Page:The Sources of Standard English.djvu/58

Rh to drink; wo&#x0302;eron tô farenne, they were to go; ic hœbbe mete tô etanne, I have to eat; synd forðfarene, they are gone. The Future was expressed by shall and will, and also by the Present; we still say, ‘another word, and I go.’ Ic môt, þû môst expressed permission, and was very seldom used in our sense of must, expressing need.

Our fathers translated the Latin debeo by sceal; we have lost this old sense of that verb, except in a phrase like ‘he should do it.’ In the Imperative mood, utan was used where we say let, as utan tô-brecan, let us break; this old form lingered on to 1250. We see an attempt to supply the want of a Middle voice in such phrases as hê heþohte hine, ‘he bethought him,’ and the later, ‘I fear me.’

I give a few forms, which we should not expect, found in English writers before the Conquest. These I have taken from March's Anglo-Saxon Grammar, published in 1870.

The Article, as in Homer, sometimes stands for the Pronoun; seô for heô; as, seô lufath hine. Hence comes our she.

The Preposition of is used to express material instead of the old Genitive. Thus we find not only scennum scîran goldes, but also reâf of hœrum. Compare Virgil's templum de marmore ponam. This of and this de have been the parents of a wide-spread offspring in modern