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Table 7.1 Some Middle English texts |
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Date |
Text |
Location |
Dialect |
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1155 |
Peterborough Chronicle |
Peterborough |
East Midlands |
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a.1200 |
Ormulum |
South Lincolnshire |
Northeast Midlands |
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1225 |
Ancrene Wisse |
Herefordshire |
West Midlands |
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a.1250 |
Kentish Sermons |
Kent |
Kentish |
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a.1300 |
Cursor Mundi |
Durham/Yorkshire |
Northeast |
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1340 |
Ayenbite of Inwit |
Kent |
Kentish |
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1375 |
Gawain |
Staffordshire |
Northwest Midlands |
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1375 |
Barbour’s Bruce |
Scotland |
Scots |
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1380 |
Wiclif |
Leicestershire |
Southeast Midlands |
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1387 |
John of Trevisa |
Cornwall |
Southwest |
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1390 |
Chaucer |
London |
Southeast |
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A comparison of any extract from Chaucer and from the Gawain poet will reveal how dialectally diverse contemporary writings could be at the end of the fourteenth century. In order to elucidate the variety of writings during the ME period, Table 7.1 is a quick guide to some of the more interesting dialect texts. It is very selective, and it is no substitute for a fuller investigation of the type of material presented in a textbook such as Burrow & Turville-Petre (1992).
It should be observed that the dates give in Table 7.1 are approximate and only intended to help readers identify texts for study. Note also that many of these texts appear in various manuscripts, which may originate from different parts of the country.
7.4A Scottish interlude
So far we have given the impression that all British dialects were located in England. This, however, is to mislead. In the case of Welsh English this is not too important, since we have little reliable information about such varieties until the twentieth century (see Thomas, 1994), and we shall leave that issue aside for the present. But the English dialects of Scotland are a quite different matter. Not only that, but the terms which can be used to describe them are often unclear. It is, therefore, useful to spend a few moments dealing with matters of history and terminology.
English-speaking settlements in what is now Scotland were first established in the second half of the sixth century – indeed the Ruthwell Cross, with its inscription from the Anglo-Saxon Dream of the Rood, is to be found in southwest Scotland. It is clear that from an early time English had become the dominant language in the Borders and Lothian, i.e. southeast Scotland up to Edinburgh, and
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possibly also in the southwest. But the Viking invasions and the English-based Norman Conquest created a complex set of linguistic and other relationships in Scotland.
At the time of the Norman Conquest the kingdom of Scotland, which was beginning to emerge, remained fundamentally Gaelic-speaking. But Gaelic was under threat from English, as a result of the Norman Conquest, the development of Anglo-Scottish commerce and, soon, the accession to the Scottish throne of native English-speaking Scots. Just as important from our point of view is the fact that the fourteenth century saw the War of Independence against the English. Therefore the growing dominance of the English language, allied with hostile relations with the English and friendlier relations with the continent, especially France, did not, at this time, lead to a subordinate variety of English in Scotland.
Sisam (1921: xx) writes: ‘The literary centre swings back to the capital – now London instead of Winchester – which henceforth provides the models for authors of any pretensions throughout England and across the Scottish border.’ As a description of the activities of, say, the Gawain poet, this seems misleading. All the more so, then, does it inadequately describe the writing of John Barbour, the fourteenth-century author of The Bruce. Here is a typical extract from the poem:
Engynys alsua for till cast
Thai ordanit and maid redy fast,
And set ilk man syne till his ward;
And Schir Valter, the gude Steward,
With armyt men shuld ryde about,
And se quhar at thar war mast dout,
And succur thar with his men he.
And quhen thai into sic degr´
Had maid thame for thair assaling,
On the Rude-evyn in the dawing,
The Inglis host blew till assale.
Many of the particular features of this passage can equally be found in texts from northern English. However it is notable how many Scots features extend throughout the system. It is not simply a matter of orthography, even given spellings such as <quh-> (for English <wh>) or the use of <i> to indicate a long vowel, as in <maid> ‘made’. Note, for example, the for + till construction. This equates to English for + to and might be thought to show only lexical variation. But there is a different point to be made. Although in ME the for + to construction was common (see Fischer, 1992), it became obsolete shortly afterwards (see Rissanen, 1999a). However it survives in present-day Scots, albeit in a semi-English form, i.e. as firtae. In phonology the spelling of <gude> signals the fronting and raising of ME /o / to /ø / and eventually /y /, which occurs in all northern varieties. A particular feature of the extract above is the use of the French loanword assale. The word exists in English too, but it is more frequent in Scots, which has many
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French loans not found in English, e.g. tassie ‘cup’ < Fr. tasse. There are also Old English words which have been lost from English but remain in Modern Scots, here dawing, cf. English dawn(ing).
Before we conclude this interlude it is necessary to say a few words about terminology, as I promised. It is normal to distinguish between Scots and Scottish English. Essentially Scots refers to the language which is descended from Northumbrian OE and became in the latter part of the medieval period close to becoming a language distinct from English. Scottish English refers to the anglicised form of the language which was to become dominant, partly due to the Union of the two kingdoms in 1603 but also because of the influence exerted by the Authorised Version of the Bible. To what extent devolution (1999) will switch the balance back towards Scots is a question at present unanswerable.
7.5Early Modern English
The period from the rise of printing to the American Declaration of Independence marks the last time when English could be seen as a phenomenon solely associated with the British Isles. At the same time, it is a period which marks the transition from a state where all dialects had at best a local focus. For the great movement at this time was the quite rapid emergence of a standard language, a topic that is handled in Chapter 5. We shall therefore attempt to avoid repetition here, although it will be clear to everyone that there is such interlocking of the standard and non-standard varieties that such an attempt is doomed to failure.
The first point which has to be made is that although the amount of material available for this period appears to be substantial in comparison with previous times, this appearance of quantity belies the true state of affairs. The rise of printing and the quickening spread of education of course led to more being written (and read), but at the same time the rise of a standard language caused writing in local dialect to be stigmatised. Quite early in this period (1589) we find George Puttenham writing as follows:
ye shall therfore take the vsuall speach of the Court, and that of London and the shires lying about London within lx. myles, and not much aboue. I say not this but that in euery shyre of England there be gentlemen and others that speake but especially write as good Southerne as we of Middlesex or Surrey do, but not the common people of euery shire . . . (Gorlach,¨ 1991)
And at the end of the period we find Thomas Sheridan writing as follows in 1762:
One [mode of pronunciation] is current in the city, and is called the cockney; the other at the court-end, and is called the polite pronunciation. As amongst these various dialects, one must have the preference, and become fashionable, it will of course fall to the lot of which prevails at court, the source of fashions of all kinds. All other dialects, are sure marks, of either a provincial, rustic,
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pedantic, or mechanic education; and therefore have some degree of disgrace
annexed to them. |
(Gorlach,¨ |
1999, quoting from Wakelin, 1977) |
Let us first examine the state of affairs in the mid-fifteenth century. At this time there are indeed a growing number of texts which demonstrate, if not a standard language, what the authors of LALME describe as a colourless variety which, although not conforming to the emerging standard, is generally devoid of localised forms (see also Smith, 1996: 73ff.). One such text is Bokenham’s Mappa Mundi. Bokenham came from Suffolk and the text dates from just before the middle of the century. Here is a typical extract:
. . . hit is to been vndirstondyn that, as mony dyuerys peeples as it haþe dwellers, so many hit haþe dyuersites of toungis and languagis . . . Angli, all be hit þat from the first bygynnynge, after þe thre dyuersytees of peeplis of Germayne þe which they comyn of, hadyn thre dyuersites of sowndyngis yn hure language and yn thre diuerys places, as Sowþe, Norþe, and Mydlonde, yet of commyxtioun dyvers, firste Danys and sethe with Normannys, they haue corrupte her first nativ toungis and vsyn now I ne wot what straunge and pylgryms blaberyng and cheteryng, noþyng accordynge onto here firste speche. (From Burnley, 1992)
It is, of course, interesting to compare this extract with that from Trevisa which we discussed in Section 7.3, since this new text is from the same original source. But it is even more interesting to compare it with the material emerging from the new Chancery Standard discussed in Chapter 5. There are a variety of different features which do not appear in Chancery Standard, such as: third-person plural -yn, hit ‘it’, hure ‘their’, negative ne wot. But perhaps most obvious of all is the variation in forms: note for example the various spellings of diversity.
Yet if we look at another contemporary East Anglian letter, we can see the difference between a colourless variety such as Bokenham’s and a localised variety. This extract is from the collection of letters written by the Norfolk Paston Family. It is from a letter dictated by Margaret Paston to her husband John on 19 May 1448:
Qwhan Wymdham seyd þat Jamys xuld dy I seyd to hym þat I soposyd þat he xuld repent hym jf he schlow hym or dede to hym any bodyly harm; and he seyd nay, he xuld never repent hym ner have a ferding wurth of harm þow he kelyd w and hym bothe . . . It js told me þat he xall kom to London jn hast. I pray w be ware hw e walkyn jf he be þere, for he js ful cursyd-hertyd and lwmysch. (From Burnley, 1992)
The most obvious features here are the particularly East Anglian spellings, such as qwhan ‘when’, xuld ‘should’, schlow ‘slew’, but also jf ‘if’, jn ‘in’. Yet there are other East Anglian features too, for example inflectional -yn and the dialect word lwmysch ‘loutish’. Sometimes, as with -yn, these are identical with the colourless variety, but more often they are clearly local, and the result is for us today a text which is not immediately readable. The Paston family were well-to-do; John
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Paston was a barrister at the Inner Temple, and in letters twenty or so years later, we find his sons writing in a form much closer to the Chancery Standard (letters sometimes dictated by their mother, who remained non-literate). Such a shift shows how quickly standard spelling practices were adopted.
It therefore begins to appear as if non-standard English is disappearing. But that is not a helpful view of the situation. It is true that ever since the midfifteenth century standardised forms of the language have come to dominate, more and more, written discourse. And conversely, non-standard written forms have become, except for particular purposes, stigmatised. The critical word here is ‘written’. As we shall see later, spoken dialect variation continued to flourish. But since it became exiled from the written discourse, it becomes harder for us today to discover direct evidence for its existence, until the invention of technology such as tape-recording towards the end of the nineteenth century.
This shift away from written dialect forms can be astonishingly quick. Here, for example, is a short extract from the diary kept by Henry Machyn, a London tradesman, between 1550 and 1563:
The xxv day of Marche, the wyche was owre lade [day,] ther was as gret justes as youe have sene at the tylt at Vestmynster; the chalengers was a Spaneard and ser Gorge Haward; and all ther men, and ther horsses trymmyd in whyt, and then cam the Kyng and a gret mene all in bluw . . . and all ther veffelers and ther fotemen . . . (from Burnley, 1992)
Perhaps what is most obvious about such non-standard language is the extent to which it nevertheless approximates to the standard. When, therefore, Machyn (originally from southwest Yorkshire; see now Britton, 2000) writes wyche alongside whyt and, elsewhere, what and where, most early spelling reformers, such as John Hart and Alexander Gil, preserve the distinction between [hw] and [w], and the variation shown by Machyn may signal a struggle between standardised and dialect forms. Machyn also demonstrates another difficulty we face when dealing with a localised spelling system, namely the question of how to interpret certain spellings. Thus the value of the use of <v> in both Vestminster and veffelers (= whifflers) is obscure, and we might be misled by Dickensian overtones.
What we might call the ‘underground’ nature of the non-standard dialects means that for most of the early Modern English period substantial information about the structure of the dialects is rather limited. To some extent what we have to do is to interpolate; we have to pool our resources about the situation in Middle English and the situation in the present-day language in order to ascertain the likely state of affairs in the intervening period. The best source of contemporary evidence for the period comes from spelling reformers, or orthoepists, and grammarians.
Nevertheless, it is during this period that a number of dialect distinctions emerge which are highly salient in the present-day language. Most of these, because of the nature of the limited evidence, are phonological. I give below a short summary of some of these distinctions.