Annd whase wilenn shall piss boc

Efft operrsibe written,

Himm bidde icc patt he write rihht…

(And if anyone wants to

copy this book again,

I bid him that he write it correctly…)

The earliest and also the most popular was Layamon’s Brut, a poem composed in the late 12^th century in the West Midland dialect. Layamon translated the popular Anglo-Norman romance BRUT, which in its turn was a versified rendering of the Latin HISTORIA REGUM BRITAN. (It’s the history of the King of Britain. It described the deeds of King Arthur, a legendary king of the Britons, and his Knights of the Round Table (which became the favourite subject of English romances of chivalry).

Middle English Dialects

Northumbrian NORTHERN

(Northern, Lowland, Scottish)

Mercian MIDLAND

(West Midland, East Midland, South-West Midland)

LONDON

West Saxon SOUTHERN

(South-Western)

Kentish KENTISH

2. The London dialect and the flourishing of Literature in the late 14^th century

In the 14^th century, when English revived as the official and the written language, the four main dialects, Northern, Southern, West Midland and East Midland, were struggling for supremacy but none of them was destined to predominate. The history of the London dialect reveals to us the sources of the literary language in the Late Middle English period (as well as the main sources of the national English language, both in its written and spoken forms). It is common knowledge that the history of London reaches back to Rome and even pro-Roman days. Already in Old English times London was by far the biggest town in Britain, although the capital of Wessex – the main old English kingdom – was Winchester. It may be interesting to recall that in 1018 one eighth of the Danegeld collected from all over the country came from London. (“Danegeld” is the name of the tax paid by the English to the Scandinavian (or Danish) rulers of Britain in the early 11^th century.

The Early Middle English records made in London – beginning with the London PROCLAMATION of 1258 – show that the dialect of London came from an East Saxon dialect, or, in terms of the Middle English division, from the south-western variety of the Southern dialect group.

In the 12^th and 13^th centuries the inhabitants of London came from the neighbouring south-western districts. In the middle of the 14^th c. London was practically depopulated during the Black Death (1348-1349) and later outbreaks of bubonic plague. It has been the epidemics, the highest proportion of deaths falling to London. The depopulation was speedily made good, and in 1377 London had already 35 000 inhabitants.

The flourishing of literature in the second half of the 14^th c., apart from its cultural significance, testifies to the establishment of the London dialect as the literary language, some authors wrote in their dialect (other than London); others represent various combinations of London and regional traits.

One of the prominent authors of the time was John de Trevisa of Cornwall. In 1392 he completed the translation of seven books on world history, POLYCHRONICON by Ranulf Higden, from Latin into the South-Western dialect of English. Among other information he inserted there some curious remarks commenting on Higden’s observations about the English language. Here is a fragment from their dialogue literary rendered in Modern English:

RANULG: It seems a great wonder hoe Englishment and their own language and tongue is so diverse in sound in this one island and the language of Normandy coming from another land has one manner (of) sound among all men that speak it right in England.

TREVISA: Nevertheless there are as many diverse manners of French in the realm of France as diverse manners of English in the realm of England.

RANULF: Men of the East with men of the West, as it were, under than same part of heaven, accord more in the sound of their speech than men of the North with men of the South; therefore the Mercians, who live in Central England, as they are neighbours of the ends of England, understand the language of those ends, northern and southern, better than people from the North and from the South understand each other.

Many more names might be mentioned but all of them were certainly overshadowed by that of Geoffrey Chaucer, the greatest English writer before the age of Shakespeare.

Chaucer was born about the year 1340 and had the most varied experience as student, courtier, soldier, ambassador, official, and Member of Parliament. He mixed freely with all sorts and conditions of men and in his works gave a true and vivid picture of contemporary England. Chaucer’s most important work is his Canterbury Tales, a series of stories told by a number of pilgrims on their way to Canterbury. In the Prologue to the poem he presents in the pilgrims a gallery of life-like portraits taken from all walks of like.

Chaucer wrote in a dialect, which in the main coincided with that used in documents produced in London shortly before his time and for a long while after. He made better use of the literary language and set up a pattern of it to be followed in the 14^th and 15^th centuries. His poems were copied so many times that over sixty manuscripts of the Canterbury Tales have survived today.

Chaucer’s literary language based on the mixed (largely East Midland) dialect of London is known as classical Middle English; in the 15^th and 16^th centuries it became the basis of the national standard form of the written language.