Page:The Sources of Standard English.djvu/158

Rh (not cwén), smot, olike (similiter), token, ðret, may, le&shy;man, helde, pride, strif, ðralles, wroð, often, eldest, rein&shy;bows.

There are other points in which these East Anglian poems of 1230 clearly foreshadow our Standard English. Wiht (pondus) becomes wigte, and teogeða is now tigðe (tithe). The d is sometimes slipped into the middle of a word after n; we find kindred and ðunder. The t or ð is also added to the end of a word: þwyrian becomes ðwert (thwart); stalu (furtum) appears as stalðe, our stealth. Maked (factus) is shortened into made; and when we find such a form as lordehed (dominion), we see that Orrmin's laferrdinngess will soon become lordings. The clipping and paring process is going on apace. Nu is once seen as nou, and tun as town. Orrmin had freely used ne in the old way, prefixing it as a negative to am, will, habbe, with all their tenses and persons; but in the Suffolk poem nothing of the kind is found, except the one verb nill (nolo), and this we have not yet wholly lost. Golden (aureus) is cut down in page 54 of the Genesis and Exodus; we find ‘gol prenes and ringes,’ and in page 95 we see ‘a gold pot.’ The Perfects clad, bad, and fed also meet us. When we see such a verb as semelen instead of the former samnian, we can under&shy;stand how easily the French word assemble must have made its way in England.

Some of Orrmin's Norse words are here repeated; but his sh is often changed to s, as sal instead of shall, and this is still found in Scotland. What was scœ (illa) at Peterborough, seventy years earlier, is now found as sge, sche, and once as she. Hi (illi) is only