Early Middle English Written Records

§ 292. For a long time after the Norman Conquest there were two written languages in England, both of them foreign: Latin and French. English was held in disdain as a tongue used only by common illiterate people and not fit for writing. In some dialects the gap in the written tradition spanned almost two hundred years.

The earliest samples of Early ME prose are the new entries made inthe ANGLO-SAXON CHRONICLES from the year 1122 to the year 1154, known as the PETERBOROUGH CHRONICLE.

The works inthe vernacular, which began to appear towards the end of the 12th c., were mostly of a religious nature. The great mass of these works are homilies, sermons in prose and verse, paraphrases from the Bible, psalms and prayers. The earliest of these religious works, the POEMA MORALE ("Moral Ode") represents the Kentish dialect of the late 12th or the early 13th c.

Of particular interest for the history of the language is ORMULUM, a poem composed by the monk Orm in about 1200 in the North-East Midland dialect (Lincolnshire). It consists of unrhymed metrical par­aphrases of the Gospels. The text abounds in Scandinavianisms and lacks French borrowings. Its most outstanding feature is the spelling system devised by the author. He doubled the consonants after short vowels in closed syllables and used special semicircular marks over short vowels in open syllables. Here are some lines from the poem where the au­thor recommends that these rules should be followed in copying the poem:

Among other works of religious nature we may mention ANCRENE RIWLE ("The Rule ofAnchorites"), a prose treatise in the South-West­ern dialect ofthe early 13th c. and two later poems in the Northern dialect: CURSOR MUNDI, an amplified version of the Gospels, and the PRICKE OF CONSCIENCE, a translation attributed to Richard Rolle of Hampole.

§ 293. Alongside these religious works there sprang up a new kind of secular literature inspired by the French romances of chivalry. Ro­mances were long compositions in verse or prose, describing the life and adventures of knights. The great majority of romances fell into groupsor cycles' concerned with a limited number of matters. Those relating tothe "matter of Britain" were probably the most popular and original works of English poets, though many ofthem were paraphrased from French.

One of the earliest poems of this type was BRUT composed by Layamon in the early 13th c. It is a free rendering of the BRUT D'ANGLETERRE by Wace, an Anglo-Norman writer of the 12th c, which tells the story of the legendary foundation of Britain by Brutus, the alleged great grandson of Aeneas of Troy; the last third of the poem is devoted to Brut's most famous descendant, the mythical British king Arthur and his "Knights of the Round Table", who became the favourite sub­ject of English knightly romances. The poem is written in alliterative verse with a considerable number of rhymes. It is noteworthy that the West Midland dialect of BRUT, though nearly a century and a half after the Norman Conquest, contains very few French words; evidently the West Midlands were as yet little affected by French influence.

§ 294. Some romances deal with more recent events and distinctly English themes: episodes of the Crusades or Scandinavian invasions. HAVELOK THE DANE (East Midland dialect of the late 13th c.) narrates the adventures of a Danish prince who was saved by a fisher­man, Grim (the founder of Grimsby). Another poem in the same dia­lect and century, KING HORN, is more of a love story. Both poems make use of characters and plots found in French sources but are nevertheless original English productions.

§ 295. Among the Early ME texts in the South-Western dialects we should mention THE LONDON PROCLAMATION of the year 1258 (see § 287) and the political poems of the early 14th c. which voiced the complaint of the poor against their oppressors. In the poem EVIL TIMES OF EDWARD II the unknown author described the vices of the cler­gy and the nobility as the causes of the wretched condition of the people. Those were the earliest ME texts in the London dialect.

As seen from this survey Early ME written records represent differ­ent local dialects. The dialects were relatively equal as forms of the written language, beneath the twofold oppression of Anglo-Norman and Latin writing. They retained a certain literary authority until it was overshadowed in the 14th c. by the prestige of the London written language.