Some tongues mark many of the cases by sundry endings of the thing-name, but we have in common names only one ending for case, the possessive, as ‘the horse’s mane,’ ‘John’s house.’
In name-tokens we have three case-forms, as thou, thy, thee—thy for the possessive, and thee for all the other cases.
‘The bird flew from the apple-tree in the corner of the garden, through the archway, and under the elm by the barn, round the hayrick, and on over the stream just below the willow, and above the bridge, and then to the stall, and on towards the wood, and into an ivy-bush.’
Here the sundry named things are way-marks which mark the place of the flying in its beginning and end, and at sundry points of its length.
Such stead-marks or way-marks may be taken as in either of one or two or three cases, as they may be either stead-marks or way-marks, and as their beholdingness to the time-taking may be reckoned to it or from it to themselves.
‘The bird flew over or under or by the tree.’ The flying at first reached on nearer towards the tree, and then reached off again farther from it, so that the tree was at first in the case of a toness, and then in the case of a fromness, with the flying.
But under the wording ‘the roof is over the floor,’ or ‘the floor is under the roof,’ the time-taking is is a staid and not an ongoing one, and either the roof or the floor may be in the fromness or toness case, as the height may be reckoned from it to the other, or to it from the other.
A housemother may say ‘We live near (to) Fairton’ (toness case); yet an hour afterwards she may say ‘We live too far from Fairton (fromness case) to step in readily for errands.’