One of our old chroniclers, writing in the reign of Elizabeth, informs us that by the English colonists within the Pale in Ireland numerous words were preserved in common use, “the dregs of the old ancient Chaucer English”, as he contemptuously calls it, which had become quite obsolete and forgotten in England itself. For example, they still called a spider an ‘attercop’—a word, by the way, still in popular use in the North;—a physician a ‘leech’, as in poetry he still is called; a dunghill was still for them a ‘mixen’; (the word is still common all over England in this sense;) a quadrangle or base court was a ‘bawn’[136]; they employed ‘uncouth’ in the earlier sense of unknown. Nay more, their general manner of speech was so different, though containing English still, that Englishmen at their first coming over often found it hard or impossible to comprehend. We have another example of the same in what took place after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, and the consequent formation of colonies of Protestant French emigrants in various places, especially in Amsterdam and other chief cities of Holland. There gradually grew up among these what came to be called ‘refugee French’, which within a generation or two diverged in several particulars from the classical language of France; its divergence being mainly occasioned by this, that it remained stationary, while the classical language was in motion; it retained usages and words, which the latter had dismissed[137].
Provincial English
Nor is it otherwise in respect of our English provincialisms. It is true that our country people who in the main employ them, have not been separated by distance of space, nor yet by insurmountable obstacles intervening, from the main body of their fellow-countrymen; but they have been quite as effectually divided by deficient education. They have been, if not locally, yet intellectually, kept at a distance from the onward march of the nation’s mind; and of them also it is true that many of their words, idioms, turns of speech, which we are ready to set down as vulgarisms, solecisms of speech, violations of the primary rules of grammar, do merely attest that those who employ them have not kept abreast with the advance of the language and nation, but have been left behind by it. The usages are only local in the fact that, having once been employed by the whole body of the English people, they have now receded from the lips of all except those in some certain country districts, who have been more faithful than others to the tradition of the past[138].
It is thus in respect of a multitude of isolated words, which were excellent Anglo-Saxon, which were excellent early English, and which only are not excellent present English, because use, which is the supreme arbiter in these matters, has decided against their further employment. Several of these I enumerated just now. It is thus also with several grammatical forms and flexions. For instance, where we decline the plural of “I sing”, “we sing”, “ye sing”, “they sing”, there are parts of England in which they would decline, “we singen”, “ye singen”, “they singen”. This is not indeed the original form of the plural, but it is that form of it which, coming up about Chaucer’s time, was just going out in Spenser’s; he, though we must ever keep in mind that he does not fairly represent the language of his time, or indeed of any time, affecting a certain artificial archaism both in words and forms, continually uses it[139]. After him it becomes ever rarer, the last of whom I am aware as occasionally using it being Fuller, until it quite disappears.
Earlier and Later English
Of such as may now employ forms like these we must say, not that they violate the laws of the language, but only that they have taken their permanent stand at a point which was only a point of transition, and which it has now left behind, and overlived. Thus, to take examples which you may hear at the present day in almost any part of England—a countryman will say, “He made me afeard”; or “The price of corn ris last market day”; or “I will axe him his name”; or “I tell ye”. You would probably set these phrases down for barbarous English. They are not so at all; in one sense they are quite as good English as “He made me afraid”; or “The price of corn rose last market day”; or “I will ask him his name”. ‘Afeard’, used by Spenser, is the regular participle of the old verb to ‘affear’, still existing as a law term, as ‘afraid’ is of to ‘affray’, and just as good English[140]; ‘ris’ or ‘risse’ is an old præterite of ‘to rise’; to ‘axe’ is not a mispronunciation of ‘to ask’, but a genuine English form of the word, the form which in the earlier English it constantly assumed; in Wiclif’s Bible almost without exception; and indeed ‘axe’ occurs continually, I know not whether invariably, in Tyndale’s translation of the Scriptures; there was a time when ‘ye’ was an accusative, and to have used it as a nominative or vocative, the only permitted uses at present, would have been incorrect. Even such phrases as “Put them things away”; or “The man what owns the horse” are not bad, but only antiquated English[141]. Saying this, I would not in the least imply that these forms are open to you to employ, or that they would be good English for you. They would not; inasmuch as they are contrary to present use and custom, and these must be our standards in what we speak, and in what we write; just as in our buying and selling we are bound to employ the current coin of the realm, must not attempt to pass that which long since has been called in, whatever merits or intrinsic value it may possess. All which I affirm is that the phrases just brought forward represent past stages of the language, and are not barbarous violations of it.
The same may be asserted of certain ways of pronouncing words, which are now in use among the lower classes, but not among the higher; as, for example, ‘contrāry’, ‘mischiēvous’, ‘blasphēmous’, instead of ‘contrăry’, ‘mischiĕvous’, ‘blasphĕmous’. It would be abundantly easy to show by a multitude of quotations from our poets, and those reaching very far down, that these are merely the retention of the earlier pronunciation by the people, after the higher classes have abandoned it[142]. And on the strength of what has just been spoken, let me here suggest to you how well worth your while it will prove to be on the watch for provincial words and inflexions, local idioms and modes of pronunciation, and to take note of these. Count nothing in this kind beneath your notice. Luncheon, Nuncheon Do not at once ascribe anything which you hear to the ignorance or stupidity of the speaker. Thus if you hear ‘nuncheon’, do not at once set it down for a malformation of ‘luncheon’[143], nor ‘yeel’[144], of ‘eel’. Lists and collections of provincial usage, such as I have suggested, always have their value. If you are not able to turn them to any profit yourselves, and they may not stand in close enough connexion with your own studies for this, yet there always are those who will thank you for them; and to whom the humblest of these collections, carefully and intelligently made, will be in one way or another of real assistance[145]. And there is the more need to urge this at the present, because, notwithstanding the tenacity with which our country folk cling to their old forms and usages, still these forms and usages must now be rapidly growing fewer; and there are forces, moral and material, at work in England, which will probably cause that of those which now survive the greater part will within the next fifty years have disappeared[146].
‘Its’ of Late Introduction
Before quitting this subject, let me instance one example more of that which is commonly accounted ungrammatical usage, but which is really the retention of old grammar by some, where others have substituted new; I mean the constant application by our rustic population in the south, and I dare say through all parts of England, of ‘his’ to inanimate objects, and to these not personified, no less than to persons; where ‘its’ would be employed by others. This was once the manner of speech among all; for ‘its’ is a word of very recent introduction, many would be surprised to learn of how recent introduction, into the language. You will look for it in vain through the whole of our Authorized Version of the Bible; the office which it now fulfils being there accomplished, as our rustics accomplish it at the present, by ‘his’ (Gen. i. 11; Exod. xxxvii. 17; Matt. v. 15) or ‘her’ (Jon. i. 15; Rev. xxii. 2) applied as freely to inanimate things as to persons, or else by ‘thereof’ (Ps. lxv. 10) or ‘of it’ (Dan. vii. 5). Nor may Lev. xx. 5 be urged as invalidating this assertion; for reference to the exemplar edition of 1611, or indeed to any earlier editions of King James’ Bible, will show that in them the passage stood, “of it own accord”[147]. ‘Its’ occurs very rarely in Shakespeare, in many of his plays it will not once be found. Milton also for the most part avoids it, and this, though in his time others freely allowed it. How soon all this was forgotten we have striking evidence in the fact that when Dryden, in one of his fault-finding moods with the great men of the preceding generation, is taking Ben Jonson to task for general inaccuracy in his English diction, among other counts of his indictment, he quotes this line from Catiline
“Though heaven should speak with all his wrath at once”,