Page:The Sources of Standard English.djvu/65

36 the remnants of four verbs in mi — am, beôm (sum), geseôm (video), gedôm (facio). In other points it fore&shy;shadows the language to be spoken in Queen Victoria's day more clearly than these same writers of Wessex did.

In tracing the history of Standard English, it is mainly on Northumbria that we must keep our eyes. About the year 680, a stone cross was set up at Ruth&shy;well, not far from Dumfries; and the Runes graven upon it enshrine an English poem written by no mean hand. Cadmon, the great Northumbrian bard, had compiled a noble lay on the Crucifixion, a lay which may still be read at full length in its Southern English dress of the Tenth Century. Forty lines or so of the earlier poem of the Seventh Century were engraven upon the Ruthwell Cross; these I give in my Appendix, as the lay is the earliest English that we possess just as it was written. It has old forms of English nowhere else found; and it clearly appeals to the feelings of a war&shy;like race, hardly yet out of the bonds of heathenism; the old tales of Balder are applied to Christ, who is here called ‘the young hero.’

Mr. Kemble in 1840 translated the Ruthwell Runes, which up to that time had never unlocked their secret; not long afterwards, he had the delight of seeing them in their later Southern dress, on their being published from an old English skinbook at Vercelli. He found