English Dialects From the Eighth Century to the Present Day | Page 5

being a contraction of hrindge or hrindige, plural of the adjective
hrindig, which is preserved in our dialects, in the form rindy, to this
very day. In direct contradiction of a common popular error that
regards our dialectal forms as being, for the most part, "corrupt," it will
be found by experience that they are remarkably conservative and
antique.
CHAPTER II
DIALECTS IN EARLY TIMES
The history of our dialects in the earliest periods of which we have any
record is necessarily somewhat obscure, owing to the scarcity of the

documents that have come down to us. The earliest of these have been
carefully collected and printed in one volume by Dr Sweet, entitled The
Oldest English Texts, edited for the Early English Text Society in 1885.
Here we already find the existence of no less than four dialects, which
have been called by the names of Northumbrian, Mercian, Wessex (or
Anglo-Saxon), and Kentish. These correspond, respectively, though not
quite exactly, to what we may roughly call Northern, Midland,
Southern, and Kentish. Whether the limits of these dialects were always
the same from the earliest times, we cannot tell; probably not, when the
unsettled state of the country is considered, in the days when repeated
invasions of the Danes and Norsemen necessitated constant efforts to
repel them. It is therefore sufficient to define the areas covered by these
dialects in quite a rough way. We may regard the Northumbrian or
Northern as the dialect or group of dialects spoken to the north of the
river Humber, as the name implies; the Wessex or Southern, as the
dialect or group of dialects spoken to the south of the river Thames; the
Kentish as being peculiar to Kent; and the Mercian as in use in the
Midland districts, chiefly to the south of the Humber and to the north of
the Thames. The modern limits are somewhat different, but the above
division of the three chief dialects (excluding Kentish) into Northern,
Midland, and Southern is sufficient for taking a broad general view of
the language in the days before the Norman Conquest.
The investigation of the differences of dialect in our early documents
only dates from 1885, owing to the previous impossibility of obtaining
access to these oldest texts. Before that date, it so happened that nearly
all the manuscripts that had been printed or examined were in one and
the same dialect, viz. the Southern (or Wessex). The language
employed in these was (somewhat unhappily) named "Anglo-Saxon";
and the very natural mistake was made of supposing that this
"Anglo-Saxon" was the sole language (or dialect) which served for all
the "Angles" and "Saxons" to be found in the "land of the Angles" or
England. This is the reason why it is desirable to give the more general
name of "Old English" to the oldest forms of our language, because this
term can be employed collectively, so as to include Northumbrian,
Mercian, "Anglo-Saxon" and Kentish under one designation. The name
"Anglo-Saxon" was certainly rather inappropriate, as the speakers of it

were mostly Saxons and not Angles at all; which leads up to the
paradox that they did not speak "English"; for that, in the extreme
literal sense, was the language of the Angles only! But now that the
true relationship of the old dialects is known, it is not uncommon for
scholars to speak of the Wessex dialect as "Saxon," and of the
Northumbrian and Mercian dialects as "Anglian"; for the latter are
found to have some features in common that differ sharply from those
found in "Saxon."
Manuscripts in the Southern dialect are fairly abundant, and contain
poems, homilies, land-charters, laws, wills, translations of Latin
treatises, glossaries, etc.; so that there is considerable variety. One of
the most precious documents is the history known as the _Anglo-Saxon
Chronicle_, which was continued even after the Conquest till the year
1154, when the death and burial of King Stephen were duly recorded.
But specimens of the oldest forms of the Northern and Midland dialects
are, on the other hand, very much fewer in number than students of our
language desire, and are consequently deserving of special mention.
They are duly enumerated in the chapters below, which discuss these
dialects separately.
Having thus sketched out the broad divisions into which our dialects
may be distributed, I shall proceed to enter upon a particular discussion
of each group, beginning with the Northern or Northumbrian.
CHAPTER III
THE DIALECTS OF NORTHUMBRIA; TILL A.D. 1000
In Professor Earle's excellent manual on Anglo-Saxon Literature,
chapter V is entirely occupied with "the Anglian Period," and begins
thus:--"While Canterbury was so important a seminary of learning,
there was, in the Anglian region of Northumbria, a development of
religious and intellectual life which makes it natural to regard the
whole brilliant period from