But the greatest Midland work of 1280 is the Lay of Havelok, edited by Mr. Skeat for the Early English Text Society. This is one of the many poems translated from the French about this time, when King Edward the First was welding his French-speaking nobles and his English yeomen into one redoubtable body, ready for any undertaking either at home or abroad. The poem, which belongs to the Mercian Danelagh, has come down to us in the hand of a Southern writer, transcribed within a few years of its compilation. This renowned Lincolnshire tale was most likely given to the world not far from that part of England where Orrmin wrote eighty years earlier: it is certainly of near kin to another Lincolnshire poem, compiled in 1303. Mr. Garnett, in page 75 of his essays, has suggested Derbyshire or Leicestershire as the birth-place of the author: Dr. Morris is in favour of a more Southern shire. We find the common East Midland marks: the Present Plural ending in en; the Past Participle oftenest without a prefix; are for the Latin sunt; niman for the Latin ire; and the oath Goddot, which is said to be of Danish birth. But there is also a dash of the Northern dialect; the second person singular of the Present tense, and the second person plural of the Imperative, both end in es now and then; a fashion that lingers in Scotland to this day. The Norse Active Participle in ande is also found, and Norse phrases like thusgate, hethen, gar. Orrmin's munnde has now become mone, which is almost the Scotch maun, as in line 840.
‘I wene that we deye (die) mone.’
Orrmin's ʓho (the old heo) is now changed into she
