Page:The Sources of Standard English.djvu/219

190 We have still the phrase (rather slangy) to sack a sum of money. We first find this in the Handlyng Synne.

This phrase seems not to have been understood in the South; for the Southern transcriber writes over sekke the words fyl þe bag.

The old teogan (trahere) is pared down, and from it a new substantive is formed, to express dalliance:

Orrmin's laffdi&#x0293; (domina) had been cut down in many English shires to its present form, shortly before 1300. Robert of Brunne throws the accent on the last syllable, as is so often done in English ballads:

Can and coude, as in the Peterborough Chronicle, are used very freely, where of old may and might would have been employed. Our cannot now first appears as one word:

The couþe (potuit) of the Havelok now becomes coude, as in East Anglia; the verb has since changed for the worse, owing to a false analogy. We see do and did, as in page 193 of my work, employed as auxiliaries. There are some instances of this idiom before the Norman Con&shy;quest, but the fashion had long been dropped until shortly before the year 1300. Robert of Gloucester has it.