[30.] The Midland dialect is a very difficult one to deal with, as it presents us with no uniform type; and, moreover, works written in this idiom are marked by Northern or Southern peculiarities, which have led many of our editors altogether astray in determining the locality of their composition.
[31.] Published by the Camden Society, 1842.
[32.] Edited by Mr. Halliwell for the Percy Society.
[33.] Edited by me for the Philological Society, 1862.
[34.] -us and -ud for -es and -ed, as well as hom, hor, do occasionally occur in the MS. containing our poems.
[35.] The Romance of William and the Werwolf is written in the West-Midland dialect as spoken probably in Shropshire.
[36.] Robson’s Metrical Romances, p. 54, l. 9.
[37.] Woldus = woldes = wouldst, appears in Audelay’s poems (in the Shropshire dialect of the fifteenth century), p. 32, l. 6.
[38.] The so-called Northumbrian records of the ninth and tenth centuries frequently use -es instead of -est, in the 2nd pers. preterite of regular verbs, e.g.,
ðu forcerdes usic on-bec = Thou turnedst us hindward. —(Ps. xliii. 11.)