22
NOTES AND QUERIES. [9 th s. in. JAN.
As I hope before long to publish an exhaus-
tive discussion of the above questions, with
an examination of the chronology of the
changes therein involved, and an attempt to
fix, with as much precision as possible, the
exact dialectal area within which the prin-
ciple works, I shall content myself here with
only adducing what I believe to be sufficient
examples to prove my case. My excuse for
publishing my results in this brief and incom-
plete way is that they will probably be of
use to those scholars engaged on the 'His-
torical English Dictionary ' and the 'English
Dialect Dictionary.'
The above observations may be briefly as follows :
O.E. c + f, J>, s, &c. = k (g). O.E. 03 + f, >, s, &c. = g (k).
difficulty
occurs in
O.E. 3 ,
O.E. h + f,
&c. = g.
. = k.
, s, &c
As O.E. does not distinguish graphically between back and front c in any consistent manner, we have to infer from various con- siderations the nature of any given O.E. c. For our present purpose, therefore, we need not go further back than M.E. In a large number of early M.E. Southern texts we find .sechen, seche, werchen, werche, thenchen, thenche,
then, reche (to reck, care), techen; but in the
and the form
Devonshire (see
hoc/thorn, which
Friend's 'Devon-
shire Plant-Names,' 1882), can hardly be called
a " Northern form" with any degree of plausi-
bility. On the other hand, when we find O.E.
hawthorn (Wright-Wiilcker, 269, 4; 349,4), and
bear in mind that it is precisely in the
Southern dialects of M.E. that we have so
much evidence of stopping before open con-
sonants, we are not surprised to find O.E. 3
becoming g before th, and still less surprised
to find some traces of it remaining in
Devonshire. Again, from such a form as O.E.
slatfhorn (Wright-Wiilcker, 453, 15) we might
infer a Modern English slag or slagthorn = sloe.
I have not found slagthorn, but slags and
slaigh occur, in Westmoreland and Lancashire
respectively (see Britten's 'English Plant-
Names'). As examples of O.E. h becoming k
we may take the forms heckth, O.E. heahfru,
height, and heckfer, a heifer, heahfore, both
of which occur in Southern dialects of the
present day.
It must be admitted that a great number of these k and g forms occur at the present day in North Midland and Northern dialects, but my material leads me to believe that they arose almost entirely in the South, and by- virtue of the law which I have enunciated.
same texts we find, with equal regularity,
.sefy, werkst, werk\>, thenkst, thenk}>, tek\>,
&c. In other words, O.E. front c becomes ch
regularly, except when, through inflexional
hanges, it is brought into contact with an
open consonant, in which case it promptly
becomes k. Before stop consonants we get
ch, as blenchte, cwenchte, &c. (St. Juliana, prose
life), schrenckten (St. Kath.).
Those dialects which do not apocopate the vowel of the second and third persons have thenchest, thencheth, &c. The apocope _took place in the South (see Morsbach, 'Middle English Grammar,' p. 102), and is found Already in the West Saxon and Kentish dia- lects of O.E. In the early M.E. period the eh and k forms occur only in accordance with above rule, but later on new formations from the k forms took place, which gave a set of new verbs with k throughout, and to this process we owe forms like seek in standarc English, and beseek, which occurs in the Induction of the 'Mirror for Magistrates (written by a Sussex man), and in Shake speare. In the same way think, drink (by the side of drench), to reck, &c., may be ex plained.
r.turn now to O.E. 3 and h. Forms like hag or haig, instead of haw, which occur in Modern English dialects, have always been a
f this be so, it will no longer be possible to
egard every word which has k where we
might have expected cAas a "Northern form,"
and there is no further difficulty regarding
his class of words.
The whole question resolves itself into explaining under what conditions and in which dialects it was possible for the k and g
- orms to arise. When w r e have once done
- his, the subsequent distribution of them is
a secondary matter, and demands separate nvestigation. As a matter of fact a very arge number of these k and g forms still exist in the Southern dialects, and the verbal forms, at any rate, could not have arisen anywhere else ; while a great number of dge and ch forms occur in the north of England. In consideration of this and the other facts which I have briefly mentioned, I see no reason whatever for assuming these so-called " irregular " forms to be either Scandina- vian or Northern. O.E. medial and final and q became ch and dge in all dialects except in the South under the conditions stated. Why the Southern dialects should, on the whole perhaps, have preferred the fronted forms, and why the North should have adopted the others, belongs to a dif- ferent order of investigation.
H. CECIL WYLD. Corpus Christ! College, Oxford.
