"And soft take me in your armes twey,
For love of God, and hearkeneth what I sey."
Chaucer, Knight's Tale, 2783.
"And at certyn houres, they seyn to certyn offices,
maketh pees;" that is, make peace.—Mandeville, p. 281.
2. That yif is used for if; a proof that if is a verb, a contraction of gif or yif (for they were used promiscuously) the imperative of gifan, to give.[174]
3. That the subjunctive form of verbs was not used after if; and yif they goeth to the northe contray.
4. That there were three principal dialects in the English; the northern, which was corrupted by the Scots and Picts, and from which the present Yorkshire language is derived; the middle, which came from Germany and retained its primitive purity, and is the true parent of modern English; and the southern, by which is meant, either the language of the southern parts which was corrupted by an intercourse with foreigners; or what is more probable, the language spoken in Devonshire, and on the borders of Cornwall, which was mixed with the old British, and is now almost unintelligible.
5. That the conquests of the Danes and Normans had corrupted the pure language of the Saxons.
6. That this corruption proceeded principally from the teaching of French in schools.
7. That country people, (uplandish men) imitated the practice of the polite, and learnt French, as many do now, to be told of.
8. That Cornwail and others, in Trevisa's time, had begun to reform this practice.