Page:The Sources of Standard English.djvu/67

38 text from which I quote is referred by Wanley, a good judge, to the year A.D. 737. I set down here those words which are nearer to the language spoken in our days than Alfred's version is.

The word ‘til’ (to), unknown in Southern speech, is found in this old manuscript, and is translated ‘to’ by Alfred. The modern Th here first appears for the good old character that our unwisdom has allowed to drop. The whole of the manuscript is in Northern English, such as it was spoken before the Danes overran the North.

The next earliest Northumbrian monument that we have is a Psalter, which Garnett dates about the year A.D. 800. It is thought to have been translated in one of the shires just south of the Humber. This Psalter, like the former specimen, employs a instead of the Southern ea, even as we ourselves do.

There are many other respects in which the Psalter differs from Southern English of the Ninth Century; the chief is that the first Person Singular of the verb ends, like the Latin, in o or u: as sitto, I sit; ondredu, I