#Dialect#: West Midland, like _Gawayne_.
The metre occasionally gives clear evidence that final flexional _-e_ of
the original has not always been preserved in the extant MS., e.g.
_Þaȝ cortaysly ȝe carp<ė> con_ 21.
The most noteworthy verbal forms are:
pres. ind. 1 sg. _byswykeȝ_ 208 (once only, in rime);
2 sg. _þou quyteȝ_ 235;
3 sg. _leþeȝ_ 17; _totȝ_ (= _tǭs_ = _tās_
= _takes_) 153 (note).
1 pl. _we leuen_ 65; _we calle_ 70;
3 pl. _temen_ 100 (and cp. ll. 151-2); _knawe_ 145; but
_þay gotȝ_ 150, _pykeȝ_ 213 (both in rime).
imperative pl. _dyspleseȝ_ 62; _gos_, _dotȝ_ 161.
pres. p. _spornande_ 3.
pp. _runne_ (in rime) 163, beside _wroken_ 15, &c.
Characteristic Western forms are _burne_ 37 (OE. _beorn_); _vrþe_ 82
(OE. _eorþe_).
* * * * *
5. 'Like bubbling water that flows from a spring', i.e. his wild words
rise from a heart that can no longer contain its affliction.
11-12. 'You, who were once the source of all my joy, made sorrow my
companion.'
15. 'From the time when you were removed from every peril'. The child
died before she was two years old (l. 123).
22. 'I am but dust, and rough in manners.' The MS. has _marereȝ
mysse_, which has been rendered 'botcher's waste'; but the poet is
contrasting his own ill-mannered speech with the Pearl's courtesy.
23. 'But the mercy of Christ and of Mary and of John'. The genitive
inflexion is confined to the noun immediately preceding _mersy_, while
the two following nouns, which are logically genitives with exactly the
same construction as _Crystes_, remain uninflected. For analogies see
note to II 518.
36. _and_: MS. _in_. The sign for _and_ is easily mistaken for _ī_ =
_in_. Cp. note to XVII 42.