PREFACE

I. Dialects and their value.  The meaning of dialect.  Phonetic decay and
      dialectic regeneration.  The words twenty, madam, alms.  Keats;
      use of awfully.  Tennyson and Ben Jonson; use of flittermouse. 
      Shakespeare; use of bolter and child.  Sir W. Scott; use of
      eme.  The English yon. Hrinde in Beowulf.

II.  DIALECTS IN EARLY TIMES.  The four old dialects.  Meaning of
      “Anglo-Saxon.”  Documents in the Wessex dialect.

III.  THE DIALECTS OF NORTHUMBRIA; TILL A.D. 1300.  The Anglian period. 
      Beda’s History and “Death-song.”  The poet C{ae}dmon.  C{ae}dmon’s
      hymn.  The Leyden Riddle.  The Ruth well Cross.  Liber Vit{ae}.  The
      Durham Ritual.  The Lindisfarne and Rushworth MSS.  Meaning of a
      “gloss.”  Specimen.

IV.  THE DIALECTS OF NORTHUMBRIA; A.D. 1300-1400.  The Metrical Psalter;
      with an extract.  Cursor Mundi.  Homilies in Verse.  Prick of
      Conscience.  Minot’s Poems.  Barbour’s Bruce; with an extract.  Great
      extent of the Old Northern dialect; from Aberdeen to the Humber. 
      Lowland Scotch identical with the Yorkshire dialect of Hampole. 
      Lowland Scotch called “Inglis” by Barbour, Henry the Minstrel,
      Dunbar, and Lyndesay; first called “Scottis” by G. Douglas. 
      Dr Murray’s account of the Dialect of the Southern Counties of
      Scotland.

V. NORTHUMBRIAN IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY.  Northumbrian of Scotland and
      of England in different circumstances.  Literature of the fifteenth
      century; poems, romances, plays, and ballads.  List of Romances. 
      Caxton.  Rise of the Midland dialect.  “Scottish” and “English.” 
      Jamieson’s Dictionary.  “Middle Scots.”  Quotation from Dunbar.

VI.  THE SOUTHERN DIALECT.  Alfred the Great.  The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. 
      Old English Homilies.  The Brut.  St Juliana.  The Ancren Riwle.  The
      Proverbs of Alfred.  The Owl and the Nightingale.  A Moral Ode. 
      Robert of Gloucester.  Early history of Britain.  The South-English
      Legendary.  The Harleian MS. 2253.  The Vernon MS. John Trevisa. 
      The Testament of Love.

VII.  THE SOUTHERN DIALECT OF KENT.  Quotation from Beda.  Extract from an
      Old Kentish Charter.  Kentish Glosses.  Kentish Sermons.  William of
      Shoreham; with an extract.  The Ayenbite of Inwyt.  The Apostles’
      Creed in Old Kentish.  The use of e for A.S. y in Kentish.  Use
      of Kentish by Gower and Chaucer.  Kentish forms in modern English.