the Thames. He prefers the old sc to the new sound sh, writing scawian, not shawian. The ch was not fully established in his Western shire, so far from London. We see swilc, such, and other varieties for talis. He, like Orrmin, sometimes gives us the old and the new sound of c (that is, k) in the same word; thus, the old cycene now becomes kuchene, our kitchen.[1] He was the last Englishman who held fast to the old national diphthong œ, which was after his time, and indeed earlier, replaced by many combinations of vowels that still puzzle foreigners.
What Orrmin would have called o lande, Layamon calls a londe.
He has for denique a new phrase, at þan laste, I. page 160. We have already seen in the Homilies our contraction from the old latost. We keep both the forms, latest and last.
The old endlufon (undecim) is turned into œllevene.
Layamon turns ne (the Latin nec) into no; we must wait 140 years for nor.
He has the two phrases þene dœi longe and alle longe niht; whence come our all day long, &c.
He first used the Indefinite Article after many, as mony enne thing (many a thing). The word Hors (equi) is now changed to horses. — II. page 556.
In Verbs, Layamon turns some Strong ones into Weak. He says (I. 57), his scipen runden, where we more correctly say, his ships ran. But the great corruption which England owes to him is the changed
- ↑ The old cicen is turned into chicken in the Worcester manuscript, quoted at page 85.
