We have still the phrase (rather slangy) to sack a sum of money. We first find this in the Handlyng Synne.
Þe whyles þe executours sekke,
Of þe soule þey ne rekke. — Page 195.
This phrase seems not to have been understood in the South; for the Southern transcriber writes over sekke the words fyl þe bag.
The old teogan (trahere) is pared down, and from it a new substantive is formed, to express dalliance:
And makeþ nat a mys þe toye. — Page 246.
Orrmin's laffdiʓ (domina) had been cut down in many English shires to its present form, shortly before 1300. Robert of Brunne throws the accent on the last syllable, as is so often done in English ballads:
For to be holde þe feyryst lady. — Page 103.
Can and coude, as in the Peterborough Chronicle, are used very freely, where of old may and might would have been employed. Our cannot now first appears as one word:
Þat ʓyf ʓe kunnat, lerneþ how. — Page 298.
The couþe (potuit) of the Havelok now becomes coude, as in East Anglia; the verb has since changed for the worse, owing to a false analogy. We see do and did, as in page 193 of my work, employed as auxiliaries. There are some instances of this idiom before the Norman Conquest, but the fashion had long been dropped until shortly before the year 1300.[1] Robert of Gloucester has it.
- ↑ In Somersetshire, they say ‘he do be,’ instead of ‘he is.’ Mr. Earle (Philology, page 492) gives instances of this idiom from the old Romance of Eger and Grime.
