Page:The Sources of Standard English.djvu/66

that he had only three letters of his translation to cor­rect. Seldom has there been such a hit and such a confirmation of a hit.^[1]

These Ruthwell Runes are in close agreement with the dying words of Bede, the few English lines em­bedded in the Latin text.^[2] The letter k is here found, which did not appear in Southern English until many centuries later. The word ungcet, the Dual Accusative, betokens the hoariest antiquity. The Infinitive ends, not in the Southern an, but in a, like the old Norse and Friesic.

The speech of the men who conquered Northumbria in the Sixth Century must have been influenced by their Danish neighbours of the mainland. I give a few words from the Ruthwell Cross, compared with King Alfred's Southern English: —

Southern.	Ruthwell.
Heofenas	Heafunæs
Stigan	Stiga
Gewundod	Giwundæd
Eal	Al[3]
On gealgan	On galgu

The next specimen, given by me in my Appendix, is about sixty years later than the Ruthwell Runes. It is another fragment of Cadmon's, which was modernised two hundred years after his time by King Alfred. The

1. Archæologia for 1843, page 31.
2. See the Runes in my Appendix, Chapter VII.
3. We follow the North, which is more primitive than the South,in pronouncing this word. But in Dorset they still sound the ebefore a, as in yacre, yale, yarm, and others. See Mr. Barnes' poems.