Page:The Sources of Standard English.djvu/280

Robert of Brunne, in 1303.	His Transcriber, about 1360.	Robert of Brunne, in 1303.	His Transcriber, about 1360.
yn lowe	fyre	rous	proud wordys
layþ	foule	aghte	gode
fyn	ende	hals	nek
þarmys	guttys	swyer
mone	warne	cuntek	debate
warryng	cursing	hote	vowe
mysse	fayle	ferde	ʓede
wonde	spare	raþe	sone
dere	harme	flytes	chydeþ
teyl	scorne	y-dyt	stoppyd
tyne	lese	syde	long
pele	perche	awe	drede
myrke	derke	dryghe	suffre
seynorye	lordshyp	wlate	steyn

Some of Robert's words, that needed explanation in 1360, are as well known to us in 1873 as those where­with his transcriber corrected what seemed obsolete. Words will sometimes fall out of written speech, and crop up again long afterwards. Language is full of these odd tricks.^[1] It is mournful to trace the gradual loss of old words. This cannot be better done than by comparing three English versions of the Eleven Pains of Hell: one of these seems to belong to the year 1250, another to 1340, another to 1420.^[2] Each successive loss was of course made good by fresh shoals of French words. Steady indeed was the flow of these into English prose and poetry all through the Fourteenth Century, as may

1. Multa renascentur quæ jam cecidere, cadentque
   Quæ jam sunt in honore vocabula, si volet usus.
2. Old English Miscellany (Early English Text Society), pp. 147, 210, 223.