CHAPTER VII

CHAPTER VII

THE SOUTHERN DIALECT OF KENT

Though the Kentish dialect properly belongs to Southern English, from its position to the south of the Thames, yet it shows certain peculiarities which make it desirable to consider it apart from the rest.

In Beda's _Ecclesiastical History_, Bk I, ch. 15, he says of the Teutonic invaders: "Those who came over were of the three most powerful nations of Germany--Saxons, Angles, and Jutes. From the Jutes are descended the people of Kent, and of the Isle of Wight, and those also in the province of the West-Saxons who are to this day called Jutes, seated opposite to the Isle of Wight"; a remark which obviously implies the southern part of Hampshire. This suggests that the speech of Kent, from the very first, had peculiarities of its own. Dr Sweet, in his _Second Anglo-Saxon Reader, Archaic and Dialectal_, gives five very brief Kentish charters of the seventh and eighth centuries, but the texts are in Latin, and only the names of persons and places appear in Kentish forms. In the ninth century, however, there are seven Kentish charters, of a fuller description, from the year 805 to 837. In one of these, dated 835, a few lines occur that may be quoted:

Ic bidde and bebeode sw{ae}lc monn se th{ae}t min lond hebbe th{ae}t he {ae}lce gere agefe them higum {ae}t Folcanstane l. ambra maltes, and vi. ambra gruta, and iii. wega spices and ceses, and cccc. hlafa, and an hrithr, and vi. scep.... Th{ae}m higum et Cristes cirican of th{ae}m londe et Cealflocan: th{ae}t is thonne thritig ombra alath, and threo hund hlafa, theara bith fiftig hwitehlafa, an weg spices and ceses, an ald hrithr, feower wedras, an suin oththe sex wedras, sex gosfuglas, ten hennfuglas, thritig teapera, gif hit wintres deg sie, sester fulne huniges, sester fulne butran, sester fulne saltes.

That is to say:

I ask and command, whosoever may have my land, that he every year give to the domestics at Folkestone fifty measures of malt, and six measures of meal, and three weys [_heavy weights_] of bacon and cheese, and four hundred loaves, and one rother [_ox_], and six sheep.... To the domestics at Christ's church, from the land at Challock: that is, then, thirty vessels of ale, and three hundred loaves, of which fifty shall be white loaves, one wey of bacon and cheese, one old rother, four wethers, one swine or six wethers, six goose-fowls, ten hen-fowls, thirty tapers, if it be a day in winter, a jar full of honey, a jar full of butter, and a jar full of salt.

At pp. 152-175 of the same volume, Dr Sweet gives 1204 Kentish glosses of a very early date. No. 268 is: "_Cardines_, hearran"; and in several modern dialects, including Hampshire, the upright part of a gate to which the hinges are fastened is called a _harr_.

Several years ago, M. Paul Mayer found five short sermons in a Kentish dialect in MS. Laud 471, in the Bodleian Library, along with their French originals. They are printed in Morris's _Old English Miscellany_, and two of them will be found in _Specimens of Early English_, Part I, p. 141. The former of these is for the Epiphany, the text being taken from Matt. ii 1. The date is just before 1250. I give an extract.

The kinges hem wenten and hi seghen the sterre thet yede bifore hem, alwat hi kam over tho huse war ure loverd was; and alswo hi hedden i-fonden ure loverd, swo hin an-urede, and him offrede hire offrendes, gold, and stor, and mirre. Tho nicht efter thet aperede an ongel of hevene in here slepe ine metinge, and hem seide and het, thet hi ne solde ayen wende be herodes, ac be an other weye wende into hire londes.

That is:

The kings went (them), and they saw the star that went before them until it came over the house where our Lord was; and as-soon-as they had found our Lord, so (they) honoured him, and offered him their offerings, gold, and frankincense, and myrrh. The night after that (there) appeared an angel from heaven in their sleep, in a dream, and said to-them and commanded, that they should not wend again near Herod, but by another way wend to their lands.

In the days of Edward II (1307-27) flourished William of Shoreham, named from Shoreham (Kent), near Otford and Sevenoaks, who was appointed vicar of Chart-Sutton in 1320. He translated the Psalter into English prose, and wrote some religious poems, chiefly relating to church-services, which were edited by T. Wright for the Percy Society in 1849. His poem "On Baptism" is printed in _Specimens of Early English_, Part II. I give an extract:

In water ich wel the cristny her{1} As Gode him-self hyt dight{e}{2}; For mide to wessch{e}{3} nis{4} nothynge That man cometh to so light{e}{5} In lond{e}{6}; Nis non that habben hit ne may{7} That habbe hit wil{e} found{e}{8}.

This bethe{9} the word{e}s of cristning By thyse Engl{'i}ssch{e} cost{e}s{10}-- "Ich{11} cristni the{12} ine the Vader{13} name And Sone and Holy Gostes"-- And more, "Amen!" wane hit{14} is ised{15} thertoe, Confermeth thet ther-to-fore{16}.

{Footnotes: 1: _I desire thee to christen here_ 2: _ordaine it_ 3: _to wash with_ 4: _is not_ 5: _easily_ 6: _in (the) land_ 7: _there is noe that may not have it_ 8: _that will try to have it_ 9: _these are_ 10: _coasts, regions_ 11: _I_ 12: _thee_ 13: _Father's_ 14: _when it_ 15: _said_ 16: _that which precedes_ }

In the year 1340, Dan Michel of Northgate (Kent) translated into English a French treatise on Vices and Virtues, under the title _The Ayenbite of Inwyt_, literally, "The Again-biting of In-wit," i.e. Remorse of Conscience. This is the best specimen of the Kentish dialect of the fourteenth century, and is remarkable for being much more difficult to make out than other pieces of the same period. The whole work was edited by Dr Morris for the Early English Text Society in 1866. A sermon of the same date and in the same dialect, and probably by the same author, is given in _Specimens of Early English_, Part II. The sermon is followed by the Lord's Prayer, the Ave Maria, and the "Credo" or Apostles' Creed, all in the same dialect; and I here give the last of these, as being not difficult to follow:

Ich leve ine God, Vader almighti, makere of hevene and of erthe. And ine Iesu Crist, His zone onlepi [_only son_], oure lhord, thet y-kend [_conceived_] is of the Holy Gost, y-bore of Marie mayde, y-pyned [_was crucified_, lit. _made to suffer_] onder Pouns Pilate, y-nayled a rode [_on a cross_], dyad, and be-bered; yede [_went_] doun to helle; thane thridde day aros vram the dyade; steay [_rose, ascended_] to hevenes; zit [_sitteth_] athe [_on the_] right half of God the Vader almighti; thannes to comene He is, to deme the quike and the dyade. Ich y-leve ine the Holy Gost; holy cherche generalliche; Mennesse of halyen [_communion of holy-ones_]; Lesnesse of zennes [_remission of sins_]; of vlesse [_flesh, body_] arizinge; and lyf evrelestinde. Zuo by hyt [_so be it_].

A few remarks may well be made here on some of the peculiarities of Southern English that appear here. The use of _v_ for _f_ (as in _vader_, _vram_, _vlesshe_), and of _z_ for _s_ (as in _zone_, _zit_, _zennes_) are common to this day, especially in Somersetshire. The spelling _lhord_ reminds us that many Anglo-Saxon words began with _hl_, one of them being _hl{-a}fweard_, later _hl{-a}ford_, a lord; and this _hl_ is a symbol denoting the so-called "whispered _l_," sounded much as if an aspirate were prefixed to the _l_, and still common in Welsh, where it is denoted by _ll_, as in _llyn_, a lake. In every case, modern English substitutes for it the ordinary _l_, though _lh_ (= _hl_) was in use in 1340 in Southern. The prefix _y-_, representing the extremely common A. S. (Anglo-Saxon) prefix _ge-_, was kept up in Southern much longer than in the other dialects, but has now disappeared; the form _y-clept_ being archaic. The plural suffix _-en_, as in _haly-en_, holy ones, saints, is due to the fact that Southern admitted the use of that suffix very freely, as in _cherch-en_, churches, _sterr-en_, stars, etc.; whilst Northern only admitted five such plurals, viz. _egh-en_, _ey-en_, eyes (Shakespeare's _eyne_), _hos-en_, stockings, _ox-en_, _shoo-n_, shoes, and _f{-a}-n_, foes; _ox-en_ being the sole survivor, since _shoon_ (as in _Hamlet_, IV iv 26) is archaic. The modern _child-r-en_, _breth-r-en_, are really double plurals; Northern employed the more original forms _childer_ and _brether_, both of which, and especially the former, are still in dialectal use. _Evrelest-inde_ exhibits the Southern _-inde_ for present participles.

But the word _zennes_, sins, exhibits a peculiarity that is almost solely Kentish, and seldom found elsewhere, viz. the use of _e_ for _i_. The explanation of this rests on an elementary lesson in Old English phonology, which it will do the reader no harm to acquire. The modern symbol _i_ (when denoting the _short_ sound, as in _pit_) really does double duty. It sometimes represents the A. S. short _i_, as in _it_ (A. S. _hit_), _sit_ (A. S. _sittan_), _bitten_ (A. S. _b{)i}ten_), etc.; and sometimes the A. S. short _y_, as in _pyt_, a pit. The sound of the A. S. short _i_ was much the same as in modern English; but that of the short _y_ was different, as it denoted the "mutated" form of short _u_ for which German has a special symbol, viz. _{ue}_, the sound intended being that of the German _ue_ in _schuetzen_, to protect. In the latter case, Kentish usually has the vowel _e_, as in the modern Kentish _pet_, a pit, and in the surname _Petman_ (at Margate), which means _pitman_; and as the A. S. for "sin" was _synn_ (dat. _synne_), the Kentish form was _zenne_, since Middle English substantives often represent the A. S. dative case. The Kentish plural had the double form, _zennes_ and _zennen_, both of which occur in the _Ayenbite_, as might have been expected.

The poet Gower, who completed what may be called the first edition of his poem named the _Confessio Amantis_ (or Confession of a Lover) in 1390, was a Kentish man, and well acquainted with the Kentish dialect. He took advantage of this to introduce, occasionally, Kentish forms into his verse; apparently for the sake of securing a rime more easily. See this discussed at p. ci of vol. II of Macaulay's edition of Gower. I may illustrate this by noting that in _Conf. Amant._ i 1908, we find _pitt_ riming with _witt_, whereas in the same, v 4945, _pet_ rimes with _let_.

We know that, in 1386, the poet Chaucer was elected a knight of the shire for Kent, and in 1392-3 he was residing at Greenwich. He evidently knew something of the Kentish dialect; and he took advantage of the circumstance, precisely as Gower did, for varying his rimes. The earliest example of this is in his _Book of the Duchess_, l. 438, where he uses the Kentish _ken_ instead of _kin_ (A. S. _cynn_) in order to secure a rime for _ten_. In the _Canterbury Tales_, E 1057, he has _kesse_, to kiss (A. S. _cyssan_), to rime with _stedfastnesse_. In the same, A 1318, he has _fulfille_, to fulfil (cf. A. S. _fyllan_, to fill), to rime with _wille_; but in Troilus, iii 510, he changes it to _fulfelle_, to rime with _telle_; with several other instances of a like kind.

It is further remarkable that some Kentish forms seem to have established themselves in standard English, as when we use _dent_ with the sense of _dint_ (A. S. _dynt_). When we speak of _the left hand_, the form _left_ is really Kentish, and occurs in the _Ayenbite of Inwyt_; the Midland form is properly _lift_, which is common enough in Middle English; see the _New English Dictionary_, s.v. _Left_, adj. _Hemlock_ is certainly a Kentish form; cf. A. S. _hymlice_, and see the _New English Dictionary_. So also is _kernel_ (A. S. _cyrnel_); _knell_ (A. S. _cnyllan_, verb); _merry_ (A. S. _myrge_, _myrige_); and perhaps _stern_, adj. (A. S. _styrne_).

There are some excellent remarks upon the vocalism of the Kentish dialect in Middle English by W. Heuser, in the German periodical entitled _Anglia_, vol XVII pp. 73-90.