A Brief Excursion into Middle English for 419 Students.

Middle English, as its name suggests, is the name we use for the language spoken after the Norman Conquest and before Modern English came around. This is a bit misleading, naturally, since the Norman Conquest didn't automatically change the way English speakers spoke, but it did change English culture enough so that: a) English pretty quickly ceased to be an appropriate language for official business or for most literary composition, and b) by the time it once again was appropriate for these things, it had been radically changed. This chapter will attempt to chronicle some of those changes, as the language continued to evolve towards the English of today.

In reality, there were probably two "most important" events which brought about Middle English. These influences were contact with the French-speaking Normans and contact with the ON-speaking Danish (Viking) invaders of the 9th, 10th, and 11th centuries. The Danish influence was especially strong in the northern parts of England, as this was under the political control of the Danes for quite a long period. Since the Danes spoke Old Norse, a language fairly closely related to OE, the influence they had upon the English language was somewhat different than the impact of the Normans. In this period, OE and ON were different enough that they were mutually unintelligible--at least for the most part. It seems likely that speakers of the two languages were probably pretty well able to make themselves understood to each other, but probably not very well. It has been suggested that one of the consequences of this near-intelligibility was that this sort of language contact promoted a focus upon shared vocabulary rather than on the differing details of inflectional syntax; contact with the Danes, then, has been proposed as an explanation for why we now have a greatly reduced inflectional system. This explanation, however, seems in some ways unsatisfactory, as Middle English maintained a somewhat more complex inflectional system than we do, so it seems that the influence of the Danes could at best only partially explain the reduction of inflections.

The ON impact upon English vocabulary, however, is of unarguable importance. A number of ModE words descend directly from ON ancestors. Occasionally, they parallel related OE words. Thus, OE "scyrte" and ON "skyrta" (both meaning "garment") are very closely related; they come down to ModE, respectively, as "shirt" and "skirt." Other examples of lexical items derived from ON are a number of words which retain the velar stops (which were often palatalized or otherwise altered in OE) as in "kid," "dike" (cf. ModE "ditch," from the corresponding OE word), "get," "give," and "egg." Numerous other common words ultimately spring from this period of contact, such as: booth, bull, reindeer, gap, root, steak, awkward, flat, odd, rotten, glitter, kindle, ransack, sprint, call, and many more.

The Normans' impact upon English was of a different character. While the Danish settlers in the north of England seem to have lived side by side with OE speakers, the Norman Conquest took another form politically, with French-speaking Normans taking over almost all positions of political and cultural importance in England. One of the consequences of this was the tendency to see French as more prestigious than English. This leads to pairs such as "pork" versus "swine" and "beef" versus "cow." The first term in each pair comes from French; the second comes from OE--after the Conquest, "civilized" people ate only pork and beef, peasants ate cows and swine. Innumerable other loanwords also came into English from French after the Conquest; they do not always form such nice pairs with native English words--often, in fact, the new French words entirely supplanted the older OE words for the same things.

On the whole, ME is much easier for ModE speakers to understand than OE. However, by the time English once again became widely enough accepted to be used in books and poems, there were wide dialectal variations between different regions of England. (Of course, there had also been dialectal variations in Anglo-Saxon times, but there was also a fairly widely accepted "literary language" in OE: the West Saxon dialect of King Alfred and his descendents.) The most "normal" seeming of these ME dialects is that of Chaucer; through various circumstances, his dialect is the most direct ancestor of most Modern English.

Because the syntax, morphology, and phonology of ME are, for the most part, somewhere between those of OE and those of ModE, I think it's best, in this brief survey of Middle English, to look directly at a variety of Middle English texts, from early and late, and from a variety of dialectal regions, and to simply comment upon relevant issues as they show up. Some general observations, however, might be worth making. First, the unstressed vowels in almost all of the inflectional endings level towards a relatively undistinguished schwa, usually spelled "-e-," leading to much-simplified inflectional morphology. For example, the noun inflections, in general, are much more limited than in OE--nominative and accusative are rarely distinguished; plurals and possessives alike are usually marked by "-es"; dative sometimes marked (by "-e"), sometimes not. Because the cases are less important for marking syntactic function, word order becomes more important, and prepositional phrases are often used to indicate case usage. Verbal inflections are likewise simplified, although to a lesser degree (see the comments in the OE chapter on archaic "-est"/"-eth" verbal endings). Infinitives are marked now by "-en" most often, rather than OE "-an" or "-ian."

The following texts are arranged more or less chronologically, to give an impression of the ways in which Middle English developed. I have also tried to give representative samples of both prose and verse, where possible, in order to show similarities and differences in these two modes of writing. In general, for most ME texts (especially later texts such as Chaucer) the most difficult feature for beginning students is the spelling. When in doubt, read the characters as sounding like the related phonetic symbols and listen to what they say; generally this will get you closer to an understanding of a tricky word than trying to figure out what modern word it looks like spelling-wise.

Early Middle English

Text 1: from the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.

For almost 90 years after the Norman Conquest, the history of England continued to be written in English by Anglo-Saxon churchmen. Some of the latest entries already begin to show characteristics of Middle English, rather than Old. It might be useful to compare the following text, written around 1155, to the brief passage from the Chronicle quoted in the OE chapter, written around 890-95.

[annal 1137] a e King Stephne to Englalande com, a macod he his gadering æt Oxeneford and ar he nam e biscop Roger of Sereberi, and Alexander Biscop of Lincol and te Canceler Roger, hise neves, and dide ælle in prisun til hi iafen up here castles.... I ne can ne I ne mai tellen alle e wunder, ne alle e pines at hi diden wrecce men on is lande; and at lastede a XIX wintre wile Stephne was king, and ævre it was werse and werse.

a e.... a = When...then
nam = past tense of niman,"to take"
Sereberi = Salisbury
neves = nephews
dide = p.t. of don, "to do" or "to put"
iafen = p.t. of gifan, "to give" showing pronunciation of OE "g" as [j]
pines = pains
wrecce = "wretched" (this is a good cognate, pronounce the ME [wrt∫t∫]

This really is almost a transitional OE text, but note the influence of French vocabulary in words like "prisun" and "castles." Note also that the old distinction between ‘can’ and ‘may’ still applies—‘can’ means to know how, and ‘may’ means to be able to. Apart from the words I have glossed, I hope the rest is nevertheless fairly clear, especially if the text is read aloud.

Text 2: from La3amon's Brut

The Brut is an early ME poetic history of the island of Britain (thus its name, from the legendary founder of Britain, Brutus). The poem seems to have been written in an intentionally archaic style, sometimes harkening back to the norms of Old English poetry, but just as often using end-rhyme--a technique not unknown in Old English poetry. One of my recent research projects has attempted to argue that this use of rhyme, in fact, does descend from OE practice, although the conventional wisdom has always explained it as deriving from French poetic practice. The Brut contains the first treatment in English of the story of King Arthur, a very small portion of which is included here.

Her mon mai arede of Arure an king,
hu he twelf 3ere seoen wuneden here,
inne grie and inne frie in alle uæ3ernesse.
Na man him ne faht wi no he ne makede nan un-fri;
ne mihte nauere nan man bi-enchen of blissen,
at weoren in ai eode, mare an i isse;
ne mihte nauere mon cunne nan swa muchel wunne
swa wes mid Arure and mid his folke here.

Here one may read of Arthur the King
How he afterwards dwelt here 12 years
In peace and in ease, in all fairness
No man fought against him, nor did he make any un-peace
No man might ever think of blisses
that were in a nation greater than in this
No man might ever know any joy so great
as was with Arthur and with his folk here.

The character which looks like a "3" here is the ME character "yogh"--which is essentially the descendent of the OE "g" In Middle English texts, it seems to take on a variety of sounds (later ME scribes will use "gh" to represent this sound: consider the different pronunciations we have for this sound in words like "rough" and "through." In this text, it appears as [j], in other ME texts, it might be pronounced [g] or [x] or possibly even [z] (in very exceptional cases). This text also may appear difficult at first glance because of some distinctly Southern dialectal forms, which are not representative of ModE. "u" here, for example, often appears where we would write "v" and even appears in places we would write "f" (Southern ME tended to voice this consonant, thus the spellings with "v" or "u"). A number of the words in this text are well-known in OE, but drop out fairly quickly from ME or are a bit difficult to identify with their ModE forms: "gri" and "fri" both meaning "peace"; "i-enchen," meaning "to think, to seem"; "eode" meaning "nation, or people"; "wunne" meaning "joy". Note also that "wi" retains its OE sense of "against," while "mid" stands where we would use "with." The ME habit of multiple negation is obvious here, especially in lines 4 and 7. I've translated the entire text here, since it seems noticeably more difficult than the Chronicle selection; this is partly because it's poetic, partly because, as I said, this text seems intentionally anachronistic, even though it is between 50 and 100 years later than the Chronicle passage.

Middle English Lyrics.

Short, lyrical poems were a popular genre during the Middle English period; very many survive--some bad, some good. Here are some of the better ones.

"Foweles in the Frith" (from about 1270)

Foweles in e frith . . . . . . (frith = forest)
e fisses in e flod . . . . . . (fisses = fishes)
And I mon waxe wod. . . . .(mon = must; wod = mad)
Mulch sorw I walke with . (Mulch sorw = much sorrow)
For beste of bon and blod. (beste = substantive adjective: one who is the best)

Notice that this poem uses both alliteration and rhyme. Note also the relatively early use of "-th" as a spelling for the interdental fricative.

"All Night by the Rose" (early 14th century)

Al nist by e rose, rose
Al nist bi the rose I lay;
Darf ich noust e rose stele . . (Darf = p.t. of "dare")
Ant 3et Ich bar e flour away. (Ich = I, bar = bore)

This poem uses "s" in places where the "yogh" might elsewhere appear (as it is sometimes represented by "z"). Thus the spellings "nist" and "noust."

"The Smiths" (15th century)

Swarte-smeked smees(1), smatered with smoke,
Dryve me to deth wyth din of here dyntes(2).
Swich noys on nyghtes ne herd men neuer!
What knavene cry(3) and clateryng of knockes,
The cammede kongons(4) cryen after "col, col,"
And blowen here bellewes at al here brayn brestes!(5)
'Huf, puf' seith �at one, 'Haf, paf' at o�er,
Thei spytten and spraulen and spellen many spelles(6);
Thei gnauen and gnacchen (7), ei grones togydere,
And holden hem hot wyth here hard hamers.
Of a bole hyde(8) ben here barm-felles(9)
Here shankes (10) ben shakeled(11) for e fere-flunderes(12).
Heuy hameres ei han at hard ben handled,
Stark strokes ei stryken on a steled stokke(13),
'Lus, bus; las, das!' rowten be rowe,(14)
Swich dolful a dreme e deuyl it todryue.
The master longeth a litel and lascheth a lesse(15),
Twyneth hem tweyn and toucheth a treble(16).
'Tik, tak; hic, hac! tiket, taket; tyk, tak!
Lus, bus; lus das!' Swich lyf ei leden!
Alle cloemeres(17), Cryst hem gyue sorwe,
May no man for brenwateres(18) on nyght han hys reste.

1. "black-smocked smiths"
2. "noise of their strokes"
3. "cries of knaves" ("knavene" is a nice example of a genitive plural)
4."pug-nosed rascals"
5. "bursts"
6. "tell many tales"
7. "gnaw and gnash"
8. "bull's hide"; 9. "leather apron"
10. "legs"; 11. "covered"; 12. "flying-fire"
13. "steel stock" (anvil)
14. "[they] sound in turn"
15. "lengthens a little piece and lashes on a lesser"
16. "a treble note"
17."mare-clothiers" (armorers)
18. "waterburners" (from the practice of plunging hot metal into water to temper it)

"The Smiths" is one of my favorites.

Chaucer's "London" Dialect and the Northern Dialect of the Gawain Poet.

Chaucer hardly needs an introduction; he was probably England's greatest writer before Shakespeare (and maybe since, as well). The Canterbury Tales was his greatest, most ambitious work and seems to have been unfinished when he died. This description of the Clerk of Oxenford is from the General Prologue to The Canterbury Tales (dating roughly from 1380-1400).

A Clerk ther was of Oxenford also
That unto logyk hadde longe ygo. (ygo = "a-gone")
As leene was his hors as is a rake
And he nas nat right fat I undertake (nas = "ne was")
But looked holwe and therto sobrely.
Full thredbare was his overeste courtepy; (= "a short upper coat")
For he hadde geten hym yet no benefice
Ne was so worldly for to have office.
For hym was levere have at his beddes heed
Twenty bookes clad in blak or reed
Of Aristotle and his philosophie
Than robes riche, or fithele, or gay sautrie. (fithele, sautrie = "fiddle, psaltery")
But al be that he was a philosophre (al be = "although")
Yet hadde he but litel gold in cofre;
But al that he myghte of his freendes hente (hente = "get, borrow")
On bookes and on lernynge he it spente.

Poetry such as Chaucer's with its regular metrical and rhyming structure tells us much about how ME was pronounced. For example, each of the above lines is in regular iambic pentameter; thus we can determine that sometimes Chaucer expects us to pronounce word-final vowels (as in "hadde", line 2 above), and sometimes not (as in "longe", line 2). Since Chaucer's English is what will eventually become ModE, his poetry is relatively easy for us to understand, apart form the occasional vocabulary item. His prose, as the following passage from the "Retraction" to the Canterbury Tales shows, is even easier to understand:

Now preye I to hem alle that herkne this litel tretys or rede, that if ther be any thyng in it that liketh hem, that therof they thanken oure Lord Jhesu Christ, of whom procedeth al wit and al goodnesse. And if ther be any thyng that displese hem, I preye hem also that they arrette it to the defaute of my unkonnynge, and nat to my wyl, that would fayn have seyd bettre if I hadde had konnynge.

liketh hem = "is pleasing to them"
arrette = "acsribe"
(un)konnynge = "(un)knowing"

Again, apart from a couple of fairly straightforward issues, this is pretty easy for ModE speakers to follow. Note, though, that the third person pronoun is sometimes still spelled "hem" (not "them") by Chaucer; the forms of this pronoun which have "th-" come from a Northern dialect, which has not yet completely influenced the London dialect of Chaucer. The relative accessibility of Chaucer's language, whether prose or verse, is demonstrated by looking at the language of the Gawain poet, who, for all intents and purposes, was a contemporary of Chaucer's who happened to inhabit another part of England (the Northwest Midlands) and thus spoke and wrote a different dialect.

From Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.

Without a doubt, SGGK is the masterpiece of the "Alliterative Revival" of the fourteenth century, in which the Anglo-Saxon practice of alliterative poetry was brought back into vogue. This poet also produced at least one other work commonly seen as a masterpiece, The Pearl. SGGK, however, takes material from tales of Arthur and the Round Table, and crafts a powerful tale of the (potential) conflict of chivalric and Christian ideals. This passage is part of the description of the Green Knight (ll. 179-86).

Wel gay wat3 is gome gered in grene
And e here of his hed of his hors swete
Fayre fannand fax vmbefoldes his schulderes;
A much berd as a busk over his brest henges,
at wyth his hi3lich here at of his hed reches
Wat3 euesed al vmbetorne abof his elbowes,
at half his armes ervnder were halched in e wyse
Of a kynges capados at closes his swyre.

I suspect that this is a much more difficult passage for most of us than Chaucer's text; possibly even more difficult then the passage from the Brut. It is indeed more difficult because this dialect is not a direct ancestor of our own, and because this poem, too, uses poetic vocabulary heavily dependent upon words (originally) from OE, which have passed out of regular usage. An example from this passage is "gome" from OE "guma" meaning "man" (cognate with Latin "homo"). It should also be noted that the "yogh" here is used as both [x] and [z]; in fact, transcriptions of this poem will often vary on what letter they use to represent the manuscript spelling. Note also that "u" and "v" are almost exactly reversed from how we use these letters today. Note also the Northern forms: the present participle, which ends in "-and" rather than "-ing" and the preservation of the "k" in the word "busk." A fairly close translation of this passage follows:

Well gayly was this man geared in green
And the hair of his head [that] of his horse suited
Fair fanning hair folds about his shoulders
A great beard like a bush over his breast hangs
That [together] with the hair of his head reaches;
[It] was trimmed all around above his elbows
That half his arms thereunder were enclosed in the manner
Of a king's cape that closely fits his neck.

Fifteenth Century ME Texts:

From The Book of Margery Kempe

Margery Kempe is the most well-known female English religious mystics of the fifteenth century. She was a well-to-do woman, apparently the mother of fourteen, who visited Italy and the Holy Land. She was somewhat well-known in her time for her visions of Christ and her more or less continuous weeping, and was accused at various times in her life of religious heresy, although never proved guilty. The following extract is from the preface to her book, the earliest autobiography written in English.

Here begynneth a schort tretys and a comfortabyl for synful wreccys, wher-in ei may haue gret solas and comfort to hem and vnderstondyn e hy & vnspecabyl mercy of ower souereyn Sauyowr Cryst Ihesu, whos name be worschepd and magnyfyed wythowten end, at now in ower days to vs vnworthy deyneth to exercysen hys nobeley & hys goodnesse. Alle e werkys of ower Saviowr ben for ower exampyl & instruccyon, and what grace at he werkyth in any creatur is ower profyth yf lak of charyte be not ower hynderawnce. And erfor, be e leue of ower mercyful Lord Cryst Ihesu, to e magnyfying of hys holy name, Ihesu, is lytyl tretys schal tretyn sumdeel in parcel of hys wonderful werkys, how mercyfully, how benyngly, how charytefully he meued & stered a synful caytyf vn-to hys love, whech synful caytyf many 3erys was in wyl and in purpose thorw steryng of e Holy Gost to folwyn oure Savyowr, makyng gret behestys of fastyngys with many oer dedys of penawns.

From the Paston Letters.

The Paston Letters are a very large group of personal letters and business letters written mostly in the fifteenth century. The following one was written by Margaret Paston to her husband, John Paston, in about the year 1449. As the letter shows, this was a violent time in England, and the Pastons as a family were caught up in much of that violence, often forced to protect what they felt to be their property from other powerful families by means of force. Because of the nature of politics of the time, the head of the family was often in London or elsewhere; thus the need for such correspondence in the first place. (In the following text, "x" is pronounced as "sh"; "3" usually as [j].)

Ryt wurchipful hwsbond, I recomawnd me to 3u, and prey 3w to gete som crosse bowis, and wyndacs to bynd them with, and quarrels; for 3our hwsis her ben so low that ther may non man schet owt with no long bowe, thow we hadde never so moche nede.

I sopose 3e xulde have sech thyngs of Ser Jon Fastolf, if 3e wold send to hym; and also I wold 3e xuld get ij or iij schort pelleaxis to kepe with doris, and als many jakkys, and ye may.

Partryche and his felaschep arn sor afreyd that 3e wold entren a3en up on them, and they have made grete ordynaw[n]ce with inne the hwse, as it is told me. They have made barris to barre the dorys crosse weyse, and they have made wykets on every quarter of the hwse to schote owte atte, bothe with bowys and with hand gunnys; and the holys that ben made forr hand gunnys, they ben scarse kne hey fro the plawncher, and of soche holis ben made fyve. There can non man schete owt at them with no hand bowys.

Purry felle in felaschepe with Willyum Hasard at Quarles, and told hym that he wold com and drynk with Partryche and with hym, and he seyd he xuld ben welcome, and after none he went thedder for to aspye qhat they dedyn, and qhat felachep they hadde with them; and qhan he com thedder, the dors were fast sperid, and there wer non folks with hem but Maryoth, and Capron, and hys wyf, and Querles wyf, a[n]d another man in a blac 3ede sum qhate haltyng, I sopose be his words that it was Norfolk of Gemyngham; and the seyd Purry aspyde alle this forseyd thyngs. And Marioth and his felaschep had meche grette langage that xall ben told 3w qhen 3e kom hom.

I pray 3w that 3e wyl vowche save to don bye for me i. li. of almands and i li. of sugyr and that 3e wille do byen sume frese to maken of 3our child is gwnys; 3e xall have best chepe and best choyse of Hayis wyf, as it is told me. And that 3e wyld bye a 3erd of brode clothe of blac for an hode fore me of xliiii d. or iiii s. a 3erd, for ther is nether gode cloth ner gode fryse in this twn. As for the child is gwnys, and I have them, I wel do hem maken.

The Trynyte have 3w in his keping, and send 3w gode spede i all 3our materis.

Middle Scots

From the Testament of Cresseid

In the late fifteenth century, the Scots poet Robert Henryson composed a poem as a sequel to Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde; the Middle Scots dialect Henryson used, although much later than Chaucer, is nevertheless more difficult than Chaucer's language. The following stanza is from early in Henryson's poem:

I mend the fyr, and beikit me about (mend = mended; beikit = baked)
Than tuik ane drink my spreitis to comfort (tuik = took)
And armit me weill fra the cauld thairout. (fra = from)
To cut the winter-nicht, and mak it short,
I tuik ane quair, and left all uther sport, (quair = book)
Writtin be worthy Chaucer glorious,
Of fair Cresseid and lusty Troilus.

Henryson's Middle Scots uses "-it" as the past tense morpheme, rather than "-ed." But his language differs from Chaucer's (and from ours) in other ways as well; specifically, his vowels are quite different from either Chaucer's or our own. In many ways, his vowels are closer to OE; for example, "ane" meaning "one" has the same vowel as OE "an."

Problems in Middle English.

1. In many of the texts I've chosen, the word "night" appears. In each case, it is the direct descendent of OE "niht" and the variety of Middle English pronunciations can help us determine how "h" was pronounced in this OE word. Consider the following spellings for ME "night" from the texts here:

nicht
nist
nyght

Assume that these spellings correspond to the following pronunciations:

[nixt]
[nist]
[ni¥t] (here, I use the "¥" symbol for the voiced velar fricative.

 

Consider the phonetic features of the key consonant in each of these, and try to reconstruct the most likely phonetic value for the ancestor of these three different pronunciations. (Of course, I say in the OE chapter what the OE pronunciation was; this problem asks you to figure it out from the data available--i.e. I know you can look up the answer, but I want you to do the work anyhow, so you can see where the answer comes from.)

2. Take two or three sentences from one of the prose passages I have included here and describe the syntactic differences between the Middle English and Modern English.

3. Look at the letter from Margaret Paston and, as much as is possible, reconstruct the ME pronoun system which she uses. (There will, of course, be some gaps, but find the pronouns you can and figure out what case and number each is and put it all into a chart like the ones in the OE chapter.)

4. Some few examples of the Modern English "a-" prefix seem to stem ultimately from the OE "ge-" prefix. Thus "ygo" in the Chaucer selection corresponds to ModE "ago." In Middle English, this prefix was often spelled "y-" or "i-" and used before past participles; in some dialects of ModE, the "a-" prefix is used much the same way: "It's all agone." "I was afeared of it" (cf. ModE 'afraid'). "That's what I'm acalled." Using what you know of phonology (and the various comments about phonological rules here and there in this and the preceding chapter) explain how the pronunciation (and thus the spelling) of this morpheme has changed from the OE period to the ModE period.

5. Find uses of the "genitive" (possessive) case in these sample texts; determine what the various forms of possessive can tell us about how our modern possessive case developed.

6. As best you can, translate the passages from Margery Kempe and Margeret Paston into Modern English.

7. At a later point in her book, Margery Kempe writes: "Sche seruyd hir as sche wolde a don owyr Lady." Explain how "a" is used here; you may want to make use of similar usages from Modern English.