Middle English

Mystery Text 1: About Freedom

Model Solution
13/07/21

Read the text and answer the questions below:

1 A fredome is a noble thing,

Fredome mays man to haiff liking.
Fredome all solace to man giffis,
He levys at es þat frely levys.
5 A noble hart may haiff nane es
Na ellys nocht þat may him ples
naught
Gyff fredome failʒhe — for fre liking
Is ʒharnyt our all oþer thing.
Na he þat ay has levyt fre
10 May nacht knaw weill the propyrte
Þe angyr na þe wrechyt dome
Þat is cowplyt to foule thyrldome
Bot gyff he had assayit it.
mays: makes; haiff: have; liking: choice
levys: lives; es: ease
nane: no, none
na: nor; ellys: else; nocht: nothing,
gyff: if; failʒhe: fails
ʒharnyt: yearned; our: over
ay: aye, yes (interjection)
nacht: not
wrechyt: wretched; dome: doom, fate
cowplyt: coupled; thyrldome: slavery
bot gyff: unless; assayit: experienced

Questions:

1. Translate the text into (comprehensible) Modern English!

A freedom is a noble thing

Freedom makes man to have choice
Freedom gives solace to man,
Only he lives at ease that lives freely.
A noble heart may have no ease
Nor else anything that may please him
If freedom fails — for free choice
Is yearned more than all other things.
Nor he that, aye! Has lived free
May not know well the property
The anger nor the wretched fate
That is coupled to foul slavery
Unless he has experienced it-

2. Transcribe the first 4 lines in the IPA.

Help: an <i> after a vowel indicates vowel length; <ff> = /v/

[a fre:dɔm ɪz a nɔ:bəl θɪŋg

fre:dɔm maɪz man tʊ ha:v li:kɪŋg.
fre:dɔm al sɔ:las to: man gɪvɪz
he: levɪz at ɛ:z ðat fre:li: levɪz.]
Middle English

3. Explain the effect the Great Vowel Shift had on mid vowels, using the examples es (4, 5),
fre (9), noble (1, 5), dome (11).

In the GVS, mid vowels raised.

ME /ɔ:/ raised to /o:/ (Present-Day /əʊ/), /o:/ raised to /u:/.
Thus dom ‘doom’ had /o:/ (now /du:m/), noble had /ɔ:/ (now /əʊ/).
ME /ɛ:/ and /e:/ both raised to /i:/ in Present Day English and thus merged.
Fre had /e:/ and es had /ɛ:/ – now free and ease both have /i:/.
The clue as to what the ME vowel was usually lies in spelling.
A modern spelling <ee> indicates ME /e:/, <ea> indicates /ɛ:/.

4. The words angyr and propyrte (lines 10, 11) are new in Middle English. Where do they
originate? Explain briefly how they got into the English language.

angyr ‘anger’ is a loanword from Old Norse, propyrte ‘property’ is a French loanword.
Borrowing from ON is an effect of Viking settlements in the North and East of England
which led to intensive contact between Norse and English speakers. One effect of this
contact was that many words of Norse origin entered the English language.
Borrowing from French is an effect of Norman rule after 1066; after the Battle of Hastings a
French-speaking nobility took control in England, and French became the language of the
court and of government. Over time this led to massive borrowing from French,
especially from 1200 onwards.

5. Identify all inflectional suffixes you can find. Do they give you an indication of where
the text is from (from which dialect area)?

There are two verbal inflectional suffixes in this text.

-s marks the third person singular in this text (has, mays, giffis, levys …).
-it (-yt) marks the past participle (ȝharnyt, cowplyt, assayit …).
The use of -s indicates that the text is from the North where the use of -s as a 3rd singular
(and general present tense marker) was innovated (the rest of England had -th).
Bonus answer: final -t in the past tense / past participle points at Early Scots where the
original suffix -ede/-ed underwent hardening.

6. Provide 1 or 2 additional pieces of evidence to support the suggestion that the text is
from this specific dialect.

Additional Northern features:

Use of <i> as an orthographic marker indicating vowel length (haiff, weill)
No raising of OE /a:/ to /ɔ:/, thus na, nane ‘no, none’
(ay is a Northern form, borrowed from Norse.)

7. Identify and cite an example of word order that is different from Modern English and
explain briefly how it is different. Does this link in some way to what you know about
Old English word order?

There are several instances where the position of the verb is different. In particular, there are
instances of verb-final word order:
line 3: Fredome all solace to man giffis
Middle English

line 4: þat frely levys

line 6: þat may him ples

In line 4 and 6 this word order is found in subordinate clauses. Verb-final word order in
subordinate clauses was in fact the norm in Old English and abandoned in favour of SVO in
the ME period. In main clauses, where word order is free, we also occasionally find the verb
in final position (though there is a tendency for the inflected verb to go into second position
which we also see in the line 6 example, where may is in second position). Here too ME sees
the development of SVO as the unmarked word order.

The mystery solved:

The text is an excerpt from the verse epic The Bruce by John Barbour, written about 1375, detailing
the heroic deeds of the Scottish king Robert Bruce, fighting off the invading English. The text is
thus an example of Early Scots, which was beginning to develop out of the Northern dialects of ME
at that time.