DIALECT OF THE TRANSLATION AND VARIATIONS BY SCRIBES.

Dr Morris has described the Lay Folks Mass Book as a "specimen of the East Midland dialect."(1) He had before him the print of our text B, which, as mentioned in the preface, (2) was circulated when the transcript first came into my hands; and as I had come to the conclusion that this particular MS. was the work of a Midland scribe, I was very pleased to have my opinion confirmed by a philologist in every way entitled to speak with authority on any question connected with English dialect.

It is mainly to Dr Morris' systematic classification of their grammatical forms that I am indebted for most of what little I know of our old English dialects-always excepting the northern, which, from having been an East Riding clergyman for more than thirty years, I have had ample opportunities of studying as a living language; -and therefore an attempt to modify a judgment of his, obiter dictum though it be, may seem presumptuous: but I venture to think that the original was translated into a northern dialect, however much the manuscripts may have been altered by successive scribes in the process of copying, in order to adapt them to the language of their own time and district-texts E and F, as well as text B, being examples of a Midland dialect, and text C of a northern dialect, though of a hundred and fifty years later, when many older northern forms and words were passing out of use.

Nor were the alterations made by the scribes merely grammatical, or confined to the alteration of a word which was unknown or distasteful to them. Instead of reproducing the copy before them, they seem to have held themselves at liberty, and especially where it was a question of religion, to exercise the functions of revisers. In some cases, they may have thought they were carrying out the wishes of the author in making what seemed to be amendments and improvements. Hampole, at the end of his Prick of Conscience, not only bespeaks excuse for defaults of rhyme, but invites the correction of the learned in the matter of his treatise. He says,

(1) Alliterative Poems, Revised Edition, Preface, p. xxviii, note 1.

(2) Page x.

"I rek noght, bogh þe ryme be rude,
If þe maters þarof be gude.

And if any man þat es clerk,
Can fynde any errour in þis werk,
I pray hym do me þat favour,
þat he wille amende þat errour ;
For if men may here any errour se,
Or if any defaut in þis tretice be,
I make here a protestacion,

þat I wil stand til þe correccion

Of ilka rightwyse lered man,

þat my defaut here correcte can.'
."(1)

The worthy old hermit's desire was to stir lewed men to the love and fear of God, and he recked nothing as to shape in which his message might come to them. Chaucer, on the other hand, was quite alive to the risks to which his highly-wrought verse was exposed. In his Troilus and Cryseyde, he thus addresses his "litel boke": "And for ther is so grete diversite

In Englissh, and in writynge of our tongue,
So preye I to God, that non myswrite the

Ne the mys-metre for defaute of tongue! "(2)

This diversity is so great that we find a northern scribe describing his work as a translation, and his fellow north countrymen as unable to read other English:

"In other Inglis was it drawin

And turnid Ic haue it til ur awin
Language of the Northin lede,

That can na nother Inglis rede "(3)

In our texts it is the turning of a northern poem into midland, though from being a case of neighbouring dialects, the contrast, especially in B, is not so great; and the original northern, in many of its peculiarities, would have been uncouth rather than unintelligible. The invention of printing has tended more than anything else to the formation of a common language, and the fixing of its spelling;

(1) P. C. 9585-9596.

2) Quoted, Ellis, Early English Pronunciation, I, 249. We find an appeal of the same character in the Ormulum, and the Preambulum of the Promptorium Parrulorum.

(3) The Embassy of Helis, MS. Edinburgh, quoted, Small, E. M. H., Preface, p. xxii. The caution in the Promptorium referred to in the last note speaks of a different dialect as being "alterius patriæ"; much as here we have another "lede." One of the examples given is hande and honde, an alteration which occurs in our texts: "Non scribat HONDE pro HANDE, nec NOSE Pro NESE, nec KAYE pro KEYE, et sic de aliis."-P. P. I, 4.

but it may not be uninteresting to see how Caxton at the first dealt with his copy. He is speaking of Trevisa's translation of the Polychronicon, which had not been written a hundred years-it was finished in 1387 :

"I William Caxton. . . . . somewhat have chaunged the rude and old Englysh, that is to wete certayn wordes which in these days [1482] be neither vsed ne understanden."(1)

And now to the examination(2) of our text B. At first sight it has an un-northern look. The scribe has written po for pe, hom and hor for pam and pair, shal and shulde for sal and suld or soulde; and not only are these forms constantly recurring from the words being necessarily in such constant use, but there are many other words which he has written according to his Midland spelling (3) : and not al ane

alone

(1) Polychronicon Ranulphi Higden, ed. Babington, 1865, I, p. lxiii. (2) If it should occur to any of my readers that the circumstance of the answer of the York missal not being used (lines 275-8) is an argument for the text having been written in the southern province, I beg to refer to the note, page 263.

(3) The use of "o" in this text is almost as marked a feature as the perpetual upsilonism of our West-Midland text E. See note, p. 185.

(4) See notes, p. 293, 312.

On the other hand, there are a few northern words :

I lay no great stress on the occurrence of these words, because northern words may have found, and in many cases did find their way into neighbouring dialects.

What is more to the point, not only do we find northern grammatical flexions as I shall proceed to show, but we find the words in the following list both in the Northern and the Midland forms :

(1) The scribe (E 141) evidently did not understand the northern nane, but writes name, which points to it.

(2) Our Midland scribe seems to have been quite at fault with the northern a or ane (one). In line 11 he has let ane pass for the sake of the rhyme. In Ime 157 a may very well have been the article as in line 19, though it may have been used of one in contrast to the several crosses, which are sometimes directed to be made. In line 173 a is used in contrasting one with the other; but the scribe most likely let it pass as the indefinite article; and in line 180, probably for the same reason, though here it was intended of the oneness of the Trinity (see note, p. 215-16). In line 561 he has written ay (=ever) instead of a (=one), though this is clearly a better reading, and has been retained in C. (See note, p. 300.)

In lines 424 and 425, from not being used to "ane," and from the AueMaria being an established devotion when he wrote, he has made utter nonsense, by writing are; though the usually blundering scribe of our E text has rightly translated the ane into on. See note, p. 183.

* asterisk,

Now except those words which are marked with an where the northern form may have been copied mechanically by the scribe, although midlandized in other cases, it will be observed that the northern forms occur in rhymes, where both words did not admit

(1) Note, p. 288.

(2) Note, p. 223.
(4) Note, p. 179.

(3) Note, p. 199.