English Dialects From the Eighth Century to the Present Day

y in 1843-7. The language is supposed to represent the speech of Yorkshire. It is translated

is arwes, and

vening, and d

wed welles o

f ertheli worl

ibbing, La

e of gast of

fra hegh, an

watres

-toke me t

s that war

ha me tha

enghthed over

ome me in dai

Layered mi

led me in b

he me, for

yhelde to m

rightwi

clensing o

elde to m

atio) of the breath of Thy wrath. He sent from on high, and took me up; from many waters He took me. He took me out there-among from my foes that were so strong, and from those that alway hated me; for they were strengthened together over me. They came before me in the day of affl

ct, it is wholly silent. The words ware (were), are (are), myne, thine, toke, made, brede, hende, ende, are all monosyllabic; and in fact the large number of monosyllabic words is very striking. The words onesprute, forcome, foryhelde are, in like manner, dissyllabic. The only suffixes that count in the scansion are -en, -ed, and -es; as in sam-en, skat'r-èd, drev-èd, hat-è

at, Part ii, pp. 23-34, and is easily accessible. In the same volume, the Specimens numbered vii, viii, x, xi, and xvi

ous length, extending to 29,655 lines, and recounts many of the events found in the Old and New Testaments, with the addition of legends from many other sources, one of them, for example,

trical Homilies, edited by J. Small (Edinburgh, 1862) from a MS. in Edinburgh. The

ecial value, as it carefully describes the characteristics of Northumbrian, and practically laid the foundation of our knowledge of the old dialects as exhibited in MSS. Lists are given of orthographical differences between the Nort

Ritson in 1795; and subsequently by T. Wright, in his Political Poems and Songs (London, 1859); and are now very accessible in the excellent and cheap (second) edition by Joseph Hall (Oxford University

he Early English Text Society) in 1870-89; and again (for the Scottish Text Society) in 1893-5. Unfortunately, the two extant MSS. were both written out about a century after the date of composition. Nevertheless, we have the text of more than 260 li

dyre oure ky

d had to ste

x yhere and

ate effty

off Scotland,

hame, and f

kyng, thare

wncestry c

hat aucht6 t

d rycht thar

that is sa

me mad di

have the Ba

cumyn off t

he eldest

um nyt11 al

at he thare

in als ne

wes off the

rawnchys co

ured? 5. choose? 6. possessed? 7. royalty? 8. most? 9. e

olk, fulle

thowcht14 yo

e to yowe m

ht wroucht o

kepe16, how t

forowtyn su

to wyn the

his mycht

ware till h

was, and

till sic t

hat ware off

fwte, as r

folk he wa

of Walis in

ra evyn fe

wallyd to

ld lyff and

hryllage27 t

-come with h

red? 19. sovereignty? 20. bordering? 21. such subjection? 22. high rank? 23

re either obsolete or provincial. Many of the obsolete words are found in other dialects; thus stere, to control, perfay, fonden (for fanden), chesen, to choose, feloun, adj. meaning "angry," take kepe, soiourne, to tarry, travaile, to labour, parage, rank, all occur in Chaucer; barnage, reauté, in William of Palerne (in the Midland dialect, possibly Shropshire); oughte, owned, possessed, tyne, to lose, in Piers

n and exposition of the Psalter, edited by the Rev. H.R. Bramley (Oxford, 1884), and the Prose Treatises edited by the Rev. G.G. Perry for the Early Engli

ray will probably come as a surprise to many, though they have now been before the public for more than forty years. The Durham dialect of the Cursor Mundi and the Aberdeen Scotch of Barbour are hardly distinguishable by grammatical or orthographical tests; and both bear a remarkable resemblance to the Yorkshire dialect as found in Hampole. What is now called Lowland Scotch is so nearly descended from the Old Northumbrian that the latter was invariably called "Ingliss" by the writers who employed it; and they reserved the name of "Scottish" to

s, manlik o

ottis be meki

tong, for Ingl

e lycht." It was not till 1513 that Gawain Douglas, in the Prologue to the first book of his translation of Virgil, claimed to have "writtin in the langage of Scottis natioun"

race or speech, but solely to locality; and yet, as Dr Murray remarks, the struggle for supremacy "made every one either an Englishman or a Scotchman, and made English and Scotch names of division and bitter enmity." So strong, indeed, was the division thus created that it has continued to the present day; and it would be very difficult even now to convince a native of the Scottish Lowlands-unless

Dr Murray once

pecially on being told that Richard the Hermit [i.e. of Hampole] wrote in the extreme south of Yorkshire, within a few miles of a locality so thoroughly English as Sherwood Forest, with its memories of Robin Hood. Such is the difficulty which people have in separating the natural

rded that their native language was "Inglis" or "Inglisch"; and it is interesting to note that, having