Moder of milte and maidin Mari, mercy help us at ure hending, for þi merci. Jhesu for pi moder luve and for pin hali wndis, Hi true in God, fader hal-michttende, pat makede heven and herdepe, and in Jhesu Krist, is anelepi sone, hure laverd, þat was bigotin of pe hali gast, and born of the mainden Marie, pinid under Punce Pilate, festened to the rode, ded and dulvun, licht in til helle, pe pride dai up ras fra dede to live, stegh intil hevenne, sitis on is fadir richt hand, fadir alwaldand, he pen sal cume to deme pe quike an pe dede. Hy troue hy peli gast, and hely kirke, pe samninge of halghes, forgifnes of sinnes, uprisigen of fleyes, and life with-hutin hend. Amen.'1 THE CONTRAST TO THE EAST MIDLAND. (A.D. 1250.) PSALM VIII. Laverd, oure Laverd, hou selkouth is 1 We find the old genitive still uncorrupted, as hevene king, fadir hand. We still say hell fire, Lady day. It is most strange that such words as fanding, stegh, and samninge should ever have dropped out of our speech, since they must have been in the mouths of all Englishmen who knew the simplest truths of religion. L 1 Of mouth of childer and soukand Lesse fra pine aungeles bright; With blisse and mensk pou crouned him yet, And over werkes of þi hend him set. Bou under-laide alle pinges Under his fete pat ought forth-bringes, The above Psalm is a specimen of the Northumbrian Psalter (Surtees Society), a translation which, from its large proportion of obsolete words, must have been compiled about 1250, though it has come down to us only in a transcript made sixty years later. This is the earliest well-marked specimen of the Northern Dialect, spoken at York, Durham, and Edinburgh alike; it was now making its way to Ayr and Aberdeen, and driving out the old Celtic dialects before it. This was the speech 1 Sly (sapiens) has here a most exalted sense; it has been sadly degraded. 'Nasty sly girl!' says one of Mr. Trollopo's matrons, speaking of her son's enchantress. which 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 has 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 speech have been, if York had replaced London as our capital! This Psalter, most likely compiled in Southern Yorkshire, is nearly akin in its spelling to the Lincolnshire Creed in page 139. It has gh for the old h; we find heghest, lagh, sight, fight, neghbur, negh. It substitutes the same gh for g or c; as in sigh, slaghter, sagh. Sometimes the former g gets the sound of y, as in bie (emere); it is thus that we still pronounce the old bycgan, though we spell it with a u in the Southern way. The English word for arcus is written both bough and bow. In Psalm cxxxi. breg is turned into brow; and the consonant is thrown out altogether in slaer (uccisor) in Vol. I. page 11; as also in slaine. This last we saw in Essex in 1180. Hég (fonum) becomes hai, much as it remains. The u and o are often turned into ou, as in the Lincolnshire Creed; we find wound, doun-right, and thought. In Vol. II. page 43, super principes is translated, by our princes; hence our contraction o'er. The English for per is here seen as thrugh, the sound The Midland Present Plural ending in en is sometimes found, as wirken (laborant). Ninety years later, Higden said that this Yorkshire speech was so harsh and rough that it could be hardly understood in the South. 2 It is well known how the Scotch love vowels and get rid of consonants; with them all wool becomes a oo. of which we keep. The Northern Poet sometimes leans to the vowel o; we find swore, spoken, rore, and swolyhe (devorare). What was once gebundne his (vinctos suos) now becomes his bonden (Vol. I. p. 221); new words were soon to be formed from this Participle. There are other forms still preserved in our Version of the Bible, such as brake, spake, and gat. The Plural of foot is now written feet instead of fét; we also find beest and neet. Longè is translated by far in Vol. I. p. 59, and this has prevailed over the Southern ferre. We of course find the Active Participle in and, the old Norse form; sal is used for shall; thai, thair, thaim occur, something like the forms in the Ormulum. We see the correct pou mines, where we should say pou mindest; a twofold corruption. The third Person Singular of the Present ends in s, as gives, does, has; we follow this Northern usage in week-day life, but on Sunday we have recourse in Church to the old Southern forms, giveth, doeth, &c. A remarkable Norse form is seen in Vol. I. page 301; pou is (tu es);1 pon has, which is also found, is not yet grown into thou hast. The old ending of the Imperative Plural is sometimes clipped, though not often; as understande for intelligite. The Northern form of the Present Plural in es appears, as hates, oderunt; and Shakspere sometimes follows this form. Many new phrases crop up for the first time; such as for evermare, fra fer (à longe), al at anes, in mides of, This lingers in Scotland, as in the Jacobite ballad:- 'Cogie, an the King come, I'se be fou and thou's be toom,' This Norse is answers alike to sum, es, and est. four-skore. There are new Relative forms which took a long time to find their way to the South, as nane was wha roned; nane es whilke saufe mas; yhe whilk standes (qui statis), fest, God, pat whilke pou wroght. In the Twelfth Century, these Relatives had only been used in oblique cases; the Nominative who was not used commonly in the South till the Reformation. Another wholly new form is found in this Psalter. We have seen that Orrmin, first of all our writers, used pat, the old Neuter article, to translate ille; and its plural pâ, to translate illi. This pa is still to be found in Scotland (Scott talks of thae loons); it held its ground in Southern England as po down to 1530. The old Dative of this, pâm, is still in use among our lower orders; as, 'look at them lads.' But in Yorkshire, about 1250, pas, our those, a confusion with the old Plural of pes (hic), began to be used for pâ.' Vol. I. page 243: Superbia eorum qui te oderunt,' is translated pride of pas pat pe hates; and many such instances could be given. The writer has elsewhere pese, as in the Essex Homilies, to translate the Latin hi. In this Psalter we see the beginning of the corruptions embodied in the phrase those who speak; a phrase which often with us replaces the rightful they that speak, the Old English pa pe. The whilke set down a little earlier, answering to the Latin qui, gives us the earliest glimpse of the well-known idiom in the first clause of our English Paternoster.2 1 Hampole, ninety years later, has the same corruption, pas for på. 2 Addison, in his Humble Petition of Who' and Which,' makes these Relatives complain of the Jack Sprat That, their supplanter. |