
Pecock, in 1450 .
l-yndale, iu 1530
Defoe, in 1710
Macaulaj, inlS40
Gibbon (sometdmes)
Morria's Si^rd (sometimes)
Robert of Bronne, the Patriarch of the New English,
fairly well foreshadowed the proportion of oatlandiah
gear that was to be the common rale in oar land after
his time. He has six French words oat of fifty ; a little
later Mandeville and Chancer were to hare eight French
words of fifty; this is the proportion in ShaVespere'a
comic parts ; and it is also the proportion in the every-
day talk of onr own time, as may be seen in the dialogues
of MissTonge'B and Mr. Trollope's works.' We English
are nsoally Teatonic enongh in onr carelesB off-hand
speech ; bat the instant we prepare any prose to be
printed, we scorn to tread onr Tentonic mother earth
with well assured step, and we hobble along, most of ns
' OdIj NonoB, VerbB. and Adverbs mast be reckoned in ibeee
computations. As a general rule, these moke np tiro-fifths of n
sentence ; the other parts of speech (nlmost whoUj Tentonic) nwka
up the ivmiiinttig Three-fifths.
Inroad of French Words into England. 589
very awkwardly, npon Latin stiltB ; Dr. Johnson, not
Defoe, then becomes onr model. It may be, that the
good example set by onr poets, and the increasing heed
bestowed npon the stndy of oar noble tongne in all
its stages, will in fntnre years abate the Johnsonese
nniBance ; ' perhaps even onr penny-a-liners and our
Aldermen may leam good taete '. The Teutonic part
of onr tongue may be likened both to gold and to copper;
it is chosen by onr poets, the best of all experts, as the
noblest vehicle of thonght ; ^ yet at the same time it is
' One cleTBF initeT has latelj attempted a <lefen<M) of Dr. John-
aon's pompous atjie, ssTing that the sage drew distinctioDB as he
diev hia bi«ath. and that he could not ezpcess these dUtinotioDS
■without couching bii diction in lAtin-bom phrases. The answer is
most simple : he drew distinctions with equal subtilty when hs was
talking, and he expressed them id the homeliest Teutonic He hw
had his reward: Us RaoMer lie* nniead on our book-<helTe» ; his
tali, u recorded bj Boswell, is perused everj jear bj thousands of
delighted stndents. Anj writer of our day, who has a mind to be
read a hundred /ears hence, should lay the lesson to heart.
■ I was lately much amused by a passage in one of the penny
papers; the writer bade 'the gentlemen who are good enough to
watch over the parity of the English language ' consider, that our
Teutonic words are mostly monosyllables, and are therefore very
ugly. The British penny-a-liner, it would seem, does a serrice to
the nation when he Ings in some long Latin word to express a rimple
idea. ' The mindx of ittll yoatla that Ihink ' is a poor and vulgar
sentcDce to write ; the idXotyninuia of toMttdiigfnt adolacenU that
eiistimate, is of course a woodrona improrement. Monosyllables
aro no disadranlage ; with them Shakespere and Milton pioduco
most noble effects. The obnoxious woids swarm in our version
of Isajah, perhaps the grandest pattern of English prose that we
* I have in my mind Mr. Swinburne's 'ErechUieus' andMr. Uorris's |
■Sigurd the Volsnng.' These poems, in purity of diclioa, tatiia \n %^
back six hundred years at least.
590
Old and Middle English.
always being passed from hand to hand, as, it were, hj
seventy milKons of our kin in their every-day speech.
These ideas I hope to draw ont still further in a fntme
work.
Examples of English.
APPENDIX.
CHAPTER VIII.
EXAMPLES OP
RVKEB ON THK RUIHWELL OROSS, t
■ ABOUT THK IB&B 8
(On-) geredn Iuddb
God auievottig
^ he walde
on mdpu gi-stiga
modig fore
(ftie) men
(abof) ic riicDie cuningc
heafuiites hlafard
hfelda ic (n)i derBtte
bJsniKrtedu iingcet men ba
»tgad(r)e
\e (wigs) mill Diode biatanud
Girded him
God almighty
wheD he would
on gallowB monst
proud for
all men
I heaved the rich king
beavea's lord
heel (over) I durat not
men mocked va both together
Kriat wtes on rodi
hwejine }>er fti«B
fesnwi kwomu
lelipiin ti lanum
ic Imt al bi(h)eal(d)
mi(f.) 8orgu(m) gi(d)rfB{fe)d
mi^ Blrelum giwundnd
alegdun hiee iunie Umwceri^ie
giBtoddun bim (let) h(iB l)i-
«e9 (h)eaf(du)m
n^th blood beemeared
Ohriat was on rood
hut there hurriedly
From afar the; came
the Prince to aid
I beheld all that
with s<
a harrowed
with arrows wounded
tbey laid him down limb-weary
they stood at hia corpBe'e head
■ Stspheni, Banic MoaunienU, I, 405.
592
Old and Middle English.
Manitbgript of the
Nu scylun heigan
hefaen ricaes uard
metudees mfficti
end his mod gidanc
uerc uuldnr fadur
sue he uundra gihuaes
eci diictin
or astelidiB
He ffiiist scop
elda bamum
heben lil hrofe
haleg soepen
tha middon geard
mon cynnffis uard
eci diyctin
asfter tiad»
firmn foldu
frea allmectig.
n.
TiAJt 737, ooNTAumre
Gabkoit.^
LlHBB BT
Now must we praise
heaven kingdom's Warden
the Creator's might
and his mind's thought
glorious Father of men
as he of each wonder
eternal Lord
formed the beginning
He erst shaped
for earth's baima
heaven as a roof
holy Shaper
then mid-earth
mankind's Warden
eternal Lord
afterwards produced
for men the earth
Lord Almighty.
' Sosworth, Oriffinqfthe Gtrmanie Lan^uagea^ p. 57.
Examples of English.
Dryht', diyht' ur, hu wundurljc ia noma *in in aire «ort!tin,
for-Son ap-abefea is micelDie X>va ofer beofcDaa, of muSe
cilda and tuilc-deondn JSu ge-fremedes lof.
foT-9oa ic ge-sie beofenaa were flngra Sinra, mooAD aod
steorran & Su ge-steaSulades.
hwet IB moD Stet ge-mjodig Su aie his, oSJSe buhu montieB
for-ISon Su neosas tune P
%u ge-wonedes hiiie hwoene laessan from englum, mid
wuldre and mid are Su ge-begadea bine, and ge-eettas bine
ofer were honda Sinra :
all fm nnder-deodes under fotum his, seep and oxan all ec
Son and netenu feldes,
fuglae heofenrta and fiscas saea, Sa geond-gaS atige saes ;
Dryht', drjht' ur, hu wundurlie ia noma Sin in aire eorflan.
594 Old and Middle English.
IV.
Ths Lnn>iBPABKB Gospsls, a.d. 960.
PA&i3Ui 07 THS Ten Visenrs St. Matthew zxr.
1. Donne gelic bi6 ric beofiia tewm behstaldaii,
^ onfengon leht-fato heora ge-eodnn ongenn tan
brydgnma and fmst brjde. 2. fifo nntetlioe of tan
weron idle and fifo hogo&aste. 3. ah fifo idlo gefengon
leht-fato ne gcnomnn oele mitS him. 4. hogofieste
nntetlice onfengon oele in fetelsnm hiora niiS leht-fiitam.
5. snigo natetlice djde l$e brydgum geslepedon alle and
geslepdon. 6. middam nntetlioe lueht Ijden^ gvworden
W898: heonn brydgnma cwom, gees ongson him. 7. fc
arioson alle hehstalde tSa ilco, and gehrindon leht-&U>
hiora. 8. idlo nntetlice 6am. snotnun cnoedon : sdes
us of ole inerre, foW^n lebt-fato asm gedryaiied bito.
9. geondnoidon hogo cnoe^ndo : eaSe mao^ ne nob is ns
and inh, gaas gewelgad to tteem bibjcendnm and brg^
inh. 10. mi^y natetlice geeoden to bycganne, caom
tSe brydgnma and tSa t$e . . . "weion innfoerdon mi^
him to brydloppnm and getyned wsbs 6e dura
11. hbstmesto cwomon and tSa o6ro hehstaldo cneSendo:
diihten, drihten, nntvii as. 12. sotS he ondnearde catiS:
8o51ice ic cnoe^ inh, nat ic inih. 13. wnccas foitoi,
foi^km nnoto gie tk>ne dsege ne )K>ne tad.
Examples of Englisk.
The RTTaEWOBTE Gospels, a.d. 1000.
St. Matthew, Ohnp. iL
I. fa Bo)>lice akenned wfea Hrelend Indeana in
dagnm Erodes ftes kjningea, henn tongol-kraaftgu
eastan qnomon in Hierosolimam, 2. cwef>onde, hwear is
se|>6 akenned is kining ludeana P we gesegon sojilice
steorra. his in east-diele and caomoa to gebiddenne to
him. 3. \vit )>a geherde, Bofilice Herodea king wtes
gedroefed in mode and ealle HieroBolima mid bine.
4. . . . ealle aldnr-sacerdos, bokeras }>eBe folkes, alisade
heom hwffir Krist wtere akenned. 5. hise pa cwsedon,
in Bethlem Indeana, swa BO]>lice awriten fmrh witga,
cvie|>ende. 6 menigjiinga Ites-teet eart aldnr*
monnnm Inda, of )>e ao)>Iice gffi|i latteaw ae)>e neccet
Israluel. 7. Herodea demnnga antegde tongal-kneit^m
and geome geliomade let l>a tid peBs leteawde him steorra.
8, Bondende heom. to Bethlem cwsep, g»)> ahaiaS geome
bi pem cnehte panne ge gemoetop hine a»cga$ eft, pKt
ic swilce cjmende gebidde to him. 9. pa hie pa ... .
I^ea kyninges word eodnn ponan, henn pe steorra pe hite
ST geSEBgon east-dffile fore-eade fai» opptat he oamende
bnfan Sser se cneht .... 10. hie geaea^nde aoph'ce
ateorran gefegon gefea miccle swipe. 11. Jngangende
pffit hns gemootton pone cnebt mid . . . forpfiUlende
gebednn to him . . . ontyndeu heora gold-hord brohtnn
lac recils mnrra. 12. andsnari onfeDgon alepe, hie ne
cerdun . , , pnrh wege gewendon to huora lond«.
Q « 2
596 Old and Middle English.
VI.
(About A J). 1090.)
The FiNDiwa op St. EDin7in)'8 Hbad.^
Hw»t ))a, t$e flot-liere ferde )ia eft to scipe, and
What ihtn fleet-armafnent fared then again thip
behyddon \Bdi heaf od ])8BS halgan Sadmnndes on j^m
hid the head holy
tJiccum bremlum, pSBt hit bibnrig'ed ne wnrde. pa
thick brambles buried should not be.
aefter fyrste, 8j55an beo ifarene wseron, com faet iond-
a time after they gone
folc to, pe f8Br to lafe fa w«§s, fasr Heor® lafordes li<J
baton beafde fa l»g, and wurdon swit5e sarig for his
mthotit head lay were right sorry
sleeg^e on mode, and bure f sat beo nssf don fsat beafod to
slaughter mind moreover had not
J>am bodige. pa saede 5e sceawere, f e hit aer iseah, ^
' beholder erst sav
fa flot-men haafdon fast beafod mid heom, and wses bim
with them to kii» H
if ubt, swa swa hit wees fnl sotJ, fast heo hydden |«et
seemed as tnte
beofod on f am bolte. For-bweega heo eoden fa endemes
However went at laM
alle to fam wude, saecende gehwaer, geond fyfelas and
everywhere through shntbs
brymelas, gif beo mihten imeten f aet heafod. Waes eac
if meet th
mycel wunder faet an wulf wass isend, furh Godee
* Thorpe's Analecta^ p. 87. He thinks that this is East AngHaii
Here we see the Anglian diphthong a at the end of words, just a»
Otv l\\e BAxV\i\?^CiTC>va,lwst\iSfli5XaNdL'«j^ax% earlier.
Examples of English. $97
willange, to biwEerigeime )>ret heafod, wiS )>a oSre de<ir,
guard agaitut Uaett
ofer de^ and niht. Heo eoden ^a sescende, and
cleopigende, BWa swa hit iwanelic is |)£et Sa )>e on wnde
fflSiJi^ aulonuuy thott thai
gaf oft: 'Hwwr eart fu nu gerefa?' And him and-
^0 goitnuT
Bvjrde pffit heafod; 'Her, her, her.' And swa ilorao
clfpode andswarigende, o8Set heo alio bicomeu, ])arh
uaiil eamt
I'a clypnnge, him i6. pa heg ))e grtegte wolf [>e b^wiatc
gray guarded
^«t heafod, ant mid his twam fotam hefde \>tBt heafod
biclypped, gredig and hnngrig, and for Gode ne djrste
wnrdon heo ofnnDdrodea jWB wnlfes hordnedene, and
hecamt amastd at guardiaathip
Tftbi halige heafod bam feroden mid heom, Jiaiikende
home carried
Ac |>e wolf fologede
forJi mid fam heafde, oSSefc heo on tiine comen, swylce
ide ongean.
Da lond-leodan fa BySSan liegdan ]'tBt heafod to fam
laud-fott
halige bodige, and bnrigdon, ewa awa heo lihtlncost
mihten on swylce rtedinge, and cyrce arserdon onnppon
(uci hatie a kirk reared
him.
598 Old and Middle English.
vn.
(A.D. 1220.)
Akcrbk Biwlb (Camden Society), 388.'
A lefdi was ])et was mid hire voan biset al abates,
lady foes
and hire lond al destmed, and heo al poure, wi5inD<«
the poor
one eoi^ne castle. On mihti kinges Inve was Jwib ^k
an earthen A hofartr
tnmd upon hire, so unimete swnfte fet he vor wouh-
boutuUees very wooag
lecchonge sende hire his sonden, on efber o6er, and ofte
messengtrSf one
somed monie : and sende hire beanbelet bot$e veole and
at once jewels nutny
feire, and suknrs of livenet^, and help of his heie bird to
supplies victuals ara^
holden hire castel. Heo nnderveng al ase on nsrec-
received eareU»
heleas ]>ing ^ei was so herd iheorted ]>et hire lure t&
hard-hearted
mihte he never beon J>e neorre. Hwat wult tu more ?
nearer
He com himsulf a last, and scheawede hire his feire
at
neb, ase t>e ])et was of alle men veirest to biholden, asd
face one
Spec swatSe sweteliche and so mnrie w^ordes ]>et hea
spake pleasant tky
muhten pe deade arearen yrom deaSe to lire. And
might
* This is the only passage, of all the specimens in this Chapttf.
tVisiX, vj«kft tiO\, '5m\X«tt. \xv ^XsA kw^U«n country, or that did not feel
Examples of English. S99
WTonhtifl veole wnndres, and dnde reole meiatries bivo-
dH grtatworki
ren hire eihsibjie, aad scheawede hire hia mihtea : tolde
hire of his kinedome, and bead for to makien hire cwene
of al ^i he onhte. Al yia ne help nout. Nes fia
ovtud JulpednoHfflU. Wat itot Ikit
wnnderlich hoker? Vor heo nes never wurCe vorte
boon his Hchelohine. Auh bo, yarah his debonert^, lave
ert iweorred, and pine von beoS bo stronge pet tu ne
auaiUd fota
meiht nonesweis, wiSnten Bokars af me, etfleon hore
is no (Mfp Meajx that
bonden, )fet heo ne don }« to scheomefole deaS. Ich
chnlle vor \% Inve of )>e nimen fiis fiht upon nie, and
jilaU taJct
aredden )ie of ham pat schecheS pine deatS. Ich wot
paoh for soSe pet ich achal bitweonen ham nnderrongen
deatSes wnnde, and ich bit wulle heorteliche vorto of^n
pine heorte. Nn, peonne, bisecho ich pe, vor pe love pet
ich kaSe pe, pet ta Invie me, hare and hare, efter pen
fJlm* ai Unit
iUce dead deaSe, hwon pn noldes lives, pea king dade
tame a,iv:e vxniiM not in trty life
al pna, aradde hire of alle hire von, and waa himsaK to
iniDdre itnked, and isleien on ende. Pa.T^Vv ttiau^^
6oo Old and Middle Englislu
l^aoh he aros finom deaSe to lire. Nere \eo& ilke le£ii of
Wcmldwothe^
vnele kmrnes knnde, pf heo over alle pin^ ne lave Im
her efter?
pes king is Jesu Crist, Grodes smie, )>et al o ^isse wise
wowude nre sonle, J^et ^ deoflen heveden biset And
wooed omt deviU
he, ase noble woware, efter monie messagers, and feole
god deden, com vorto preoven his Inve, and scheawede
prooe
)mnih knihtschipe ]>et he was Inve-wnrSe, ase weren
worthy
somewhole knihtes iwnned for to donne. He dnde faim
wmetimes womt do
ine tnmement, and hefde Tor his leofinonnes lure Iiis
lads^s
schelde ine yihte, ase kene kniht, on eTeriche baH
i-]mrled. pis scheld ]>et wreih his Godhed was his leove
pttTCtd OOVCTtd oMT
lioome |>et was ispred o rode, brode ase scheld bnven is
body gboK
his i-streiht earmes, and neroh bineoSen, ase ^ on Tot,
stretched marrow omfoBt
efter pet me weneS, sete npon fe oSer vote. . . . Efter
according to mppositiom
kene knihtes deaSe me hongeS heie ine chirche bis
mm ha»g
schelde on his mnn^^onge. Al so is |»i8 acheldy ^t is,
rtpttmbranee
1^ cracifix iset ine chirche, ine swnche stade ^ me hit
sonest iseo, Torto ]»enchen ]»erbi o Jesn Criates kmht-
may aea
INDEX.
(EiigKsb tninlB uid ktlfn trv hen in
In nrdsr to find Aviile. Following 11
Atha Pn&L, le, 2H: it is
f dipped,81, lis, US, 1S3,
214, 320. 367, 887, *fi2; it ih
ohaDged, 16(J ; it is dropped,
2A1
— replaces a, 36, 92, 105, 107. {
128, 134, 147, 157, Ut. 165, i
189, 201. 214, 243, 244, 286, j
' 311,319, 332. 431 |
— replace* an id the Infinitive, ;
01 I
— wplaces an in Nouns, 108 I
— replaces in as the Article,
1S6, 160, 163, 164, 424
— replacea o, 29, 286. 319, 338.
398, 422, 426. 431, 436, 499,
602
— replaces so, 91, 94, 108, 104,
117, 127, 1*4, 184, 165, 214,
243, 254, 270, 311, 357
— replaces to. 103, 106, 133,
147, 439
— replaces ^<, 118. 147
— replaces ■', 249, 269, 398. 440
— replaces e, 190. 319, 308
— replaces o/ 116, 2T7
— replaces on. 70, 71, 72, 104,
ABL
A replaces y, 398
— used as an InteijectioD, 72,
421, 616
— fllands for have, 287
— atnads for he, 463
— alands for all, 400
— is set iiftec an Adjective, 409
~ its old Bonnd in EnglJBb, 2S,
206, 602
— first sounded like French I,
30, 133
A better, 403
A feir, 64, SS
A good man aod a stead&st, 465
A hundred, 64
A bundced so mncli, 202
A letter more, 201
A little, 6*
A man, 66, 428
A man}' times, 64
A sorrf man was be, 404
A word or two, 407
Al)ack, 157
Aliaft, 71, 412
Al.«;e, a, b, c, 436
Aberdeenshire, 303, 318
Abingdon, 384
Able, tbe Bomance SnfBz. 5TI,
6o2
Index.
ABN
Abner, 76, 108
Aboon, 214
Aboat, 149, 183, 413
About to, (sumding for the
Future), 878, 458. 574
Above, 6, 214
Abroad, 424
Abye, 450
Abyss, 568
Ac, the Romanca Suffix, 582
Accents, the Old English, 32, 88,
267, 502
Accord, 492, 497
Account, 577
Accusative, construction of the,
47, 66. 61, 123, 126, 130, 131,
146, 192, 219, 227, 246, 248,
268, 290, 291, 359, 409, 441
Acknowledge, 150, 269, 402
Acre, 3, 6, 206
Adam Bede, the Authoress of,
217. See Middlemarch.
Adder, 440
Addison, 60, 228, 325, 457
Adjectival endings, 11, 12, 221,
285, 581-583
Adjectives, 7, 13, 23, 24, 40, 41,
50, 70, 213, 307. 822, 324,
360, 872, 388, 505. Bee De-
finite and Indefinite
— no longer agree in Number
with Substantives, 145. 213
— used as Adverbs, 116, 295,
386, 413
— coupled with a Participle, 262
Ado, 176, 887
Adown, 96, 115, 295
Adventurer, 534
Adverbial Genitive, 8
Adverbs, 8, 58-65, 70, 71, 131,
285
— made Adjectives, 276
— made Prepositions, 333, 336
AIL
Adverb formed fiom a NcnSi
413
Advisableness, 583
Advisedly, 579
M replaces a. 91, 107
— replaces ea, 145, 243
— replaces o, 91
— disappears, 134, 144, 243
— the Anglian diphthong, 213,
336
— the old sound of; 28, 30
^Ifhetih, 34
^Ifric, 40, 66, 57, 72. 121.
122, 154, 155, 204, 266,489,
509, 544, 545
-SJscliylus. 408
^thelred, 187
Afar, 277
Afeard, 578
Afford, 179
Affray, 676
Afore, 71, 453
Afraid, 506, 578
After, 7, 68, 72, 232
— used as an Adverb, 70, SI 2
Aftermost, 8
Afterward, 176
Again, 71, 288, 433
Again-buyer, 526
Against, 60, 71, 81, 160. 164.
320, 332, 364
Agatho, Pope, 147
Age. the Romance Suffix, 580
Age, 393, 676
Age of thirty, 414
Aghast, 253, 256
Ago, 306, 332, 334, 344
Agog, 236
Aha, 415
Ai, the combinaUoQ, 37, 107>
134, 157, 190
— replaces a, 319
. — replaces «Mr, 167
Air. S70. 572
Ait. 262
AJ, the Anglian for eat, MS
^ ispraflxed, 166, 1S3, 224, 277,
292, 3iB
~- IN clipped in Scotlnnd, 400
-- the Roni«nc« SofBi, 681
Alamnnie, Alimajne, 403, 669
AIb^. 416. file, 657. 660
Albeit, 277, 487
Aldprli'ef«nl, Alderbut, 290, S66
Aldermnn (a Pnnce). 219
AUIgate, 30
Aldhelm. 86, 500
Aleinniler, the Romance at, 112,
376. 387, 4S9-444, 464, 631,
632, 674
Alfred. King, 27, 29, 32, S3, 36-
3S. 43, 46, 51. 52, 6S. 69, 61,
66. 67, 71, 76, 77. 91-93, 98-
102. 106-106. 115. 118, 188.
138, I4U. 166, 168, 162, 165,
166, 186, SOI, 202, 223. 233,
306. SU7, 331, 431, 435, 466,
483,480. 490. 614, 628, 546.
See ' Paatorel Care.'
— his PrnverbB. 204-210. 284,
292, 298, 296, 361
Al^tee. 351
Alioe, Qneen, 491
Alik«, " "
Aliw
^S4S
Alison, the writer, 407
Alire, 18^. 284, 381
All. 91. 127.138, 164,226
All and some, 281,424
All at once. 327
All day long, 249
All bail, 466
All Hallows. 438
All Hollasdi. 272
AU night lon^, 249
Al! kind of, 206
All OEB to me, 265
Al! thfit, 430
AU that she mnj, 234, 457
All the betrer, 292
All its backiraTd nfennce, 396
Allan. 141
Allenarij, 401
Alliterative Poetry. 83, 84. 273,
477, 539, 649, 663
Allot, 249
Almighty, 91, 146,290
Almost. 287. 351
Alms, 107, 399, 496
Aloft, 2SS, 382
Alone. 225. 284, 312
Along 443
Alonft of, 71, 283
Aloud, 443
Already, 230. 404
Also, 161, 163, :).^6, 394
Altar. 20, 87. 273
Although. 348
Altogether. 128. 166
A limy, 68
Always, 401
Am, 8. 10, 90, 103, 147, ISO
Am and erer shall be &c. 408
AmeU (inter), 08
Amends, 664
AmencH, 44. 68. 373, 378, 398.
501, 663, 582. Set United
States.
Amid, 401
Amidst. 441
Amies, ISO
Among, 104, 173,295, 898
Amount, to, 679
An, the Ind^nite Article, 66,
127. 134, 194. 164
~ tile Romance anffli. 2S7. 582
— —fl/one, AS
— np\aic\&e and. ^jri>i, Vl^
6o4
Index.
XV
^s
Ad, the Infinitive ending, clipped,
166, 164
An eight days, 424
Anagni, 87
Analecta AngloSaxonica (Mr.
Thorpe's), 27. 163. See
Thorpe.
Ance, the Romance Snffix, 581
Ancren Riwle, the. 272-281,
306. 310, 329, 334, 339, 347,
364, 387, 457, 461, 501-505,
507. 511, 517, 524, 527, 528,
530, 552, 559, 565, 587, 598
And, our form of autif 81
And, 63
And if; 379
Ande, the Northern Active Par-
ticiple, 9, ] 48. 270, 284, 355,
450
Andrew, St., 498
Anent, 71, 178, 260, 272, 278,
398, 399
Anger, 238
Angevin, 138, 172
Anglen, 257
Angles, the, 19, 20, 89, 98, 102,
106, 119, 139, 142, 226,445,
489
Angli, the, 17
Anglian, 19, 93, 127, 145, 167,
188, 196, 352, 596, 598
Anglican clergy, the, 85
Anglo-Saxon, 95. 150, 158, 175
— Chronicle. See Chronicle.
— Reader, 27, 59
Anguish, 502, 506
Anhungred, 443
Anjou, 28, 165, 493
Anne, Queen, 318
Annoy, 502
Anon, 149, 157
Anonright, 255
Another (a corrupt form), 54,
130
Anoyle. 261
Answer, 81
Ant, 87, 431
Anthem, 503
Any, 122, 128
ApolloniDs, the, 27. 124
Apostle, 81, 117, 118, 188.214
Apulia, 493
Arabic, 1, 136
ArVlast, 492
ArboriciHtnre, 546
Architecture, its infiueoce oo
Engliah, 546, 547
Ard, the Romance Suffix, 340.
581
Arderne, John, 543
Are (sunt), 10, 87, 93. 103, 188.
213, 226, 314, 350. 354
— {tu «), 463
Aright, 125, 151
Arise, 214, 259
Aristotle, 257
Arm, 243, 434
Around, 575
Arrive at, 425, 557
Arrow, 320, 399
Arrowsmith, 78
Art («), 76, 87, 103
Arthur, King, 491, 509, 566
Article, Definite (Demonstia- '
tive), 24, 60, 52, 125, 128, 135.
146, 194, 213, 252. 391. 548
— prefixed to one, other^ b1
— Indefinite, 54, 65, 160, 271
— dropped before an A4i«*ii^*'
55
— used after many, 247
Arve, 496
Aryan, 1, 2, 7, 9. 11, 12,13,15,
16, 33. 42, 84, 88, 89,95,106,
157. 217, 227. 303
As {alse, swa), 63, 64, 156, ISV
163, 164, 302, 366, 388, 437
— dlatinguished from «?, 250
6o5
As, staodingror the RelalWo. 63,
IS7, 266. 384, 423, 438
— the old English Floral, B, 22,
3B. lOi, 136
— IB clipped, 217
As (qvia), 260
Ab (vbf). 263
Lt this
177
!, 437
As for as, 263, 413, 443
As for. 412
As ^ood SB, 374
As hew&a, 260, 390
Aa if, 231
As it -wew, 48, 327
Aalongu, \S5. 161, il2
As much BB. 265, 106
As cjft aa, 63
As !i>un as. 269
As though. 196, 231, 271
Ab to this, 53, 68, 423
As vtll OS, 266
Ashby, 102, 212
Ashors, lis. ]S1, 182
Aside, 438, 443
Ask,aie, 31, 36, 104, 174, 229
AslsDt, 417
Asleep. 165
Assemble. 289. 358, 606
Assise, ,^60, 577
Asaoil, S77
AsBumptioD, the Poem on, 370,
567
Astonied. 420, 506
Astray, 562, 575
Aitronotny, S45
Aetrologist, 493
Asunder. 453
At, 69, 71. 72,81.178,234,251,
372, 414, 462. 508
— used in compounding, 210
At a blov, 364
At nil, 126, 135.412
At all en'ls, 4SI
At f&se. 414
At heart, 60
At him, 425
At home, 429
At home with, 414
At least, 69, 126
Atm
I, 435
At need. 209, 356
A peace. 328
At the last, 249
At will. 213
Ate (nanducavil), 286. 422
Ath. the Plural Ending of the
Preeent, altered. 147
Athanaoian Creed, version of.
302-305
Atheling, 431,532
Athelstane. 77, 541
— his supposed Chatters, 386
Athena, 572
Athirst, 344
Athwart, 256, 364
AtioD, the Romance SufRi, 581
Ative, the Homance Huff t, 581
Atonement. 309
Attend, 563
Attic, 156
Au, the combination, 36, 107,
128,201,311,367
— replaces a. 253, 335, 353, 422,
431, 502. 669
Anchinleck Bomances, the, 536,
Auclorite, 567
Aadle)'. John, 269
Audley End, 267
'6o6
Index.
AUQ
Augast, 493
Augastine, St, 29, 217i 493
Auld laDg syne, 230
Aunt, 335, 669
Ava, the Scotch, 412
Aw, the old sound of, 28, 29,
206, 214, 215, 267, 261, 396
Await, 603
Awake, 214
Aware, 131
Awaj, 58, 231, 340, 412
Awdry, St., 463
Awe, 368, 463
Awful, 270
Awfully jolly, 291
Awl, 29, 274, 431
Axe, for<u^, 31, 229
Ay replaces a, 418
Aye, the old <i, 12, 166,201,216,
237, 429
A^e replaces y, 174
Ayr, 318, 656
B inserted in a word, 165, 367,
496
— is cast out, 426
-- replaces^, 174, 216, 264
— replaces v^ 86
— replaces to, 371
— connected with/l 31, 87
Babe, 280
Babel, Tower of, 547
Back, 398
Bacon, Boger, 608, 619, 642
Bad {:mdu8), 416, 439, 481
Bad way, to be in, 430
Bade (jvMsU\ 144, 189, 214, 378
Backbiter. 278
Baere, old Teutonic Adjectival
ending, 11
Bag, 276, 466
Baud, 30
Bait, to, 238, 421
BEA
Bald, 416
Balder, the hero, 90
Baleful, 272
Ball, 252
Ball (danceX to, 663
Balm, 335, 346, 502
Ban, 210
Banns, 79
Baptism, baptim, 568
Baptist, 497, 563
Baptize, 495, 568, 567
Barbour, 550, 555
Bare, 184, 307
Barefoot, 41
Bark {cortex\ 417
Barkis, Mrs., 76
Barley, 150
Bam, 81, 115
Barnes, Mr., 74, 92
Baron, 497, 506
Barren, 498
Barixjw, 422
Bartle, 400
Bask, 98
Bastard. 492
Baste, 266
Bastune, 565
Bat, 334
Bath, 502
Battle Abbey, 492
Bauble, 504
Baxter, 78, 203, 269
Bayonet, 288
Be, 4, 10, 12, 147, 185, 2U
— the Prefix, 15, 211
— IS clipped, 399
Be, ben, beoth, hutk (mai\ U
189, 226
Be hanged to him, 148
Beadle, 168, 213
Beandon, 492
Bear, 4, 243
Bear arms, 436
Bear him companj, 277
k
6o7
Bear him vitnern, 22S
Bear Uie bell, 460
Bsar ap with, 232
BrardB wag. 4S0
Baturing. 291
Beast, 320. fiOO, 602
Bnastlj, 500, S07
Bean, S61, fi62
Beaatj, SOS, 661, 662, 676
BeanUeo, aS2. 56D
Bean frereB, 672
Because, 572, S79. S81
Becket, 16, 169, 426. Ste
Tbomaa, St.
— the Legesdof, 121-42S, 632.
673, 676
Become (_dtctre), 17S
Become (/m), 178, 248, i08
B4!came frirnda, 436
Bed and board. Si
Bede, Uia wntar, 19. 36. 86, 39,
ei. 101, 123. 201, 490, 491,
600
Bede (prayer). 227, 328
BedeU. Bishop, 313
Bedford, 20, 99, 102, 140, 349,
486
Bedlam, 380
Bedridden, 40
Beef. 496, 676
Been (aevtten); tSl, 132, 167,
162
BeJkll, 293
Before, OS. 104, 146, 232
Before and under, 443
Beforehand, 277
Befrresaid, 302
Beget, 184, 189, 203, 314
Beggar, 408
Begin the names, 430
B<«nile, 506
Behalf, 221, 464
Behind, 146. 193, 413
— nied Bs a Nono, 309
BET
190
Behore, 206
heing (eitrntia), 411, 496
Being, 303
Bein); done, 337, 461
B>-lami, 601. 604, 663, 662
Belger, a, 6S3
Belief, 171, 174,21.^,264
Belittle, 174
Bell, t
, 76
Bf-ilov, 76
Bellows, 426
Belly, 274, 644
Betunging lo, 216
Beloir, 163, 26S, 461
Beaighted, 460
Beni>h. 216,164
Brngali'e, h, 616
Beowulf, The, 18, 47. 65. 71, 72,
102, 103. 172, 34S, 480
Bequeath. 36
BequeW. 35S
Berry, MJms, 516
Bee (the Latin n), 204
Beseem. 262. 263
Beshrew, 309. 460
Beside, 146, 196, 200, 296, 462
Besides, 336
Besiege. 550, S69
Befpcnk it. 428
Best, 34
Bethiokhim, 149
Beti>l<', 208
Betimes, 296, 461
Bctruy, 604, 664, 567
; Betroih. 460
I Better, 131, 312
BettiT an,l better, 231
I Belter were him Ut &e., 839
Better,
J. 326
6o8
Index,
BET
Btitt^rncbS, 330
Between. 104, 188, 190, 270,
428, 443
Betwixt, 30, 144, 332, 309, 462
Beverley, 31, 386
Bewray, 442, 506
Beyond, 104
Beca, 562
BezHuts, 218, 236
Bible, the, 12, 59, 85, 131, 137,
183, 187. 192, 208, 244, 248,
268, 287,319,325, 344, 398,
502, 436, 437, 448, 467, 600,
602, 525, 534, 665. Sea
Scriptures.
Bicker, 444
Bid. 228
— it be Iwnght, 293, 326
— good day, 371
Bide, to, 398, 410
Bidene, 230
Big, 365
Bigging, 296
Billy Taylor, 347
Bind, 4, 113, 460
Bird, 105
Birmingham. 30
Bishop, 5, 20, 192,216, 400
Bist (<w), 375
Bit, 214
Black, 372
Black and blue, 374
Blacken, 34
Blackstone, 541, 551
BUimed. \o be, 459, 497
Blanchet, 517
Bleak, 365
Blench, 423, 506
Bless thee ! 378
Blessedness, 401
Blew, 147. 173
Blickling Homilies, the, 58, 92,
114-117, 219. 224, 374, 394
Blimber. Miss, 1 5
BOS
Blind, 32, 398
Blindfold, 280
Blink. 366
Blount, 32
Blow (fiare\ 174, 190. 356,395
Blow {ictu8), 416
Blue. 374, 494, 506, 518
Blunt, 238
— the name. 32
Boast, 340
Boastful, 455
Bob, to, 439
Bode, to, 309
Boding. 431-
Body, 112, 220
Body {ho7no\ 418
Body and Soul, poem on the.
387-391, 660
Bogie. 313
Bogle, 313
Bohemia, 103
Boil, 371, 494, 640, 573
Boiling hot, 262
Boisil, 1 18
Boisterous, 444
Bologna, 87, 449, 676
Bond {vermis), 113, 383, 393
Bondage, 580
Bonden, 320, 383
Bondman {jstermu\ 423
Bondman {colowU)^ 307, 423
Bonny, 676
Book, 94. 130. 206, 206, 399
Boom, 332
Boon, 94, 212, 216, 220, 267
Boor, 205
Booth, 238
Boozy, 377
Bopp, his grammar, 88
Borgo, the, 36
Bom, 34, 302
Borough, 104
Bosom, 128
Bossuet, 542, 668
6o9
Boston, 380, 453
Bretons, 433
Bo8W«ll, 643, 689
Brick, 606
Boflworth, 112,229
Brick (fiagntnium), 75
Both (rt), 62
Bridal. 398
— (amio), 4, 161,155, 167
Bride, 246
Bothie, 390
Bridlington, Piets of, 638
Boogb, 307, 400
BooTdM', 365
Bright, 4
Brimstone, 328. 388, 399
BonlogDC, 493
Bring about, 466
Bonn, RBQfde, 535
— forth, 66
Bounce. 280
- to end, 228
Bound, 238
- to nought, 209,-.277
Boonden, 121
Brink, 280
Bourne, 447
Bristol, 78, 165, 229, 323. 483,
Bout, 366
480, 636
Bow (fttetfTt), 4, 73, 168, 206,
Britain, 18, 10,37,101
257,271
British MuBemn, thi>, 467
Bow(amu), 191.320
Britlanj, 433
Bower, 245
Broad, 201
Bowshot, 441
Bowjer, 78, 430. 4SI
Brake, m, 284
Jtoi, 73, 181
Brother, 3
Boy. 366. 370, 374, 440
Brace, 640
Brough, 304
Brachet, 83
Brougham, 566
Bradford. 424
Brought, 246
BradmrdiDB, Baron of, 541
Brow, 3, 191
Brag, 348
Brown. 372
Brake, broke, 284. 319
Brown and black, 361
Bran, 417
Browning, 453
Brandan, St., the Legend of.
Bmce, Robert, 474
*22, 425, 673
Brqges, 29
Bread, 96, HI, 157
Brurn, 463
Break,!, 189.309, 402
Bruise, 496, 506
— up, 363
— heads. 385
Brunne, Robprt of. 447-474. 487,
— prison, 424
626,585-688. &v Manning
— to pieces, 567
Brat, the, 243, 432, 499, 616.
Braast, 104, 214
636
— high, 117
BtMch, 245
Brytland. 126
Breed, to, 410
238
Bretiiren, 191,213, 381
Bubble. 463
— mine, 116
Back. 454, 465
6io
Index.
BUG
Bi]g, 313
Bugbear, 813
BiiU(to«ru<), 215, 238, 244
^- (error), 417
Bully, 426
Bulwer, 64
Bundle, 113
Bunyan, 332, 376, 521
Buonayentura, 464, 519
Burden, 192, 285, 289
Burgess, 506, 542, 656
Burgh, bury, borough, 144, 158,
160, 185, 191, 245, 431
Burghers, 104, 506, 556
Burgoyne, 347, 534
Burgundy, 496
Burial, 159, 161, 287
Burke, 323
Burly. 285
Bum {rivua)t 78
— down, 437
— strong, 425
Burnet, 41
Bums, 74, 229
Burrow, 245, 267
Burst, 218, 269, 410
— out laughing, 460
Bury, 115
— St. Edmund's, 245, 353
Bush, 296, 506
Business, 113
Busk, 98, 386
Busy, 124
But, 126
— its many meanings, 130, 250,
263. 295, 302, 336, 356, 379,
412. 438,461,562
— and ben, 71
Butt, 202
— to, 366, 506
Buttock, 430
Button, 559
Buxom. 257» 555
Buxton, 78
GAM
Buy, 104, 821, 353, 371. 380,
439
— out, 231,438
Buzzard-clock, 150
By, the Danirfi ending, 08, 212
- (oppidttm), 417
— the Preposition, 4, 15, 67, 72,
116, 117, 129, 135, 234, 251,
429
— used as an Adverb, 209
— and by, 232, 451
— wayof &c., 414
By-path, 464
By-way, 465
Byron, 84, 352, 536, 544, 677
C replaces^, 301, 440
— replaces A, 133, 160, 206
— confused with t, 36, 86, 255
— sounded soft, 159, 174, 202.
218,275,426,498. 5«! Ch
— strock out, 96, 97, 189, 270,
289, 289, 320
— inserted, 165, 400, 570
— coupled with k, 202
— contrasted with A, 207
— prevails in Picaidy, 496
— not pronounced, 567
Cabbage, 175
Cackle, 280
Cadmon, 43, 62, 55, 61, 83, 89,
90, 92, 448, 592
CadugauD, 128
Casar, 17, 18, 50, 137, 426. 500
Oaistor, 30. 78
Caithness, 226
Caitiff, 560, 564
Cake, 266
Calf, 214
Calthiop, 441
Cambridge, 100, 483, 463, 474,
545.513
Camel, 297
CAU
Cunpian, 208, 217
Can. 10, 166, 207, 440,458
Candir, 20, 662
Cannot, 408
Canterbmy, 141, 186, 187, 202,
335, S09, 547
Canute, 64, 110, 123, 127, 156
Cap«l, 396
Capital, 503
Captaio, 334
Cardinal Nnmb^r, 59, 407, 436
Cark, 549
CHFlaietoc, 53 S
Carle, 123, 356
Carline, 6
CarUsle, 433
Csriyle. Mr.. 198
Carp, to, 272
Caqtenter, 572, 586
Can,202,214, 219, 588
Case, 572, 573
CasifS confuiied, 35
Cast,
1,428
-up I
>, 469
Castle, 37, 128, 159, 165, 491,
496, 634
— men, 492
— of Love, the poem, 439, 551
Caatlereagh, 631
Calcl. (bicalcL), 172, 174, 179,
181, 189, 229, 429, 498
Catchpoie, 170, 407
Cattle, 503
Canae whj, 454
Caiton, 15R, 288, 3S8, 391, 426,
453, S83
C«ue, 575
Cecil, 431
Cella. tbf, 1, 11. 13, 16-20, 88,
100 101, 140, 245, 292, 330,
480
Celtic
CHA
396, 417, 444, 463. Sif
Welsli, Irish
Centurion, 584
Cerdic, 140
Certain. 569, 571,575, 577
Cartes, 564
Ch, 3a
— replaces e, 87, 132, 141, l.>.i.
169, 172, 175, 185, 137, l^'l.
202, 216, 245, 264. 282, iW,
311, 350.449. 496
— replaces A. 104. 106. 144, 160.
188, 206. 245
Chsbbe, for/A«i«,481
Chacc. 406, 540
Chad, St. 624
Chaff. 279
Chaifw, 278
Chaldiea. 548
Chalk, 202
Chameleon, the poem ou the. 104
CbampioE. 506
Chaticel. 677
Chancellor, 541
Changes in the meaning of pnr-
ticnlar English words. 178-
181, 184, 197, 208. 209, 210,
219-221, 226, 227-230, 237,
233, 248. 247, 249, 255-259.
267, 271. 293, 295, 296. 207.
307, 323. 328. 327, 329, 3;i7,
330, 340. 360. 379, 383. 388.
303, 403, 404, 407. 408. 410.
413. 417,419,423, 428, 434.
442,159.460. 462, 501. ,569.
574. 579
Chanlideer, 34S
Chapman. 113, 214, 311, 518
Chapter. 603. 542
Charily, 487, 497, 498. 577, 578
Charlemaene, 89, 514
Charles II., 277, 531, 543
Charlfa Edward, 634
Charter, the Gt*M, Ii\U
CtuuttMa d'Amoar. the, 6 IS, 531,
aiusten, 497. 676
Chii^tiiic. 262, S7S
CliatMl, BOS
ChHttor, 279, 280
CliHiti.-,T. 36. 163, 227, 260, 260,
28U, 294, 296. 340. 366. 384,
131}. 48.';, 512, 622. 623, S32.
640, 6S2. 660. 6B0. 682, 686,
688
Cheap, 113,271
CbcdnrtHomeF. 01
Ciller (valliis), 604
ChrBiiT. 37, 78
Cliickeo, 202
Chide, 208
Chief. 87
ChMitqu^), 371,403
Childish, U, 16
Children, childer, 104, 16t, 218,
37U, 450
ChilliD^orth, 546
Chime, 330
Chine, 77
Choose, 128, 155, 156, 158, 169,
216, 429, 606
Chop, to, 1 13
Chough, 279
Chrisctanity, 16, 18, 20, 36, SB,
568
Chriytinu names, j24, G2S
Chrouicte, Saxon. tJie, 19. 27,
28.29,41.63,67, 68. 60, 69.
97, 09, 100, llu, 122, 123,
126. 128-132, 185. 233, 252,
260, 491-403, 498, 60D, 528,
540. Sfe Peterborough
ChronicUB. French, 636, 536
Church. 20. 175. 19t, 200, 216
Churohyard, the po«t, 260
Cinqne porta, 671
Citizen, 262
City men. 441
CiuUo d'Alcamo, 138
Clack, 300
Clad, 2S6, 366
Clap on ihe cnivn, 363
Clapper, 280
CluendoD, Cai]BlitotioD«of,i41.
574
Clattering, 269
Claw, 201, 285
Clay, 201
Clean (pmnino). 69, 2S4, til
Clear, 567, 677
Cleaaby'B Icelandic Cirtionuj.
168, 223, 229
Cleare, 73, 442
Cleft, 417
Clench, 309
Clep^ 189
Clergy, 668
Clerk. 209, 378, 499. 578
Clerer. 285, 312, 673
Climb. 426
Clink, 373
Clip, 238, 294
Clock (an insect), 160
Clod, 309
Cloister, 214
Cloke. 334
Close, a. 571
Cloth, 32, 274
Clolha. 114, 296
Clothing, 220
Cloud, 296, 323
Clout, 421
Clovis, 97, 606
Club, 252
Club. to. 278
Clutches, 281, 387
Cobweb, 78
Cocky. 208
Cog, 309
[
«'3
COG
CoBgwhail, Ralph of, ItO, 203
Coke, 4SS
Colcheater, 102, 140, 141, 188,
204, 210, 442, 44S, 450
Coleridge, 468
Culin. 3eS
Colonr of right, 572
Come, 117, 162, 164, 170, 190,
213
— w hand, 409
— to pence, 436
— of, 424
Comelj {bietiniitie), 338, 413
Comfort, G72, fiSO '
Coming, th;, 3fi I
Commeoce, 641, 548
Comtnon, 606, 642, 571, 677
CompftHf, £72
Comparatives of Adjectives, 7
CompariBon of Atljectives, with
moil and more, 276, 335, 360
Compass a life, 658, 572
Compass, points of, 6S
Compounding, English, 139,210,
211. 236,323, 366, 450, 492,
600, 627, 628, 533
Con, to, 4S2, 459
Cone;. 184
Conjunctions, Devly formed, 232
Cooqueror, the. 131, 142, 159.
Sa Willinm I.
Conqneet, Nonnan, 63, 66, 64,
67. 72, 128, 129, 194. 201,
203, 267, 265, 386, 490. 494,
608. 627, 647. Set Norman
Consonants, interchange of, 31,
Stf ee and oc
32
— dislike to, f
— dcmbled. 23
Contrary, 602
Contrast to the East Midland
dialect. See Contents of the
Book
Conversazione, 545
CSl
CouTbeare, S3, 172
Cooke, Mr., 313
Cookei^, woids of, 640, .341
Cooper, 66
Coping stone, 78
Coppwfield, Darid, 65, 296
Corboil, 493
Corner, 6S6
Comet, 635
Corse, 496, 660, 670
Coat, 280, 444, 506, 673
CottoD Manuscript, the,
314,636
452
Country, 669, 665
Country house, 39
Countrymen, 672
Conntj Court, 677
Coupe, 366, 366
Couple, 564
Coupling of Nouns, 39
Courser, 650
Cousin, 567, 581
Court hose, 570
Core, 111,416
CoTentry Mysteries, 3G3
Cover, 337
Coverdale. 112, 368, 403
Coverlej, Sir Roger dt, ^
Cow, 3, 426
Cover, 443
Cowl, 246
Coicper, 30, 230. 310
Crack, 401
— his erown, 363
Craft, the ending, 15
Crag. 417
Cramp, 309
Crawl, 416
Cress, 31
Grew, 535
Crih bit*r, 376
6i4
Index.
CBI
Cripple, 266
Croats, 510
Crock, 202
Croker, 83, 543
Cromwell, 71, 385, 582
Crook, 197, 238
Crooked, 421
Crookedly, 466
Crop, to, 279
Crop {ca<pui\ 373
Cropper, 874
Cross, 151, 252, 521
Crouse, 365
Crowland, 494
Crown, 348, 450, 555
Crown first, 362
Cruelty, 503
Cruise, 494, 502, 559
Crummie, 78
Crumpled, 416
Crusade, 236, 502
Crutch, 245
Cry, 331, 444, 505, 506, 573
Cry him mercy, 424, 656, 577
Crying mercy. 389
Cuckold, 309
Cudgel, 280
CuflVi, 617
Culver, 198
Cumberland, 335
Cunning, 463
Cup, 37, 105
Cur, 280
Curl, 443
Curse, 31
Cursor Mundi, the, 118, 353,
397-418, 448, 450, 460, 46J,
481, 526, 531, 532, 544, 547,
549, 552-555, 562-569, 580,
687
Curst (crabbed), 404
Custom, 497, 541, 576
Cut, 252, 330
Cut to pieces, 69
DAN
CuihbcTt, St., 491, 524
Cwifer, 280
D added \o n, /, r, «, 30, 108,
, 290, 563
— is inserted, 321, 838
— dropped in the middle and at
the end of words, 29, 33, 21S.
338, 344, 355, 379, 388, 400.
495
— confused with j^, 86, 160, 272
— replaces ^, 108
— replaces, tk, 34, 35, 192, 206.
267, 285, 289, 301, 353
— answers to /, 87
Bab, 443
Dainty, 504
Daisies, 338
Dally, 443
Dame, 504, 508, 524. 540, 5^
579
Dame Siriz, the poem, 377-
380, 459
Damnes, 494, 495. See Ban
Dan {dominw), 496, 556, 563
Dandie Dinmont, 465
Danelagh, the, 102, 139-141,
143, 147, 188, 249, 301
Danes, Danish (see ScandinaTiin,
Icelandic, Norse), 20, 34, 89,
01, 92, 93, 97-103. 106, 108,
115, 117-120, 122. 123, 127-
139, 140, 142, 143, 147, H8,
160, 151, 166. 167, 162, 167,
173, 180. 194, 210, 211, 212,
228, 230, 231, 234, 236, 237.
239, 252, 264, 279. 292, 320,
325, 330, 348, 350, 355, 383.
408. 413, 444, 450, 459, 489,
502
Dano-Anglian {See East Mid-
land), 103, 161, 213,386,449,
627, 528
Dante, 4S7, 529
Deep, the, 40
Van; i. 10. 104, 207, 2H,
398,
Deepden, 78
458
Deer, 23, 219
D«ck, 251, 307
Defend, 496, .M8. 663
DiLTling. 439
Defile, 606
Dart, 382, 509
DrfiQlte Adjective, 13, 23. 1(16
Dawnt, Mr., 262
145, 210
Dwb, 262, 385
Defoe, Bo. 416. 521. 688. .MB
D>uih it, 306
DaUvp, Plural, 14. 15, 38, 106,
77
130,145. 156, 165,182
De'il, 373
— Absolate, 47. 362
Delight, 603
— Esfleiive. 49, 225
Deliver, (o. 566
— replaces the AccnsatiTo,
110.
Deliver (liber), 673
127, H3
— is replaced by to. 234
Den. 78
Daughter, 3, 20S, 246, 332
354
Denis. 663
Dannt, 587. 579
Depart, 336. 559
DaTid. 496
Dqarting, hia, 504
Dawniiig, 290
Der. the AiysD SofBx. 6
Day. 3, 144. 202, 204, 332
Derby. 98. 100. 102, 133, 2)2
I>e.th8Boiii>iic9. 676
217,218. 226. 254,260,334
409. 565
676 6 ■*. r .
Derby, Loid. 47
— at tie end, clipped. 294
Dew. Deu, 401, 462. 496, 616
BeacoD, 575
540, 556
Dead. the. 464
DoBerre, 261, 496. 573
Dead asa, 404
Destroy, 399, 439. 507
Dead B8 a stone, 361
Devil hsve him. 364
Dead ae it vae. 437
DBvizee, 433. 482
Dead loss, 347
Deadly, 386
Dew. 174
Deal, 22, 227. 296, 268,
323.
Dickens, 66. 78, 180, 255.271,
386, 422. 434
646
Deans, David, 658
Did. 9, 10, 16, 292, 852, 360,
Dear God. 421
384, 407, 458
Diddle. 76, 87
Deave, 203
Die. 238. 288
Debt, 504
Die death, 163
Decay of Eogliah words. 7S
Dig, 365
Declining. 122
Dedacalo, 562
380, 3B4, 536
Deem, 94, 399, 606, 5SS, 665
Dike, 191,246,288
6i6
Index.
Ding, 365, 387
Dingle, 269
Dirt, 365
Disciple, 117,499
Disputing, 258, 644
Distrost, 582
Ditch, 175, 191, 245, 288
Dither, 256
Dinj, 229
Do (facen\ 10, 90, 94, 104,
121, 156, 166, 192, 262, 266,
409
— {jptynen\ 4, 16, 131, 168, 181,
294,442
— (deoere), 259
— (valere), 363, 428
— -used as an Aoxiliaiy, 47,
292, 429, 458
— prefixed to the Impeiatiye,
45, 263, 339
— used instead of repeating a
previous Verb, 45, 263
— (/actum), 363
Do battle, 436
Do but, 461
Do for, 65, 379, 459
Do justice, 566
Do me right, 338
Do their best, 423
Do their devoir, 566
Do to death, 47
Do us grace, 574
Do way, 375
Do with it, 364
Do you honour, 442
Do you to wit, 149, 193
Doctor, 544
Doe, 201
Doff, 66
Dog, 279
Dogged, 374
Doing, the, 464
Dole, 266, 434
Dolt, 120
I Dom. the Teutonic Suffix, Id^
532, 683
Bombey, 15
Don, to, 66
— , the Sp&niah, 556
Donald, 30
Doncaster 102, 121
Done (JtmsJked), 208, 345, 4S0
Doom, 94, 399
Doomsday Book, 28, 99, 1S2,
173, 264, 307, 353, 875, 4»,
494
Door, 3, 21. 28, 105, 320
Dorset, 29, 74, 92, 106, 147, 151.
159, 173, 221,251.253, 2fi9,
273, 274, 276.278,279,281,
306, 312, 332, 339, 384, 480.
527, 666, 667
Dost, 216
Dote, 209, 263
Doth, 216
Double English fozms, 191,245
253, 264, 297
Doubt, 667
Douce, 668
Dough, 344
Dove, 198
Down, 96, 214, 267. 335,437,440
Down and dale, 402
Down, to, 70, 326
Down to the ground, 219
Down with it, 364
Downfall, 401
Down there, 296, 427
Downright. 265, 327, 380, 450
Dozen, a, 661
Draff, 262
Drag, 288
Dragon, 297
Drake, 359
Draught, 262
Drove, 244, 398
Draw, 189, 200, 202, 249, 288,
368, 381, 428
Drawbridge, 441
Di»;, 2S8
Dreadful, 27 S, 291
Dream, 296
Dree, 202
Dreg, 328
Dceneh, 191
Dreii^ S79, Sat
Dried, 190
Drill, 34
Drink, SI
-of m
1, 382
Drive. 8u, 128, 208
DriTBl, 2S6, 281
Droop, 256
Diop87, G41
Drought, dntnlh, 216, 288
Drore, 190. 244
Droini, 8B1
DnuikennesB, 582
Diy, 128,282, 288
Dryden, Sd, 125, 289. 281, 346,
542
Dual Number, 8, 24. 91, 268
— is dw^ped in English, 36S
Dab, to, 492
Duck. 369, 441
— , to, 86, 416
Doll, 257
Dnrnb bfsat, 404
Dwnp, to, 417
Danbaf, 523, 555
Duncan. 128
Duiham. 318.335. 426,475.515
IlaFwaTd, 320
Dnak, 279
Dntch vordt akin to Engliah,
150, 168, 181, 210,229, 230,
237, 252, 253. 256, 268, 279,
2S0, 297, 300, 310, 323, 329,
386, 373, 377. 386. 396. 416,
421.425.429.430. &» Friei-
land, Frisian, Low German,
Eits old aonnd, 28. 178, 190,
, 320, 6U0
— it« Bound ia reprt-seDted in
man; waja, 182
— replacoi o, 37, 93, 94, 107,
158, 173, 214, 286, 302, 315,
495
— replaces a, 36, 94, 105, 123,
144, 157, 158, 172, 174, 185,
201, 214, 343,274
— Kplaces ni,g4, 117, 147, 159,
190, 214
— leplacea eo, 38, 94, 104, 143.
147, 165, 174, 214, 244, 274,
357
— replaces eow, 94, 311, 381,
431
— i«places I, 115, 143, 18S, 287
— leplacea to, 105
— Kplaces t>, 36, 81, 94, U5,
146, 257, 398
— replaces u, 115, 189
— replaces y, 04, 117, 158, 171,
185, 18r,'286. 431, 440
— is popolac in the Sonth-eaat
of Engliind, in the middle of
a word, 116, 156,.15S, 159,301
— is clipptsl at the end of »
word, 105, 124, 295, 425, 461
— is clipped at tlie beguming,
310, 398
— is popular in the Nortb-weat,
in the middle of a word, 158,
254, 257, 370
— omitted at the end of a word,
33, 398
— sounded before a, 92, 581
Eu, retained in Dorset and the
South, 1 73, 182. 254, 274, 602
— its old F<ouDd. 28, 30, 392
Ci6
///di'jT,
EA
Ea K-pLiei?s *, 172
— ivplae»-s eo, 104. 144
Each, 62. 141, 166. 171, 173.
17.1, 187. 281, 262,449
— ot Us. 1 9.>
— on.-. 116. 175. 224
— oth r. o6. 4»>6
E:i.iiv.l. lOu, 101
K.i-le. o69
£i..T>\ the, 99
Eaiii, 72,421. 516, 557
E.il.iaf;«-ler, 197
E*i- (a rare), 2. 12
— ! ii'rU), the sound of, 371, 392
Eiirl. 205. 357
Karlr?, Mr., «4, 113, 143, 184,
337, 458
Early, 276
Earn, 261
Eamcr^t, 262
Earth, 322
Earthly, 216
Ease, to, 294, 497, 506
Easily, 216
Efist Anclia, 19. 97, 99. 100.
127, 139, 144, 148. 191, 192,
204. 205. 206, 210, 256, 261,
270, 285-289, 292, 294. 295,
302, 312. 314. 353, 354, 356,
357, 302, 403. 444, 447, 452,
466, 486, 508. 596
East Midland, the. 139, 144. 156,
165, 174, 190, 253, 274, 279,
332, 350, 449, 527. 528, 533.
See Contents of the Book
Easter, 174. 435
Ea.sy, 40, 105, 262
p:at, 4
Eat my fill, 402
Eau, its old sound, 508, 561,
575
tiaves, 78
Eiiw, an old sound, 28
YA, the Teutonic Prefix, 81, 582
ELE
Rizar. 143
E.i-e. to. 191
E-iinbursh. 318. 555
Eiith, 433
i^^imTind. .<t-, the Arr^ibiii^T
3S4. ol.x 523. 545. 573
E-lmnna. St., the Ki^, 127,493,
I 524. odS
j Edw^arvi, the son of Alfrr.1 99,
lini
Elwaj>l rh«> ConlWs^^r, 125, 4.v^,
524, 547
Eiward I., 349. 354, 372. 45,\
4 47, oil. 518, 531.533. *->4.
535, .549
E.iw..n{ IV.. 536
Ee, the Romance SniSi. 581
— r.^'plaeesr, 107, 2.>4, 3iV', 357,
392
— replaces efre, 105
Eeen, the Irish Suffix, .382
Een {ocu/i-, 216, 272
E'en (evenintr). 432
Eer, the Itoroance Suffix. oS2
E'er (ever), 287
Eftsoons, 167, 378
Etrerton Manufccript, the, 394
Egg (ovttm), 426
— on, to, 76. 191
. Eh, 260, 462 ; its old sound, 28,
I 79
Ei, n-places ^, 107, 128, 14.%
, 157. 172
— replaet^ e, 128. 134, 398
— replaces fa, 201, 286
Eicrht, 157, 201
Either, 79. 157, 172, 189
Eke, 117, 190, 357
El. the Teutonic Suffix, 15
Elbowr. 202
Eld. 393
Elders, 40
Eldest. 286
Eleanor, Queen, 520
6i^
Elephant, 38. 490
ElevtD, 12. 13, 33, 24S
Eleven Pains of Hell, the, 687
ElkHbeth, Que#Q, 419,601
Elliptx'. on, 268
Else, 11
Ely, 334
Em. short for tern (iUie), 143
Ember dajs. 278
Eramet, 431
Emperor, .102, SS9
Empress, 498
Empty, 257
En, tbe Koraaoca Prefii. 70
^ (— an), the Plural ending of
Noun.% 23, 346, 464
— the PoasessiTB Feminine Suf-
fix. 6
— the Siiffii akio to the Greek,
— the AdjectiTttl Ending, 291
— ( = an), the Ending of the
luflniuve, 212. 239, 269
— the Ending of the Strong
Participle Passive, 9, 28
— the new Midland Ending of
tbe Plural of the Present
Tense, 148, 213, 284, 3S0
— replaces « as a Plttial No-
rn inative, 161
End, 267, 423
— (WW), 45B
Ende, the ending of the Active
Participle, 26, 148, 164,204,
213, 248, 253, 284. 387
— replaces tbe Gernodiftl In-
finitive, 186, 389
Ending day, 382
_ his, 463
Endings, Aryan, 6-10
.— Romance, 6gO-S82
— Teutonic, IS, 16; 406
Ene, the Genitive Plural, 204,
213, 344
England, ita gender changed,
434
English, the speeoh of the Weet
Saxons, 89, 431
Eogbsb Pale in Irekod, 480
Enlighten, 81, 582
Ennui, 602
Enough, 68, 160, 162, 164, 182,
201, 224, 228. 274, 277, 287.
344.381,332
EnaigD, 636
Entent, 673
Entered into, 560
Entirely, 560
Entrance, 65
Eo,iU Bound, 215
— replacea eoa, 164
-^ ceplaoes y, 174
Eow me, 72
Epistle, 81. 452, 525
^j, the Teutonic SutBi. 16, 16.
493, 507. 683
-- replaces ™rf, 176
— replaces other endings, 281
1, H9, 421
the. So. 6H9
^r Ireland
Krn, tbe Saffii, 6. 16. 81 ; it is
clipped, 41
Errand-bearer, 281
Erst, 66, 226, 347
Ery. tbe Romance SofBi, 581
Es, the ending of the QenitiTC
Singular. 5, 37, 106, 206
— (-ii»), the ending of the
Nominative Plural, 6, 104.
106, 120, 12S, 145. 176, 246,
268, 346, 356
— the old Ending of the Second
Person Singular of the Pre-
sent, 8, 253. 257, 319, 365
— the Northern Ending of the
Present Plural, 104
— added to Adverbs, 68, 120,
Ere, 46,
Erect hi
Erin, 2.
620
Index,
ESC
149, 160, 167, 178, 195> 208,
217, 295, 332, 443
Escape, 658
Ese, the Bomance Suffix, 5A2
Esqae, the Romance Suffix, 582
Ess, the Bomance Suffix, 562,
581
Essex, 19, 20, 36, 98, 99, 140,
156, 158, 191, 193, 205, 213,
224, 268, 271, 301, 303, 312,
332, 344
Essex Homilies, the, 141, 188-
199, 200, 204, 206, 210, 234,
261, 266, 324, 389, 498, 516,
617
Esthonia, 167
Et, the Teutonic Suffix, 15
— the Bomance Suffix, 581
Eth, is added in eaUth, 94
Eton, 252, 454
Eu, is chajiged in sound, 107
— replaces eow^ 144, 164
— replaces eato, 143, 174
Eulalie, St., Hjmn of, 20, 87, 494
Evangelist, 493, 498, 563
Eve, 307
Even, 116, 125, 214, 288, 410,
496
— in composition, 235
Ever, 12, 144, 166, 172, 259
— is tacked on to wKat^ tDhOj &c.,
183, 333
Evermore, 183, 586
Every, 130. 166, 170, 174, 189,
314, 353
— body, 112
— one, 268, 325
— where, 259, 461
Evesham, 128, 342
Evil, 158, 190
Evilness, 322
Ew, the sound, 28, 37, 560
— replaces aw, 215
— replaces eaw, 174
FAN
Ew replaces u, 205
Ewe, 3
Ewer, 495
Exeter, 433, 515
Exit, 65
Ey, replaces mg^ 1 58
— (the Interjection), 462
Eye, 3, 21, 94, 201, 214, 267.
311
Eyne, 216, 358
Eyr of justice, 571
F replaces b, 94, 105, 108, 147
, replaces c,k, A, and^, 13,
86, 181, 296, 303, 332, 430
— confosed with th, 86, 206
— lost in a word, 84, 122, 161,
186, 215, 246, 287, 307, 821,
344, 347, 399, 432, 453, 561
— written for the Latin v, 88,
215
— answers to the German b, 87
Faber, 155
Fablings, 322
Face to fiice, 265, 563
Faemne, 38
Fail, 309, -414, 505, 569. 571,
586
Fain, 177, 275
Fair, 385
Fair and free, 347, 378
Fair and still, 339
Faith, 289, 356, 558
Faithfully, 466, 662
Falcandus, 137
Fall, 13, 244
— to, 409, 410, 420, 424
— upon, 415
FaUing evU, 277
Fallows, 360
False, 123
Falter, 309
Fantom, 331
Far, 105, 255, 236, 31B, 398
Far and Dear, SB, ITS
Far and wide, 309
Far land, a, ,'i9
F&ra, 94, 213, 403
Farewell, 486
Farquhar, 270
Farther, 388
Fartbing waatel. 359
Fast, the Teatonic Saffix, 16
Fast {ft,U), 81, 3BS
Fastolf. 337
Father, 3, 6 ; change in its Oeni-
tire. 208
Fatherltud, 134, 557
F'atbom. 399
FaWD. to, 275, 347
FearfW. 254
Feather, 3
February, 264, 570
Fed, 121, 287
Fee, 104. 214, 218, 274, 289,
356, 506
Feeble, 188. 467. 558
Feet, 166. 287, 320
Feign. 331,506
Fell (vtri), 78
- (moB^ 417
FelloT,99, 441
Felt, 453
Feminine Gender, the. 6
Fen, 73
Fence, 578
Fenciblo*, 571
Fetch! 31
Feudal SjBtem, 503
Few, 28, 143, 166, 190
Fib. 254
Fie on thee, 443, 463
Field (vktoria). 402
Fielding, 63, 85
Fiend, 36, 104, 12J, 188, 189
Fiei7-foot«d, 62B
Fight a man, 193
— hard. 295
File, 274, 368
Find, found 80, 81, HI, 352
— out, 428
Fine, 235, 411, 441, 506, 558
Finish, 330
Finsborough, BattJoof, 18
Fire. 87. 144, 156. 168, 189.
253,2
I, 432
1,425
Fint, 4, 56, 225
Firat and last, 457
— two, 58, 132, 225
Fish, 31, 105, 175, 192
Fishwife, 80
Fit, 310
Filz. 495. 570
Five, 4, 30
Fire Danish Burghs, the, 100,
102
FlaU, 220
Flash, 279
Flat, 506
Flatter, 281,506
Flea, 254
Fled, 356, 388
Flee, 32, 246
Fleet. 78
Flemish. 203
Flesh, 401
Flew, 245, 262
Flinch, 31. 423
Fling. 443
Flit, 238
Float, 78
Flog, 180
Floriz, the Poem, 370, 371, 539,
542, 557
Floor, 297
Flow, 4, 190.226,246
Flowiog, 112
Flower. 297, 681
Flown, 248
622
Index.
FLO
Floyd, 180
Flush, 330
Flutter, 373
Fly, 32
Foal, 11
Foe, 190, 319
Fold, the Teutonic Suffix, 16
Folk, 221, 360, 400, 435. 532
Folks, 418
Follow, 115, 127, 182, 191, 275,
288, 334, 399, 441
— up, 425
Follower (baptuser). 353
Fond, 417
Font, 215
Food, 258
Fool, 329, 338, 399, 452, 567
— of myself, 504
— hardy, 504
Foot, feet, 3, 23, 371
Footman, 112,401
For, the Preposition, 68, 260,
278, 340, 345, 372, 415, 421,
438, 467, 508
— the Prefix, 11,15
For aU that, 63, 72, 421
— certain, 577
— dead, 466
— («im), 149, 157
— evermore, 327
— God's love, 423
— good, 265
— her to see, 363
— his life, 309
— long, 232
— mercy, 314
— no good, 232, 462
— nought, 428
— once, 333
-- ought that &c., 421
— shame! 416
— that, 64, 149, 232
— the case that, 572
— the nonce 195, 232. 442
FOX
For to, 149. 157
Forasmooh. 406. 424
Forby, 232, 287, 453
— Mr., 280
Force, 677
Fordo, 11, 16
Fore, tiie Teutonic Prefix, oJ
235, 528
— (pr«), 5
Fore father, 400
— feet, 425
— God, 262
— head. 347
— mnner, 401
— said, 409
— sight, 402
— top, 430
Forget himself, 47
Forgetful, 247
Forked, 559
Forletin, 210
Form, a hare's, 573
Former, 4, 7
Fomenst, 68, 251
Forsooth, 184
Forthright, 230, 255
Forthwith, 230
Fortnight, 134
Forward, 7, 125, 192, 335, 43
Forwhy, 411
Fought, 357
Foul, 4, 221
Foundest, 263, 352
Foundling, 323
Fountains, 569
Four, 3, 13, 95, 105, 107. I
190, 200
Fourscore, 325
Four square, 407
Fourth, 174
Fonrty, 391
Fowl, 202, 284
Fox, 6, 176
Foxing, a, 285
623
Freetions. way of expressing,
225, 407
Fnil, 606
France, 20, 101, 140, 492. &e
Chapter VII.
Frandfl, St. 518, G22, 553,534
Franciscami, the, G18-524, 554.
583-585
Frankis, 549
Franllin, 563
Franks, the, 506
Freak, 48
Free, 94. 311,360
Free of, 234, :!65, 340
Freeman, Mr., 449, 525
French. Stt Chapter VII. 53,
65, 81, 83, 102, 103, 112,
113, 13U, 133, 135, 139, 142,
159, 166, 172, 173, 175, 186,
190, 191, 202, 218, 266, 283.
304, a06, 313, 339, 33S, 344,
347, 349, 363, 364, 893, 401,
402, 411,414, 429, 430, 439,
446, 447, 470. See Contents
of the Book.
French idioms in English, 64, 60,
129, 149. 162, 177, 194, 207,
256, 258-260, 263,271, 276,
292, 297, 349, 346, 352, 361,
376, 376, 379, 384, 335, 390,
408. 409, 415, 422, 424, 426,
436, 438. 441. 442, 443, 446,
457. 459, 462. 465. 466
Fnnch words io English. 37, 70,
74, 85, 136, 151, 135, 175,
178. 180, 181, 186, 191. 198,
203, 209, 211, 237, 238, 239,
245, 252, 258, 260, 261, 264.
273, 289. 292, 295, 302, 310,
316, 329-336. 339-341, 316,
350, S6S. 372, 3N0. 386, 395,
396, 307. 131, 433,444,448,
452, 456, 506
Fresh, 218, 323, 606
Fret, 79
Friars, the, 346. 518-526. 511
Friend, 4, 36. 188, 214
Friesland, Frieaic, 18. 91, loO
Fright, 288
Frightfiil, 291
Frisian waids akin to Englisli,
163, 197, 244. 263, 467,488.
Sm Dutch, Low Qeimaa
Frithrtool. 31, 78
Fro, fta, 161,284
From, 68, 234
bej-ond. 6
I. 103
— far, 327, 413
- henceforward, 461
— high. 404
— home, 379
— thenceforth, 234. 412
Fronde, Mr., 83
Froward, 287
Frnitfd, 323, 331
Ful. the Teutonic SuiBi. 16,221,
254, 258, 268. 275, 286, 291.
323, 403, 406, 466
— replacBB ol. 247
Full, 8. 116. 235
Full speed. 291
Fuller, 449
Fulsome, 221
Fulstow, 133
Fnmivali, Mr.. 422. 425
Furthermore. 231
Fussy, 77. 401
Future tense, the, 12, 42-41.
See •hall. mil. miin
"1 thp har.1. 33. 191. 205. 207.
X 216. 354, 393.418. 453
- confused with d. 36, 160. 272
- ie prelUed. 288
- dropped at the end of a word
94, 202, 246, 270
624
Index.
o
G dropped in the middle of a
wotd, 33, 104, 105, 115, 123,
126, 128, 133, 134, 144, 145,
146, 151, 165, 100, 287. 296,
321, 358, 381, 400, 432, 433
— 18 softened, 122, 160, 216,
274, 393, 504
— replaces A, 36, 104, 191, 206
— replaces ta, 105
Gabbing, 310
Gaed(»vi^), 11, 151, 191,288
Gaelic, 30
Gain, the Teutonic Prefix, 15
Gain (commodum), 238, 255, 506
Gainest. the, 238, 383
Gainsay, 320
GalUee, 215
Gallow tree, 358
Gallows, 91, 358
Game, 434
Gammon, 77
Gander, 3
Gang, 12
Ganges, 2
Gape, 256
Gar, 236, 355, 378
Garden, 384, 506, 575
Garibaldi, 138
Gamett, Mr., 19, 117, 354, 395
Gaskell, Mrs., 108
Gate, 144, 216, 238, 288, 320,
351, 355, 453, 586
Gateshead, 201, 418
Gaul, 17, 18. 19, 496
Gare, 145, 287, 352, 411
Ge, the Prefix, is dropped, 33, 92,
93, 105, 115, 127, 134, 147,
189, 190, 192, 216, 338, 340
— is sounded, 259
Gear, 311
(Jehaten, 147, 213
Gekk, 151
Geld, 266
Gem-stone, 313, 570
GIB
Gem, 313
Gender, change of, 434. 577
Genesis and Exodns. the Poes.
283, 285, 286-300, 302, Sli
356, 472, 687
Genitive, the, 5, 8, 40, 69. 66.
106, 120. 126, 136,146,206.
213. 219, 234, 250, 268. 271
333, 334, 359, 422, 437
Gente, 310
Gentle, 662
Gentleman, 209, 311
Gentlewoman, 504
George HI., 73
German, 6, 10, 17, 83. 45. 5-1
55, 60, 69, 82, 83, 87, 88. 97.
101, 103, 106, 108. 186, 150.
161, 218, 285-237. 303, 349.
396, 407, 439, 445, 467, 511
513, 514, 634, 535. 543,5^4.
557,681,582. £^ High sod
Low
German words akin to Eog^isii.
134, 181, 184, 239, 253. 264.
269, 286, 289. 297. 309, 367,
373, 416, 443
Gerundial Infinitive. 26.42,162.
167, 184, 193, 227, 389
Geste. 539, 578
Get, 164, 288, 293, 379; its
changes of meaning, 410, 420
Get in with yon, 364
Get you gone, 49, 350
Gevenlike, 288
Gewgaw. 280, 604
Gh replaces a and c. 182, 165
— replaces h. 36, 118, 144, 190,
200, 301, 303, 321
— is inserted, 464
— is dropped, 392, 603
— is not sounded, 440, 450
Ghastly, 268, 42?
Ghostly, 283, 270, 427
Gibbon, 1, 83, 688
625
Giddy, 307
Giles. 557
Gilot, 311. SS5
Giggle, 280
Gin, luad as nu Auxiliarj Verb.
207, 213. 460
Q\n(doltit). 211. 238
GinilduB Cambrpnris, '198, 60S,
609
Gild, 249
Girl, 443
Give, 28B. 399
Gire BBMult, 575
Give avay, 417
Giro hack. 109
Give batllc, 409. 438
Give ber M folly, 459
GiveD peDBQce, to bp, 4S9
Givish, 74
Olnd mao vas he, 382
OlandBK, 78
Glare, 394
GUsUtnbnry, 142. 396, 433, £47
Qlearo, 299
Glee. 188, 1B9, 311. 381. 398.
431
Gloucester, Robert of. 141. 3
396. 421, 430, 430, 481, 6',
635. 643, 560-572, 676. 51
687
Glouceater. 20. 128. 161, 1<
167. 246. 262, 264. 269, 21
363, 360. 370. 372, 406, 4.
430, 439. 457, 458, 479. &■
679
Goasb, 32S
Gnaw, 182, 646
Go. 10, 274
Go hiB gate. 338
Go oat, of fire, 278
Go WU, 378
Got<
178
6o to good. 430
Go wrong. 413
Goad, 201
Goat. 201, 413
Ooblin, 396
Ood. 267
God-feariDg. 176
Ood A Imi filly's, 427
God bU&8 th«e, 378
Oodforbid. 415, 436
God wol (Ooddot), 350, 354, 378,
397
Oodfrej, 463
Godly, 32. 286, 330
God wine, 497, 534
Goe;t (gast), 253
Going in, 65
OoiDga, 322
Gold. 290, 271
GoaB lame, 48
Good, 23. 24, 40. 41. 214, 371,
338. 418, 427
Good day, 261. 298
Gond earaeBt. 134
Good man. 127
Good pace, a, 677
Good silt; a, 485
Good wife, '427
Goodly. 82
Goodman, 1267, 392, 393
Qoodnes.<e .210
Oooda. 26 7. 322, 413,586
Goody, .183
Goose, 30
Ooapel. 400
Gomip, 80, 344
Gothic, 12-1 1, 16, 18, 27-26, 31.
33,37, 41-43,47-57,68,66-
67, 69,72. 84, 87, 88,96,115,
129, 174, 175, 223. 226, 228.
261,263, 2^8, 295, 303, 328,
376
Goveraeflnag, 322
626
Index,
GOW
Oower, 329, 536, 683
Goyts, 326
GftBme, 30
Gnetecros, 151
Orace, year of, 436, 570
Grafton's Bible, 358
Ghmnercj, 579
Grape, 573
Graas, 31, 110, 191
GrasBhopper, 218
Grave, the Poem, 163
Gravel, 496, 567
Great, 291
Greatly, 277
Grecian stairs, the, 563
Greek, 1, 2, 6, 7, 9. 11, 40, 42,
55, 62, 65, 66. 86. 87, 112.
116, 129,215, 235, 267, 276.
278, 307. 361, 371. 415, 528,
562, 564
Green, a, 360
Greens, 322
Gregory I., Pope, his ' Pastoral
Care,' 27, 188, 498
Gregory IX., 513
Grey, 141
Griddle, 280
Gridiron, 426
Grime, 365
Grimm's Law, 38, 86, 217
Grip. 357
Griskin, 273
Groats, 567
Groom, 279
Grove, 216, 244
Groveling, 417
Grown, he is, 226
Grub, 113,416
Grudge, 564, 665
Ghrunt, 274
Guess, 373
Guest, Dr., 449
Guild, 160, 432, 536
Guile, 209, 314
HAL
Guilt, 141, 156, 158, 174. 189,
301
Gun, 444
Gut, the, 78, 327, 506
Guthlac, St., 61
GuthriP, Dr., 295
Guts, 586
Gyves, 252
H answers in English to the
, Sanskrit and Latin iE: or r,
3, 4, 34, 91, 97.218, 307
— loses its old sound, 270, 356,
495
— disappears at the beginning
of words, 93, 96, 115, 127,
145, 164, 174, 191, 206, 207.
215,245, 270, 287, 332, 356,
453, 503
— disappears in the middle and
end of words, 34, 216, 289.
344, 354, 356, 368, 400, 432,
555
— replaces c, 117
— wrongly set at the beginning
of words, 155, 160, 205, 209,
301, 314, 332, 354. 378, 392
— should be sounded, 120. 160
Ha, 415
Hacking, 323
Had, 34, 157, 161, 287; used
for the Subjunctive, 131
Had rather die. 442
Hag, 280
Haigh, Mr., 00
Hail, 74, 75, 110,217. 287
Hale (m»i«), 122. 247
Hale {trahere), 253. See Haul
Hales, Alexander of, 519
Hales, Thomas of, 522
Half, 57, 68, 174. 247, 248. 250.
335, 345, 402, 426
Half, new idiom with, 407
Haiaings, 217
Halfpeace, 281. 353
Hftli Maidenhad. the, 28*-2e8.
268. 500
Hrtll, a Celtin word, Ifi
Hull. Mr.. fl2
EallAm. Mr.. M3. 612
Halliwell, Mr., 396
HalloireeD, 272, 431
H«lter. 307
H*mlet, 60. 506
Hampole. US, 324. 464, 17G,
$31, 660, 666, 688
Hnmpehire, 181.433, 4S2
Hand, 244, 329, 360
— rpplacBB luiif, 267
Hand in hand, 126
Handl>ook, 74
Hand-tamK, 330
Handlynjt .--ynne. tha, 447-473,
481, 486, 632, 661, 576-680.
683, 686
Handmaiden. 323, 460
HaniliKinie is that &c., 66
Handy. 70, 247, 819
HaDdvwDck. 174
Hang, 186.268, 269, 362
Hanging, a. 272
Hap, 262. 463
Haplj. 282
Happen. 262
Hnppiff. 681
Happy. 262
Harbour, 400, S08
Haid, 214
Hardwick'a Sniui
113
.p«U,
I. Arehdmcon. 9
HareTOod, 1 17
Hark, 416
Hnrleian Mnnaacript, Che, 338,
346, 373. 636, 637
HArlot. 280
Harold. 489, 628
•ix. 627
HEA
HaiTow, 898, 399
Harroiring of Hell, tha, 197,
349-353, 376. 394, 472, 478.
648. 687
Harah. 417
Harry, to, 190, 197, 398
Rar
:, 426
Has, 319
Ha»t. 229, 460
HBat«,579
HasCincaa, 434
Eaatinga. battle of, 197, 142,
186, 400,491. 497, 498, 628
HaatT, 606
Hat^h. 309
Hate. 506
Halh. 167. 161, 186, 287. 353,
371
Hatred. 161
Hatton GoBpeU. the, 187
Hani, 263. 422
Hare, 10,^. 147. 148,184, 193,
229. 270. 284, 344, 347, 350
Havfl {Iraka-f), SO
Hare (facere), 436
" aight of. 382
I £ither
s, 249
>bea1
1, 420
I Have
Have
I Have done, 460
I Haye manry of, 324
Havelok, the, 354-369, 874, 387,
444. 466, 401. 612, 631, 638,
, 589, 640, 656, 587, 5S7
Having been, 461
i Havk, 329, 450
Hay. 202, 321
' Hay Cup. 7S
' Haywanl, 275
I He. 25. 48. 394
, ~ stands before alio, 207
' thni, iiZ
. He lamb. 406
Head. to. 410
Head (i:npM0,3,145,216, 229, 347
628
Index.
HXA
Head, the Teutonic Suffix, 15,
401,582
Header, 374
Heading, 399
Headlong, 443
Heal, 74. 127, 254
Healer, 176, 393
Healing, 397
Heai\ 425
Heap of people, 76
Hearsay, 125
Hearne, 430
Heart, 3
Heartily, 270
Heatheneea, 393
Hearen, 87
HeaTenward, 6
Hebrew, 398
Heep, Uriah, 561
Height, 321
Heir male, 541, 556
Held, 147, 165, 214
Hell-fire, 317
Helped, 325
Hem, 309
Hemp, 365
Hence, 105, 332
Henceforward, 259
Hende (duck), 359
Hending, Froverbe of, 338-340,
342, 587
Hengist, 27, 150, 391, 505, 630
Henry, the name, 493
— I. 16, 132, 143, 146, 148, 172,
494, 680
— U. , 1 68, 1 86, 235, 446, 500,54 1
— ni., 219, 284, 336, 341, 348,
447, 611, 530, 632, 562
— IV., 636
— VI., 464
— Vin., 487
— VL, the Emperor, 236
Heo (tf/«i), 26, 108, 205, 212, 216,
222, 267, 653
HIG
Heoiii replaces ii, 127. 130
Hor ^hirt, the Ge&itzre tod
I>atiTeof ileo, 25
— the carmpt AocnsatiTe, 103,
146
— «* hira (tl]<XTi]n), 25
Hexaldry, 535
Herb, 573
Herd, 274
Here, refernng to time, 60
— oomponnds oC 195
Hero and there, 231, 380
Hereafter, 195, 250
Hereafterward, 413
Hereabout* 372
Hereford, 338, 340, 341, 341
346, 350, 352, 395, 396, 4U
478, 561
Herein, 195
H«»reof, 231
Hereupon, 231
Heieward, 142, 143
Heriot, 123
Herod, 544
Herodotus, 44, 156, 420
Hers, 405
Hertfordshire, 332-334, 844.
350, 394
Hethen (A«nr), 189, 355
Hew, 245
Hexham, 78
Heyday, 192
Hey! 260, 462,516
Hi, 72
Hickes, 305, 508
Hide, 287
Hie, 274
Higden, 319
High German, 13, 14, 150, 162.
178, 183, 236. 253, 256, 277,
285, 330, Z%^, 386. 413
High, 114, 216, 452
Highest, 321
Hight (gehaten), 9
HighiMt, the corrapt, 109, 2B6,
Him, the Dative Singu
— =jiinc, tha Accntati
lor, 11», 13S
— B hi-m, heoin,ham,{illia),ib.ti
Dative Plural, 25
Him one, 226
Himself, 206
Hinder feet, 425
Hia, 25, 26B, 383, 405
His, instead of tlie Genitive, SO,
Ho: il6
Hoar, 430
Hoard, 201, 274
Hoarse, 3, 321
Hoast, 321
Hoax, 75
Hobble, 3S6
Hobakin, 433
Hog, 444
HoheDEtHnfens, 512
HolbourD, 78
Hold ia chief, 574
Hold on bis waj, 420
Hold tangup, 460
Huld((nwr«),25, 193, 424
Hold (.eatteUam). 382
Holiday, 403
Holland, 198. Sre Dutch
HolUnd, Lai.lj, 85
Hollow, 307
H0I7, 115, 302
Holy Rood, Legends of the, 27,
57. M
Holy water elerli, 464
Home, 30, 107
Homely, 466
Homer, 11
Homilies, the Old Knglinh.
First Series, 164-163, 177,
226, 391 ; Second Seri ex. 170-
181, 203, 213, 490, 493,516.
Set BlitUing and Kanex
Honour. 81, 32, 87, 497, 560
Hood, CheSoffii, 15
Hood, the punster, 76, 337, 383
Hoot, 236, 261
Horace, 41,64. 227, 6S0
Horn, 202
Horn, tbe Poem. 370. 371, 393,
612,539, 653.557
Horse, 22
— its corrupt Plnral, 246
Hot, 244
Honr, 496. 503
House, 1S6
— with corrupt Plural, 136, 14,1
House and homr', 435
Hove, 2SS
How. 52, 58. 21)4, 289, 297. 311,
357, 421
How goes it. 428
How now. 261
Howsoever, 277, 461
Howeomever, 413
However, 424
Hubba. 150
Huckster. 238
Hne. 36, 173
Hue and cry. 499
Huge. 210
Hugh,335, 358, 432
Hulic, 114
HoU. 302. 445
Hulland, 133. 134. 494
HnniitDily, 82
Humber. the. 89. 93. 102. 148,
680
Hnmble, 561
Hume, 107. 565
Handred, 104,226
630
Index,
HUN
Hundred times fairer, 407
Hondred, the, 434
Hundreds, 442
Hung, 362
Hungary, 402, 510
Hunter, 289
Hunting, words of, 539
Huntingdon, 336, 341, 449
Huntingdon, Henry of, 490
Hurl, 280. 607
Hurrah, 87
Hurt, 237, 607
Husband (paterfamilias), 267,
383, 393
Husband {colonu*), 286, 393
Husbandman, 285, 382
Husel, 198
Hustings, 123, 252
Hyge, 646
Hymn, the English, 377
I how pronounced, 28, 159, 178,
, 190, 282, 344
— it is inserted, 422, 430
— replaces <?, 146, 159, 367
— replaces, e, 29, 32, 107, 174,
320, 329, 357, 398
— replaces ea, 107, 371
— replaces ro, 104, 144, 145,
174, 190, 274
— replaces aw, 29
— replaces ^«, 33, 122, 127, 145,
160, 174, 182
— replaces tkt, 276
— replaces m, 115
— replaces u, 36, 112, 144, 286,
350, 399
— replaces v, 29, 144, 168
— is added to form AdjectiTes
and Adverbs, 403, 41 3
I, the Pronoun. 4, 2*, 117, 165,
221, 270, 291, 350, 363
I dare say, 460
IN
I dread, 409
I fear, 193
I say, 388, 466
I sleeping, 408
I trow, 385
I to leave thee ! 408
I ween, 363
r faith, 346
Ible, the Romance Suffix, 571
Ic, the Romance Suffix, 582
leal, the Romance Suffix, 581
Icelandic, 34, 73, 76, 98, 132,
168, 180, 181, 215, 216, 236.
262, 266, 256, 278, 279, 285.
286, 297, 313, 328, 329, 382,
396, 397, 398, 404. See Danes,
Korse, Scandinavian
Idiot, 567
Idle, 73
le, how pronounced, 2S, 286
— replaces e, 156. 158, 182, 188.
392
— replaces ea, 186
— replaces «o, 36, 189
ler, the Romance Suffix, 507
If, 46, 63,64, 124. 175
If so be that, 224, 378
If that, 232
Ilea (quieque), 62, 146, 224, 450
Iliad, the, 18 .
Ilk {idem\ 62, 222, 451
lU, 238, 327
Imperative Mood, the, 9, 26, 43,
46, 106, 124, 227, 263, 276,
345, 364
— its new form. 276, 319, 450
Impersonal Verbs. 45, 126, 148,
208, 259, 312
In, for on and en, 4, 66. 70, 111,
233. 333. 507
— for a, 81
— replaces %eond, 278
— is pared down to t, 157
In all, 414
IN
In nnd out, 60, SS
In hiB teeth, 435
In tlie taee. 443
la going, its
In vain, 496, 567
In blind. 60
In leu, 430
Id me a bugain thou bust, 272
In midst of. 327
In Bleed of, 273, 416
In tbat, 64. 233
In way to be &c., 458
Inagmach as, 461
Inc«i, the Doal. 24
Incle, tbe Teutonic Suffix, 1 1
Income, 401
Inde, lie Sontiem Acti™ Par-
ticipla in, 14S, 155, 162, 2l)4,
248, 253
ludeed, 461
IndsflnitH Adjective, the, 13, 23,
106, 146
Indefinite Agency, 49, 1S5
Indefinite Fronouna, S6, 66
India, U, 37, 70,235
Ine, the Snffii, 6, 633
Inferno, the, 487
InflQitive, the. 9, 26, 26. 46, 47,
193 212, 227. 239. 339
— it has tD prefixed. 234
— nsed ae nn ' Interjection, 268,
40S
— follows iti^e, 411
— it is dropped, 312, 458, 461
— imitat<>9 the Active Parti-
dpU, 389
— it ii dipped, 33, 01, 1 14, 126,
127, 147. 136, 190
— replaces the Gerundial Infi-
nitivfl, 166
— baa an influence npon our
form in ing, 259, 294, 374,
3S4
Infinitive used as a Verbal Konn,
276. a09. 348, 437
— its P^ssire fonn, 283, 326,
420, 442, -169
— its Perfect form, 383, 408
— stnnds for the SubjnnctiTS.
458
InlleiionH, 8, 14
— Danish influence on, 102
— pared away, 6. 527, 528, 633
Ing, the Teutonic .Suffii. 16, 562
^ ceplacPB inrfa in tbe ActiTw
Pnrticiple. 248, 294, 307,311.
370, 389, 4.W), 660
— replaces ung in the Verbiil
Noon. 112, 227. 389
stand for tbe Inli-
I. 389,
nitive m, 259, 3
437, 440. 446
Inger, the Snflii, 581
Innerds, 76
InmoBt, 419
Innocent III., 500
Inetiai.Sl
luHtmnientHl Case, S2
InteijectioQs, Eagiish, 72. 421,
462, 616
— French, 72. 261, 416, 516
Interlacing of Constmctioni, 63
Interrogative. 52
Intil. 233, 32S, 356
IntTomit. 505
lo replaces i, 91, 106
Ionic, 166
lou. Oie sound, 173
lour, the Suffix. 581
Ipewicb, 19
Ir, foi ly, 1 05
Ir. French verbs in, 176,561
Iran. 2
Ire, 331, 450, 607
Ireland, 89, 480
632
Index,
IBl
Irish, the, 28, 34, 37, 44, 49, 61,
83, 103, 165, 229, 313, 368,
396, 412, 466, 600, 601, 643,
669, 682
Irk, 297. 686
Iron-ness, 401
Irreffular Verbs, 9, 10, 207
Is, the English Auxiliary Verb, 4
Is, Scandinavian, for ««m, e«,
est, 118, 819, 408
Isaiah, 689
Isc, or Ish, the Teutonic Suffix,
11, 16,632,682,683
Island, 286, 330
Isle, 330, 607
lam, the Bomance Suffix, 681
Ist, the fiomance Suffix, 493,
682
Isumbras, the Poem, 417. 668
It, 26, 60. 119, 126, 164, 206,
216, 224, 262, 312, 346, 348,
374, 384, 406, 436
It waa a &&, 48. 247. 307, 324,
362, 371
It was so that, 437
It, used for thert, 372, 460
Italian, the, 28, 29, 36, 66, 74,
87, 201, 449, 487, 612, 622,
634, 646, 647, 656
Italy, 17. 18, 19, 89, 96, 100,
101, 112, 132, 137, 138, 613,
614, 618, 619, 620, 562, 682
Ite, the Romance Suffix, 682
Its, 461
Ity, the Bomance Suffix, 681
lu repUces to, 28, 104, 108, 144
I wis, 277
Izo, the Romance Suffix, 496,
662
J first appearance of the sound
, in English, 498
— replaces cA, 87, 88
JUL
J replaces y, 88
Jack, 526
Jacob, 403
Jake, 672
Jame, 276, 403, 498
James, 336, 433
— I. (VI.). 361, 867
— n., 277
Jangle, 264
Jankin, 204,311, 524
Januaiy, 670
Jar, on the, 175
Jaw, to, 88, 122, 197. 266
Jay, 570
Jekyll, 674
Jeoplkrdy, 380
Jerome, St., 69, 1 12, 260
Jerrold, 64
Jesuits, the, 622
Jesus Manuscript, the, 310, 814,
334, 536
Jewel, Bishop, 423
Jew-hed, 401
Jewry, 504
Jews, 218. 392, 496, 498
Jig, 657
Jilt, 626
Job, 113
John, the name, 368. 493, 626
John, King, 210, 402, 489, 499,
611, 643
Johnson, Dr., 68, 326, 689
Jolly, 661. 572, 677.
Jove, 122, 441
Jowl, 286
Joy, 388, 494, 659
Joying, 369
Jude, 126, 398, 433
Judith, the, 90, 102
Julian. St., the Legend of, 429,
438
Juliana, St., the Legend of, 261-
264, 423, 444, 648
Julius, 37
k
633
JUL
July, 401, 493
June. 434, 493, 494. 670
JuEt, 230, 419, 496, 568, 5S1
Justice, 407, 408, £66
Jutra. 19
Kakin to/, 86
, — unswiring lo the South-
eiD c, 36. 91, 96. US, 1*6,
164. 2HS
— coupled with o. 36, 202
— thrown out in th« middle of
words. 320. 381.418
— replaoeB ju, 406
Kaieer, 23S. 244
Kamea, Lrrd, 39
Kntherine, St , Legend of. 256-
261, 37^. 3E4, 416, 440, 608,
644
Ke^p, 228, 266
Keep coant, 638
Kemble. Mr., 27, 41. 90. 123,
244, 3S3, 387
Keat, ]», 20, 29. 36. 93, 1)9,
120, 132. 140, 166, 158, 186,
186, 188, 213, 32S, 464, 483,
611,627. 630, 648, 560
KentiBh SpnnoDS, the, 391-304,
560.687
Key, 146
Kid, 238
Kill. 309, 440
KiU down, 414
Kin. 4, 158, 159,189.204, 370,
LAC
Kin and kith. 402
Kind. thsTeatonic Suffix. 16,203
Kind {aaruralie). 404
Kind Igenn'), 39, 480
Kindle. 4. 23B
Kiuclred, 290
Kinclred words in French and
English. .iO.5-607
Kine. 218, 426,430,451
King, 4, 198, 393
Kiogdom, 315
Kinsman, 220, 270
Kirk, 887, 461
Kirkjurd, 167, 237
Kios, 270, 275, 286, 370
Kitchen. 246
Kitling, 323, 328
Knave, 77,123. 368, 405
Knee, 3, 212
Kneel, 192.218.217, 371
Knew, 4S0
Knight, to, 372
Knight. 77, 126,130; hia infln
enceon Enelish waids,G03-504
Knighthood, 371
Knit. 121
Knoll, 78, 98
Knot, 12
Know, 4, 6, 12. 160,190, 206,
362, 460
Knowed, 411
Know-i^othiDg, 376
Knowledge, 402. 418
Knowles. 232
Kraslnski, 522
Ky, 426, 461
Lila interchfinge with l>, 34. 87
, — its inlOTchange with d,
87. 433
— replaces r, 76, 335, 377, 423,
576
— inserted in a won), 117, 191,
217, 275, 332, 383
— wrongly inserted in could,
4,i2
— Ihruwn out. 161, 272, 284.
377, 400.433, 602
La. 72
Luc. the ending, 418
luee, 605
^34
■Index.
LAC
LEA
Lack, 297, 466
Lad, 366, 374
Lady, 126, 219, 244, 338, 452,
678
— her influence on English, 517,
518. 541
Lady-day, 317
Lady-friend, 39
Lafayette, 558
Laid, 33. 145
Lair, 190
Lake, 145, 254, 507
Lammas, 123
Lancashire, 108, 148, 185, 212,
218, 400, 406, 409, 477, 680
Lance, 575
Land, 204, 244
Lane, Scotch corrupt use of, 225
Lanercofit Chronicle, 298
Lanfranc, 155
Langport. 30
Lanky, 207
Lapland, 11, 167
Large, 497, 504, 505
Lark {litdere), 75, 236, 364
Lash, 417
Lass, 366, 416
Last, 175
Lasting, 302
Later, 221
Latest, 161
Latham, Dr., 449
Latin, 1, 2, 6, 7, 9, 11, 12. 13,
15, 17, 18. 28, 29, 31, 34, 35,
37, 38, 40-43, 46, 47, 49-52,
54-5«, 60, 62-65, 67-73, 76,
77, 79,82,86-88,93,95,101,
108, 114, 117-119, 121, 133,
136, 137, 139, 142, 181, 205,
211,215, 218, 227, 235, 279,
283, 322, 328, 330, 331, 339,
432, 444, 491, 493, 498, 504.
509, 510, 512, 515, 522, 526,
532, 536, 542, 543, 544, 545,
546, 560. 551, 564, 567, 57«.
589
Latin words, brought heie l^
Christianity, 20
Latter, 105. 221
Laugh, 271, 274. 440
lAughingly, 59, 466
Laughter, 270, 400, 450
Launch, 575
Laurence, ways of writing, 21i
429
Law (/fir), 122. 123. 157, I8t
261, 392, 507. See Biothet-
in-law
Law (reli^y 261
Law UoUis), 78, 97
Law-bearer, 330
Lawless, 403
Lawyers, 430, 541, 542
Lay, 216, 384
Lay {foTJaccre\ 352
Lay on, 249, 253
Layamon,08, 200, 206, 211, 217,
232. 242-256, 261, 264, 332-
336, 339, 344, 364, 370. 371
431, 450, 463, 499, 501,509,
515, 526, 627. 530, 531,536,
545, 549, 560, 587
— his Second Text, 830. S31-
334,361, 382, 385, 394,482,
454, 523
Lay ton, Dr.. 255
Ld is thrown out. 462» 453
Lead {ducere), 172
Lead (ductusy 236
Leal, 315, 331. 348, 535, 659,
562
Lean, 274
Leap, 236
Lear, King. 242. 248, 481
Learn, 79, 214. See itre
Least, 254
Leather, 17
Leave, 74, 327
635
iOi
,287
Leogtli. Hi, 286
Length en, 321
Lent, Lenten, 174
Leof, 72
Lrre (i;um«), 35B, 386, 469
Xiere (vockim). 43S
Lasa, the Teut™ic SuiBi, 16.
103, S62
Less, the nev idiom of, 383
Lewer. 268
Lent, 171, 175. 218
Lestogium, S80
Let. repUcfls the old Impcratire,
278
L*C {obllart). 80
Let (permittert).»0, 276, 277,4111
Lot be, 176, 809
Let blood, 248
Let fly, 363
Lets*
t, the B
, 38S
CfiSl
Let alone, 6S
Let off, 66
Letters, 209
Lever, 96. 286
LeTin, 296
Levd, 172, 353. 398
Lewes, 340, 342, 633
Lesse, the ScondinaTian ending,
237
LIK
Leave off, 196
LearingB, 322
Led, 158, 274
Leech, 216, 644
LiechcBift,16. 543, 644
Left (Wm), 172, 181
Leg, 333
leghorn, 303
L^iceetvF. 98, 100, 102, 210, 212,
364, 358, 363, 449
Leikr, the Scundinavian ending.
r. 174
Libec de Antiquia Legibus, 301
Lic(iwpiH), 112.220, 679
Lice, 23
LiohSeld, 220
Lick, 4, 180
Lick, the Teutonic Suffix, IS
Ue, 32, 148,165
Lie (Jiim/iri), 188, 189
Lie Id hand. 414
Uegc lord, 687
Life and limb, 439
Lifelike, 383
Li
Lift, 32fl, 367
Light, 144. 180. ISO, 847
Light is out, 42T
Light (pu/vu>\ 203
Ligtiten. 321, 450
Lif;hteniiig, 426
Likn, the Lithonnian, 13
Like, oc lie. the Teutonic Snffix,
6. 16, 632. 571
— its Adverbial use, 64, 201,
293
— lidded to Past Fftrticiples,
273
— the Verli. 44, 208, 293
Like, his, 40
Likewise, 62
lil; white, 339
Lincoln, 96, 99, 100, 133, 143,
150, 248, 302, 319, 326, 364,
371, 387, 388, 404, 416. 427.
447. 448. 450, 456, 474. 487,
663, 683
Lincolu, Biehop of. See Robert
Lincolneers, .^2
Lindiafarne Gospels, 51, 103^
114. 117, 134.207, 214. 230,
286. 319, 401. 416, 463, 492.
499
636
Index.
LIN
188, 196, 204, 212, 214, 229,
247, 253, 266, 270, 271, 281,
331, 341, 346, 356, 377, 388,
439, 442, 445, 447, 694
Ling, the Teutonic Suffix, 16
Linger, 401
Linn, 120
Lion, 330, 498, 636
Lisieux, 186
List, 29, 466
Lister, 78
Lithuanians, 12, 18, 87, 303,609
Little and little, 69
Littre, 261, 494, 668, 562, 668,
673
Live Ufe, 168
Livelong, 249
Lively, 38S
Lives of Saints, the, 421-429,
. 531, 648, 673
Uoyd, 180
Lo, 244, 260, 261, 264, 270
Lo where, &c., 416
Loadstar, 452
Loaf, 246
Loan, 273
Loaves, 246
Lock, the Teutonic Suffix, 16
Locke, 76, 416
Lodge, 507, 559
Loidis, 118
Loire, the, 140
London, 88, 89, 127, 144. 156,
158, 159, 160, 165, 186, 189,
208, 210, 222, 257, 301, 318,
319, 332, 340, 341, 348, 365,
386, 397, 433, 445, 449, 483,
485, 543, 554, 584
London town, 50, 454
Long, 95, 131, 169, 249, 259
Long of (along of), 233, 340
Longer, 205
Longest, 205
Long home, 374
LUB
Longwindedness, 322, 583
Long sufferance, 677
Look, 227, 418
Loom, 79
Looae, 4, 254, 273, 399. 418
Lord, 145. 287, 871, 392, 415.
421. 438, 462
Lord, to, 326
Lord of mights, 402
Lording. 394
Lordling, 332
Lorraine, 504
Lose, 105, 109. 246. 353
Lose countenance. 565
Lossum, 347
Lost. 306. 441, 463
Lostest. 453
Lot, 179
Loth. 189, 221. 287, 360
Lothian, 106, 269
Loud, 218
Louer. the French, 74
Loughborough, 304
Loup. 236. 356
Louring, 309
Lout. 402
Louth, 474
Love, 16, 26. 146, 146. 181 2o7.
320, 332
Love true, 461
Lover, 281
Low, 163. 202, 267, 856
Low German. 13. 93, 181. 2S6.
279,394. 444,506. Swlhiteh
Frisian
Low Latin, 150
Lower, to, 163
Lowlands. 8ee Scotch
Lowly, 463
Lucera, 576
Lukewarm, 197
Lump, 416
Lump, to, 255
Lurk, 328
k
LUS
Lust. 2Q. -2S2
.Lneqr, 4SI
Ly. the Teatooic Suffix, See
Uke, 69, 579
— added to PaiticiplM, 412,466
Lych-gat«, 22(1
Ludg&te. S66
Lyric Poems, tbe, 377, 698
MUis Suffix of Fint Fenon
, PteseDt, 10, 90, 12)
— csat oat in tbe middle of a
word, 400
— replaces n, 32, 290, 6S4
^ replaces 6, 87
Ma, tbe Aryan Suffix to Boots, 6
— the Aij»n Suffix of Super-
latives, 7
UacHulsT, Lord, 83, 86, 124,
126, 277.337, 363, 436, fiB8
Maclean, 30
Madam, 572, 578
Made, 270, 289. 392
Made friends, ye are, 109
lOssHferl), 351
Magdalen, 336
MaigB, 374
Maiden. 11, 123, 190,373
Maidenhead. 280
Maia BtFoDgth, 70, 4S1
Make replaces do, 294
Make a flock, 346
Make a fool of, 604
Make &ceB. 2T7
Make foe of, 414
Make game of, 304
Make him fall. 312
Make him lored, 271, 326
Make him ready, 384
Make his way, 402, 437
Make meotion of. 676
Make mepchandise of, 362
Make merry, 162
iex. 637
HAM
Make mourning, 393
Make months at, 676
Make much of, 427
Make my peace, 668, 570
Make shitt to, 403
Make stoop, 176
Make sojourn, 294
Moke tbe sign of, 429
Mate to be, 193
Make to one, 335
Make iritb child, 428
Maker. 444
Matedig-bt, 606
Malekin, 203,311, 624
MaU, 374
Mall. Dr., 349-351
Malloiy, 612
MaUoT, 12, 16
Man, tbe ending, 16
Man. SO. 1 16
Man, its Flniol, 22, 219
Man " one. 63
Mandeville, 117. 121,332,333,
485, 486, 680, 688
Mane. 443
Mangle, 440
Manhood. 82
Mankind, 316, 373
Manner, 497, 498, 571, 672, 676,
677
Maanesse, 261
Mannikin, 204
Manning. See Bruune, Bobert
of; 302. 404, 447, 687
Mannish, 77
Manor, 674
MansUyer, 202
Mantle, 517
Manrede, 306, 431
Mantle of red, 404
Many, A 9
Many {maUUitdo), 125, 507
— foUowed by an, 247, 248, 43G.
460
638
Index.
MAN
MET
Many of, 106
Many times, 290
Manzoni, 54
Mar, 338
Marble, 499
Mapes, his poems, 373, 376, 387
March (month), 124, 562
March (boundaiy), 607, 565
Mare, 320, 418
Mai^aret, St., the older legend
of (1210), 180, 253-256, 273
— the later legend of (1300),
429, 573
Mai^ry, 379, 380
Marie, her Lays, 520
Mariner, 559
Marisco, Adam de, 510
Mark, 249. 254
Market, 143, 497
Marrow, 429
Marry her to, 672
Marsh, Mr., 490
Martineau, Miss, 516, 682
Martinmas, 493, 669
Mary, 498
Muss, 311
Master, 185, 215, 237, 310.656,
660. 679
Mastery, 496
Match, 216, 402, 427
Mate, 432
Matthew Paris, 523, 526
Mattock, 463, 676
Matzner, 40, 43-46, 50, 52, 61,
64, 72, 389
Maud, 431
Maugre, 340, 560
Maumentry, 665
Maunday, 663
Maurice, 432
Mavis, 331, 496
May (poamm), 10, 104, 145,
158, 190, 204, 213, 278
May (puella), 405
May (mensis), 493
May be, 408, 420, 458
Mayest, 207
Mayor, 642, 567
Maze, 427
Mazed, 279
Mazed- like, 273
Me, 24
Me replaces /. 268
— replaces man, 135, 157, 19^
372
Me. the French www, 261
Mead, 3, 6
Meal, the ending, 16
Mean, 192, 404
Mean for, 462
Mean, to, 228. 440
Meaning, 463
Measure, 497, 601
Meddle. 382, 507
Meditacjuns on the Sopcr, 4W-
467, 473, 579
Mee (amplius), 96
Meek, 198
Meet with, 251 , 436
Meg Merrilies, 288
Mell, to, 400
Melted, 466
Men, the Indefinite, 116
Menage, 571
Mendip, 416
Menial,^556
Ment, the Romance Suffix, 581
Merchant, 618
Mercia, 19, 20, 97-100. 102, 139.
148. 156, 314, 316, 364, 445,
447. See Danelagh
Merciful, 323
Mercy, 497, 498. 569. 674
Merry, 285, 370
Mesh, 310
Messenger, 382, 499, 570
Mest replaces fna^ 7
Met, tliey were, 4*09
WET
UOK
UetBphjrsics. 546
Minx, 288
Mel-, i. fiOl
Miiv, 582
Mathiaks. 4S
Mis, the Teutonic Prefix, 16,507
Meliopolis, 257
replaces de». 686
Mistfoer. 464
Mi, Vfrbsin. *. 8. 10, 13, M
Michii«lmaa, 120
Mitgive. 424
Mishap. 30fl
Slickle, HI, 146. *50. See
Much
Slid (ami 239. 267. See With
Mifs. to. 227
MiJdka, 117
MiB»ioner, 583
Niddl^EDglJBh. 138
MiiidleVoiw. 45. sea
Mistress of herself, 4 U
Mistrust, 682
Mi«;hell,246
307, ft2i. SaAdnmBede
Mitrailleuse. 534
Middlemoat, 418
Moan, 266, 287. 444
MiddlcMX, 484, 486
Mobocraey. 582
Middle world, Z2I). 290
Moir, 133
Midriff, 77
Mold, Maud, 431
Midwife. 41 e
Moiiire. 69
Might. 206, 3S1.3S7
Mon im(). See Man
Miglit as teU. 42*
Monger. 518
Miglit be, 149. 263
MoDk>, 146
Mighty meek, 413, 461 .
Milofi(meTCy), 175,218, 37S
Monoe-vllubles. tJidiBh. 689
Milceful, 262
Moor (pai«,). 272
3[i1«h. 260
Moor. to. 437
Milksop, 468, 464
Moore, 83
MiU. 161
Mopiah. 426
Mill, 10. 382
Moral Ode. the, 18U184. 1S8
UiUcr, 161
201
Milner, Ifll
More. 3, 7, 131. 169, 164. 231
Milton, 80, 269, 404. 417. «6,
336. 362, 418, 435, 438
672, 689
— ut^ed of time, 187
Mind, 4, 570
More (radix). 181.437
Mind.to. 327, 582
Morpiind more, 231
Minde(i«™or), 388
More hsrm is. 266
Min.. 24
More than unwise, 347
— -wods bT itself, 3S1
More. Sir Thomas. 206, S78
— ct.moB lifter the Moun. 874
iloreover, 295
Miner, 576
Moreloin, 134. 493, 60J
Mingle. 275
Mom. W
Mingle-mangle, 440
Morning. 307, 321
Minut, 631,688
Morris. Dr.. 1.. 57. S8, lit. l.>4
Uinatrel, 639
179, 181, 188. 197, -.'01. 266
Morria, 1
fi89
B poet, 86, MO. &88,
McTTille, Hugh de, 186
Most, 3. 7. 192,231
Ho«t repUces the SapecUtire,
278. 3S0
Mote, 22S, SOS
Mother. 3
Motber'» son, 127
Mouldy, 279
MouDtbei^eilfiv, 97
Honm. 241, 332
Mouse, mire, 3. 23, 208
Muutb, to, 411
Mo», Se, 173.190,205.306
Mufb. mhWe. 3, 7, 141. ISfi,
168, 159. 161. 172. 176, 187.
191, 206, 24S, 327, 360, 366,
44S
Much agaiuBt be, 427
Much folt. 436
Muck. 290
Huddle, 377
Mue, 572
Mnir, Mr.. 1
Mumble, 396
Uuu, OF mim. for mU. 226, 326.
3S6, 378, 407
Murder, 4
Mure. 133
Murmy, Mr., 74
Most. 10, 42, 228, 287, 308, 312,
339, 361. 376,384, 388, 688
Hunter. 49S
Mutton, 496, 568, 675
My. for mint. 165, 160, 161.
373
Mydi
M; Ifidy. 406
Mystery, 504
N,
NEA
aaerted. 12. 34, 105. 101
128. 167, 264, 290, i07.
321. 329. 35S, 382. 422. 4U.
433. 570
— east ont. 30. 33.91, 104,114.
116. 117. 121, 134, 125, in,
130. 136, 1*7, 161, 157, IW.
)61. 162. 164. 174. 186, 1».
192, 274, 307. 400. 428, 4M.
440 ■
— interchanges irith t, 87, ill
— replaces m. 87, 113
— thp mark of the Powesmre, (
— the mark of the Eut Did-
laud Frtwent Tenee. 121, U7,
148. 176
— is pared avHy from Ihf end
of Past Participle, 28i, 28»,
' 306
N», the AjTan Suffix, 6. 9
Nferius, 11, 583
Vug (rodere). 182
Nail, 3, 190
Naime. Lady, 76. 220, 22S, JJ"
Naked, 214
Naked as bom, 119
Name, 48, 145
Named, 191, 274
Namely, 413, 414
Nap, 77, 197
Napier. Sir Charles, 197
Naples, 449
Narrow, 117, |65
NatioD, 633
Natural Hietory. 646
Naught, 29, 36, 61, 174. 241
NaughtinesB, 61
Naval t^rme, 536
Nay. 61, 216
Nd is east out. 202, 248
Ne, is dropped before bul. IM.
296
HEA
Near {paruM), 76
Nsar coasJD, a, 404
Neat, Z29
Need,214, 327, 402, 45S
Meedlf, 461
Need«, S, 59
Nsedj, 403
Ne'er, 2Ifi, 463
NiutioD, the Old Euglish furm
of, 60. 61. 232
Neigh. 482
Neighbour, US, 321. 450
Neither, 62. 214, 232
NelBOD, 99, 535
Nephev, 165. 305. 507. 559
Nb9>, the Teutaaic Suffix. 16.
137. 322, 401. 402. 562. 5S2.
fiS3
Nestle. 34
Netherest. 323
NethennoM. 401
Nerer. 131. 231
Nerermore, 167. 1S3
MeTerthflleBfl, 277
Nsir. 3, 28. 173, 422
New Eogliah, the. 102, 139, 140.
Ill, 166
Newi:utle, 75
Nem, 37
Neit, 126. 249
Nice, 607. 571
NiMty, 577
Nichole. 310
NiukB&me. 463
Niece, »e7
Nigganl, 463. 581
Nigb, 134, 17S, 201, 336, 430
Nigh at hand, 418
Night. 3
Nightingale. 307
NilJ, for ne will, 295, 302, 409
Nim. nam (arpere and in), 8, 9,
11, 239. 293, 350. 354, 370,
410, 449. 586
641
Nine, 4
Nineteen , 432 '
Ninety, he is, 407
Nis, dropped, 192
No. G. 61, 164, 262, 273, 3S3,
381
No. Scotch mn of, 97
No doubt 564
No loTB b<-tTeMi then, 428
I No man more. 411
No mending it, 411
ajs, -1
>, lis
1, 250, 261
No nsMi to, 402
Nobbut, 336,400, 412
Nobler. 573
Nobody, 112
Noise, 502
Nolt (hot). 238
Nominative, the, 46, 145
Nonce. 194. 195,213
None, 61. 144, 159. 302, 308
— is made the laaC woid, 248
Nook, 246, 330
Noon, 495
Noontide. 38
Nor, 217, 397, 464
Norfolk, OB, 187, 2S0, 298, 3S3,
360, 382, 467. 4S6, 503, 534,
576
Norman Conquest the, 7, 31, 37.
38, 44, 47. 50, 63, 110, 127,
128, 172, 207, 211, 489, 501.
505, 509, 555, 561, 570. See
Normiuia, the, 120, 144, 172,
186. Ste French
Norman names. 524, 525
None, 14, 18. 91. 93, 105. 210.
223. 232, 279. 328. 414. 445,
463, 512. Su Danes, Scan-
dinarians, Icelandic
North-Wesi, the, 254
642
Index,
VOR
Northampton, 98, 100, 102, 140,
332, 349, 445, 449
Northern English, 64, 71, 76,
81, 82,92,95, 119, 139, 141,
148y 157, 164, 182, 185, 206,
208, 212, 216, 220, 222, 223,
229, 236, 239, 245, 259, 270,
284, 288, 290, 291, 302, 315,
322, 825, 829, 331, 332, 348,
350, 355, 36U363, 380, 395,
397, 398,406,411, 412, 418,
419, 450, 457, 458. 462, 464,
474, 550. 553-565, 564, 567,
671
Northnmbria, 10, 19, 28, 36, 77,
89, 90, 91, 98, 97, 98, 100-
102, 118, 127, 138, 139, 147,
148, 184, 213, 221, 226, 524
Norwich, 212, 432, 450
Not {nokt\ replaces na and m,
61, 104, 167, 205. 208, 231,
277, 302, 321, 360, 374, 392,
400 462
Not for nought, 436
Not the man to, 424
Not the worse, 428
Not only, 62, 457
Nothing, 83, 130, 157, 204, 333
Nottingham, Notts, 98, 100, 315,
488
Nought, 181, 244, 303
— is made a Noun, 407
Nouns. See Verbal
— become Prepositions, 145
— replace Prepositions, 124
— coupled, 126, 180, 359, 466
Now, 5, 63, 72, 190, 231, 246
287, 296
Nowadays, 59
Nowhere, 214, 460 '
Nu, the Aryan Suffix, 6
Numb, 8, 14, 239, 428
Numerals, 7, 54, 67, 226
Nurture, 636
OEB
Nut, 174
Nut-brown, 404
Nym, CJorporal, 8, 239
Oita sound expressed in ten
, ways, 201
— its old sound, 28, 206
— is inserted, 106
— it disappears, 34
— replaces a, 29, 32. S3, 94,
104, 115, 166, 169, 164, 173,
190, 194, 201, 204, 214. 244,
270, 273, 282, 284, 287, 802,
306, 332, 344, 347. 360, 356,
357, 392, 430, 449, 452
— replaces au, 432
— replaces «, 244, 266, 273.
287, 320
— replaces c, 130, 216, 274, 387,
432, 470
— replaces ea, 216, 357
— replaces faiD, 264
— replaces to, 92, 14S, 146, 174,
244, 432
— replaces t, 204, 462
— replaces on, 151, 192
— replaces u and oto, 104, 106,
107, 155, 164, 182. 206, 281,
320, 332, 344, 357, 399, 432
— rephices y, 306, 338
— it is doubled, 32, 36, 107.
205, 392, 399
— the old ending of the first
Person of the Present, 93
— the Interjection, 72, 261, 438,
516, 660
Oa replaces a, 201, 244
— replaces 0, 257, 287, 336
Oar, 357
Oats, 274
Oe replaces 0and tt in the North,
94, 104
O'er, for owr, 321
Of
■Of, *, 6S, 68, 6T. 72. IM. 106.
120, 12S-120, 13.^ l&S. \m.
181, 166, 171, 177, 183, 19S,
186, 210, 234, 250, 205, 2SS,
367, 260, 271, 378, 296, 309,
322, 327. 340, 3fi9. 376, 393,
396, 40S, 414,434, 441, 443,
462, 466, S71. Sre Partitive
— the parent of of, 65, 178,
19S, 196, 231,250
— raplacsB a(, 333
— replaces In, 101. 234
— replaces on, 200. 213. 233,
364, 372
Of age. S57
Of her age, atlong, 438
Of late, 234
Of low (Ijelow), 265
Of my dioosiog, 414
Of mj Wrength, 429
Oflen. 290
Ofteutime. 4fl]
Og (rt), 237
Oi, thp Kound in English, 118,
134. 503, 6£7, 660
— expresees the EYench ou. 133,
205. 343, 440. 493, 494, 557,
5*8,570
Oil. 354,261,264, 330
Oiaua, 133
OI. the Teutonic Snfllx, )2, 16,
247
Old, 80
Old,in»«rt*dftfterNomenJB,246
Old Enelish Miscrllanj, the,
204, 334
Olifsat, 499
Olives, 108
On, 69, 70, 111, 130, 164, 106.
210, 233, 272, 386, 436, 443
— mnrksboEtilitJ, 414.415, 443
— confused with «/, 209
On, dropped before a Noun, 70
On aot^Dcd iota o, 235
OK
On replaces of. 376, 443
On, the French, 64. IB*
On condition that. 124
On theather aide. 413
On the spot. 219, 200
On fire, 376
On high, 114
Ooce (w)n«D, 149, 2S4
Once lolim). 225, 246
Once a week, 277
Once
r. 457
i, 419
Ooce or twice, 467
One. for dn. 54,55,57.166 163,
173. 183.224,251, 308, 362
— fuettned to rach, 1 1 6
— tssteoed to Adjectirea, 406
— net before Proper Names, 224,
225
— Htaodij fur aliqmi, 104, 268.
276
— ainnds for mart, 266, 268,
347, 420
— lakes al for a Prefix, 225, 40?
— followed by the 8uperl«tiTe,
268
One after one, 335
One and twentieth, 67
One day. 54
One of the best. 339, 443
One of these days, 467
One or other, 457
One or two, 194
One that, 265
Onetime, 116
One with hfni, 414
One year's sheep, 2W
One-eyed. 41
Onion. 288
Only. 54, 55. 286, 401. 601
Oo replaces Ii, 313
Optative, the. 46, 395, 458
Or. outher, 114, 144. 166, 217,
287. 366
644
Index.
OR
Or else, 250
Or, coming twice over, 415
Or {ar\ 287. 470
Orchard, 36, 123, 202
Orderic Vital, 439
Ordinals, the, 57
Orit»on, 497, 566, 573
Orm, 98
Ormulum, the, 243, 269, 528
Orrmin, 115, 116, 118, 167,188,
198, 211-242, 244-246, 248,
251, 255, 256, 258, 260-262,
268, 270, 271, 275, 276, 281,
284, 286-290, 292-297, 302,
809, 311, 314, 323-326, 329,
333, 338-340, 352, 354, 355,
362, 871, 384, 387, 398, 404-
406, 409, 411, 419, 420, 437,
452, 453, 458, 459, 465, 491,
499, 500, 501, 509, 523, 544,
562, 575, 576, 587
Orbon, 181
Ostrich (Austria), 433
Oth {usque ad), 352
Other, 7, 30, 57, 258, 290
Otlier, referring to past time,
308
Other's {aliorum), 265
Otherwise, 177, 250
Ou replaces ah, 182
— replaces aw, 29, 200, 215,
356, 432
— replaces eow, 205 *
— replaces o, 144, 181, 190, 201,
244, 330, 398, 449
— replaces oiv, 107, 173, 205,
356
— replaces u, 36. 133, 144, 165,
245, 284, 287, 303, 332, 354
— the Interjection, 72
Ough, its many sounds, 304
Ought (aliquid), 115, 214, 573
Ought (dcbeo), 110. 131, 176, 190,
269.311,381. ^Owe
OWE
Oar, 25, 165
Gups, 222
Ous, the HomaDce Suflix, 581
Ouse, 30
Out, 5, 195, 235. 385, 412. 525
— used after a Verb to inteaafr
Its meaning, 231, 269, 4ll
438
Out from, 196
Out of, 66, 200. 255. 261, 264.
576
Out and out, 59
Outing, an, 70
Outlet, 309
Outrage, 400, 556
Outright, 439
Outside, 451
Out-taken, 408
Ouw, the combination, 245
Over, 6, 7, 235, 528, 565
— strengthened by aU, 233
— stands for of, 278
-- replaces j^eond, 278
Overboard, 386
Orercast, 424
Overking, 219
Overlord, 219, 220
Overpass, 417,562
Ovepsore, 438
Overtake, 293
Overthrow, different from thm
over, 66, 442
Overton, 440
Overturn, 278
^' * Suffix, replacing «, 12. 16.
— how sounded, 28, 30. 452
— replaces ak, 267
^Tl^**^ «»«P and eow, 128.
— replaces o, 254
-- replaces off, 274
387 ^^' 1^7, 160. 268, 336.
645
owi
Owing to, 33T, 451
Owl and Nightingale, the Po«m,
305-310. fill, 530, 587
Owlet, 307
Own stands for two old Verbs,
74. 332
OWD (propriui), 115, !S4, 156,
159, 191,288, 353
Oi, 3. 498
Oxen, 23, lOS
Oifnrd, 78, 176, 216. 3U. 327.
440.483,613. 519, 641,545,
654, 571. 584
OxnB. the. 1, 11. 15, 38, 356.
548
1) averaioD of the Old English
., to, 216, 280
— inteRed id words, 257. 399
— ronfused with e, 86. 313
— inten;hnngeB with t asd d,
273, 290, 324
TKt. 667
Pack, 280
Pace, 667
Pam. 607. 559, 566. 678
Painful, 2.18, 276
Pair. 670
FAS
Paler
of, 2
Falenno, 87
Palmereton, Loni, 409
PuUj, 398, 576
PalegTHve, 28. 558. 567
Parmafey. 289. 616
Paradise, 496, 497
Fardi. 574
Pam, to. 673
ParcntheBis, an early, 268
Paris, 101, 490, 505, 613, 614.
517. 510, 620,627, 531
Parish. 658, 675
Parliament, 642, 572
Parson, 387. 675
Pan. 673
Participle Actjre, 9, 26, 42. 59,
108. 193,294, 307, 337, 370.
408, 412, 561
Participle Active, a shibbolelh
of dialeots, US, 160, 162. 164,
204, 213. 248. 284, 319. 3-'i5
— coupled with a PassiTu Par-
Uoiple. 372
— coupled with a Noun, 277
— used in compounding, 529
— naed for a Prepositioo, 680
Participle, Future, 184. 458
Participle Passire, 9, 26, 33. 42,
47. 50, 93, 115, 124,141.147,
159. 160, 162, 176. 130, 186.
189, 190, 192, 1B3, 204, :284,
289, 293, 306, 308, 314, 339,
666
— stands for a Noun, 359
— stands for an Adjective, 297,
326. 464, 664
— is mads into a Superlative, 263
— takes liche after it, 273
— uspd Ahsolutely, 326. 408
Partitive Use at of, S3. 116, 166,
177, 266, 267. 373
Party, 504, 577
Pash, 429
Pass, 681
Passed, they are, 576
Pausing, Qspd as a Preposition
and Adjective, 580
Passive Voice, 9, 14, 132
its wonderful development,
226. 227, 248, 293, 394, 409,
459
Past. 665, 681
Paston Letters, the, 289, 401
Paatonil Care, Alfred's Version
of, 27, 36, 38. 44. 46.51, 56,
67, 71, 76, 646
646
Index.
PAT
Pate. 396
Path, 215
Patteson, Bishop, 85
Paul. St., 190, 214, 432
Pay, 497, 674
Payiiim. 667, 661
Peace. 173,331,497,521,670,575
Peacock, 29, 38, 441
Peak, 112
Peck. to. 469
Pecock, Bishop, 179, 688
Pedibus, 15
Pedlar, 280
Peep, 496, 670
Peer, to. 373
Pelf. 663
Pelt, 371
Pen (includere), 191
Penance, 112, 497
Pence, 245, 381
Penny, 117, 145, 246, 281, 368
Penny-a-liners, their ai^rumente.
589
Pentecost, 262
People, 314
Pepys, 413, 415, 451
Peradventure, 534, 574
Percival. the Poem, 410, 417,
568
Percy Society, 306, 422
Perfect Tense, 8-11, 16, 26, 26,
96, 111
— its change from Strong to
Weak in the Second Person,
263, 286. 352
Perhaps, 328
Perish, 175, 661
Perkin, 204
Persian, 1, 11
Person, 302, 504, 564, 574, 676
Persons of the Tenses of the
Verb. See Present, Perfect,
and Plural
Perhaps, 581
PIT
Personnel, 535
Pert, 297
Perth, 71, 205
Perugia. 176
Peter, 126
— an Interjection, 421
Peterborough, and its Chronicle,.
102, 119, 133. 138, 140,142-
154, 155, 166, 160, 163-170,
174, 183. 190,206. 208. 212.
213. 216, 222, 228, 237. 240.
253, 288 289, 325, 427. 433,
444, 446, 490. 492, 525, 527
Philip, the name, 492
Phillips, Sir Thomas, the Poem
printed by, 200-203. 253
Philologist, 493
Philology, Old EngUsh, 198
Physician, 572
Piazza. 35
Picardv, 180, 496, 562
Pick, 280, 377. 469
Pickwick, 176
Pie, 310
Piece, 564, 667
Piecemeal, 15, 570
Piers, 336. 563
Piers Ploughman, the Poem, 376.
377. 395, 396, 432. 531, 588
Pig, 273, 280
Pigheadedness, 322,583
Pin, 443
Pinion, 666
Pink, to, 76
Pipchin, Mrs.. 255
Piper, 120
Pips, 380
Pit of Hell, the Poem, 544, 54^
Pitch, to, 252, 436
Piteous, 455
Pith, 402, 407
Pitiful. 456, 578
Pitifulness, 465
Pitt, 73
Pityofit, 38*, 670
Powsroffblk,670
Plug IX.. 8S
Pmiie. 622. 679
Place. 521
P]«.k. 463
Pray, 2H8, 341, 681
Haj, 318, 2*6
Prayer, 494, 622, 678
Play king, 436
Prayer-book, the Anglican, 320,
Plead, 273. M2
448,602,851,577
Pleate™. *52
Preacher, hin influence on Eng-
Pliglit, 246
lish, 520-522
Plimsoll, Mr.. 23S
Precious, 6f 5
Plough, 161. 287. 273
303
356
Plunip, to. 443
— becomee an Adverb. 209, 231 .
Pluperfect, the, 181,
132
177,
250. 261
193.228,363.420,
4S7
— beoomee a Conjanctinn. 149
Fluisl, Nominatires,
6, 21J!6.
106, 120, 146. 213,
219.
356
66
— of tha Prewnt of Vwbf, 25,
— made the last word in the
26. 147, H8, 189.
213
284,
sentence. 167
314. 3S0, 354. 370
— coupled vith another Prepwi-
— thix is clipp-d, 264
tion, 415
Pfenitentifl. Ill, 112,
634
Poeta, their inflaenoe
□ EngliBh,
— French, prefixed to Ei^lish
82-85
roota, .582
Point, on the, 67*
— New, 146
Poimn, 205, 361,264
Freaent Tenae, 8, 10, 1*. 25, 26.
Poitou. 166, *93. filO
106, 121, 147. 341, 356
Poke, to, 377. 418
Poland, 60B, 622
— Old German Plnral of. 13
Pole ue, 238
Pre«t,659
Poles, the, 103
Prey. 288, 670
Political SongB, the. 373
Prick, to, 83. 363
Poll, 396
Pride. 288, 432, 439
Pompeii, 101
Priesta, their iDflneDC* npOD
Paatof)»ct, 430
English, 84, 85
Pool. 108. 385
Prig, to, 288
Poor, 3S9. *97, 604, 666
Prior. 251
Pope. 28. 414, *S0
Prison, *02, 497
Pore, t<^ 373
Priw. 426, 607, 540
Poison, *28
Prod, 280
Port Meadow, 78
Portanduplnnd. 78
Pot, 280. 444
Pouch, 36, 607
Pronouns, 8, 24, 26, 48-68. 129,
130
— are set before the Imperat ive.
Ponr, 326
208
648
Index,
PRO
PrDDOuns stand for Nouns, 258
Proper Names, 30
their foreign endings, 433,
498
rropitiation, 526, 567
Prove, 411.501, 574
I^rovost, 128
Prut! 462
Psalter, the Northumbrian, 93-
97, 109, 598
Psalter (the Northern, of 1250),
318-831, 380, 382, 387,
401, 419, 420, 450, 475, 515,
587
Puck, 813
Puddock, 290
Puff, 280
Punch, to, 76
Purblind, 571
Purple, 37
Purpose, 570
Put, pult, 180, 256, 365
Put forth, 436
Put him to swear, 460
QU replaces cur, 118, 165, 200,
373
— replaces A, 289
— replaces Ate;, 356, 486
Quaint, 496, 558
Quake, 373
Quakers, 361, 456
Quantity, 564
Quarrel, 503
Quarry, 495, 570
Queen, 289
Queer, 272
Quick, 158, 249, 360, 386, 443
Quickly, Mrs,, 453
Quit, 314, 579
Qaite, 501, 581
Quiver fellow, 280
Quoth, 206, 254, 267
R.
REF
inserted in English words,
256, 289, 321, 401, 422,
441
— is cut off, 96, 115, 576
-- replaces *, 31, 32, 87, 109.
128
— replaces I and n, 87, 426
— sounded strongly by the Irish,
34, 358
Ea, the Aryan Suffix, 6, 7
Race, 398
Ragged. 443
Rags, 272
Rain, 33, 134
Raise, 239, 270
Raj, the Aryan root, 3, 359
Rake, 252
Range, to, 279
Ransack, 296
Rape, 296, 586
Rasp, 296
Rather, 179, 232
Ravish, 410, 507, 568
Raw, 395
Re, the Romance Prefix, 81,
582
Readily, 386
Reading, 182
Ready with, 462
Ready money, 404
Reave, 262, 409, 410, 507
Reaverie, 434, 580
Recoil, 494
Record, 541
Recover, 506, 579
Red {ruber), 3, 41, 618
— the Teutonic Suffix, 15
Red gold, 361
Redeemer, 526
Redgauntlet, 62
Reduplication of Aryan Verbs,
8,9
Reflexive. &« Dative, 149, 225
Reform, 307
Reformation, the, 60, 137. 182.
255. 375. 406. 556. 568
iteft, 321,40(1
Begime, 503
lit^imen, 503
R^ment, 503
Reign. 107. 670
RelatLvBE, S3. 71. 125, 132. 134,
146, 157, 162. 167. 177, 107.
207, 209, 223. 247, 271. 276,
292. 302, 326, 37.^ 39*. *06
— dropped After a Noun, 406
Relics, 504
BcHgioD. influence oC npotiEng-
lish. 35. 37. 38. 84, 85
ReliquiK Antique, 314, 373, 375
Bemembrr of. 295
JUmind of. 295. 582
RemnsDl, 496, 575
Itenard. 346
Renew, 562
Repeut him. 566
RepenUnt of, 573
Repetition, idiomatic, 345
Restiicteil sense uf old vord»,
77-80
Reverse to, 677
Rarile, 579
Rhine, peiuanta of the, 147
Rich, 169, 191,607
Riches. 331, 496.407
Sick, the TiniUiDU: Snffiz. 15
Bid. t
, 270
Riddle, 76, 401
Ride, 291, 384, 387
Rider. 130
Right. 80, 108, 124, 146, 172,
206,230.419, 434, 451.465
Bight away, 58
n:_u.... j^ jg jgQ^ ,g^^ ^52
Bim.
7S
Rimes, English. 172. £
Rince, 506
Bing, 203, 507
BUE
Rioo, 173
Bipon. 386
Rist, ha, 466
KiTe, 2S2
Road, 2D1
Roam, 249
Bobber, 358, 497. 507
Robekin, 203, 524
Robert, 97. 203
Robert. Bishop of IJncoIn, 315,
467, 512,516, 619,560
Robin, 311,526
Rod, 307
Boe, 201. 254
Roger. 128, 606
Boland, 398
ItoUiad, the, 73
Bomanee words, 322
— those akin to Englith words,
506, 507
~- SufBies, 418, SSI, 582
Romauce influence on English,
162, 605, 561, 662, 687, 688.
See French
Rome, 17, 18. 37, 60. 78, 97, 236,
264. 315, 397, 4.49, 501. S05,
513, 619.523,641,582
Rood, 151
Roof, 218
Root, 198
Botherhithe, 77
Bough, 86, 93, 2S9, 303. 304,
400, 440
Round, 566, 574, G76, 681
Rout, 434
Route, 504
Boutie
,671
Row, 206
Koiburgh Clnb, 467
Roj (rex), 589
Roj, the poet, 103
Hojaume, 658
Ruddy. 268
Rue, 37, 107, 191, 263,380,376
6so
Index.
BUE
Eueful, 266. 268
RuefoUy, 285, 461
Ruefulness, 112, 265
Rufus, William, 133, 134, 233.
492
Rugby, 102, 387
Rule, 503
RuD, 31, 147, 212, 240, 257, 350.
379, 409, 459
Run out, 410
Run with blood, 251
Run his course, 460
Runes, the, 16, 90, 91, 92
Runnel, 15
Rush, to, 313
Rushworth Qospels, the, 35, 37,
51,66. 67, 111,117-121,136,
148, 202, 214, 223, 319, 595
Russians, 86, 492, 516
Rustle, 443
Ruth, 173, 429
Ruthwell Cross, the, 90, 91, 92,
591, 596
Rutland, 101, 102, 142, 163,
212, 423, 447-449, 486, 487
Ryle, Fr., 626
813, 498
, — the older form of the
•Second Person Singular of the
Present, 93
— answers to ^ in High German,
13,87
— replaces th in the North, 104,
105, 106, 141, 270, 294, 302,
314, 319, 321, 338, 341
— replaces r, 31, 32, 87, 106,
109, 128, 226, 441
— is added at the end of a word,
109, 266, 268, 276, 336, 371,
401, 441
— is dropped in a word, 161,
287, 401, 422, 433, 600, 568
SG
S is inserted, 266, 358
Sack, to, 463
Sacred, 297, 564
Sacrilege, 576
Sad, 34, 404, 419
Safe, 302
Safe and sound, 563
Said, 146, 320
.Sailyard, 203
Sain, to, 330
Saint, 122
Saint Charity, 578
Saith, 167
Sake, 79, 290
Salimbene, 518, 619, 520
Salisbury. 422, 423
Salop, 20, 29, 116, 141, 1£
254, 266, 266-274, 278, 27
281, 289, 327, 335, 339, 37
371,377,380.381,469,47:
Salt, 16, 94
Same, 3, 62, 62, 222, 451
Sample, 602
Sans, 660, 575
Sanscrit, U16, 8&-88, 108, 1(
186, 223, 239, 548
Savant, 546
Save, 664. 574, 580
Saviour, 494, 568
Saw, 29, 31, 73, 205, 206, 2]
275. 366
Sawles Ward, the, 267, 601
Saxon, 20, 98, 140, 352 . AA
489, 628. See Chronicle
Saxon, wrongly used for En^i
363, 396, 431
Saxony, 660
Say, 147, 156, 164, 174, 2(
385
Say nay, 363
Say prayers, 409
Say grace, 466
Sc, preferred to aA, 246
— sounded like «, 503
BC
Sc transpoMd, tOi, lOfi, 171
8r?itIncronica, tbe, 636
S<»ld Ijmt'a). 239, 444
Scald, to. 264, 330
Stale, to. 417
Sftil], 417
Scalp. 320
Scamp, 32
Sfanclinaviiin, 13. 20, 6B. 71, 73,
61,82,88, ins, 110,113,114,
136, 1^0,210, 212. 319, 321,
109-412, 4ie, 428, 445, Hod.
58.1
— Sre DaDea, Icelandic, Horec,
Swedes
InaTiaa Worda in English.
Sc;
M»
127, 161, 163, 167,
175, 17S, 180, 181,2!
211, 218, 220, 222, 223, 226-
228, 234, 236~23B, 251, 252.
261, 266, 272, 273, 278, 279,
281, 289, 294, 206, 297. 309,
310, 319, 321-323, 328. 329,
330.334, 358. 361, 363-366,
373, 383, 886, 397, 400-403,
406-407, 415-417. 421, 424.
429,440, 443, 455, 4^8-460,
462, 463, 466
Sc-dndinarian Idioms in English,
120, 149, 223,231, 260, 291,
333, 3B4, 387. 414, 425, 467.
666
Scape, the Teutonic ending, 1 5
Scarceiy. 671
Scare, 239
Scatter. 16B
Scholarlike. 216
School, 169. 493
Science, the Treatise on, 429, 573
Science, ita dictioo, 546, 64S
Scoff, 443
Scold, 210
Scone Charter, 476
Scorch, 229
65 r
Score, 203, 202, 374, 407, 419,
4S4
Scorn, 198, 211, 807, 676
Scot {toieere), 275
Scolland, Scotch, 9, tl, 30, 31,
34, 61, 68, 71. 79,80, 81, 93,
96, 97, 108, 111, 118, 120,
130. 133. 144, 146, 150, 151,
160, 161, 178, 182, 184, 194,
202, 203, 214, 216, 217, 220,
222, 224, 225, 232, 236-239,
270, 272, 289, 290. 296, 303,
304,310, 318, 320-322, 324,
331, 351, 355. 369, 363, 364,
366, 380, 382, 884, 386, 396,
397, 399. 401, 407, 408, 410-
412, 417, 421, 447, 476,496.
634, 555, 569, 669
Scott, Majut, 73
Scott, Sir Walter,39, 67.76, 111,
132, 180, 207. 209, 230, 233,
247, 26). 324, 330, 399, 534,
544, 560,571
Scour. 417
.Scourge, 261
Scowl. 279
Scraggy. 279
Scrape, 230
Scratch, 273
Scream, 266
Screech, 191
Screw, 309
Scrip, 373
Scriptuies.the,lS,284. S:wBibli!
Scrub, 443
Scullion. 463
Sea, 172
Seal, 34, 367
Seamstiess, 203
Seat, 4
Second, 451,571, 581
Sadgvick, Prafessor, 565
Sec, 169
See of, 183,457.607
6s 2
Index.
SBE
Seek, is to, {dM9»e\ 428
Seek for, 232
Seek out, 438
Seek nnto, 414
Seem, 255
Seemly, 256
Seize, 556
Seldom, 15, 290
Self, 49, 52, 98, 195, 222, 258,
324. 414
Selfish. 74
Sell, 197
Selle, 550
Semi-Saxon, 233
Send word, 50
Servant, 566
^Tw^, 181, 340, 417, 548, 566
Service, 38
Serving man, 453
Set, 181, 270, 287, 385, 424, 459
Set about, 409
Set at nought, 459, 462
Set on fire, 376, 436
Set hand on, 424
Set together, 436
Settle, a, 35
Settle, stands for two old verbs,
74
Seven, 4
Seven-night, 418
Seventh, 108, 151, 358
Seventy, for hnnd^seofontig^ 157
Severn, the, 201, 205, 245, 251,
252, 259, 270, 378, 427, 431,
464, 580
Sew, 4
Sexton, 576
Sh or 9ch, replaces j?c, 95, 171,
185, 191,200, 206, 216, 245,
282, 449
Shake, 113
Shakespere, 12, 44, 48, 55, 65,
110, 115, 157,221, 222, 243,
249, 250, 261, 262, 280, 313,
SHO
319, 326, 339, 864, 368, 404,
427, 429, 439, 445, 529, 576,
578, 588, 589
ShaU, sal, 10, 42-44, 184. 189,
191, 201, 204, 206, 216. 289,
314, 319, 337, 353, 356, 392
— stands for soUo^ 457
— contrasted with will, 457, 458,
464
— followed by can and may, 407,
408
— followed by kave^ 213, 409
Shame, 216
Shannon, the, 2
Shape, 32
Shaper, 417
Share, 73
Shaw, 443
She (the old mo), 50, 141, 165,
289, 355, 419
She-boast, 405
Shear, 113, 203
Shed, to, 4, 179
Sheen, 206
Sheep, 23, 245, 429, 496
Sheepish, 221
Sheets 206
Sheridan, 56
Sheriff, 144
Shift, 237, 294
Shimmer, 269
Shine, 175
Shined, 430
Shingle, 443
Ship, the Teutonic Snffix, l.>,o83
Ship, 22. 192, 245
Ship-breaking, 402
Shire, 113, 126, 202
Shirt 198
Shiver (Jindere), 198
Shiver {trem/re), 313
Shoe. to. 306
Shoes, 105, 174, 418
Shone, 332
6S3
10, 267, 308, 367
Silver, 117, 146,218
32, 43*
SilTero. 6, 16
jn,687
SimmondB, 663
to UT, 43a
Simple, .^71
rS. 416, 426
Sin, 115. 138, 188, 270, 378
43, 46, 132, 148
166,
Sin, to, 190
248. 272, 308, 4,')7,
465
Sin(»,Mn,«th.64, 70. 333,388
hare been («-?0. 407
Since vben, 412 .
T,215
Sing, 81
77. 192
Sing nnali. 76
18, 1.W, 172, 179
218,
Single, 302, 677
249, 264. 327. 357,
373
Sink, to, 193, 194, 327. 469
.nb. 265
Sip. 29
Bhrewed, 309, 340
480,
l^r. 72, 340, 656, 657, 663, 678
566
Sire, 624, 540, 642
mry, 99, 140, 158
267,
Sin, 579
SiBter, 3, 166, 286, 356
191. 198, 444
Sit, ut, 4, 8. 9. 16, 93, 104
2S6, 441
Sit op, 460
201, 426
Sixth. 3
tin, 42S
SinuB v., 622
% 266
Size, 387, 462, 580
327
Skent, Mr., 117, 364, 358. 636
19S
Skeilcn, the Poet, 222, 499
9,607
Skelton, the Bev. P., 643
Kantiah Article, 548
Sket (cilo), 430
Latin ml), 228
Skill. 180
Skip, 297
217
Skirt, 417
9. 174, 274
Skulk, 329. 417
16, 382, 402, 426
Skull, 279
Bide, 2ai, 402
Sky, 296, 323, 450
451
Slab. 430
82
Slack, 214
H), 460
Slain, 190, 2S3, 321, 381
■.418
Slake, 214
31. 462
SInDder. 559
tbe, 86. 34S
Slang wordB, 73, 76, 77
urt), 161. 182, 1B4
7
336,
Slap. 31
S1b7. Blew, 165, 174,274,460
Slaughter. 328, 329, 480
3,401
SUto, 560
79. 360, 361, 374
423.
Slavonians, 1, 12, IS, 654
386
SUjer, 321
«S4
Index.
SLE
Sledgehammer, 79
31eek, 310
Sleep, 94, 202, 229
Sleep a wink, 454
Sleight, 198
Slide, 278
Slight, 417
Slip, 31. 87
Slippery, 272, 324
Slogger, 78
Slops, 76
Slot, 239
Slough, 258
Sluggish, 279
Slush, 258
Sly, 239, 317. 388
Smack, 214, 564
Smarts 254, 329, 330, 450
Smile. 4, 417
Smirk, 77
Smite a battle, 486
Smith, 32, 245
Smith, Sydney, 84, 251
Smithereen. 402
Smithy, 75
Smock, 198
Smother, 181
Smoulder, 279
Smudge, 311
Smug, 239
Smut. 32
Snatch, 280, 440
Sneak, 77
Sneer, 113, 329
Sniff, 197
Snout 285
Snow drift, 416
Snub, 329
Snuff, 197
So, «a, Mmz. 63, 64, 116.
163, 204. 250. 254, 271.
302. 320, 357, 394
So soon as, 177
So that, 260
16!,
277.
SOU
So wise for to, 456
So, needlessly ioBcited. 208, 376
So or so. 461
So far forth. 461
Sobbing, 366
Soberness, 507, 577
Sociology, 220
Soho, 443
Sol-sece, 38
Some, the Teutonic Suffix, 16,
532
Some, 56, 66, 177
Somehow, 451
Some one, 428
Somebody, 457
Some other, 224
Somerset, 6. 20. 30, 97. 106,
147, 213, 426, 435, 458, 480,
481, 527
Some ten years, 56
Something. 56
Sometime. 277, 435, 461
Somewhat, 53, 224. 257, 387
Somewhere, 53, 224
Son, 3, 6, 15, 22. 104. 145, 187
Soon, 149, 399
Soon as, 63
Sooner, soonest, 278, 452
Sooth, 3, 413
Sophocles. 11. 350
Sorfoller, 405
Sorrow, 182, 279. 320, 452
Sorrowful, 202
Sony, 190, 287, 360, 374
Sough, 215
Sought, 201
Soul, 21, 29, 115, 190, 200, 560
Sound, 74
Sound as a roach, 403
Southern English, 51, 54, 90, 91,
93,95-97. 106, 111, 112, 113.
116, 120, 121, 185, 141, 145,
147, 148. 155, 166, 160, 161.
162, 164, 173, 177, 181, 188,
BOQ
189. 198, 200-202, 20*-207,
209, 212-218, 229,
251, 269, 261-26(,
273, 279. 284, 2g8,
301, Sn2. 30a, 31
334. 344. 3S4. 375,
412, 41S, 42S, 460,
SSO, a62~65S, fiS5
Suath-Ea«taf England, 182, 191,
213, 353, 392
South-West of England, 170,
189, 43fi, S02. S«WeB8si
Southern OfMpeU, the, 27, 67,
120, 1S6, 389
Scnthey, 63
Son, 3, 96, 109, 202
Spacti, SS7
Spain. IS, 19, B7, 103, 136. 398,
612, 513,6S6, 686
Spakp. ISS
Span new, 861
Spar, 417
Spare, to, 410
Spark, 262
Speak. 214
Speech, 210
Spenser, 1 1, 33, S3, 86, 217, 246
8pm, 326. 327, 339. 607
Spill-bread. 376, 376. 441
Spindle, 202
Spinster, 16, 203
Spirit up, 7S
Spit. 121, S99
Spital, S04
Spile, 566
Splotch. 202, 284
Spoon, 76
Sport oak', 78
Spot. 280, 284, 285
SpODt, 310
Sprairl, 366
Spread, 274, 43S
Spreite, 6SS
Springe, 307
Spy. 297, 607
SqnHre, 567
Squash, 310, S29
Squeak, 441
Squeal. 417
Squeeze, 266, 310
Squint, 277, 280
Squire, 5.^7
Squireen. 682
tin becomes lA, 961
Slable, 310, 607
Stack, 366
SuSbrd, 89, 114,378
Slainton, 133
Stalwart, 170
Stamford, 100, 102, 446, 449
Sump. 443
Stand, 4, 193, 309, 312, 386, 400
Stand in, 228
Stand to, 425
SCaalon, 30
Star. 3, 21, 237,366
Stark. 435
Stark naked. 265
Start, 252. 388
Startle, 388
SUnnton, "274
SUy, 411, 507
Stead,120, 621
Stealth, 267. 290
Steke,
■,237
Step, 401
Stem, to, 417
Stephen, 164, IS7, 168, 400,
429
Stephen of Canterbury, S12
Stephens. Mr., 90
Ster.theTentonlcSnffii, 16.203,
238
Sterlings, 430
Slick. 79. 80. 237. 264, 386, 466
Stickle, to, 265
Still, 116,886,419
Stilt, 386
656
Index.
STI
Sting, to, 397
Stink. 77
Stint, 32, 228, 401
Stir, 113
Stirling, 19
Stirrup, 4, 381
Stitch, 264
Stodge, 256
Stone. 29, 30, 107, 398
Stonecast, 401
Stone-dead, 361
Stone-still 276
Stone weight, 418
Stop, to, 277, 607, 686
Stopt, 9
Story, 656
Stot. 417
Stout, 386
Stow. 28, 81, 133, 173, 353
Stow (compescere), 180, 256, 261
Straight, 440, 464, 507
Straiten, 331, 440
Strange. 570
Strasburg, Godfrey of, 514
Stratford atte Bowe, 620
Stratmann, Dr., 158, 210, 212,
329, 583
Straw, 201
Strawberry, 29
Streamer, 421
Strength, 275
Strengthen, 257
Stress, 576
Strew, 4, 9, 29, 31. 36, 173, 215,
230
Strife, 507
Strike in. 228
Strike sail, 372
Strip naked, 429
Strongbow, 49, 500
Strong Verbs, 8, 9, 16, 25, 109,
258, 286
— replace Weak Verbs, 202,
230, 326, 327, 424, 466
SUM
Strong Perfect, bestowed on a
French Verb, 411
Strut, 366
Stuarts, 277
Stubble. 329
Study, 569
Stumble, 463
Stump, 810
Sturdy, 443
Stutter. 256
Stye, 274
Subjunctive, the, 26, 26, 45. 46,
131, 132,213, 409
Sub-let, 42, 582
Substantives, examples of Teu-
tonic, 14
— declensions of Old English.
21-23
— used almost as an Interjec-
tion, 456
— turned into Verbs, 326
— dropped, 39, 131, 311, 347,
403, 430, 454
Such, 7, 141, 158,161,171,175.
245, 253, 355, 388. 392, 400.
449
Such and such, 66
Such a, 224, 406
Such as it is, 27 1
Such it is to. 437
Such man as, 63
Such that, 224
Sue. 497
Suffixes, Aryan, 6-8
— Teutonic, 15, 16
— Romance, 580-582
Suffolk, 127, 140, 159, 283,288,
296, 301, 353
Suit, 572
Suivre. 495
Sulh {arairum), 151, 273
Sum [stDo), 231, 413
Sumner, the name, 642
Sumus, 501
\
657
Sun, 217
.SIS
Snad>7, 171
Sonnj, 403
Snubeam, 218
Snp, 26
SoperlatiTU, 7, 57, 442, 466
— replaced by molt, 27S
Surre;, Earl of, 1S6
Snwex. 19, 20
Sireddls. 416
Srag. 46S
Swain, 133, 26i
SwsUow. 274
Swan. 347
Sware, 319
Swear, 428, S33
Swear to. 460
Swear false. 461
Swwt,4, 13.644
Swedish wonlB in Englaod, 210,
£62, 264, 279, 366, 373, 386,
463 j
Swrot, 3, 7.311 I
Sweet. Mr. Stt Anglo-Saxon {
lUader; 27, 33, 12Z
Sweetmaat, 39
Sweeting, 271
Sweetheart, 427
Swelter, 1T7
Swift, S6
Swiftlier, 413
Swill, 463
Swinburne. Mr., 85, 540. {
Swindle, 77
Swine, 23, 426, 496
Swingeing. 76
Swipe, IS8
Switbe, 413
SwiTO, 340
Swoon, 240. 381. 464
Swoop, 333
Sworn, 264, 293
Sword, 106
I S;pnpringbain, 423
I S;ndDn (nmO, 93, 226, 284,
I 334, 354
' Syne, sold Ung, 230
Tia well preserred, 13
— rounds off tjie end of ■
; word, 30. 31, 120. 290. 821,
I 327. 332, 495, S7S
— replaccB d. 33, 321. 400
' —repUceiifA, 218, 257,289,321
I — changee with c, 86, 432. 440
— changes with p, 273. 290
— ia cHBt oDt in the middle of a
woid. 34, 217
— ia inserted, 264, 429
Tft, the Aryan Suffix, 9
Taciiu
17
Tack, 191
Tackle, 297
TftdcHBter, 37, 78
Ta'eD, 320, 380, 460
Tail, 434
Tailor, 518, 572
Take, ita many meaniiiga, 167,
197, 228, 229, 239, 266,293,
320, 385, 409. 424
Take counsel, 673
Take eiample by, 428
Take Sight, 409
Take heart. 435
Take beer). 318
Take to heart, 409
Take to wilneas, 409, 428
T-king, 322
Tale, go
Talk, 262, 253
TaUol, 218
Tama, the Superlative ending. 7
Tame, 4. 12. 608
Tara, the Aryan ComparatiTe. 7
Targe, 5U7, 665
Tarry. 392, 432, 507
658
Index,
TAB
Taste, 564
Tattle, 280
Taught {doemi\ 107, 381
Taught (^(iMM), 808
Taylor, Mr., 140
Tea 28
Teach, 172, 175, 216, 248
Tear, 108, 371
Teat, 287
Tees, the, 553
Teeth, 254
— in his, 262
Teinds, 237
Tell on, (influence), 271
Temper, 38
Temple, 117,215
Ten, 4, 12, 13, 94
Ten years after that, 424
Ten year old, a, 435
Ten-stringed, 326
Tennyson, Mr., 41, 150, 172,459,
474
Tent, to, 564
Tenth, 157, 237
Tenth part, the, 407
Term-day, 567
Teutons, Teutonic, 6, 10. 12-20,
113, 115, 136, 137, 150. 155,
165, 177, 180, 209, 211, 217,
235, 237, 243, 245. 273, 283,
207, 330, 331, 346, 349, 376,
877, 397, 445, 448, 451. 456,
476, 489, 499, 500, 505, 516,
517,524, 526, 529, 530, 532-
534, 540, 544-546, 571, 577,
580-584, 587-589
— Prefixes, 15
—-Suffixes, 15, 16,203
Th, answers to the Sanscrit ^, 9, 86
~ substituted for )>, 92, 128,
144, 165
— cast out in the middle of a
word, 126, 133, 217, 287. 871,
388, 432, 453
I'HV
Th cast out at the end of a word,
33, 104, 105, 312
— is inserted, 257, 321
— ronnds off a word, 206, 290
— replaces rf, 366
— replaces *, 87, 103, 121, 125,
127. 141
— a puzzle to Frenchmen, 133
Thackeray, 44
Thae, 222, 324
Thane. 107, 145, 157
Thames, the. 239, 553, 585
Thank God, 40, 148, 364
That, 24, 1 19, 125, 132, 282, 247,
394
— used as a Demonstrative, 48.
50. 51. 52, 213, 222, 281, 439
— used for the fS^nch jve, 262
— is dropped after a Verb, 437
— first follows Plural Nouns,
146
— the old Kelative, 58, 1 10, 325
That time twelvemonth, 454
That (Ottui), 46, 64
That, dropped, 64, 414
That erer 1 &c., 421
That is in me. do, 465
That is to say. 228
That same, 222
That there, 362, 405
That time, 402
That which, 325
Thaun, Philip de, 494, 558, 570
The, 24, 50, 63, 103, 125, 127,
135, 1.56
The one, 57, 312
The tother, 292
The two of them, 424
The which, 406
— the one case when th% is not
now a Definite Article, 62,
372
Thee, 24
Theft, 289, 392
>
659
THE
Their, 24, IDS, 212, 221, 302,
SIS. 365
Their midst, bl
Theirs, 222. 362
Them, 24. SO. fil, 103, IIG, 212,
221, 319, 321,484,465
Then, 173, 243, 250. 386
TfasDce, 144
Theneetbrward, 196
Ther, nprese nting the old Aiyan
CompamtiTe Suffii, 7
Therr, repUcea thilker, 92
— an oipletive before leat, 60
— H BenionBtrative, 24. 60
There {ubi), 100
Thereabout, 231
Thereaa. 438
Therefnte, 149, 167, 186
Thereupon, 312,413
Theiewithnl. 312
These, 24, 158, 244, 286, 324
Thew, 174,248
Tfaflf, 24, 49, 103, 141, 182. 218,
221. 247, 270, 291, 310, 332,
333, 360, 356, 870, 406. 466
They say, 406
Thick. 36, 202, 307
Thii^keit of, the, 419
Thilk. 6, Gl, 213. 222, 281. 307,
312, 332, 336, 344. 366, 37B,
433. 1S6, 486
Thine. 24
Thine, 80. 207, 200, 394
Tbinl, 46. 194, 320, 327
Thir, the Scotch. 118, 397, 406
Thirf. 3, 105
Tliirst, 4
ThiitMD. 13
This. 24, 06
This here, 405
This nnd that, 222
TIC
This
^ 200
Thomas. .'^L. ISS, IS7. 356,641,
674. See Becket
Thomson, 86
Thong, 432
Thor. 98, 99
Thorny, 276
Thorough. 122, 357
Thoronghly. 230, 363
Thorpe, Hr., Analecta Anglo-
SaioQica, 124, 127, 183, 596
Those, (JpAi), 51, 182, 222,324,
326. 419
Thou, 4, 24. 46, 24.^ 357
— UH diBtingniehed from ye, 4o8
Thongh, 48, 63, 64, 106, 215,
302. 303, 368
Thongh it be {elti), 428
Thought. 182, 190
Thongbtful, 221
Thonsiind, U, 12
— used as a Noan, 292
Thrash, 114
Threaten, 433
Three, 3, 169, 144
Thtice, 3, 105
ThriU. 401
Thrive, 239
Throe. 173, 440
Through. 6, 303. 321, 823, 431
Through bap. 328
Through and throogb, 232, 281
Throngbont, 17S, 230
Throw. 438
Thrash, 306, 380
Thrust. 180
Thucydides. 186
Thnd. 244
Thumb, 166
Thander, has d i
290
Thnraday, 99. 192
Thtt-art, 268, 290
Thy. forrUnr, 165. 160
Ticklish, 377
serted, S
66o
Index,
TID
Tidings, 180
Tidy, 261
Tied, 190, 245, 440
Tight, 865
Till, the Northumbrian, 71, 92,
167, 196, 284, 302, 314, 352,
355, 370, 378, 439, 451
Till, to, 75, 189
Tillftr, 289
Tilly ^-ally, 387
Timber, 3, 104, 257
Time, computed by the English
in the liitin way, 38, 264
Time, see his, 423
Time, rephicos «t>tf, 451
Timeous, 184
Tine, to, 297, 356, 586
Tire. 47, 48, 285, 392
Tite {ciio\ 329, 380
Tithes, 237, 287, 452
To. its uses, 129, 209, 213, 234.
251, 262, 268, 271, 424, 425,
443, 458, 460
— its sound, 159
— before Infinitive, 42
— the senses of, 69, 161, 178,
193, 196
— used for at, 71, 414
To, the Latin ^, the German
ter, 183, 210, 336, 367
To-break, 183, 567
To-while, 421
To and fro, 151, 364, 387
To be (offered), 227
To his shirt, 414
To it, 250
To speak shortly, 48
To the end that. 64
To the good, 235
To the ground, 235
To your honour, 443
Toad, 201. 290
Toby, 217
Toes, 360
TRB
Toil, to, 75, 1 89, 206
Tom Brown, 76
Tomb, 334
Tom-cat, 39
Tome {piiwiC)^ 417
To-name. 416
Tongue, 21
Toot, to, 280
Tooth, teeth, 3, 28, 30, 157
Top, 247, 418. 448
Top to toe, 262
Topple, 279
Tor, 78
Tother, 194
Touch, 504, 579, 581
Tough. 432
Tout, to, 75
Tow, 191
Towards, 68, 233, 251
Tower, 330, 492
Town, 120, 287
Town, come to, 207
Townley Mysteries, the, 308, 399
Towzer. 366
Toy, 191, 453
Trades, English, their names,
518
Trail, 575, 576
Train, 576
Translators, from the French.
549-552
Transubstantiation, 155
Travail, 560, 565
Travel, 569
Traveller's Song, the, 18
Tread. 229
Treat, 507, 562
Tree, 3, 94, 212
Tremble, 495, 579
Trench, Archbishop, 85
Trend, 79
Trent, the, 99, 235, 513
Tresses, 429
Trey {troii), 540
"^
Trickeiy, 191
TricklB, 348
Trifurinm, 547
Trig, 236
Trigger, 289
Trini. 79
Triple, 217
Tristrem, the Poem, 231, 347.
3ii, 365, 3BU-386, 42S, 150,
4fi9, 466, 514, 531, fi39, 541),
647, 55S. 559. 560. 568
Tiollope, JUr., 317. 378. 588
Troterals, 387. 3SS
Troth, 164, 220, 460
Trooble, 565
Trowse™, 568
Troir. 357
Truck, 500
Tmckle, 600
True, 37, 131, 173. 245, 413,
427
True aa steel, 378
Traefal, 403
Trulj, 413,461
Trumbull, Mr^ 521
Trump, 417,507
TruD^e, 7B
TruBB, 504
TruBseau, 504
Tniat, 197
Truth, 164. 205. 215,460 '
Truthful, 413
Try, 567. 581
TndoFfl, 132
Tueida;, 2, 422
Tng. 191, 266, 452, 463
Tumble, 443, 507
Turk, 2
Tom, 607
Tom about, 413
Turn briKut. 460
Turn on him, 443
Tnni up, 327
Turn fonr himd to, 436
Tmold, 142
TnrtJe. 289
TnscBU, 218
Tveifth night, SO
TwrlfiBODt^ 116, 402
Twelve, 13, 303
Twice, 3, 149, 160
Twice eii, 124
Twinge, 310
Twiukliog of an eje, 305
Twist, 188
Twit, 81
Two, 3, 28, 94, 190, 273
Twofold of, 268
Two and two, 67
Two leSB thiia, 116
Two first, 56, 132, 226
Two- pronging of English vorda,
61, 66,' 160. 163, 164, 178,
189, 181, 194, 203,214, 264,
266, 274, 275, 288. 284, 309,
321, 383, 434, 436, 603, 658,
659
Twrford, 78
Tyke, 396
Tyndale, 28, 29, 48, 65, 85. 1 1 2,
166, 183, 217, 231. 2G7, 313,
328, 353, 368, 358, 382, 39S,
408, 421, 427, 429, 430, 432,
435, 443, 452, 461, 503, 626,
866, 567. 570-J74, 678, 588
Tyrant, 30. 485, 673
TyBf, for mlict, 576
Dthe Aiyan Softi, 6. 12
, — the old sound of, 28,
205, 494, 503
— the old ending of the North-
umbrian Present Tense, 93
- is iasKrtwl, 122. 128, 144,
202, 274, 399
-is cast out, 272
-repUcrJxi, 111, 117,173,281
662
Index,
u
U replaces <p, 425
— replaces an, 91
— replaces fo, ]6d, 185, 190,
244, 267, 452
— replaces eow, 87
— replaces 0, 371, 399
— replaces % in the South, 29,
32, 173,254,306,462
— replaces o, 33, 93, 107, 118,
159, 164, 174, 190. 202, 215,
244, 257, 267, 272, 287, 806,
338, 388, 899, 418, 432, 452,
495
— replaces ot, 133, 205
— replaces to, 36, 104
— replaces we, 92, 320
— replaces y, 29, 141, 158, 174,
201. 244, 262, 282
— united with w, 115
— united with y, 432
— written for v, 133, 495
Udall, 499, 577
Ue stands for tfa, 92
— stands for to, 205, 338, 373
, — stands for eu, 422, 432
Ugh, 429
Ugly, 273, 291, 297, 404
Ui, a curious combination, 270,
493
Ulfilas, 55, 65, 295
Ulyie. 261
Um, Dative Plural in, 15, 38,
39, 130, 156
Umbe. 278, 366, 566
Umbrian, a, 527
Umquhile, 188, 278. 364. 399
XJmstroke, 278
Un, the Teutonic Prefix, 7, 41,
42,235,411,562
— replaces a, 40
— prefixed to Romance roots,
507
Unanealed. 261
Unawaros, 68
UPP
I Unbeknown, 76
Uncle, 572, 581
Under, 7, 69, 72, 235, 528
Under, to, 326
Underst>iiid, 356
Understanding, 322
Undertake, 273, 339
Undying, 411
Uneasiness, 294
Uneasy, 422
Ungainly, 238. 255
Ungcet, a very old form, 91
Ungodly, 413
Ungracious, 507
Unhappy, 403
Unique, 74
United States, 103. See Ame*
rica
Unless, 451
Unlike. 216, 250
Unlikely. 59
Unseaworthiness, 235
Untidy, 261
Until, 65, 238, 328, 355
Unto, 117, 233, 328, 350
Unwisdom, 41, 235
Unwitting, 460
Uo replaces a, 190
Up, 178, 231, 251, 396
— is tacked on to Verbs, 260»
414, 425, 437, 566
Up and down, 65, 70, 231, 438^
461
Upbraid, 245
Upfloor, 440, 547
Upholding, 239
Upon, 130, 233, 260, 266, 378.
42S
Upon a summer H day, 382
Upon pain of, 251
Upon his cost, 573
Upon the point to be, 574
Upper, 440
Upper hand, 238
66;
Uppermost, 461
UppisliDRss. 74
UpjK) (upon), 217, 270
Uprise, 65
Upavt, 66
Up»ids down, 438
Upwunl, 58, 193
Urchin, 331
Ub, 25
Ub. th« endiog, ia clipped, 37
Vee l«ita>), 334, fSl
— (.fr«or), 673
Utan, ut«, 312
UllDOBt, 8
Ulwrtst, 323
UlWriy, 230, 277
VToplHCM/.Sa, 118,128,145,
nS, 246, 264, 262, 307,
358, 392
— replaces u, 495
— cast out in the midille of a
word, 33S, 871. 373
— the Latin aonnd of. 3B, 8S
V«ngu«rd, 81
Vat, 176, 264
Vedaa, thf. b, 1 1
Venom, 564
VfTbftI Nouns, 36, 70, II:
160, 220, 227, 248, 25:
272, 276, 285, 322, 337.
351, 353, 382, 393 ""
413, 437, 441, 446,463,
604.668
Verbs. See Strong, Weak, Ir-
TOg;uIar
— howfonni^, 8, 16
— idioms of, 42-48
— changes in, 13, 147
— formod &om Nodus, 326
— ace dropped, 60, 166, 186,
339.411.437,458
Verily, 579
Very, 230, 4dl, 496, 648, S60,
S81
Victoria, 90, 101, 138, 451, 628,
530, 548
Viewy, 683
Vigelli. 203
ViUehaidaiua, 526
Vineyard. 330
Vicgil, 371
Virgin, the, 523
Virtus, 534, 659
ViiBO, 6, 16, 176
Volowcr, 363
Von Raamer, 643
Vouchsafe, 568
Vowels, sounds of, 28-30. 75
' — clmng^d in strong Verbs, 8,16
— interchange of, 33, 113
— doubling of. See ee and 00, "
clipped lit the end of a vord.
2)5
the
Wreplacra g, 31, 88, 182,
. 191, 200, 202. 267,27fi,
282. 288. 320, 321, 358
— replaces 5, 382
— replaces A. 182, 245
— replaces r, 441
— replaces u. 357
— n-places v, 88, 496
— answers to Idtin v, 38
— cast out in a word, 161, 165,
192, 401, 422,432
— is disused. 128
— united with n, 115
— not sounded before h and r.
366, 871
Waddell, Mr., 361
Wadding, 518
Waddington. Willinm of. 44",
4GS
664
Index,
WAD
Wadekin, 311
Wae, the Scotch, 79, 328
W»8tm, 298
Waggon, 216
Wail, 444
Wain, 216
Wait. 366, 497, 506, 569
Waive, 459, 507, 586
Wake, 191, 294, 424
Wakefiil, wacol, 12
Wales, 126, 144, 849
Walk, 184, 208, 293, 375
Walker, 78
Wallow, 31, 87
Walter, 433, 525
Wan, the Teutonic Prefix, 42,
235
— replaces ww, 275
Wand, 239
Wanley, 92
Want, 227, 239, 261
Wanton, 42, 275, 347, 401
War, 150, 398, 432, 507
Ward, the old Suffix, 6
Warden, 504, 572, 574
Wardrobe, 567
Ware, 186, 405
Warm, 3, 31, 88
Warning, 563
Warwickshire, 99, 281, 370, 375,
387, 439, 479, 515
Was, 147, 157, 165
— (mw), 87, 226, 270, 387
Wasp, 31
Wassail, 45, 363, 434, 456
Waste, 507
Watch, 191, 216, 294
Water, 168
Waur, 239, 451
Waves, 383
Wax, 4
Waxen, he was, 226
Way takes us, the, 409
We, 4, 25
WES
Weak, 365
Weak Verbs, how formed, 9, 10,
16, 26
— replace Strong Verbs, 94, 96,
109, 166, 202, 207, 229, 249,
258, 259, 271, 325, 351, 362,
430, 442, 466
Wealth, 206. 296
Wear, 28
Weary, 74
Weather, 80
Weave, 4, 104
Wed, 232, 375. 460, 507
Wedgwood, Mr., 167, 180, 229,
280, 285, 323, 330, 366, 373
Wedlock, 220
Wednesday, 257, 422
Week. 32
Ween, I, 249, 398
Weep a flood, 375
Weigh, 4, 79, 274, 421
Weir, 79
Welcome, 187
Welfare, 439
Welkin, 323
Well, 149, 195, 208, 213, 230,
376. 386, 461
Well answered ! 408
Well enough, 438
Well is thee, 403
Well nigh, 149, 195
Well with him, 263
Wellington, 365
Welsh, the, 44, 87, 103. 108. 126,
128, 180, 236, 252, 266, 280,
297, 313, 366, 431, 444
Welter, 184
Weoch, 311
Went, 11, 127. 294. 451
Wept, 109, 229
Were, 32, 46, 87, 128, 156, 157,
226, 287, 356
Wessex, 18, 19, 20, 33, 89, 90,
100, 101, 103, 173. 184
WES
West of Eogliuid, ei, 226, 244,
252, 2SS, 393, 374, 438, 419,
524. See Scutli-Wfil
W«t Hidland Dialect, 212
Wefltern, Squire, 136
WeBtmiiiBter, 513, 514, 547
Wet, 347
Weiford, 480
Weymouth, 445
Wej-moulh, Mr, 651
What, 4. 7, 25. 52, S3, 88, 108,
lis, ISn. 21g, 245. 247, 562
— BUnds for fui), 224, 270
— BlnodB for gtmd. IIB. 177,
223. 27*1
— ttnndfloiquedcuTigue, 195.408
— Bt»ad» for aiiquid. 56, 224
— etande for el. 182
— btuiida for ret. 224, 256
— T^placee tial. 110, 132
— used as nn Interjection, 72,
421
Whatever, 335, 375
Wh»t deril, 462
What ia your wiU? 421
What say, 45
What time, 223
Whit to do, 436
What manDM of, 420
WhutbO, 94, 223
Whateoei-er, 202, 4«1
r, 231
What!
Wheedle, 77
Wheel, 4
Whelp. 120
When, 46, B3, 177, 438
When that, 413
When.
When
,371
Whens
Where, for ahiHer, 02
Where, rephices tieit. 109, 134,
157, 208, 29S
Whereaboute, 373
665
Wberehy, 106
Wherever, 333
Wherefore, 149, 263, 419, 466
Whereof, 251, 380
Wherenoever, 263, 277
Wherewith. 107, 105
Whether (nter), 4, 7, 62, 408
Which, 53, 53, 146, 166, 160,
161, 1B2, 172, ns, 183, 223,
247, 276, 302, 375, 44fl
— need as a Neuter, 276, 292,
826
— used for lUer, 406
— iCa old aenao dropped, 420
Which ia vhich. 406
Which one, 406
Which so ever, 1S3
Which, the, 406
Whiff, 417
While, 62, 111, 164, 187, 232,
412
Whilea, 111.295, 4SI
Whilom, 16, 111, 230, 294
Whilst that, 208, 271, 443
Whine, 312
Whip, 310
Whirlwind, 218
Whithy, 96, 445
Whitfl, 104
White, Mr., 212
Whiten. 329
Whither, 4, 34
Whiuuntide, 252
Who (A)). 4, 7, 26, 63, S6. 66.
134, 165, 160, 162, 177, 183,
190, 223, 265, 271, 276. 325.
422
~ attuula after ht, 207, 271
Who but, 384
Whole, 122, 247, 287
Whole men, the, 407
Wholesome, IBS
^6
Index,
WHO
Wholly, 412
Whom, 25, 406.
Whom should I meet, 407
Whoreson, 439
Whose, 25, 302
Whoso, 66, 164, 200, 207, 224,
260, 273, 302, 310, 371
WhosoeTer, 255
Why, 25, 52, 58 ; an expletive,
59, 416
Why for, 149
Wicked, 167, 237, 338
Wickedness, 321, 822
WickliflFe, 27, 52, 85, 112, 113.
118, 121, 185, 267, 311, 352,
373, 389, 400, 406, 408, 420,
526, 552, 582, 585
Wide, the, 383
Widow, 3, 344
Width, 402
Wife, 80, 145, 176
Wight (/or<M), 247
Wight, Isle of, 19, 77
Wilderness, 81
Wiles, 151, 237
Wilful, 268, 328
Will, to, 422
Will, the Auxiliary Verb, 10,
116, 204, 244
— contrasted with thaU, 42-44,
457, 458, 464
Willekin, 203, 298, 379, 524
William, the name, 203, 422,
504, 525
WiUiam the First, 102, 127,
129, 132, 143, 492, 500, 505,
508. See Conqueror
William the Englishman, 547
William of Sens, 547
William Kufus, 133. See Hufus
Williamsthorpe, 133
WiUingly, 328
Willy, 298
Willy nilly, 135
WOL
Wiltshire, 426. 481, 482
Wily, 403
Wimple, 198, 507
Win, 410, 421, 459
Winchester, 101, 102, 125, 138,
148, 185, 482, 490, 513
Wind and weather, 262
Winding doth, 401
Window, 273, 296
Wing, 180
Winking, 416
Wintw (anf»u«), 246, 454
Wiieker, Nigel, 203, 456
Wis, the Teutonic Suffix, 16
Wist, 351
Wit, 10
With (mte^, its meanings, 67, 68,
232, 239, 251, 263, 264, 302,
345, 346, 350, 356, 364, 376,
389, 300, 414. 462
— the Teutonic Prefix, 15
With that, 256
With the best, 251, 404
With will. 402
Withal, 232, 259
Withdraw, 278, 4S6
Withhold, 278
Within, 232
Without, 129, 206
— followed by the InfinitaTe, as
in French, 259, 384, 440
Witness, to, 279
Wits, the Five, 564
Wittol, 12, 16
Wizened, 78
Wobble, 253
Woe, 107. 190
Woebegone, 307
Woeful, 408
Woe me, 173, 178, 190
Wohung of our Lord, the, 269,
270, 508
Wolf. 3, 5, 14, 108, 206, 844
Wolsey, 84
WOM
Woman, 122, Z54, 257, 334,378
Womb. 2SI, 403
WoDderfal, 323
Wont [toltrt). 182, 244, 248,
332, 344, 400
Won't, 206
Woo, 274
Wood. 206
Wood-hoEBy, 39
Wool, 206
Wool-pack, 434
Worcester, 33, 93, 133. 141,
200, 213, 243, 244, 253, 370,
392, 432, fi2e
Word come, 126
Word tot word. MB
Work, SO, 06, 157, 244
Workadny, 221
Workmanlike, 6, 16
World, 115, 190, 220, 200, 369
Worae, 332
Worahip, 217
WorahipfiU, 466
Wort, 77
Worth ifieriy i
Worthy, 33, 76, 131, 374, 442
Wot, 10, 366,308, 452
Would, 33, 244, 287
— the old use of, 132, 177
Would <?od, 395, 458
Would have dooe, 177
WouDd. 205
Wrap, 467
Wrath, 32
Wreck. 210, 402
Wrench, 255, 264
Wreatle, 264
Wretch, 280
Wretched, 450
WretchediieM, 321,331
Wriggle, 429
Wrigbt, SO. 218
Wright, Mr.. 123, 338, S77.
42S, 494, 544, 645
YKA
Wrinkle, 77
Write, 114
Wrong, 127, 1S4, 230, 237, 383
Wrong, to, 208
WrongouA. 184
Wrongonsne**, 401
Wroth, 100, 287,426
Wrought, 96, 160, 218, 288
WjEBtre ((^etw), 181
Wyntonn, 660, 656
** writtRU for «, as in French,
105, 131, 144, 16(^ 166, 174,
206, 288
— repreaentB the enffix ig, 16,
683
— used aa a Prefli, 204
— written for t, 76, 117
— written for ea, 462
— WTitten for to, 347
— wrilten for J, 214,462
— written foe Ih, 433
— thrown ont, 9 1
— is inserted, 431, 673
Yard, 203, 249
Yara. 117
Yarmouth, 431
Yawn, 28
Ye, 4, 26, 160, 324
— used for rW, 292, 411,450
— used foruoB, 387, 442
— nsedinaddreHeinga superior
427. 466, 466
Ye know, 424
Ye sbiUI see, 409
Yea, 60, 82, 269
Year, 11, 33, 188, 191
Year of Grace, 436
668
Index,
YKA
Yenm, 146, 288
Yeatman, 288
Yell, 264
Yelp, 77, 288
Yeoman, 417
Yes, 60, 226
Yet, 144. 327, 364, 398
Yh replaces g^ 302, 320
Yield, 160, 288
Yip. 38, 297. 499
Ymbe. 183
Yoke, 3, 9, 117, 122, 192
Yon, 419, 466
Yonder, 61, 223
Yonge, Miss, 688
York, Richard, Duke of, 462,
636
York, change of its name, 98.
&'«al80 141, 144, 210. 318,
319,366,446
Yorkshire. 30, 61, 102, 111,
117, 118, 120, 131, 134, 139,
143, 161, 166, 176, 182, 212,
230, 238, 263, 269, 276, 296,
296, 304, 318, 319, 321, 823,
324, 336, 337, 378, 381, 383.
384, 396, 397, 403, 406, 409,
410, 412, 416, 417, 419, 420,
460, 462, 476, 649, 660,
653-666, 660, 663, 564, 666,
671
You, 26, 169, 186, 204
— used for ihm, 312, 361
— used for ye, 248, 346
You were best go, 427
ZEB
Young, 3, 33, 117. 204, 288,
364
Young one, 407
Young to be king, 437
Younglike. 323
Your, 26, 28, 144, 160. 191
— stands for thine^ 207
Your traitor, 276
Yours. 222, 362, 405
Youth, 189, 276, 311
Yowl. 366
Yule, 239, 461,661
^ a new character in English ;
o, replaces c, 216
— replaces^, 160, 174, 191,202,
216
— replaces ^, 246, 390
— firat set at the end of a word,
216
— written for the sound « or ^ ,
218, 262, 676
— written like ik, 358, 371
Jeond {'peT)y is dropped, 278
?er8alem^(«7mwa29m), 237
Jho (A«?), 212
Z stands for «, 34, 35, 87,
499
— how pronounced in Italj, 36
Zer, answers in High Gennan
to English to, 183
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