University of Virginia Library

08. CHAPTER VIII
THE MERCIAN DIALECT

I. EAST MIDLAND

The Mercian district lies between the Northern and Southern, occupying an irregular area which it is very difficult to define. On the east coast it reached from the mouth of the Humber to that of the Thames. On the western side it seems to have included a part of Lancashire, and extended from the mouth of the Lune to the Bristol Channel, exclusive of a great part of Wales.

There were two chief varieties of it which differed in many particulars, viz. the East Midland and the West Midland. The East Midland included, roughly speaking, the counties of Lincoln, Rutland, Northampton, and Buckingham, and all the counties (between the Thames and Humber) to the east of these, viz. Cambridge, Huntingdon, Bedford, Hertford, Middlesex, Norfolk, Suffolk, and Essex. We must also certainly include, if not Oxfordshire, at any rate the city of Oxford. This is by far the most important

group of counties, as it was the East Midland that finally prevailed over the rest, and was at last accepted as a standard, thus rising from the position of a dialect to be the language of the Empire. The Midland prevailed over the Northern and Southern dialects because it was intermediate between them, and so helped to interpret between North and South; and the East Midland prevailed over the Western because it contained within its area all three of the chief literary centres, namely, Oxford, Cambridge, and London. It follows from this that the Old Mercian dialect is of greater interest than either the Northumbrian or Anglo-Saxon.

Unfortunately, the amount of extant Old Mercian, before the Conquest, is not very large, and it is only of late years that the MSS. containing it have been rightly understood. Practically, the study of it dates only from 1885, when Dr Sweet published his Oldest English Texts.

But there is more Mercian to be found than was at first suspected; and it is desirable to consider this question.

An important discovery was that the language of the oldest Glossaries seems to be Mercian. We have extant no less than four Glossaries in MSS. of as early a date as the eighth century, named respectively, the Epinal, Erfurt, Corpus, and Leyden Glossaries. The first is now at Epinal, in France (in the department

Vosges); the second, at Erfurt, near Weimar, in Germany; the third, in Corpus Christi College, Cambridge; and the fourth, at Leyden, in Holland. The Corpus MS. may be taken as typical of the rest. It contains an enumeration of a large number of difficult words, arranged, but imperfectly, in alphabetical order; and after each of these is written its gloss or interpretation. Thus the fifth folio begins as follows:

The chief interest of these Glossaries lies in the fact that a small proportion of the hard words is explained, not in Latin, but in Mercian English, of which there are two examples in the six glosses here quoted. Thus Abelena, which is another spelling of Abellana or Avellana, "a filbert," is explained as "haeselhnutu"; which is a perfectly familiar word when reduced to its modern form of "hazel-nut." And again, Abies, which usually means "a fir-tree," is here glossed by "etspe." But this is certainly a false spelling, as we see by comparing it with the following glosses in Epinal and Erfurt (Nos. 37, 1006):--"Abies. saeppae--sæpae"; and "Tremulus. aespae--espæ." This shows that the scribe ought to have explained Abies by "saeppae," meaning the tree full of sap, called in French sapin; but he confused it with

another tree, the "trembling" tree, of which the Old Mercian name was "espe" or "espæ," or "aespae," and he miswrote espe as etspe, inserting a needless t. This last tree is the one which Chaucer called the asp in l. 180 of his Parliament of Fowls, but in modern times the adjectival suffix -en (as in gold-en, wood-en) has been tacked on to it, and it is now the aspen.

The interpretation of these ancient glosses requires very great care, but they afford a considerable number of interesting results, and are therefore valuable, especially as they give us spellings of the eighth century, which are very scarce.

One of the oldest specimens of Old Mercian that affords intelligible sentences is known as the "Lorica Prayer," because it occurs in the same MS. (Ll. 1. 10 in the Cambridge University Library) as the "Lorica Glosses," or the glosses which accompany a long Latin prayer, really a charm, called "lorica" or "breast-plate," because it was recited thrice a day to protect the person who used it from all possible injury and accident. I give this Prayer as illustrating the state of our language about A.D. 850.

And the georne gebide gece and miltse fore alra his haligra gewyrhtum and ge-earningum and boenum be [hiwe]num, tha the domino deo gelicedon from fruman middan-geardes; thonne gehereth he thec thorh hiora thingunge. Do thonne fiorthan sithe thin hleor thriga to iorthan, fore alle Godes cirican, and sing thas fers: domini est salus, saluum fac populum tuum, domine, praetende misericordiam tuam. Sing thonne pater noster.

Gebide thonne fore alle geleaffulle menn in mundo. Thonne bistu thone deg dael-niomende thorh Dryhtnes gefe alra theara goda the ænig monn for his noman gedoeth, and thec alle soth-festæ fore thingiath in caelo et in terra. Amen.

That is:--

And earnestly pray for-thyself for help and mercy by-reason-of the deeds and merits and prayers of all his saints on-behalf-of the [households] that have pleased the Lord God from the beginning of the world; then will He hear thee because-of their intercession. Bow-down then, at the fourth time, thy face thrice to the earth before all God's church, and sing these verses: The Lord is my salvation, save Thy people, O Lord: show forth Thy mercy. Sing then a pater-noster. Pray then for all believing men in the world. Then shalt thou be, on that day, a partaker, by God's grace, of all the good things that any man doth for His name, and all true-men will intercede for thee in heaven and in earth. Amen.

Another discovery was the assignment of a correct description to the glosses found in a document known as the Vespasian Psalter; so called because it is an early Latin Psalter, or book of Psalms, contained in a Cotton MS. in the British Museum, marked with the class-mark "Vespasian, A. 1." This Psalter is accompanied throughout with glosses which were at first mistakenly thought to be in a Northumbrian dialect, and were published as such by the Surtees Society in 1843. They were next, in 1875, wrongly supposed to be Kentish; but since they were printed by Sweet in 1885 it has been shown that they are really

Mercian. This set of glosses is very important for the study of Old Mercian, because they are rather extensive; they occupy 213 pages of the Oldest English Texts, and are followed by 20 more pages of similar glosses to certain Latin canticles and hymns that occur in the same MS.

There are also a few Charters extant in the Mercian dialect, but the earliest contain little else than old forms of the names of persons and places. There are, however, some later Charters, from 836 to 1058 in the Mercian dialect, which contain some boundaries of lands and afford other information. Most of these relate to Worcestershire.

But the most interesting Mercian glosses are those to be found in the Rushworth MS., which has already been mentioned as containing Northumbrian glosses of the Latin Gospels of St Mark, St Luke, and St John. For the Gospel of St Matthew was glossed by the scribe Farman, who was a priest of Harewood, situate on the river Wharfe, in the West Riding of Yorkshire; whose language, accordingly, was Mercian. In my Principles of English Etymology, First Series (second edition, 1892), p. 44, I gave a list of words selected from these glosses, in order to show how much nearer they stand, as a rule, to modern English than do the corresponding Anglo-Saxon forms. I here repeat this list, as it is very instructive. The references, such as "5. 15," are to

the chapters and verses of St Matthew's Gospel, as printed in my edition of The Holy Gospels, in Anglo-Saxon, Northumbrian, and Old Mercian Versions, synoptically arranged (Cambridge, 1871-87). The first column below gives the Modern English form, the second the Old Mercian form (with references), and the third the Anglo-Saxon or Wessex form:

                                

	MODERN	OLD MERCIAN	WESSEX (A.S.)
	all	all, 5. 15	eall
	are	arun, 19. 28	(not used)
	betwixt	betwix, 27. 56	betweox
	cheek	cēke, 5. 39	cēace
5	cold	cald, 10. 42	ceald
	eke	ēk, 5. 39	ēac
	eleven	enlefan, 28. 16	endlufon
	eye	ēge, 5. 29	ēage
	falleth	falleth, 10. 29	fealleth
10	fell, pt.t.pl.	fellun, 7. 25	fēollon
	-fold	-fald, 19. 29	-feald
	gall, sb.	galla, 27. 34	gealla
	half, sb.	half, 20. 23	healf
	halt, adj.	halt, 11. 5	healt
15	heard, pt.t.s.	(ge)hērde, 2. 3	(ge)hīerde
	lie	līgan, 5. 11	lēogan
	light, sb.	līht, 5. 16	lēoht
	light, adj.	liht, 11. 30	leoht
	narrow	naru, 7. 14	nearu
20	old	áld, 9. 16	eald
	sheep	scēp, 25. 32	scēap
	shoes	scōas, 10. 10	scēos, scȳ
	silver	sylfur, 10. 9	seolfor
	slept, pt.t.pl.	sleptun, 13. 25	slēpon
25	sold, pp.	sald, 10. 19	seald
	spit, vb.	spittan, 27. 30	spǣtan
	wall	wall, 21. 33	weall
	yard (rod)	ierd, 10. 10	gyrd
	yare (ready)	iara, 22. 4	gearo
30	yoke	ioc, 11. 29	geoc
	youth	iuguth, 19. 20	geoguth

In l.5, the scribe Farman miswrote caldas as galdas, in Matt. x 42; but it is a mere mistake. In l. 20, the accent over the a in áld is marked in the MS., though the vowel was not originally long.

Even a glance at this comparative table reveals a peculiarity of the Wessex dialect which properly belongs neither to Mercian nor to Modern English, viz. the use of the diphthong ea (in which each vowel was pronounced separately) instead of simple a, before the sounds denoted by l, r, h, especially when another consonant follows. We find accordingly such Wessex forms as eall, ceald, fealleth, -feald, gealla, healf, healt, nearu, eald, seald, weall, gearo, where the Old Mercian has simply all, cald, falleth, -fald, galla, half, halt, naru, ald, sald, wall, iara. Similarly, Wessex has the diphthongs ēa, ēo, in which the former element is long, where the Old Mercian has simply ē or ī. We find accordingly the Wessex cēace, ēac, ēage, scēap, as against the Mercian cēke, ēk, ēge, scēp; and the Wessex lēogan, lēoht, as against the Mercian līgan, līht.

I have now mentioned nearly all the examples of Old Mercian to be found before the Conquest. After that event it was still the Southern dialect that prevailed, and there is scarcely any Mercian (or Midland) to be found except in the Laud MS. of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, which was written at Peterborough. See the extract, describing the miserable state of England during the reign of Stephen, in Specimens of Early English, Part I.

It was about the year 1200 that the remarkable work appeared that is known by the name of The Ormulum, written in the North-East Midland of Lincolnshire, which is the first clear example of the form which our literary language was destined to assume. It is an extremely long and dreary poem of about 10,000 long lines, written in a sadly monotonous unrimed metre; and it contains an introduction, paraphrases relating to the gospels read in the church during the year, and homilies upon the same. It was named Ormulum by the author after his own name, which was Orm; and the sole existing MS. is probably in the handwriting of Orm himself, who employed a phonetic spelling of his own invention which he strongly recommends. Owing to this circumstance and to the fact that his very regular metre leaves no doubt as to his grammatical forms, this otherwise uninviting poem has a high philological value. In my book entitled The Chaucer Canon, published at

Oxford in 1900, I quote 78 long lines from the Ormulum, reduced to a simpler system of spelling, at pp. 9-14; and, at pp. 15-18, I give an analysis of the suffixes employed by Orm to mark grammatical inflexions. At pp. 30-41, I give an analysis of similar inflexions as employed by Chaucer, who likewise employed the East Midland dialect, but with such slight modifications of Orm's language as were due to his living in London instead of Lincolnshire, and to the fact that he wrote more than 150 years later. The agreement, as to grammatical usages, of these two authors is extremely close, allowing for lapse of time; and the comparison between them gives most indubitable and valuable results. There is no better way of learning Chaucer's grammar.

As East Midland was spread over a wide area, there are, as might be expected, some varieties of it. The dialects of Lincolnshire and of Norfolk were not quite the same, and both differed somewhat from that of Essex and Middlesex; but the general characteristics of all three sub-dialects are very much alike. As time went on, the speech of the students of Oxford and Cambridge was closely assimilated to that of the court as held in London; and this "educated" type was naturally that to which Caxton and the great writers of the sixteenth century endeavoured to conform.

We have one ancient specimen of the London

dialect which is eminently authentic and valuable, and has the additional advantage of being exactly dated. This is the document known as "The only English Proclamation of Henry III," issued on Oct. 18, 1258. Its intention was to confirm to the people the "Provisions of Oxford," a charter of rights that had been wrested from the king, from which we may conclude that the Proclamation was issued by Henry rather by compulsion than by his own free will. There is a note at the end which tells us that a copy was sent to every shire in England and to Ireland. If every copy had been preserved, we should have a plentiful supply. As it is, only two copies have survived. One is the copy which found its way to Oxford; and the other is the original from which the copies were made, which has been carefully preserved for six centuries and a half in the Public Record Office in London. I here give the contents of the original, substituting y (at the beginning of a word) or gh (elsewhere) for the symbol ȝ, and th for the symbol ƿ, and v for u when between two vowels.

¶ Henri, thurgh Godes fultume king on Engleneloande, Lhoaverd on Yrloande, Duk on Norm(andi), on Aquitaine, and Eorl on Aniow, send igretinge to alle hise holde ilærde and ileawede on Huntendoneschire: thæt witen ye wel alle, thæt we willen and unnen thæt, thæt ure rædesmen alle, other the moare dæl of heom thæt beoth ichosen thurgh us and thurgh thæt loandes

folk on ure kuneriche, habbeth idon and schullen don in the worthnesse of Gode and on ure treowthe, for the freme of the loande, thurgh the besighte of than to-foren iseide redesmen, beo stedefaest and ilestinde in alle thinge, abuten ænde.

And we hoaten alle ure treowe, in the treowthe thæt heo us ogen, thæt heo stedefæstliche healden, and swerien to healden and to werien, tho isetnesses thæt beon imakede and beon to makien, thurgh than to-foren iseide rædesmen, other thurgh the moare dæl of hem, alswo also hit is biforen iseid; And thæt æhc other helpe thæt for to done bi than ilche othe, ayenes alle men, right for to done and to foangen. And noan ne nime of loande ne of eghte, wherthurgh this besighte mughe beon ilet other iwersed on onie wise.

And yif oni other onie cumen her onyenes, we willen and hoaten thæt alle ure treowe heom healden deadliche ifoan. And for thæt we willen thæt this beo stedefæst and lestinde, we senden yew this writ open, iseined with ure seel, to halden a-manges yew me hord.

Witnesse us selven æt Lundene, thane eghtetenthe day on the monthe of Octobre, in the two and fowertighthe yeare of ure cruninge.

And this wes idon ætforen ure isworene redesmen, Boneface archebischop on Kanterburi, Walter of Cantelow, bischop on Wirechestre, Simon of Muntfort, eorl on Leirchestre, Richard of Clare, eorl on Glowchestre and on Hurtforde, Roger Bigod, eorl on Northfolke and marescal on Engleneloande, Perres of Sauveye, Willelm of Fort, eorl on Aubemarle, Iohan of Pleisseiz, eorl on Warewike, Iohan Geffreës sune, Perres of Muntfort, Richard of Grey, Roger of Mortemer, James of Aldithel; and ætforen othre inoghe.

¶ And al on tho ilche worden is isend in-to ævrihce othre shcire over al thære kuneriche on Engleneloande, and ek in-tel Irelonde.

This document presents at first sight many unfamiliar

forms, but really differs from Modern English mainly in the spelling, which of course represents the pronunciation of that period. The grammar is perfectly intelligible, and this is the surest mark of similarity of language; we may, however, note the use of send as a contraction of sendeth, and of oni for "any man" in the singular, while onie, being plural, represents "any men."

The other chief variations are in the vocabulary or word-list, due to the fact that this Proclamation is older than the reigns of the first three Edwards, which was the period when so many words of Anglo-Norman origin entered our language, displacing many words of native origin that thus became obsolete; though some were exchanged for other native words. We may notice, for example, fultume, "assistance"; holde, "faithful"; ilærde and ileawede, "learned and unlearned"; unnen, "grant"; rædesmen, "councillors"; kuneriche, "kingdom"; and so on. I subjoin a closely literal translation, retaining awkward expressions.

¶ Henry, through God's assistance, king in England, Lord in Ireland, Duke in Normandy, in Aquitaine, and Earl in Anjou, sendeth greeting to all his faithful, learned and unlearned, in Huntingdonshire; that wit ye well all, that we will and grant that which our councillors all, or the more deal (part) of them, that be chosen through us and through the land's folk in our kingdom, have done and shall do in the worship of God and in our truth, for the benefit of the land, through the provision of the beforesaid councillors, be steadfast and lasting in all things

without end. And we command all our true-men, in the truth that they us owe, that they steadfastly hold, and swear to hold and to defend, the statutes that be made and be to make, through the aforesaid councillors, or through the more deal of them, even as it is before said; and that each help other that for to do, by the same oath, against all men, right for to do and to receive. And (let) none take of land nor of property, wherethrough this provision may be let or worsened in any wise. And if any-man or any-men come here-against, we will and command that all our true-men hold them (as) deadly foes. And for that we will that thi bes steadfast and lasting, we send you this writ open, signed with our seal, to hold amongst you in hoard. Witness us-selves at London, the eighteenth day in the month of October, in the two and fortieth year of our crowning. And this was done before our sworen councillors, Boneface, archbishop of Canterbury, Walter of Cantelow, bishop of Worcester, Simon of Muntfort, earl of Leicester, ... and before others enough.

¶ And all in the same words is sent into every other shire over all the kingdom in England, and eke into Ireland.

In the year 1303, Robert Manning, of Bourn in Lincolnshire, translated a French poem entitled Manuel des Pechiez (Manual of Sins) into very fair East Midland verse, giving to his translation the title of Handling Synne. Many of the verses are easy and smooth, and the poem clearly shows us that the East Midland dialect was by this time at least the equal of the others, and that the language was good enough to be largely permanent. When we read such lines as:

we have merely to modernise the spelling, and we at once have:

These are lines that could be written now.

An extract from Manning's Handlyng Synne is given in Specimens of Early English, Part II, most of which can be read with ease. The obsolete words are not very numerous, and we meet now and then with half a dozen consecutive lines that would puzzle no one. It is needless to pursue the history of this dialect further. It had, by this time, become almost the standard language, differing from Modern English chiefly in date, and consequently in pronunciation. We pass on from Manning to Chaucer, from Chaucer to Lydgate and Caxton, and from Caxton to Lord Surrey and Sackville and Spenser, without any real change in the actual dialect employed, but only in the form of it.

II. WEST MIDLAND

We have seen that there are two divisions of the Mercian dialect, into East and West Midland.

The West Midland does not greatly differ from the East Midland, but it approaches more nearly, in some respects, to the Northumbrian. The greatest

distinction seems to be in the present and past participles of verbs. In the West Midland, the present participle frequently ends in -and, as in Northumbrian, especially in the Northern part of the Midland area. The East Midland usually employs -ende or -inge instead. In the West Midland, the prefix i- or y- is seldom used for the past participle, whilst the East Midland admits it more freely. In the third person singular of the present tense, the West Midland favours the Northern suffix -es or -is; whilst the East Midland favours the Southern suffix -eth. The suffix -us appears to be altogether peculiar to West Midland, in which it occurs occasionally; and the same is true of -ud for -ed in the preterite of a weak verb.

There is a rather early West Midland Prose Psalter, belonging to the former half of the fourteenth century, which was edited for the Early English Text Society by Dr Karl Bulbring in 1891.

The curious poem called William of Palerne (Palermo) or William and the Werwolf, written in alliterative verse about 1350-60, and edited by me for the E.E.T.S. in 1867, seems to be in a form of West Midland, and has been claimed for Shropshire; nothing is known as to its author.

The very remarkable poem called The Pearl, and three Alliterative Poems by the same author, were first edited by Dr Morris for the E.E.T.S. in 1864; with a preface in which the peculiarities of the dialect

were discussed. Dr Morris showed that the grammatical forms are uniform and consistent throughout, and may be safely characterised as being West Midland. Moreover, they are frequently very like Northumbrian, and must belong to the Northern area of the West Midland dialect. "Much," says Dr Morris, "may be said in favour of their Lancashire origin."

The MS. which contains the above poems also contains the excellent alliterative romance-poem named Sir Gawayne and the Green Knight, evidently written by the same author; so that this poem also may be considered as a specimen of West Midland. For further particulars, see the "Grammatical Details" given in Dr Morris's preface to The Pearl, etc., pp. xxviii-xl. Sir Gawayne was likewise edited by Morris in 1864.

It would not be easy to trace the history of this dialect at a later date, and the task is hardly necessary. It was soon superseded in literary use by the East Midland, with which it had much in common.