The meaning of these last two statements is explained by the following extract: "Another characteristic is the infusion of Scandinavian words, of which there are slight traces in monuments of the tenth century, and strong and unequivocal ones in those of the thirteenth and fourteenth. Some of the above criteria may be verified by a simple and obvious process, namely, a reference to the topographical nomenclature of our provinces. Whoever takes the trouble to consult the Gazetteer of England will find, that of our numerous 'Carltons' not one is to be met with south of the Mersey, west of the Staffordshire Tame, or south of the Thames; and that 'Fiskertons,' 'Skiptons,' 'Skelbrookes,' and a whole host of similar names are equally introuvables in the same district. They are, with scarcely a single exception, northern or eastern; and we know from Ælfric's Glossary, from Domesday and the Chartularies, that this distinction of pronunciation was established as early as the eleventh century. 'Kirby' or 'Kirkby,' is a specimen of joint Anglian and
Scandinavian influence, furnishing a clue to the ethnology of the district wherever it occurs. The converse of this rule does not hold with equal universality, various causes having gradually introduced soft palatal sounds into districts to which they did not properly belong. Such are, however, of very partial occurrence, and form the exception rather than the rule."—Quarterly Review, No. CLXIV.
Bibliographical preliminaries.—The leading facts here are the difference between 1. the locality of the authorship, and 2, the locality of the transcription of a book.
Thus: the composition of a Devonshire poet may find readers in Northumberland, and his work be transcribed by Northumbrian copyist. Now this Northumbrian copyist may do one of two things: he may transcribe the Devonian production verbatim et literatim; in which case his countrymen read the MS. just as a Londoner reads Burns, i.e., in the dialect of the writer, and not in the dialect of the reader. On the other hand, he may accommodate as well as transcribe, i.e., he may change the non-Northumbrian into Northumbrian expressions, in which case his countrymen read the MS. in their own rather than the writer's dialect.
Now it is clear, that in a literature where transcription, combined with accommodation, is as common as simple transcription, we are never sure of knowing the dialect of an author unless we also know the dialect of his transcriber. In no literature is there more of this semi-translation than in the Anglo-Saxon and the early English; a fact which sometimes raises difficulties, by disconnecting the evidence of authorship with the otherwise natural inferences as to the dialect employed; whilst, at others, it smoothes them away by supplying as many specimens of fresh dialects, as there are extant MSS. of an often copied composition.
Inquiring whether certain peculiarities of dialect in Layamon's Brut, really emanated from the author, a writer in the Quarterly Review, (No. clxiv.) remarks, that to decide this it "would be necessary to have access either to the priest's autograph, or to a more faithful copy of it than it was the practice to make either in his age or the succeeding
ones. A transcriber of an early English composition followed his own ideas of language, grammar, and orthography; and if he did not entirely obliterate the characteristic peculiarities of his original, he was pretty sure, like the Conde de Olivares, 'd'y meter beaucour du sein.' The practical proof of this is to be found in the existing copies of those works, almost every one of which exhibits some peculiarity of features. We have 'Trevisa' and 'Robert of Gloucester,' in two distinct forms—'Pier's Ploughman,' in at least three, and 'Hampole's Pricke of Conscience,' in half a dozen, without any absolute certainty which approximates most to what the authors wrote. With regard to Layamon, it might be supposed that the older copy is the more likely to represent the original; but we have internal evidence that it is not the priest's autograph; and it is impossible to know what alterations it may have undergone in the course of one or more transcriptions."
Again, in noticing the orthography of the Ormulum (alluded to in the present volume, [§ 266]), he writes: "It is true that in this instance we have the rare advantage of possessing the author's autograph, a circumstance which cannot with confidence be predicated of any other considerable work of the same period. The author was, moreover, as Mr. Thorpe observes, a kind of critic in his own language; and we therefore find in his work, a regularity of orthography, grammar, and metre, hardly to be paralleled in the same age. All this might, in a great measure, disappear in the very next copy; for fidelity of transcription was no virtue of the thirteenth or the fourteenth century; at least with respect to vernacular works. It becomes, therefore, in many cases a problem of no small complication, to decide with certainty respecting the original metre, or language, of a given mediæval composition, with such data as we now possess."
From all this it follows, that the inquirer must talk of copies rather than of authors.
[§ 688]. Caution.—Differences of spelling do not always imply differences of pronunciation; perhaps they may be primâ facie of such. Still it is uncritical to be over-hasty in