14.  He sent his arwes, and skatered tha;
    Felefalded levening, and dreved tham swa.
15.  And schewed welles of watres ware,
    And groundes of ertheli world unhiled are,
    For thi snibbing, Laverd myne;
    For onesprute of gast of wreth thine.
16.  He sent fra hegh, and uptoke me;
    Fra many watres me nam he.
17.  He out-toke me thare amang
    Fra my faas that war sa strang,
    And fra tha me that hated ai;
    For samen strenghthed over me war thai
18.  Thai forcome me in daie of twinging,
    And made es Layered mi forhiling.
19.  And he led me in brede to be;
    Sauf made he me, for he wald me;
20.  And foryhelde to me Laverd sal
    After mi rightwisenes al. 
    And after clensing of mi hende
    Sal he yhelde to me at ende.

The literal sense is:—­“He sent His arrows and scattered them; multiplied (His) lightning and so afflicted them.  And the wells of waters were shown, and the foundations of the earthly world are uncovered because of Thy snubbing (rebuke), O my Lord! because of the blast (Lat. inspiratio) of the breath of Thy wrath.  He sent from on high, and took me up; from many waters He took me.  He took me out there-among from my foes that were so strong, and from those that alway hated me; for they were strengthened together over me.  They came before me in the day of affliction, and the Lord is made my protection.  And He led me (so as) to be in a broad place; He made me safe, because He desired (lit. would) me; and the Lord shall requite me according to all my righteousness, and according to the cleanness of my hands shall He repay me in the end.”

In this specimen we can already discern some of the chief characteristics which are so conspicuous in Lowland Scotch MSS. of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.  The most striking is the almost total loss of the final _-e_ which is so frequently required to form an extra syllable when we try to scan the poetry of Chaucer.  Even where a final _-e_ is written in the above extract, it is wholly silent.  The words ware (were), are (are), myne, thine, toke, made, brede, hende, ende, are all monosyllabic; and in fact the large number of monosyllabic words is very striking.  The words onesprute, forcome, foryhelde are, in like manner, dissyllabic.  The only suffixes that count in the scansion are _-en_, _-ed_, and _-es_; as in sam-en, skat’r-{`e}d, drev-{`e}d, hat-{`e}d, etc., and arw-{`e}s, well-{`e}s, watr-{`e}s, etc.  The curious form sal, for “shall,” is a Northern characteristic.  So also is the form hende as the plural of “hand”; the Southern plural was often hond-en, and the Midland form was hond-{`e}s or hand-{`e}s.  Note also the characteristic long a; as in swa for swo, so; gast, ghost; fra, fro; faas, foes.  It was pronounced like the a in father.