PREFACE.

THIS BOOK does not pretend to be a history of the English tongue; I attempt nothing more than to trace the way in which one special dialect took the lead in our island; I also try to point out the earliest instances of corruptions in our speech. Hence attention must be given to the North rather than to the South; we must think more of the first appearance of the New in the Northumbrian Versions of the Bible, than of the last traces of the Old in the Ayenbite of Inwyt and works still more modern. We must look to York rather than to Canterbury. I may mention that, until I began to study English with thoroughness, I had no idea how much of our Standard speech is due to Northern shires; how much influence the Norsemen have had in our land;1

When weighing the corruptions of the Old English, we shall find that two-thirds of these are due to the shires held by the the remaining one-third is due to the Lower Severn and to the shires lying south of the Thames.

Norsemen ;