| Page | 145. | Techeð us bi hwiche weie. |
| " | 179. | Were we . . . . swa vuele bicauhte. |
| " | 129. | Him þuhte bicumelic þet we . . . weren alesede. |
The poem, part of which I have set out above, is the earliest long specimen of an English riming metre that is still popular.[1] Having been compiled somewhere about 1160, the work stands about half way between the Beowulf and the last work of Mr. Tennyson. The French riming lays, of which our Norman and Angevin rulers were so fond, must have been the model followed by the English bard, whoever he was. In the same volume are many Homilies, which give us a good idea of the English spoken in the South at this time. The following are the main points of difference between them and the Homilies of Henry the First's time.
A new combination of letters, au (well known in Gothic), is seen for the first time in English; as blauwen, naut, bicauhte.
- ↑ The English rimes, written before the Norman Conquest, must
have been nothing but an exercise of ingenuity: —
Flah mah fliteð,
Flan man hwiteð,
Burg sorg biteð,
Bald aid ðwiteð,
Wræc-fæc wriðað.This is a long poem, printed by Conybeare, Anglo-Saxon Poetry, p. xxiii. Mr. Morris, in his Second Series of Homilies, contends that the Moral Ode there printed is a transcript of some long English riming poem of the year 1000, or thereabouts. If so, the transcriber must have taken great liberties, in writing words like bikeihte and serveden (pp. 239 and 230), Second Series. If the original ever turns up, it will be the first of long-lined riming poems in English.
