Page:The dialect of the southern counties of Scotland - Murray - 1873.djvu/44

30 show the identity of the Northern dialect in England and Scotland, and illustrate the difficulty experienced in judging, from internal evidence alone, whether a given production of the period was written north or south of the Tweed. They consist of: 1. Passages from the Northern version of Cursor Mundi, written, near Durham, about 1275-1300 (while Alexander III. reigned in Scotland), and preserved in an orthography not much later. 2. Extracts from the Early Scottish Laws, the Latin originals of which date to the reign of David I., William the Lion, &c.; and the vernacular translations to the end of the fourteenth and beginning of the fifteenth century. 3. Passages from Barbour's Brus, written at Aberdeen about 1375; but as the existing MSS. are more recent by a century, the extracts are taken from the passages incorporated by Wyntown in his "Orygynal Cronykil of Scotland," 1419-30, and preserved in the Royal MS. 17 d. xx., of date 1430-40. 4. The same passages from John Bamsay's transcript of Barbour in 1489, assimilated to the orthography of that later period. 5. An Extract from The Craft of Deyng, one of the 15th c. Scottish pieces contained in Camb. Univ. MS. K.K. 1, 5, and important as being, with exception of some of the older translations of the laws, and other formal documents, perhaps the most archaic specimen of Scottish prose yet published. 6. From Hampole's "Pricke of Conscience," written near Doncaster early in the fourteenth century, but of which the MS. is not earlier than the beginning of the fifteenth, and the orthography influenced by that of the Midland English. 7. From the prose works attributed to Hampole in the Thornton MS., of which the orthography is also somewhat modified, but, upon the whole, more Northern; and 8. Specimens of contemporary date with the Thornton MS., from the Acts of the Scottish Parliament of James I. and James II.

The identity of the language of these works may be studied, first, in the words and word-forms, such as wone, mirkness, byggin, gar, tynsel, pousté, reauté, to-morn, barne, dede, mekyll, mare, maste, kynrik, quhilk, swilk, ilka, swa, quha, stane, ald, cald, liald, aucht, ga, gang, gede, gane, tas, tane, ma, mas, sal, sould, wald, chese, ane, twa, nowcht, na, wrang, lang, nathyng, bath, ryn, hyng, hym, kyng, &c.

Secondly, in the grammatical inflections: the irregular plurals, brether, childer, kye, gait, schone, &c.; the possessive, as in his fader broder, his syster sone, the childer ayris; the indefinite article identical with the numeral, a before a consonant, ane or an otherwise; the demonstratives, thir, tha; distinction between tha and thay; the pronouns, scho, thay, thair, thame; the relative, at; the forms, whatkyn, alkyn, nakyn, swylkin, the tane, the tother; the verbal inflections, thow cumis, clerkes sayis, we that lyves; the participle, in and, and gerund in ing, falland, fallyng; preterites, like fand, rayse, &c.; the negative, nocht, noght; the preposition, tyl, for to, &c.

Thirdly, in the orthography, in which we notice that the