Thet avere either other
luvede alse if brother.
That ever either other
Loved as if brother.
In the words the tendency is to drop the old inflections, the language is shaking off its original grammar and approaching modern English. In the later of two manuscripts of the poem this tendency is much more strong. Thus the older manuscript has
He wes a swithe aehte gume
And he streonde (begat) threo snelle sunen.
The later copy has
He was a strong gome
And he streonede threo sones.
The word "snell" in the older version still survives in Scots,
"There cam a wind out o' the East
A sharp wind and a snell,"
snell meaning "keen".
Ormulum.
Layamon was too great a poet to mingle sermons with his song. The pulpit was his preaching place, he scarcely ever preaches in his poem. On the other hand the worthy brother Ormin or Orm did nothing but preach in his versified book "The Ormulum". He was an Augustinian canon of the North Midlands who, about 1200, paraphrased the Gospels read on each day, and the homily which followed, often drawn from Bede (for Orm was not an advanced theologian), in a kind of blank verse. Nothing could be more simply edifying to plain congregations, but edification is not the aim of literature. Orm is best known for his determination to have English properly pronounced. A vowel, in English is, and was, sounded short before two consonants, and Orm was bent on making the reader pronounce the vowels thus and not otherwise. He therefore wrote the two consonants after every short vowel, and explained himself thus, the lines also give the metre of his verses:—