8/15/2019 A Guide to Old and Middle English
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The survival of the English language is in many respects,
surprising. Surviving waves of conquering
forces, and hundreds of years, the language we speak today as
English is far removed from the Old
English of last millennium. This essay will examine an extract
from the Peterborough Chronicle, and
examine the differences and similarities between Old English and
Modern English that are evident in
this extract, and will focus on orthography, grammar and
vocabulary.
“þa þe castles uuaren maked… Þa namen hi þa men þe hi wenden ðat
ani god hefden,
bathe be nihtes & be dæies, carlmen & wimmen, &
diden heom in prisun & pined heom
efter gold & syluer untellendlice pining; for ne uuæren
næure nan martyrs swa pined alse hi
Ƿæron. Me henged up bi the fet & smoked heom mid ful smoke.
Me henged bi the þumbes
other bi the hefed & hengen bryniges on her fet. Me dide
cnotted strenges abuton here
hæued & uurythen it ðat it gæde to þe hærnes. Hi diden heom
in quarterne þar nadres &
snakes & pades Ƿæron inne… War sæ me tilede, þe erthe ne bar
nan corn, for þe land was
al fordon mid suilce dædes. & hi sæden openlice ðat Crist
slep, & his halechen. Suilc, &
mare þanne we cunnen sæin, we þoleden xix wintre for ure
sinnes.”1
Peterborough Chronicle for 1137
The Peterborough Chronicle is a part of
the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, a historical document
containing
accounts of events in England produced and distributed by
various monasteries in England. Anglo-
Saxon Chronicle serves as a valuable historical document because
it allows us to trace the
development of the English language across the centuries as it
developed and changed under both
external and internal influence. The line between Old and Middle
English was not a hard and fast
border, as David Crystal says in The End of Old English: “…there
was never a break… there could not
have been”. Crystal states that though the change in the
language was rapid, it was not
revolutionary but rather “gradual” – and he further states
that we find texts halfway betweenMiddle and Old English.
2 This extract from the Chronicle provides an example of
this straddling.
Originating in the year 1137, post-Norman conquest, this extract
provides some history as to how
Norman French affected and altered English, as well as how the
move towards a standard form of
English, affected the way the language was written.
Orthography and spelling
Of interest is the mixed use of letters in the extract,
particularly the interchange between and
to represent [w], contrasted with Old English where only the
wynn is used and not the later-
occuring : “…Ƿæs mid þæm fyrstum mannum on þæm lande” from the
History Against the
Pagans. ‘Ƿæron’ and ‘uuaren’ are two examples where
the symbols are different in the passage.
Also notable are the use of instead of for [v], which is again
inconsistent, as is the use of
and alongside . The French is used in the word ‘quarterne’
rather than the Old English
as in ‘cwœð’ (quoth). Also of note is the use of rather
than , in ‘snakes’ and ‘smoke’
versus the OE ‘snacan’ and ‘smocan’.3 These mixed usages
clearly show the influence of Norman
French on English, which was to change the language to use Latin
symbols rather than Norse-derived
ones such as eth, thorn and wynn, and replace them with symbols
used in French, like and
.
1
http://members.optus.net/englesaxe/texts/peterborough_37.html2 D
Crystal, The Stories of English, (Overlook Books, 2005) pp490-8
3 Study Guide for ENG3701 p 30
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Grammar and syntax
Plurals are handled with the ‘-s’ suffix on snakes, castles,
martyrs, Þumbes, bryniges, strenges even
where there are perfectly good OE equivalents, and word order
became more consistent as well.
The standard S-V-O word order we know in Modern English is
evident in the extract in ‘ Me henged bi
the þumbes…’ and ‘Me dide cnotted strenges abuton here hæued…’
and ‘hi sæden openlice ðat…’
which compares to the S-O-V form in the OE Dream of the Rood ‘Ic
ðat eall beheold’4 or the OE
History Against the Pagans ‘…Finas him gyldað…’.5 Though an
example of V-S-O is present in
‘…seized they the people…’ to indicate the order of
events.6 This formalisation of word order was
due to the loss of inflections on the words: grammatical
function became known by syntax and not
by inflection, and number by suffixing the noun not by declining
the article, for example the use of
the word ‘the’, for singular and plural nouns indicated by the
suffix ‘-s’ like ‘snakes’ versus ‘snacan’,
or ‘bi the fet’ versus OE ‘bi þœm fotum’.7
Vocabulary
The adoption of new words, loaned from Norman French, is evident
in the passage and speaks to the
influence that foreign languages had on English. In this
passage, there are ‘castel’ and ‘prisun’, which
are Norman French words, and of course a mix of older words as
well such as ‘carlmen’, ‘wimmen’
and ‘bryniges’ from Scandinavia, along with Old English
words.8 That there are words originating
from both Norman French and Scandinavian again shows the smooth
evolution of Old English into
Middle English, and demonstrates the way that the English
language was shaped by those who used
it.
In conclusion, in many ways English became simpler: the loss of
a complex system of inflection and
declension, the loss of grammatical gender and the formalisation
of word order made English into alanguage more able to be
standardised, and therefore easier to adopt. The influence of
Norman
French, with the huge new vocabulary, equipped English to be
more capable of expression and
description. These changes helped English become adaptable and
dynamic, ensuring its use far into
the future.
4 Study Guide p 8
5 Study Guide p 10
6
Study Guide p 307 Study Guide p 31
8 Study Guide p 31
![Part II. Middle English 1066 AD - ~1500AD From Old English to Middle English, only two major consonant sounds were added: [v] and [z]. ex. v](https://img.pdfslide.net/doc/110x75/56649db95503460f94aa9909/part-ii-middle-english-1066-ad-1500ad-from-old-english-to-middle.jpg)
