A Temporary Preface to the Six-Text Edition of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, Part 1; Attempting to Show the True Order of the Tales, and the Days and Stages of the Pilgrimage, Etc., Etc (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1868 Excerpt: ... to be Northern, Cumberland, Westmoreland, Yorkshire, and partly Lancashire. All over the Northern Counties wh or w is a common substitute for initial qu. Anderson's Cumberland Ballads give whaker, a quaker whiat, quiet whart, quart whietly, quietly wharter, quarter whye, a quey wheyte, quite Which or wick, for quick, alive, I know well--" as wick as twenty fooak," Lancash. If you wish, I will find instances from Anderson for such of these as the Lansdowne shows: at present I give wheyte--" a pictur beuk or gud stuff for t' barnes or m' appen sum'at whyte as needless for the'r sels."--Cumberland: Bobby Banks' Bodderment. " An oald gentleman mak' of a fellow com in tul oor foald an' said whyte nateral, at he wantit somebody to ga wid him on't fells."--Cumberland: Joe and the Geologist. Whyat. " A wes maandredan aboot, gaan varra whyatly on thor street geeats amang fooak."--Jonny Shippard in London, Westmoreland. ( Whiver, to hover, not to quiver (I believe), is Dorset and other Western Counties. In that dialect o becomes changed 1 Shynand brighter fan ever son shane.--Hampole's Prielte of Conscience, p. 169, 1. 6243. ' Occasionally we have the Norse war for was, e. g. he war = he was.--Pre/ace to Hampole, p. xxiv. into wo, stone, stwone; morn, rawom; hover, hwover, hwuwer, or hwiver. This therefore does not belong to the class of qu words. Compare hwull or whull for hole, i. e. hoole, whurn or hwurn, for horn, i. e. hoorn, &c., a change quite different from that of qu and wh.) My own opinion of the Lansdowne MS, formed from a hasty collation of two sheets with Tyrwhitt, the only Chaucer I have at hand, is that it is very decidedly Northern in its variations. I shall mention one or two points that specially strike m...