[English Dialects From the Eighth Century to the Present Day by Walter W. Skeat]@TWC D-Link book
English Dialects From the Eighth Century to the Present Day

CHAPTER V
6/11

_Godefroy of Boloyne_ (1481), _Charles the Grete_ (1485), _The Knight Paris and the fair Vyene_ (1485), _Blanchardyn and Eglantine_ (about 1489), and _The Four Sons of Aymon_ (about 1490).

We must further put to the credit of the fifteenth century the remarkable English version of the _Gesta Romanorum_, and many more versions by Caxton, such as _The Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye_, _The Life of Jason_, _Eneydos_ (which is Virgil's _Aeneid_ in the form of a prose romance), _The Golden Legend_ or Lives of Saints, and _Reynard the Fox_.

When all these works are considered, the fifteenth century emerges with considerable credit.
It remains to look at some of the above-named romances a little more closely, in order to see if any of them are in the dialect of Northern England.

Some of them are written by scribes belonging to other parts, but there seems to be little doubt that the following were in that dialect originally, viz.

(1) _Iwain and Gawain_, printed in Ritson's _Ancient Metrical Romances_, and belonging to the very beginning of the century, extant in the same MS.


<<Back  Index  Next>>

D-Link book Top

TWC mobile books