A full discussion of the dialect, metre and syntax of Beowulf forms no part of the scheme of this study. It is only intended in this section to see how far such investigations throw light upon the literary history of the poem.
Dialect.
Beowulf is written in the late West Saxon dialect. Imbedded in the poem, however, are a large number of forms, concerning which this at least can be said—that they are not normal late West Saxon. Critics have classified these forms, and have drawn conclusions from them as to the history of the poem: arguing from sporadic "Mercian" and "Kentish" forms that Beowulf is of Mercian origin and has passed through the hands of a Kentish transcriber.
But, in fact, the evidence as to Old English dialects is more scanty and more conflicting than philologists have always been willing to admit. It is exceedingly difficult to say with any certainty what forms are "Mercian" and what "Kentish." Having run such forms to earth, it is still more difficult to say what arguments are to be drawn from their occasional
appearance in any text. Men from widely different parts of the country would be working together in the scriptorium of one and the same monastery, and this fact alone may have often led to confusion in the dialectal forms of works transcribed.
A thorough investigation of the significance of all the abnormal forms in Beowulf has still to be made. Whether it would repay the labour of the investigator may well be questioned. In the meantime we may accept the view that the poem was in all probability originally written in some non-West-Saxon dialect, and most probably in an Anglian dialect, since this is confirmed by the way in which the Anglian hero Offa is dragged into the story.
Ten Brink's attempt to decide the dialect and transmission of Beowulf will be found in his Beowulf, pp. 237-241: he notes the difficulty that the "Kentish" forms from which he argues are nearly all such as occur also sporadically in West Saxon texts. A classification of the forms by P. G. Thomas will be found in the Modern Language Review, I, 202 etc. How difficult and uncertain all classification must be has been shown by Frederick Tupper (Pub. Mod. Lang. Assoc. Amer. XXVI, 235 etc.; J.E.G.P. XI, 82-9).
"Lichtenheld's Test."
Somewhat more definite results can be drawn from certain syntactical usages. There can be no doubt that as time went on, the use of se, sēo, þæt became more and more common in O.E. verse. This is largely due to the fact that in the older poems the weak adjective + noun appears frequently where we should now use the definite article: wīsa fengel—"the wise prince"; se wīsa fengel is used where some demonstrative is needed—"that wise prince." Later, however, se, sēo, þæt comes to be used in the common and vague sense in which the definite article is used in Modern English.
We consequently get with increasing frequency the use of the definite article + weak adjective + noun: whilst the usage weak adjective + noun decreases. Some rough criterion of date can thus be obtained by an examination of a poet's usage in this particular. Of course it would be absurd—as has been done—to group Old English poems in a strict chronological order according to the proportion of forms with and without the article. Individual usage must count for a good deal: