Page:The Sources of Standard English.djvu/90

Rh The Verb, as written at Peterborough in Henry the First's day, is wonderfully changed from what it was in the Confessor's time.

The Infinitive now drops the n, as in the Northumbrian Gospels. In Pope Agatho's forged charter of 675, we find ‘ic wille segge,’ I will say: this should have been seggan. The ge, prefixed to the Past Participle, now drops altogether in the Danelagh; the Norsemen, having nothing of the kind, forced their maimed Participle upon us. The ge, slightly altered, is found to this day in shires where the Norsemen never settled. Thus, in Dorset and Somerset they say, ‘I have a-heard,’ the old gehyrde. One Past Participle, gehaten, still lingered on in the Midland for fourscore years after the paring down of all its brethren. No Teutonic country was fonder of this ge in old times than Southern England.