Page:The dialect of the southern counties of Scotland - Murray - 1873.djvu/37

Rh more thoroughly the subjects of legislation. Thus "Si quis verberando fecerit aliquem blaa et blodi, ipse qui fuerit blaa et blodi prius debet exaudiri," etc. In the 15th century translation, "Gif ony man strykis anoþir, quhar-thruch he is mayd blaa and blodi, he þat is mayd blaa and blodi sail fyrst be herde, etc. "Stallingiator nullo tempore potest habere loth, cut, neque cavyll de aliquo mercimonio, nisi infra nundinas quando quilibet potest habere loth, cut, atque cavyll," translated "Na stallangear (itinerant stall-keeper) may hafe na tyme loth, out, or cavyll wyth a burges of ony maner of merchandise, but in þe tym of þe fayris, quhen þat ilk man may hafe loth, cut, and cavyll, wythin the kyngis burgh." The stalingiator may also have "botham coopertarn" a covered buith. " Et sciendum est quod intra burgum non debet exaudiri blodewite, styngesdynt (a cudgelling), merchet, herieth (transl. here-gild, military-tribute, the heriot), nee aliquid de consimilibus." The widow of a burgess is to have left to her "interiorem partem domus que dicitur le flet;" among the personal effects of which the destination is fixed are "plumbum cum maskfat (mash-vat, masking-fat in Lyndesay's Flyting), hucham (a hutch, transl. schyrn, shrine), girdalium (the gyrdle or griddle)," etc. Further instances are found in the following expressions:—"Infantem clamantem vel plorantem vel braiantem," the chylde cryand or gretand or brayand; "Si in responsione negaverit wrang et unlaw et dicat, etc"; " post woch (A.S. woh, injustice) et wrang et unlaw"; "Non ut husbandi non ut pastores"; "forestarius habebit unum hog." So also among other terms we meet with hamesokyn, ibur þeneseca seu berthynsak, explained in the translation as "berthynsak, þe thyft of a calf or of a ram, or how mekill as a man may ber on his bak;" inboruche et [h]uteboruche potestatem habens ad distinguendum, cokestole, opelandensis, "ane uplandis-man," schorlinges (shearlings), etc., etc. So "fremd" do these terms look in the Latin texts, so entirely natural are they in the vernacular versions, that it is very difficult to realize that the Latin is the older by two or three centuries, and the conviction is forced upon one that there must have been an earlier vernacular in oral if not in written existence, which the scribes had in their mind, if not before their eyes, and which was drawn upon where the Latin would have been wanting in precision, or failed altogether to render a technicality.

But, with the exception of such isolated fragments, the history of the northern dialect is all but a blank for nearly three centuries, and that precisely at the period when the old Northan-hymbra-land was being incorporated with the English and Scottish monarchies respectively; so that we have no connected data shewing the transition of the Old North Anglian into the Early Northern English of Cursor Mundi and the Scottish laws, such as those which enable us to trace the insensible passage of the classical Anglo-Saxon into the Southern English of the Ancren Riwle