On Kinbelines daeie . . . þe king wes inne Bruttene, com a þissen middel aerde . . . anes maidenes sune, iboren wes in Beþleem . . . of bezste alre burden. He is ihaten Jesu Crist . . . þurh þene halie gost, alre worulde wunne . . . walden englenne; faeder he is on heuenen . . . froure moncunnes; sune he is on eorðen . . . of sele þon maeidene, & þene halie gost . . . haldeð mid him seoluen.
The Middle English was pre-eminently the Dialectal period of the language. It was not till after the middle of the 14th century that English obtained official recognition. For three centuries, therefore, there was no standard form of speech which claimed any pre-eminence over the others. The writers of each district wrote in the dialect familiar to them; and between extreme forms the difference was so great as to amount to unintelligibility; works written for southern Englishmen had to be translated for the benefit of the men of the north:—
| “In sotherin Inglis was it drawin, |
| And turnid ic haue it till ur awin |
| Langage of þe northin lede |
| That can na nothir Inglis rede.” |
| Cursor Mundi, 20,064. |
Three main dialects were distinguished by contemporary writers, as in the often-quoted passage from Trevisa’s translation of Higden’s Polychronicon completed in 1387:—
“Also Englysche men . . . hadde fram þe bygynnynge þre maner speche, Souþeron, Norþeron and Myddel speche (in þe myddel of þe lond) as hy come of þre maner people of Germania.... Also of þe forseyde Saxon tonge, þat ys deled a þre, and ys abyde scarslyche wiþ feaw uplondysche men and ys gret wondur, for men of þe est wiþ men of þe west, as hyt were under þe same part of heyvene, acordeþ more in sounynge of sþeche þan men of þe norþ wiþ men of þe souþ; þerfore hyt ys þat Mercii, þat buþ men of myddel Engelond, as hyt were parteners of þe endes, undurstondeþ betre þe syde longages Norþeron and Souþeron, þan Norþern and Souþern undurstondeþ oyþer oþer.”
The modern study of these Middle English dialects, initiated by the elder Richard Garnett, scientifically pursued by Dr Richard Morris, and elaborated by many later scholars, both English and German, has shown that they were readily distinguished by the conjugation of the present tense of the verb, which in typical specimens was as follows:—
| Southern. | |
| Ich singe. | We singeþ. |
| Þou singest. | Ȝe singeþ. |
| He singeþ. | Hy singeþ. |
| Midland. | |
| Ich, I, singe. | We singen. |
| Þou singest. | Ȝe singen. |
| He singeþ. | Hy, thei, singen. |
| Northern. | |
| Ic. I, sing(e) (I þat singes). | We sing(e). We þat synges. |
| Þu singes. | Ȝe sing(e), Ȝe foules synges. |
| He singes. | Thay sing(e). Men synges. |
Of these the southern is simply the old West-Saxon, with the vowels levelled to e. The northern second person in -es preserves an older form than the southern and West-Saxon -est; but the -es of the third person and plural is derived from an older -eth, the change of -th into -s being found in progress in the Durham glosses of the 10th century. In the plural, when accompanied by the pronoun subject, the verb had already dropped the inflections entirely as in Modern English. The origin of the -en plural in the midland dialect, unknown to Old English, is probably an instance of form-levelling, the inflection of the present indicative being assimilated to that of the past, and the present and past subjunctive, in all of which -en was the plural termination. In the declension of nouns, adjectives and pronouns, the northern dialect had attained before the end of the 13th century to the simplicity of Modern English, while the southern dialect still retained a large number of inflections, and the midland a considerable number. The dialects differed also in phonology, for while the northern generally retained the hard or guttural values of k, g, sc, these were in the two other dialects palatalized before front vowels into ch, j and sh. Kirk, chirche or church, bryg, bridge; scryke, shriek, are examples. Old English hw was written in the north qu(h), but elsewhere wh, often sinking into w. The original long á in stán, már, preserved in the northern stane, mare, became ō elsewhere, as in stone, more. So that the north presented a general aspect of conservation of old sounds with the most thorough-going dissolution of old inflections; the south, a tenacious retention of the inflections, with an extensive evolution in the sounds. In one important respect, however, phonetic decay was far ahead in the north: the final e to which all the old vowels had been levelled during the transition stage, and which is a distinguishing feature of Middle English in the midland and southern dialects, became mute, i.e., disappeared, in the northern dialect before that dialect emerged from its three centuries of obscuration, shortly before 1300. So thoroughly modern had its form consequently become that we might almost call it Modern English, and say that the Middle English stage of the northern dialect is lost. For comparison with the other dialects, however, the same nomenclature may be used, and we may class as Middle English the extensive literature which northern England produced during the 14th century. The earliest specimen is probably the Metrical Psalter in the Cotton Library,[1] copied during the reign of Edward II. from an original of the previous century. The gigantic versified paraphrase of Scripture history called the Cursor Mundi,[2] is held also to have been composed before 1300. The dates of the numerous alliterative romances in this dialect have not been determined with exactness, as all survive in later copies, but it is probable that some of them were written before 1300. In the 14th century appeared the theological and devotional works of Richard Rolle the anchorite of Hampole, Dan Jon Gaytrigg, William of Nassington, and other writers whose names are unknown; and towards the close of the century, specimens of the language also appear from Scotland both in official documents and in the poetical works of John Barbour, whose language, barring minute points of orthography, is identical with that of the contemporary northern English writers. From 1400 onward, the distinction between northern English and Lowland Scottish becomes clearly marked.
In the southern dialect one version of the work called the Ancren Riwle or “Rule of Nuns,” adapted about 1225 for a small sisterhood at Tarrant-Kaines, in Dorsetshire, exhibits a dialectal characteristic which had probably long prevailed in the south, though concealed by the spelling, in the use of v for f, as valle fall, vordonne fordo, vorto for to, veder father, vrom from. Not till later do we find a recognition of the parallel use of z for s. Among the writings which succeed, The Owl and the Nightingale of Nicholas de Guildford, of Portesham in Dorsetshire, before 1250, the Chronicle of Robert of Gloucester, 1298, and Trevisa’s translation of Higden, 1387, are of special importance in illustrating the history of southern English. The earliest form of Langland’s Piers Ploughman, 1362, as preserved in the Vernon MS., appears to be in an intermediate dialect between southern and midland.[3] The Kentish form of southern English seems to have retained specially archaic features; five short sermons in it of the middle of the 13th century were edited by Dr Morris (1866); but the great work illustrating it is the Ayenbite of Inwyt (Remorse of Conscience), 1340,[4] a translation from the French by Dan Michel of Northgate, Kent, who tells us—
| “Þet þis boc is y-write mid engliss of Kent; Þis boc is y-mad uor lewede men, Vor uader, and uor moder, and uor oþer ken, Ham uor to berȝe uram alle manyere zen, Þet ine hare inwytte ne bleue no uoul wen.” |
In its use of v (u) and z for ƒ and s, and its grammatical inflections, it presents an extreme type of southern speech, with peculiarities specially Kentish; and in comparison with contemporary Midland English works, it looks like a fossil of two centuries earlier.
Turning from the dialectal extremes of the Middle English to the midland speech, which we left at the closing leaves of the
- ↑ Edited for the Surtees Society, by Rev. J. Stevenson.
- ↑ Edited for the Early English Text Society, by Rev. Dr Morris.
- ↑ The Vision of William concerning Piers the Ploughman exists in three different recensions, all of which have been edited for the Early English Text Society by Rev. W. W. Skeat.
- ↑ Edited by Rev. Dr Morris for Early English Text Society, in 1866.
