separating, as specimens of dialect, works which, perhaps, only differ in being specimens of separate orthographies.
[§ 689]. Caution.—The accommodation of a transcribed work is susceptible of degrees. It may go so far as absolutely to replace one dialect by another, or it may go no farther than the omission of the more unintelligible expressions, and the substitution of others more familiar. I again quote the Quarterly Review,—"There are very few matters more difficult than to determine à priori, in what precise form a vernacular composition of the thirteenth century might be written, or what form it might assume in a very short period. Among the Anglo-Saxon charters of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, many are modelled upon the literary Anglo-Saxon, with a few slight changes of orthography and inflection; while others abound with dialectical peculiarities of various sorts. Those peculiarities may generally be accounted for from local causes. An East-Anglian scribe does not employ broad western forms, nor a West of England man East-Anglian ones; though each might keep his provincial peculiarities out of sight, and produce something not materially different from the language of Ælfric."
[§ 690]. Caution.—In the Reeve's Tale, Chaucer puts into the mouth of one of his north-country clerks, a native of the Strother, in the north-west part of the deanery of Craven, where the Northumbrian dialect rather preponderates over the Anglian, certain Yorkshire glosses. "Chaucer[[76]] undoubtedly copied the language of some native; and the general accuracy, with which he gives it, shows that he was an attentive observer of all that passed around him.
"We subjoin an extract from the poem, in order to give our readers an opportunity of comparing southern and northern English, as they co-existed in the fifteenth century. It is from a MS. that has never been collated; but which we believe to be well worthy the attention of any future editor of the Canterbury Tales. The italics denote variations from the printed text:—
"John highte that oon and Aleyn highte that other:
Of oo toun were thei born that highte Strother,
Ffer in the north I can not tellen where.
This Aleyn maketh redy al his gere—
And on an hors the sak he caste anoon.