to be as likely a spot as any, if we seek to fix upon some city for the authorship of the Legend.
Layamon was fond of the Old English diphthong œ, but in the present work this is often altered to ea, as in the words reach, clean, heal, mean, least. We even find neafre for nunquam. It is to the South Western shires that we owe the preservation of ea, a favourite combination of our forefathers: the word flea has never changed its spelling. We see in this Legend both the old swa and the new so; teeþ replaces teþ; roa comes once more. The wimman of the Midland makes way for wummon; we follow the former sound in the Plural and the latter sound in the Singular; a curious instance of the widely different sources of our Standard English. Fearful (pavidus) is seen for the first time; we grew fond or ful as an adjectival ending, and for it we displaced many older terminations. Lagu, cwœþ, wasc become lake, quoð, and weosch. Such new phrases crop up as hwa so eaver (page 20) and steorcnaket (page 5). Cleane is used for omnino in page 15; cleane overcumen, an idiom kept in our Version of the Bible. Our phrase ‘it is all one to me,’ is seen in its earliest shape at page 5, al me is an.
In this piece, smartly seems to bear a sense half-way between quickly and painfully, Orrmin's gaʓhen is now found in a new compound, ungeinliche (ungainly). At page 16 we see another Norse word, drupest (most drooping), from the Icelandic drûpa. Drivel appears, which is akin to the Dutch drevel (servus). There are a few other new verbs: stutten, akin to a High German word, shows the origin of our stutter, while shudder is akin to a Dutch word. The word schillinde (sonans) at page 19, akin to
