THE SOUTHERN DIALECT We have seen that the earliest dialect to assume literary supremacy was the Northern, and that at a very early date, namely, in the seventh, eighth, and ninth centuries; but its early documents have nearly all perished.

If, with the exception of one short fragment, any of C{ae}dmon's poems have survived, they only exist in Southern versions of a much later date.
The chief fosterer of our rather extensive Wessex (or Southern) literature, commonly called Anglo-Saxon, was the great Alfred, born at Wantage in Berkshire, to the south of the Thames.

We may roughly define the limits of the Old Southern dialect by saying that it formerly included all the counties to the south of the Thames and to the west and south-west of Berkshire, including Wiltshire, Dorsetshire, Somersetshire, and Devonshire, but excluding Cornwall, in which the Cornish dialect of Celtic prevailed.

It was at Athelney in Somersetshire, near the junction of the rivers Tone and Parrett, that Alfred, in the memorable year 878, when his dominions were reduced to a precarious sway over two or three counties, established his famous stronghold; from which he issued to inflict upon the foes of the future British empire a crushing and decisive defeat.

And it was near Athelney, in the year 1693, that the ornament of gold and enamel was found, with its famous legend--{AE}LFRED MEC HEHT GEWYRCAN--"{AE}lfred commanded (men) to make me." From his date to the Norman Conquest, the MSS.