in it, one alone, pray, is French; and of the other fifty-nine, only three or four have dropped out of our speech. In the poems of 1280 we shall find a larger proportion of French than in this elegant lay, which may be set down to 1270. The writer seems to have dwelt at Huntingdon, or somewhere near, that town being almost equidistant from London and the three other places mentioned in the fifth stanza. The prefix to the Past Participle is not wholly dropped; and this is perhaps a token that the lay was written on the Southern Border of the Mercian Danelagh. The third Person Singular of the Present Tense ends in es, and not in the Southern eth. The Plural of the same Tense ends in the Midland en. We find ourselves speedily drawing near the time, when English verse was written that might readily be understood six hundred years after it was composed.
THE EAST MIDLAND DIALECT.
(A.D. 1270.)
| When the nyhtegale singes, the wodes waxen grene, | ||
| Lef ant gras ant blosme springes in Averyl, y wene, | ||
| Ant love is to myn herte gon with one a spere so kene, | a a | |
| Nyht ant day my blod hit drynkes, myn herte deth me tene.b | b harm | |
| Ich have loved al this ʓer, that y may love na more, | ||
| Ich have siked moni syk,c lemmon, for thin ore;d | c sighd mercy | |
| Me nis love never the ner, ant that me reweth sore, | ||
| Suete lemmon, thench on me, ich have loved the ʓore.e | e long |
