“He swenges me þys,” etc. = He himself sends this, etc.[58]
“Now sweȝe me þider swyftly” = Now go (thou) thyself thither swiftly.[59]
“He meteȝ me þis good man” = He himself meets this good man.[60]
Sturzen-Becker (“Some Notes on the leading Grammatical Characteristics of the Principal Early English Dialects, Copenhagen, 1868”) thinks that I have been led astray with regard to this use of me, which he says is nothing more than the dativus ethicus.
The me in these examples may be merely an expletive, having arisen out of the general use of the dative ethicus, but the context does not satisfy me that it has the force of a dative. Dr. Guest (Proceedings of Philolog. Soc., vol. i. p. 151-153, 1842-1844) has discussed this construction at some length, and he carefully distinguishes the dative of the 1st person from the indeterminate (or indefinite) pronoun me = Fr. one. He says that in Old Frisian the indefinite pronoun has two forms, min and me, “the latter of which seems to be always used as a suffix to the verb, as momme, one may; somme, one should,” etc. The same construction was occasionally used in our own language, and it no doubt gave rise to those curious idioms which are noticed by Pegge in his “Anecdotes of the Eng. Lang.,” p. 217. This writer, whose evidence to a fact we may avail ourselves of, whatever we think of his criticism or his scholarship, quotes the following as forms of speech then prevalent among the Londoners: “and so says me I;” “well what does me I;” “so says me she;” “then away goes me he;” “what does me they?” Here it is obvious that me is the indeterminate pronoun, and represents the subject, while the personal pronoun is put in apposition to it, so that “says me I” is equivalent to “one says, that is I,”[61]. These idioms are not unknown to our literature.
(1) ‘But as he was by diverse principall young gentlemen, to his no small glorie, lifted up on horseback, comes me a page of Amphialus, etc.’ Pembr. Arcad. B. iii.
Other idioms, which have generally been confounded with those last mentioned, have the indeterminate pronoun preceded by a nominative absolute.
(2) ‘I, having been acquainted with the smell before, knew it was Crab, and—goes me to the fellow, who whips the dogs,’ etc. Two Gent. of Verona, 4. 4.
(3) ‘He thrusts me himself into the company of three or four gentlemanlike dogs under the Duke’s Table.’ Ib. See B. Jons. Ev. Man in his Humour, 3, 1.
Johnson considers the me in examples 2 and 3 to be the oblique case of the first pers. pron., and treats it as “a ludicrous expletive.” It is difficult to say how he would have parsed example 2 on such a hypothesis.