Page:The Sources of Standard English.djvu/101

72 this time. In this piece we find for the first time in English the word lah or lage (humilis): ‘Hit bið unheh and lah; ðe hele-wages beoð lage.’ The Scandinavian and Frisian have words akin to this. Fourscore years later, we find the verb to la&#x0293;henn (to lower); and almost two hundred years further on, we light on bi loogh (below). We thus in Chaucer's time compounded a new preposition out of an adjective.

THE EAST MIDLAND DIALECT. (About 1160.)

We now skip thirty years, and once more return to the neighbourhood of Rutland. The Peterborough Chronicle seems to have been laid aside for many years after 1131. England was at this time groaning under some of the worst sorrows she has ever known; we have come to the nineteen winters when Stephen was King. As soon as these evil days were over, and Eng&shy;land had begun her happy course (this has lasted, with but few checks, for more than seven hundred years ), the Peterborough monks went on with their Chro&shy;nicle. Their language was becoming more and more corrupt; but the picture they set before us of King Stephen's days is a marvel of power, and shows the sterling stuff that a Monastic writer often had in him.

The English, which we are now to weigh, dates from about the year 1160. More Norse forms crop up; we find cyrceiœrd (kirkyard) formed on the Norse pattern, instead of the Old English cirictune. When King Stephen lays hold of Earl Randolph, he is said to