East Anglia; in this piece we find so, non, no mo, whos, þow (tamen), who so; in short, the whole poem foreshadows Manning's riming Chronicle. The writer who Englished this Creed has little love for outlandish words; sauf, sengellic, and persones are the only three specimens of French here found: he commonly calls persones by the obsolete name hodes. The deep theological terms of the Creed could still be expressed in sound English; though the writer's mikel does not wholly convey the sense of our incomprehensible. We see our bifore-said for the first time. Bot (sed) and with (cum) are preferred to their other English synonyms, as in Orrmin's writings. Unlike that poet, our present author will seldom use ne for the Latin non; he prefers noht, as in the East Anglian pieces: but he once has nil (nolunt). We see the Participle lastend, which Orrmin would have used.
This Creed, short though it be, shows us two great changes that were taking root in our spelling; h was being turned, as in Essex, into gh, and u into ou.[1] One or two instances of these changes may be seen in the East Midland poems of 1230; but the alteration is now well marked. We see right, noght, and thurght instead of the old riht, noht, and thurh. These words must have been pronounced with a strong guttural sound, which may still be heard in the Scotch Lowlands; there right is sounded much like the German recht. Thoh is in this Creed written þof, and this shows us how cough and rough came to be pronounced
- ↑ In the piece referred to at p. 85, we saw the first instance of o being changed into ou.
