into what is now called The Jesus Manuscript, ranged over at least one hundred and forty years. In one piece of his, professing to give a list of the English Bishopricks, there is no mention of Ely; hence the original must have been set down soon after the year 1100. In another piece in the same collection, mention is made of Saint Edmund, the Archbishop; this fixes the date of the poem as not much earlier than the year 1250. Most of these pieces, printed in An Old English Miscellany (Early English Text Society), seem to me to have been compiled at various dates between 1220 and 1250; for the proportion of obsolete English in them varies much. The Southern Dialect is well marked.
What in Essex had been called þatt an, is now changed into its present shape.
Þe on mis þat ich echal heonne. — Page 101.
At page 164, the old gearwa is cut down to gere, our gear.
The Virgin says, in page 100, ‘ich am Godes wenche’ (ancilla). The word was henceforth only used of women; Orrmin had called Isaac ‘a wennchell.’
We see in page 76, a Celtic word brought into English, a word which Shakspere was to make immortal. It is said that greedy monks shall be ‘bitauht þe puke;’ that is, given over to the Fiend. The Welsh pwcca and bwg mean ‘an hobgoblin;’ hence come our bugbears and bogies.[1] At page 43, we see ‘he wes more bold,’ not bolder. This was put in for the sake of rime.
- ↑ Good Bishop Bedell, in a letter to Usher, brands an oppressor named Cooke: ‘he is the most cryed out upon. Insomuch as he hath found from the Irish the nickname of Pouc.’ — Page 105 of Bedell's Life, printed in 1685.
