Page:Sir Gawain and the Green Knight - Tolkien and Gordon - 1925.djvu/33

Rh which indicate such a date are: the ornamental peitrel of the Green Knight’s horse, hung with pendants ; and that the Gringolet ; the square-toed sabatounȝ worn by Gawain ; the fret worn by the lady ; the numerous pinnacles of the castle. See the notes of these passages.

The only feature of the language of the poem which gives any indication of the date of composition is the pronunciation of final unaccented -e. The rhymes show an inconsistent pronunciation. In to þe : soþe,  waþe : ta þe, the final -e of soþe (dat.) and of waþe (ON. váði) was certainly pronounced, and from the regularity of rhymes of words in -e throughout the poem it appears that -e of the infinitive, of the indic. and subj. pl., of the pa. t. of weak verbs, and of the pl. of adjectives was usually pronounced. On the other hand there are rhymes showing that final -e was sometimes dropped; for example:

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payne (infin.) rhyming with Gawayn;

fayn (adj. pl.) : Gawayn;

to graunte : seruaunt;

myȝt (pa. t.) : lyȝt.

Evidently final -e was in process of being dropped; but as verse usage is more conservative than colloquial speech, final -e in the poet’s spoken dialect may have been comparatively rare. The chronology of the loss of final unaccented -e is not known certainly, but the process seems to have been complete by c., to judge from the spelling of the Ireland MS. and the metre of The Destruction of Troy.

The criteria, such as they are, point to a date in the last quarter of the fourteenth century, the latest possible date being determined by that of the manuscript, c.. The most definite indication that the