This is one of the few words in which we still sound a corruption of the old ge, so beloved of our fathers.[1]
The phrase of feor (procul) was later to be written afar; the old of is seldom found in New English under this form a. We see the first use of a phrase that often replaces the old Preposition for. At page 260 are the words ‘ine stude of in, his cradel herbarued him;’ the cradle supplied the lack of an inn. The new preposition besides had not made its way everywhere, for in page 268 we see wiðuten employed for prœter; ‘wunden, al wiðuten eddren capitalen.’
In the Ancren Riwle one is employed in a new way, standing for man. In page 370 we read, ‘þe one þet was best ilered of Cristes deciples.’ This cannot be translated by the Latin alter, as in the passage of the Peterborough Chronicle referred to at page 89 of the present work. Another new sense of one is found in page 252, ‘ter on geð him one in one sliddrie weie’ (where a man goeth alone by himself in a slippery way).[2] This looks at first sight very like a translation of the French on; sum man would have been used by earlier English writers. However, further on we shall see that the attempt to imitate the kindred unus is the most probable source of our idiomatic one, standing by itself.
After the break-up of our old grammar, it had not as
