English Dialects From the Eighth Century to the Present Day | Page 4

is said to bolter." Trench further
points out that many of our pure Anglo-Saxon words which lived on into the formation of

our early English, subsequently dropped out of our usual vocabulary, and are now to be
found only in the dialects. A good example is the word eme, an uncle (A.S. {-e}am),
which is rather common in Middle English, but has seldom appeared in our literature
since the tune of Drayton. Yet it is well known in our Northern dialects, and Sir Walter
Scott puts the expression "Didna his eme die" in the mouth of Davie Deans (Heart of
Midlothian, ch. XII). In fact, few things are more extraordinary in the history of our
language than the singularly capricious manner in which good and useful words emerge
into or disappear from use in "standard" talk, for no very obvious reason. Such a word as
yonder is common enough still; but its corresponding adjective yon, as in the phrase "yon
man," is usually relegated to our dialects. Though it is common in Shakespeare, it is
comparatively rare in the Middle English period, from the twelfth to the fifteenth century.
It only occurs once in Chaucer, where it is introduced as being a Northern word; and it
absolutely disappears from record in the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth centuries.
Bosworth's Anglo-Saxon Dictionary gives no example of its use, and it was long
supposed that it would be impossible to trace it in our early records. Nevertheless, when
Dr Sweet printed, for the first time, an edition of King Alfred's translation of Pope
Gregory's Pastoral Care, an example appeared in which it was employed in the most
natural manner, as if it were in everyday use. At p. 443 of that treatise is the
sentence--"Aris and gong to geonre byrg," i.e. Arise and go to yon city. Here the A.S.
geon (pronounced like the modern yon) is actually declined after the regular manner,
being duly provided with the suffix -re, which was the special suffix reserved only for the
genitive or dative feminine. It is here a dative after the preposition to.
There is, in fact, no limit to the good use to which a reverent study of our dialects may be
put by a diligent student. They abound with pearls which are worthy of a better fate than
to be trampled under foot. I will content myself with giving one last example that is really
too curious to be passed over in silence.
It so happens that in the Anglo-Saxon epic poem of Beowulf, one of the most remarkable
and precious of our early poems, there is a splendid and graphic description of a lonely
mere, such as would have delighted the heart of Edgar Allan Poe, the author of Ulalume.
In Professor Earle's prose translation of this passage, given in his Deeds of Beowulf, at p.
44, is a description of two mysterious monsters, of whom it is said that "they inhabit
unvisited land, wolf-crags, windy bluffs, the dread fen-track, where the mountain
waterfall amid precipitous gloom vanisheth beneath--flood under earth. Not far hence it is,
reckoning by miles, that the Mere standeth, and over it hang rimy groves; a wood with
clenched roots overshrouds the water." The word to be noted here is the word rimy, i.e.
covered with rime or hoar-frost. The original Anglo-Saxon text has the form hrinde, the
meaning of which was long doubtful. Grein, the great German scholar, writing in 1864,
acknowledged that he did not know what was intended, and it was not till 1880 that light
was first thrown upon the passage. In that year Dr Morris edited, for the first time, some
Anglo-Saxon homilies (commonly known as the Blickling Homilies, because the MS. is
in the library of Blickling Hall, Norfolk); and he called attention to a passage (at p. 209)
where the homilist was obviously referring to the lonely mere of the old poem, in which
its overhanging groves were described as being hrimige, which is nothing but the true old
spelling of rimy. He naturally concluded that the word hrinde (in the MS. of Beowulf)
was miswritten, and that the scribe had inadvertently put down hrinde instead of hrimge,

which is a legitimate contraction of hrimige. Many scholars accepted this solution; but a
further light was yet to come, viz. in 1904. In that year, Dr Joseph Wright printed the fifth
volume of the English Dialect Dictionary, showing that in the dialects of Scotland,
Northumberland, Durham, and Yorkshire, the word for "hoarfrost" is not rime, but rind,
with a derived adjective rindy, which has the same sense as rimy. At the same time, he
called attention yet once more to the passage in Beowulf. It is established, accordingly,
that the suspected mistake in the MS. is no mistake at all; that the form