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Peterborough Chronicle of r r 54, we find a rapid development of
this dialect, which was before long to become the national
literary language. In this, the first great work is the Ormulurn,
or metrical Scripture paraphrase of Orm or Ormin, written about
rzoo, somewhere near the northern frontier of the midland area.
The dialect has a decided smack of the north, and shows for the
first time in English literature a large percentage of Scandinavian
words, derived from the Danish settlers, who, in adopting
English, had preserved a vast number of their ancestral forms of
speech, which were in time to pass into the common language, of
which they now constitute some of the most familiar words.
Blunt, bull, die, dwell, ill, kid, raise, same, thrive, wand, wing,
are words from this source, which appear first in the work of
Orm, of which the following lines may be quoted:-
“ De Iudewisshe folkess boc
hemm se33de, Patt hemm birrde
Twa bukkes samenn to Pe preost
att kirrke-dure brinngenn;,
And te33 Pa didenn bliPeli3,
swa summ be boc hemm tahhte,
And brohhtenn twe33enn bukkess Par
Drihhtin Paerwibp to lakenn.
And att 1 te kirrke-dure toc
be preost ta twe33enn bukkess,
And o Patt an he le33de Pwr
all pe33re sake and sinne,
And lét itt eornenn forPwiPP all
ut inntill wilde wesste;
And toc and snaP Fatt oben' bucc
Drihhtin Paerwibli to lakenn.
All Piss wass don forr here ned,
and ec forr ure nede;
For hemm itt hallp biforenn Godd
to clennssenn hemm of sinne;
And all swa ma33 itt hellpenn be
Ziff Fatt tu willt [itt] foll3henn.
Biff batt tu willt full innwarrdlii
wilvb fulle trowwbe lefenn
All Fatt tatt wass bitacnedd taer,
to lefenn and to trowwenn."
Ormulum, ed. White, l. 1324.
The author of the Orniulum was a phonetist, and employed a
special spelling of his own to represent not only the quality but
the quantities of vowels and consonants-a circumstance which
gives his work a peculiar value to the investigator. He is
generally assumed to have been a native of Lincolnshire or Notts,
but the point is a disputed one, and there is somewhat to be said
for the neighbourhood of Ormskirk in Lancashire.
It is customary to differentiate between east and west midland,
and to subdivide these again into north and south. As was
natural in a tract of country which stretched from Lancaster to
Essex, a very considerable variety is found in the documents
which agree in presenting the leading midland features, those of
Lancashire and Lincolnshire approaching the northern dialect
both in vocabulary, phonetic character and greater neglect of
inflections. But this diversity diminishes as we advance.
Thirty years after the Orrnuluni, the east midland rhymed
Story of Genesis and Exodus' shows us the dialect in a more
southern form, with the vowels of modern English, and from
about the same date, with rather more northern characteristics,
we have an east midland Bestiary.
Different tests and different dates have been proposed for
subdividing the Middle English period, but the most important
is that of Henry Nicol, based on the observation that in the
early 13th century, as in Ormin, the Old English short vowels
in an open syllable still retained their short quantity, as ndma,
over, méte; but by IZSO or 1260 they had been lengthened to
nd-me, 6-ver, rné~te, a change which has also taken place at a
particular period in all the Germanic, and even the Rornanic
languages, as in bu6~no for bd-num, pa-dre for pd-trem, &c. The
lengthening of the penult left the final syllable by contrast
shortened or weakened, and paved the way for the disappearance
of final e rn the century following, through the stages nd-me,
Here, and in tatt, tu, taer, for patt, pu, Poet, after t, d, there is
the same phonetic assimilation as in the last section of the Anglo-Saxon
Chronicle above. .
2 Edited for the Early English Text Society by Dr Morris (1865).
nd-me, nd-rn', - nam, the one long syllable in nam(e) being the
quantitative equivalent of the two short syllables in nd-rné;
hence the notion that mute e makes a preceding vowel long,
the truth being that the lengthening of the vowel led to the e
becoming mute.,
After 1250 we have the Lay of Haoelok, and about 1300 the
writings of Robert of Brunne in South Lincolnshire. In the
14th century we find a number of texts belonging to the western
part of the district. South-west midland is hardly to be distinguished
from southern in its south-western form, and hence texts
like Piers Plowrhan elude any satisfactory classification, but
several metrical romances exhibit what are generally considered
to be west midland characteristics, and a little group of poems,
Sir Gawayne and the Grene Knighte, the Pearl, Cleanness and
Patience, thought to be the work of a north-west midland writer
of the 14th century, bear a striking resemblance to the modern
Lancashire dialect. The end of the century witnessed the prose
of I Wyclilf and Mandeville, and the poetry of Chaucer, with
Whom Middle English may be said to have culminated, and in
whose writings its main characteristics as distinct from Old and
Modern English may be studied. Thus, we find final e in full
use representing numerous original vowels and terminations as
Him thoughté that his hertewolde breké,
in Old English- .
Him Duhte Pat his heorte wolde brecan,
which may be compared with the modern German-Ihm
dauchte dass sein Herze wollte brechen.
In nouns the -es of the plural and genitive case is still syllabic-Reede
as the berstl-es of a sow-es eer-es.
Several old genitives and plural forms continued to exist
and the dative or prepositional case has usually a final e.
Adjectives retain so much of the old declension as to have -e
in the definite form and in the plural-The
tend-re cropp-es and the yong-e sonne.
And smal-e fowl-»es maken melodic.
Numerous old forms of comparison were in use, which have
not come down to Modern English, as herre, ferre, lenger, hexthigher,
farther, longer, highest. In the pronouns, ich lingered
alongside of I; ye was only nominative, and you objective;
the northern thei had dispossessed the southern hy, but her and
hem (the modern 'em) stood their ground against their and them.
The verb is I lov-e, thou loo-est, he lov-eth; but, in the plural,
lov-en is interchanged with loo-e, as rhyme or euphony requires.
So in the plural of the past 'we love-den or love-de. The infinitive
also ends in en, often e, always syllabic. The present participle,
in Old English -ende, passing through -inde, has been confounded
with the verbal noun in -ynge, -yng, as in Modern English. The
past participle largely retains the prehx y- or i-, representing
the Old English ge-, as in i-ronne, y-don, Old English zerunnen,
I
zed6n, run, done. Many old verb forms- still continued in
existence. The adoption of French words, not only those of
Norman introduction, butthose subsequently introduced under
the Angevin kings, to supply obsolete and obsolescent English
ones, which had kept pace with the growth of literature since
the beginning of the Middle English period, had now reached
its climax; later times added many more, but they also dropped
some that were in regular use with Chaucer and his contemporaries.
Chaucer's great contemporary, William Langland, in his
Vision of William concerning Piers the Ploughman, and his
imitator the author of Pierce the Ploughrnarfs Crede (about 1400)
used the Old English alliterative versihcation for the last time
in the south. Rhyme had made its appearance in the language
shortly after the Conquest-if not already known before; and
in the south and midlands it became decidedly more popular
than alliteration; the latter retain edits hold mu clii longer in the.
north, where it was written even.after fgbo: .many of the
northern romances are either simply alliterative, or have both
alliteration and rhyme. To these", characteristics of northern
and southern verse respectively Chaucer alludes in the prologue
of the “ Persone, ” who, when -called upon for his tale said:-<noinclude><references/></div></noinclude>