Page:The Journal of English and Germanic Philology Volume 18.djvu/564

 560 Draper pent (X), 17 queint (X), *queme (V), rafte (VIII), *recks (VII), souvenance (V & XI), 18 sterne strife (II), *surquedrie (II), (V), tottie (II), tressed locks (IV), *trode (IX), *uncouthe (IX). unnethes (I), *virelaies (XI), wast of (XI), welked (XI), whilome (VIII & X), wisards (VII), *wroken (III), *yblent (IV), *yfere (IV), *of yore (VII). The words in the foregoing list seem to have been correctly glossed; for E. K's meanings, in the first place, jibe with the text, and, in the second place, the words appear with the same meaning in a body of literature from which. Spenser could easily have culled them. The rather large number that were used for the rhyme, suggests that the young poet used his archaism to help him over the technical difficulties of English verse, and goes to support the theory that the poem was, as much as anything, an exercise in versification. The foregoing includes the words that Spenser probably drew from the Middle English. The following words are somewhat uncommon in Middle English; and, as they all exist in modern dialects, Spenser is at least as likely to have taken them from the dialects of his own day. Few of them are localized in a single country, such as Lancashire; but the vast majority of them are current in the northern part of England, and most of those are limited to the northern part. 19 Words that are not localized in the north will be specially noted. Behight (IV), 20 *belive (IX), bestadde (VIII), 21 *borrowe (V), *carke (XI), chaffred (IX), 17 Spelled "pend" in the text. E. K.'s spellings often differ from those in the text; but the differences do not seem in any way significant. 18 N.E.D. suggests that "here as often," Caxton seems to be the source of Spenser's meaning. Spenser, however, could have gotten the word from Chaucer. See Skeat's glossary. 19 The only guide for Elizabethan dialects is Wright's English Dialect Dictionary. Of course, it pretends to cover only the nineteenth century; but dialects are conservative as the persistence of M.E. forms in them attest; and it is fairly safe to suppose that a modern dialect form existed in Spenser's time, especially if either we know it existed inM.E.,or we can find no other source for Spenser's use of it. 20 Listed in N.E.D. as an "improper use by archaists of the 16th and 17th centuries." D.D. gives it as n. Yorks. Spenser seems, then, to have taken it almost certainly from dialect. 21 It appears in Derby and Kent as well as Scots, and Yorks.
 * sere (I), sicker (II), sibbe (V), *soote (IV), *sourse (V & XI),
 * swaine (III), *swinke (V & VII), *syte (VI), sythe (I), thilke