English Dialects From the Eighth Century to the Present Day | Page 9

under sestre ah ofer leht-isern and lihteth allum tha the in modio sed super candelabrum et luceat omnibus qui in
hus bithon vel sint domo sunt.
The history of the Northern dialect during the next three centuries, from the year 1000 to nearly 1300, with a few insignificant exceptions, is a total blank.
CHAPTER IV
THE DIALECTS OF NORTHUMBRIA; A.D. 1300-1400
A little before 1300, we come to a Metrical English Psalter, published by the Surtees Society in 1843-7. The language is supposed to represent the speech of Yorkshire. It is translated (rather closely) from the Latin Vulgate version. I give a specimen from Psalm xviii, 14-20.
14. He sent his arwes, and skatered tha; Felefalded levening, and dreved tham swa. 15. And schewed welles of watres ware, And groundes of ertheli world unhiled are, For thi snibbing, Laverd myne; For onesprute of gast of wreth thine. 16. He sent fra hegh, and uptoke me; Fra many watres me nam he. 17. He out-toke me thare amang Fra my faas that war sa strang, And fra tha me that hated ai; For samen strenghthed over me war thai 18. Thai forcome me in daie of twinging, And made es Layered mi forhiling. 19. And he led me in brede to be; Sauf made he me, for he wald me; 20. And foryhelde to me Laverd sal After mi rightwisenes al. And after clensing of mi hende Sal he yhelde to me at ende.
The literal sense is:--"He sent His arrows and scattered them; multiplied (His) lightning and so afflicted them. And the wells of waters were shown, and the foundations of the earthly world are uncovered because of Thy snubbing (rebuke), O my Lord! because of the blast (Lat. _inspiratio_) 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 affliction, and the Lord is made my protection. And He led me (so as) to be in a broad place; He made me safe, because He desired (lit. would) me; and the Lord shall requite me according to all my righteousness, and according to the cleanness of my hands shall He repay me in the end."
In this specimen we can already discern some of the chief characteristics which are so conspicuous in Lowland Scotch MSS. of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The most striking is the almost total loss of the final _-e_ which is so frequently required to form an extra syllable when we try to scan the poetry of Chaucer. Even where a final _-e_ is written in the above extract, 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-��d_, _drev-��d_, _hat-��d_, etc., and _arw-��s_, _well-��s_, _watr-��s_, etc. The curious form sal, for "shall," is a Northern characteristic. So also is the form hende as the plural of "hand"; the Southern plural was often _hond-en_, and the Midland form was _hond-��s_ or _hand-��s_. Note also the characteristic long _a_; as in swa for swo, so; gast, ghost; fra, fro; faas, foes. It was pronounced like the a in father.
A much longer specimen of the Metrical English Psalter will be found in Specimens of Early English, ed. Morris and Skeat,
Part II,
pp. 23-34, and is easily accessible. In the same volume, the Specimens numbered VII, VIII, X, XI, and XVI are also in Northumbrian, and can easily be examined. It will therefore suffice to give a very brief account of each.
VII. Cursor Mundi, or Cursor o Werld, i.e. Over-runner of the World; so called because it rehearses a great part of the world's history, from the creation onwards. It is a poem of portentous 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, being the Historia Scholastica of Peter Comestor. Dr Murray thinks it may have been written in the neighbourhood of Durham. The specimen given (pp. 69-82) corresponds to lines 11373-11796.
VIII. _Sunday Homilies in Verse_; about 1330. The extracts are taken from English Metrical Homilies, edited by J. Small (Edinburgh, 1862) from a MS. in Edinburgh. The Northern dialect is well marked, but I do not know to what locality to assign it.
X. Richard Rolle, of Hampole, near Doncaster, wrote a poem called The Prick of Conscience, about