Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 8.djvu/414

Rh 394 close of the period has been brought down to 1250; but very shortly after 1200 in the south, and considerably before it in the north, the levelling of inflexions was com plete, and the language possessed of a tolerably settled system of new grammatical forms, the use of which marks Middle English. Although the written remains of the TRANSITION OLD ENGLISH are few, sufficient exist to enable us to trace the course of linguistic change. Within two generations after the Conquest, faithful pens were at work transliterating the old homilies of ^Elfric, and other lights of the Anglo-Saxon Church, into the neglected idiom of their posterity. Twice daring the period, in the reigns of Stephen and Henry II, /^Ifric s gospels were similarly modernized so as to be &quot;un- derstanded of the people.&quot; And shortly after 1100 appeared the great work of the age, the versified Chronicle of Layamon, or Laweman, a priest of Ernely, on the Severn, who, using as his basis the French Brut of Wace, expanded it by additions of his own to more than twice the extent; his work of 32,250 lines is a mine of illustration for the language of the period. While these southern re mains carry on in unbroken sequence the history of the Old English of Alfred and ^Elfric, the history of the northern English is an entire blank from the llth to the 13th century. The stubborn resistance of the north, and the terrible retaliation inflicted by William, apparently effaced northern English culture for centuries. If anything was written in the vernacular in the kingdom of Scotland during the same period, it probably perished during the calamities to which that country was subjected during the half century of struggle for independence. In reality, however, the northern English had entered its Transition or &quot; Semi-Saxon&quot; stage two centuries earlier ; the glosses of the 10th century show that the Danish inroads had there anticipated the results hastened by the Norman Conquest in the south. Meanwhile a dialect was making its appear ance in another quarter of England, destined to overshadow the old literary dialects of north and south alike, and become the English of the future. The Mercian kingdom, which, as its name imports, lay along the marches of the earlier states, and was really a congeries of the outlying members of many tribes, must have presented from the beginning a linguistic mixture and transition; and it is probable that more than one intermediate form of speech arose within its confines, between Lancashire and the Thames. But the only specimen of such we can with some degree of certainty produce comes towards the close of the Old English period, in the gloss to the Ilushworth Gospels, which, so far as concerns St Matthew, and a few verses of St John xviii., is probably in a Mercian dialect. At least it presents a phase of the language which in inflexional decay stands about midway between the West-Saxon and the Northumbrian glosses, to which it is yet posterior in time. But soon after the Conquest we find an undoubted midland dialect in the Transition stage from Old to Middle English, in the south-eastern part of ancient Mercia, in a district bounded on the south and south-east by the Saxon Middlesex and Essex, and on the east and north by the East Anglian Norfolk and Suffolk and the Danish settlements on the Trent and Humber. In this -district, and in the monastery of Peterborough, one of the copies of the Old English Chronicle, transcribed about 1120, was written up by two succeeding hands to the death of Stephen in 1154. The section from 1122 to 1131, written in the latter year, shows the same confusion as in Layamon between Old English forms and those of a still simpler Middle English, impatient to rid itself of the inflexional trammels which were still, though in weakened forma, so tightly hugged south of the Thames. And in the concluding section written in 1154 we find Middle English fairly started on its career. A specimen of this new tongue will best show the change that had taken place. 1140 A.D. And te eorl of Angaeu wserd ded, and his sune Henri toe to pe rice. And te cueu of France to-dselde fra pe king, and scse com to pe iunge eorl Henri, and he toe hire to wiue, and al Peitou mid hire. pa ferde he mid micel fajrd into Engleland and wan castles and te king ferde agenes lilm mid micel mare ferd. popwsethere fuhtten hi noht, oc ferden pe jsercebwcop and te wise men betwux heo??i, and makede that sahte that te king sculde ben lauerd and king wile he liuede. and setter his dsei ware Henri king, and he helde him for fader, and he him for sune. and sib and ssehte sculde ben betwyx heowi, and on al Engleland. 1 With this may be contrasted a specimen of southern English, at least 25 years later (Hatton Gospels, Luke i. 4 G). 2 Da cwaeS Maria : Min soule mersed drihten, and min gast ge-blissode on gode min en hcelende. For pam pe he ge- seah his pinene eadmoduysse. SoSlice henen-forS me eadige segge&amp;lt;5 alle cneornesse ; for ]&amp;gt;am pe me mychele Jung dyde se pe mihtyg ys ; and his name is halig. And his mildheortnysse of cueornisse on cneornesse hine on- draedende. He worhte niaegne on hys earme ; he to-daelde j&amp;gt;a ofermode, on moda heora heortan. He warp pa rice of setlle, and pa eadmode he up-an-hof. Hyngriende he mid gode ge-felde, and pa ofermode ydele for-let. He afeng israel his cniht, and gemynde his mildheortnysse ; Swa he spraec to ure fcederen Abrahame, and his saede on a weorlde, The MIDDLE ENGLISH stage was pre-eminently the Dialectal period of the language. It was not till after the middle of the 14th century that English obtained official recognition as a language. For three centuries, therefore, there was no standard form of speech which claimed any pre-eminence over the others. The writers of each district wrote in the dialect familiar to them ; and between extreme forms the difference was so great as to amount to unintelligibility ; works written for southern Englishmen had to be translated for the benefit of the men of the north : &quot; In sotherin Inglis was it drawin, And tumid ic haue it till ur awiu Langage of pe north! a lede That can na nothir Inglis rede.&quot; Cursor Mundi, 20,004. Three main dialects were distinguished by contemporary writers, as in the often-quoted passage from Trevisa s trans lation of Higden s Polychronicon completed in 1387 : &quot;Also Englysche men hadcle fram pe bygynnynge J&amp;gt;re maner speche, Souperon, Norperon, and Myddel speche (in pe myddel of pe lond) as hy come of pre maner people of Germania Also of pe forseyde Saxon tonge, pat ys deled a pre, and ys abyde scarslyche wip feaw uplondysche men and ys gret wondur, for men of pe est wij&amp;gt; men of pe west, as hyt were under pe same part of heyvene, acordep more in sounynge of speche ]&amp;gt;an men of ]&amp;gt;e norp wip men of }&amp;gt;e soup ; perfore hyt ys J&amp;gt;at Mercii, pat bup men of myddel Engelond, as hyt were parteners of pe endes, undurstondep betre pe syde longages Norperon and Souperon, pan Norpern and Soupern undiuetondep oyper oper.&quot; The modern study of these Middle English dialects, initiated by Mr Garnett, and elaborated by Dr Richard .Morris, 3 has shown that they were readily distinguished by 3 Earle, Two of the Saxon Chronicles parallel, 1865, p. 265. 2 Skcat, Anglo-Saxon and Northumbrian Gospels, 1874. 3 Sec his Early English Alliterative Poems, for the Early English Text Society, 1864 ; Historical Outlines of English Accidence, 1870 ; and Elementary Lessons in Historical English Grammar 1874.