F. E. Harmer Select English Historical Documents of the Ninth and Tenth Centuries

Annotation

Whilst the greatest effort has been made to ensure the quality of this text, due to the historical nature of this content, in some rare cases there may be minor issues with legibility. Apart from their historical importance these documents possess also considerable linguistic interest. Seven of them (i, II, IV, v, VII, Ix, X) are written in the Kentish dialect, of which they are probably the earliest specimens; one (iii) is in Mercian and one (xxii) in Northumbrian. The language of the rest is West Saxon, a dialect which seems eventually to have come into literary use in many parts of England. In certain cases however the texts which have come down to us are clearly derived from older ones with different linguistic characteristics. Thus VI and VIII shew evident traces of Kentish dialect, while Mercian features may be detected in XII-XV.