The earliest of these have
been carefully collected and printed in one volume by Dr Sweet,
entitled _The Oldest English Texts_, edited for the Early English
Text Society in 1885. Here we already find the existence of no
less than four dialects, which have been called by the names of
Northumbrian, Mercian, Wessex (or Anglo-Saxon), and Kentish. These
correspond, respectively, though not quite exactly, to what we may
roughly call Northern, Midland, Southern, and Kentish. Whether the
limits of these dialects were always the same from the earliest times,
we cannot tell; probably not, when the unsettled state of the country
is considered, in the days when repeated invasions of the Danes and
Norsemen necessitated constant efforts to repel them. It is therefore
sufficient to define the areas covered by these dialects in quite a
rough way. We may regard the Northumbrian or Northern as the dialect
or group of dialects spoken to the north of the river Humber, as the
name implies; the Wessex or Southern, as the dialect or group of
dialects spoken to the south of the river Thames; the Kentish as
being peculiar to Kent; and the Mercian as in use in the Midland
districts, chiefly to the south of the Humber and to the north of
the Thames.
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