DIALECTS IN EARLY TIMES
The history of our dialects in the earliest periods of which we have
any record is necessarily somewhat obscure, owing to the scarcity of
the documents that have come down to us. The earliest of these have
been carefully collected and printed in one volume by Dr Sweet,
entitled _The Oldest English Texts_, edited for the Early English
Text Society in 1885. Here we already find the existence of no
less than four dialects, which have been called by the names of
Northumbrian, Mercian, Wessex (or Anglo-Saxon), and Kentish. These
correspond, respectively, though not quite exactly, to what we may
roughly call Northern, Midland, Southern, and Kentish. Whether the
limits of these dialects were always the same from the earliest times,
we cannot tell; probably not, when the unsettled state of the country
is considered, in the days when repeated invasions of the Danes and
Norsemen necessitated constant efforts to repel them. It is therefore
sufficient to define the areas covered by these dialects in quite a
rough way. We may regard the Northumbrian or Northern as the dialect
or group of dialects spoken to the north of the river Humber, as the
name implies; the Wessex or Southern, as the dialect or group of
dialects spoken to the south of the river Thames; the Kentish as
being peculiar to Kent; and the Mercian as in use in the Midland
districts, chiefly to the south of the Humber and to the north of
the Thames. The modern limits are somewhat different, but the above
division of the three chief dialects (excluding Kentish) into
Northern, Midland, and Southern is sufficient for taking a broad
general view of the language in the days before the Norman Conquest.
The investigation of the differences of dialect in our early documents
only dates from 1885, owing to the previous impossibility of obtaining
access to these oldest texts. Before that date, it so happened that
nearly all the manuscripts that had been printed or examined were in
one and the same dialect, viz. the Southern (or Wessex). The language
employed in these was (somewhat unhappily) named "Anglo-Saxon"; and
the very natural mistake was made of supposing that this "Anglo-Saxon"
was the sole language (or dialect) which served for all the "Angles"
and "Saxons" to be found in the "land of the Angles" or England. This
is the reason why it is desirable to give the more general name of
"Old English" to the oldest forms of our language, because this term
can be employed collectively, so as to include Northumbrian, Mercian,
"Anglo-Saxon" and Kentish under one designation. The name "Anglo-Saxon"
was certainly rather inappropriate, as the speakers of it were mostly
Saxons and not Angles at all; which leads up to the paradox that they
did not speak "English"; for that, in the extreme literal sense, was
the language of the Angles only! But now that the true relationship of
the old dialects is known, it is not uncommon for scholars to speak
of the Wessex dialect as "Saxon," and of the Northumbrian and Mercian
dialects as "Anglian"; for the latter are found to have some features
in common that differ sharply from those found in "Saxon."
Manuscripts in the Southern dialect are fairly abundant, and contain
poems, homilies, land-charters, laws, wills, translations of Latin
treatises, glossaries, etc.; so that there is considerable variety.
One of the most precious documents is the history known as the
_Anglo-Saxon Chronicle_, which was continued even after the Conquest
till the year 1154, when the death and burial of King Stephen were
duly recorded.
But specimens of the oldest forms of the Northern and Midland dialects
are, on the other hand, very much fewer in number than students of our
language desire, and are consequently deserving of special mention.
They are duly enumerated in the chapters below, which discuss these
dialects separately.
Having thus sketched out the broad divisions into which our dialects
may be distributed, I shall proceed to enter upon a particular
discussion of each group, beginning with the Northern or Northumbrian.