man hœfde twegen sunâ; but one of the most marked tendencies of the oldest English is to leave out this Article, especially in poems, such as Cadmon's lay or the Beowulf. Hence our many pithy phrases like, ‘Faint heart never won fair lady.’ In this we go much farther than the Gothic or High German.
Man is used indefinitely, where the Greeks would say tis; as gif mon wîf ofsleâ (March's Grammar, p. 181). The numeral ân, was the parent of our one (if one slay). Some have wrongly derived the latter from the French on. Readers of David Copperfield will remember the collegian, who uses the phrase ‘a man’ for I; as, ‘a man is always hungry here,’ ‘a man might make himself very comfortable.’
Some think that yea is a more archaic form than yes; but gese and geâ are alike found in our oldest writers. There was also once a nese. As to negation, when a man says, ‘I didn't never say nothing to nobody,’ this is a good old idiom, that lasted down to the Reformation. Much harm has been done to our speech by attempts to ape French and Latin idioms.
We are now told that an English sentence ought never to end with a Preposition. This rule is not sanctioned by our forefathers' usage. When Cadmon was on his death-bed, and wished for the Eucharist, he said, ‘Berað me hwæþere husel to.’[1]
In the Verb we keep many old idioms with but little change, such as, ic eom sêcende, I am seeking; hê gœð rôedan, he is going to read; ic tô drincenne hœbbe, I have
- ↑ Thorpe's Analecta Anglo-Saxonica, p. 68.
