{Footnotes: 
    1:  I desire thee to christen here
    2:  ordaine it
    3:  to wash with
    4:  is not
    5:  easily
    6:  in (the) land
    7:  there is noe that may not have it
    8:  that will try to have it
    9:  these are
   10:  coasts, regions
   11:  I
   12:  thee
   13:  Father’s
   14:  when it
   15:  said
   16:  that which precedes }

In the year 1340, Dan Michel of Northgate (Kent) translated into English a French treatise on Vices and Virtues, under the title The Ayenbite of Inwyt, literally, “The Again-biting of In-wit,” i.e.  Remorse of Conscience.  This is the best specimen of the Kentish dialect of the fourteenth century, and is remarkable for being much more difficult to make out than other pieces of the same period.  The whole work was edited by Dr Morris for the Early English Text Society in 1866.  A sermon of the same date and in the same dialect, and probably by the same author, is given in Specimens of Early English, Part II.  The sermon is followed by the Lord’s Prayer, the Ave Maria, and the “Credo” or Apostles’ Creed, all in the same dialect; and I here give the last of these, as being not difficult to follow: 

Ich leve ine God, Vader almighti, makere of hevene and of erthe.  And ine Iesu Crist, His zone onlepi [only son], oure lhord, thet y-kend [conceived] is of the Holy Gost, y-bore of Marie mayde, y-pyned [was crucified, lit. made to suffer] onder Pouns Pilate, y-nayled a rode [on a cross], dyad, and be-bered; yede [went] doun to helle; thane thridde day aros vram the dyade; steay [rose, ascended] to hevenes; zit [sitteth] athe [on the] right half of God the Vader almighti; thannes to comene He is, to deme the quike and the dyade.  Ich y-leve ine the Holy Gost; holy cherche generalliche; Mennesse of halyen [communion of holy-ones]; Lesnesse of zennes [remission of sins]; of vlesse [flesh, body] arizinge; and lyf evrelestinde.  Zuo by hyt [so be it].

A few remarks may well be made here on some of the peculiarities of Southern English that appear here.  The use of v for f (as in vader, vram, vlesshe), and of z for s (as in zone, zit, zennes) are common to this day, especially in Somersetshire.  The spelling lhord reminds us that many Anglo-Saxon words began with hl, one of them being hl{-a}fweard, later hl{-a}ford, a lord; and this hl is a symbol denoting the so-called “whispered l,” sounded much as if an aspirate were prefixed to the l, and still common in Welsh, where it is denoted by ll, as in llyn, a lake.  In every case, modern English substitutes