Page:The Sources of Standard English.djvu/217

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These are Robert's own rimes; for Waddington, writing earlier, had not thought it needful to glance at the beard movement, though he bore hard on the ladies and their dress.

The Old English nœddre (serpens) now loses its first letter, as it also did in the Alexander. Ekename, on the other hand, has since gained the letter n.

In this poem, both the Northern ky and the Southern keyn stand for the Latin vaccœ. Reafian gets the new sense of snatching:

We have seen how in the South one came to stand for aliquis and quidam. It was brought into Lincolnshire, and is now used in a new sense, thereby avoiding the repetition of a substantive that has gone before;

London thieves speak of their booty as swag. The word of old meant nothing but a bag; the connexion between the two ideas is plain: