It is strange that this change should be for the first time found in the Norse part of England. We shall soon see a new word with a French ending formed from this bond. Already, in the Northern Psalter, bunden (vinctus) had been changed into bonden.
To dash (intransitive) may be found in the lines quoted at page 160 of my work. In Layamon the word was transitive.
Ich aught (debeo), a word which was always undergoing change, is first found at page 44.
A new sense of the word smart, used in the Northern Psalter, is seen in page 171:
‘The levedi lough ful smare.’
That is, ‘quickly, briskly.’ Americans well know what they mean by ‘a smart man.’
In page 17, we find the use of the phrase ‘fair and free,’ so common in English ballads down to the latest times:
‘Thai fair folk and thi fre.’[1]
Some Scandinavian words appear; such as busk (parare), from the Norse bua sig, to betake himself; stilt, from the Swedish stylta, a support. To hobble, which is here found, is akin to a Dutch word meaning ‘to jog up and down.’
The Northern men seem to have clipped the prefixes of French words as well as of their own. We find the beginning vowel gone in the verbs scape and stable.
- ↑ It even comes in Billy Taylor, ‘to a maiden fair and free.’
