and cases. From his use of the ch instead of c, he cannot well be established to the North of the Humber. From his employment of their, them (though indeed he sometimes uses her, hem, as well), he cannot fairly be brought further South than Lincoln. Had he lived in Lincolnshire, he would have used sal and suld instead of shall and should, and perhaps too, the participle in and, instead of ende. A line drawn between Doncaster and Derby seems to be the Western boundary of the old Danish settlement in Mercia, for few hamlets ending in by are found to the West of this line, and a writer so Scandinavian as Orrmin must have lived to the East of it. On the whole, the North of the county of Notts seems as likely a spot as any for his abode.[1] There are many links between him and the Peterborough Chronicler who wrote forty years earlier. The word gehaten or ʓehatenn is almost the only Past Participle which they leave unclipped of its prefix. They both use the two great Midland shibboleths, the Present Plural in en and the Active Participle in ende. They have the same objection to any ending but es for the Genitive Singular and the Nominative Plural, following in this the old Northumbrian Gospels. They do not inflect the Article, and are thus far ahead of the Kentish writer in 1340. Orrmin uses that as a Demonstrative and not as a Neuter Article; he knows nothing of the old thilk, used in Somersetshire to this day. He has no trace of the Genitive Plural in ene, which lingered on in the
- ↑ Mr. Garnett wishes to settle him within fifty miles of Northampton, and therefore would not object to Nottingham. I should like to place him thirty miles still further North.
