sometimes omitted, but primarily stressed syllables are not, as in 'But now I have it reapen, And some laid on my wain', which Mr. Stewart scans:

Thus the distinction between the two kinds of stressed syllables, which is characteristic of dipodic verse, is preserved.

Some septenary' ballads do not show this dipodic structure, and Mr. Stewart argues that these have come down in a less primitive form.

Ballads apparently written in a stanza of four-stress lines reveal the same essential structure, with the difference that the line is extended to the secondary stress of the last foot:

Then ffarewell hart, and farewell hand
And ffarwell all good companye.

Mr. Stewart considers examples in which the structure is more complicated, the dipod consisting not of four syllables but other arrangements metrically equivalent, and he finds in the ballads examples of the trisyllabic dipod, the dipod of two syllables, and of five, six, or even more. The scansion he suggests often has the merit of bringing out the force and meaning of lines in both the simple and more complex kinds of ballads.

Professor Tolkien offers Some Contributions to Middle-English Lexicography (R. E. S., April) for the use of future compilers of Middle-English dictionaries. It is suggested that the original meaning of burde was 'embroidress' and that it is connected with OE. borda, embroidery, and *byrdan (be-byrdan, ge-byrdan), to embroider. Among a number of notes on the glossary to the E. E. T. S. 1922 edition of Holi Meidhad, one of the most interesting is on heme, in the phrase heme and hine, for which a connexion with OE. hame, inhabitants of a ham, is suggested. The phrase then means 'villagers' and 'members of a family' (or 'inmates of the monastery'), and implies a distinction between lower and higher orders of society.

A second article in the same periodical (July) discusses the word eaueres in Holi Meidhad, as a rule translated boars'.

This word has been taken as evidence of the survival in Middle English of OE. eofor, boar', but the passage in the prophet Joel to which the writer is referring has the word jumenta and the phonological equivalent is OE. eafor (a dialectal form of afor). This occurs once in OE. in combination with the word cumfeorm, referring to the obligation to harbour the king's messengers and further them with transport facilities. ME. aver, 'draught-horse', hitherto wrongly associated with O.F. aveir, is another development of it. Perhaps eafor first meant 'heavy (farm) work' and was specialized in meaning to the sense of 'drawing heavy loads' and then of 'horse for drawing heavy loads'.

A new etymology for ME. askances meaning 'as if, as though is offered by Mr. Charles H. Livingston (M. L. R., Jan.). The second element has already been recognized as derived from O.F. quainses (quanses, queinsi) meaning comme, comme si. The suggestion here is that the first is from Latin ex-, O.F. es-, which might appear as as- in Anglo-Norman. The original meaning 'way from, out, from' has been lost in a number of O.F. words, and probably this is another instance of the use of this meaningless prefix.

The phrase busten and beten, found in Holi Meiðhad and elsewhere, is discussed by Mr. E. P. Magonn, Jr. (M. L. N., Nov.), and the first word in it is connected by him with O. Icel. beysta, 'to beat', and the Swedish dialectal bysta, to strike'.

Mr. Magonn proposes as a rendering of the phrase lof grin in the Peterborough Chronicle (1137) 'head-band and noose'. Lóf is found in OE. in an eleventh-century gloss to Aldhelm's De Laudibus Virginitatis, where it clearly means 'fillet', 'headband'. The kind of sinister 'head-band' implied in the Chronicle is suggested by the passage 'men dide cnotted strenges abuton here haeved and wrythen to dat it gaede to the haernes'.

Mr. A. H. Smith revives the suggestion that the elusive pronoun she is derived from OE. heo, and points to a number of place-names in the North in which the native sound change of he- to sh- has taken place. The place-name Shipton appears earlier as Hepeton, Hieptunum, and Hyepton. If the first element is heopa, 'briar', as he suggests, we have the following development indicated: héo > hjé>çjé>sē>si. It should

be noted that some of the names which Mr. Smith uses have no value as evidence of a native sound-change; Shetland and Shapinsey and possibly Shawm Rigg are of O.N. origin.

Various explanations have been given of the appearance, in the London dialect of the fourteenth century, of i- forms derived from OE. . Mr. Percy H. Reaney sets out to prove (Englische Studien, Aug.) that in documents of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, which must be regarded as London documents, iforms are frequent. The documents of which he makes chief use are The Great Roll of the Pipe (1158-87), and the Feet of Fines for Essex. His first concern is to show that the placename forms here reveal the London and not the local forms. The a priori probabilities are in favour of this since they deal with payments made in London; the view is confirmed by a comparison with forms from documents known to have been written in particular areas. Bedford, for example, is revealed by local documents to have been mainly a u- area, but, according to the Pipe Rolls, i- forms predominated. Evidently official documents such as these are written in an official dialect-that of London-modified to some extent by local influence. This official dialect shows in the eleventh and twelfth centuries all the varieties of developments from OE. y found in the fourteenth century, including the i- forms.

Eleventh-century charters indicate that the unrounding of OE. y took place in Essex as well as London and Middlesex, probably, as suggested by Miss Serjeantson, during the tenth century. The other important conclusion at which Mr. Reaney arrives is that OE. eo was rounded in Middlesex and Essex, probably in Hertfordshire, and possibly in Kent.

Had Professor Jordan lived to complete his Handbuch der mittelenglischen Grammatik 10 we should have had at last a comprehensive and detailed survey of the English language during the Middle English period, not limited, as are most ME. 'Grammars', to the needs of beginners. As it is, the first part of his book easily takes its place as the authority on ME. phonology. To open it anywhere is to discover sound

10 Handbuch der mittelenglischen Grammatik (1. Teil: Lautlehre), by Richard Jordan. Heidelberg: Winter. pp. xvi, 273. 8s. net (bound).

laws clearly set out, abundant evidence produced for them, exceptions noted and discussed, and references to the important scholarly works on the matter. A very comprehensive introduction precedes the discussion of the phonology. In it Professor Jordan defines the boundaries of the ME. dialects as precisely as the present state of knowledge will allow and mentions the important ME. texts belonging to each county; he gives an account of the foreign element in ME., including Celtic, Latin, and Dutch loan-words; he sketches the emergence and nature of the standard dialect and comments on ME. orthography as it appears in MSS.

The account of the language in the fifteenth century, which is given a chapter to itself, is particularly valuable as a summary of many recent theories. It will be noted that Professor Jordan does not consider that there is sufficient evidence to prove that OE. a became a or that ME. u changed to a (a) in this century, as conjectured by Zachrisson and Wyld.

This caution is characteristic of the book. It is distinctly conservative in plan; no new method of attack is suggested or developed. Its value lies in its being a very complete and judicious weighing of existing theories on ME. phonology in the light of evidence that has obviously been collected independently and considered with great care.

V

THE RENAISSANCE

[By ARTHUR W. REED]

THE four-hundredth anniversary of the first printing of William Tyndale's Translation of the New Testament has been observed during the year under review, and was the occasion of an admirable leading article in T. L. S. (4th June) in which, amongst much else that was good, the problems of the MoreTyndale controversy and the doctrinal consequences of some of Tyndale's renderings found a place. Fifteen years ago Professor Alfred W. Pollard, for the tercentenary of the Authorized Version, published his Records of the English Bible and pointed out the permanent qualities of Tyndale's work. It fixed the style and tone of the English Bible and supplied not merely the basis of all subsequent Protestant renderings of the books on which he laboured, but their very substance and body, so that these subsequent versions must be looked upon as revisions of his, not as independent translations.' As Mr. Pollard had already set out the documents relevant to Tyndale's Bible, his book has met for a second time most of the needs of a centenary observance. Demaus's biography, however, was out of print, and its reissue in a popular edition, revised by Richard Lovett,1 has put this recognized authority within the reach of the ordinary student. Reference must be made also to a wellinformed article on Tyndale by Mr. Guppy in the Bulletin of the John Rylands Library (Jan.).

Among the associates of Tyndale in exile was a small group of Observant Friars which included Alexander Barclay. It is one of the mysteries of early Tudor literary history that Barclay, who was translating the Ship of Fools in the closing

1 William Tindale: A Biography, being a contribution to the Early History of the English Bible, by Robert Demaus. Popular Edition, revised by Richard Lovett. R.T.S. pp. 561. 7s. 6d.