All square brackets [ ] are from the original text. Braces { } (“curlybrackets”) are supplied by the transcriber.
This e-text uses characters only available in UTF-8 encoding,including the non-Roman letters
ð þ (eth, thorn)
ȝ (yogh)
These diacritics should also appear:
ē ǣ ȳ (macron)
ĕ ŏ ĭ (breve)
CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
London: FETTER LANE, E.C.
C. F. CLAY, MANAGER
Edinburgh: 100, PRINCES STREET
Berlin: A. ASHER AND CO.
Leipzig: F.A. BROCKHAUS
New York: G.P. PUTNAM’S SONS
Bombay and Calcutta: MACMILLAN AND CO., LTD
All rights reserved
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 | ENGLISH DIALECTS FROM THE EIGHTH CENTURY TO THE PRESENT DAY BY THE REV. WALTER W. SKEAT, Litt.D., D.C.L., LL.D., Ph.D., F.B.A. Elrington and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon and Fel- low of Christ’s College. Founder and formerly Director of the English Dialect Society “English in the native garb;” K. Henry V. v. 1. 80 Cambridge at the University Press 1912 |  |
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KRAUS REPRINT CO.
New York
1968
With the exception of the coat of arms
at the foot, the design on the title page
is a reproduction of one used by the earliest
known Cambridge printer, John Siberch, 1521
First Edition 1911.
Reprinted 1912.
v
PREFACE
The following brief sketch is an attempt to present, in a popularform, the history of our English dialects, from the eighth century tothe present day. The evidence, which is necessarily somewhatimperfect, goes to show that the older dialects appear to have beenfew in number, each being tolerably uniform over a wide area; and thatthe rather numerous dialects of the present day were graduallydeveloped by the breaking up of the older groups into subdialects.This is especially true of the old Northumbrian dialect, in which thespeech of Aberdeen was hardly distinguishable from that of Yorkshire,down to the end of the fourteenth century; soon after which date, theuse of it for literary purposes survived in Scotland only. The chiefliterary dialect, in the earliest period, was Northumbrian or“Anglian,”