e. Arise
and go to yon city. Here the A.S. _geon_ (pronounced like the modern
_yon_) is actually declined after the regular manner, being duly
provided with the suffix _-re_, which was the special suffix reserved
only for the genitive or dative feminine. It is here a dative after
the preposition _to_.
There is, in fact, no limit to the good use to which a reverent study
of our dialects may be put by a diligent student. They abound with
pearls which are worthy of a better fate than to be trampled under
foot. I will content myself with giving one last example that is
really too curious to be passed over in silence.
It so happens that in the Anglo-Saxon epic poem of _Beowulf_, one
of the most remarkable and precious of our early poems, there is a
splendid and graphic description of a lonely mere, such as would have
delighted the heart of Edgar Allan Poe, the author of _Ulalume_. In
Professor Earle's prose translation of this passage, given in his
_Deeds of Beowulf_, at p. 44, is a description of two mysterious
monsters, of whom it is said that "they inhabit unvisited land,
wolf-crags, windy bluffs, the dread fen-track, where the mountain
waterfall amid precipitous gloom vanisheth beneath--flood under
earth.
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