_aveir_,
property, cattle; _averous_, A.F. _averous_, avaricious, in Wyclif's
translation of 1 Cor. vi 10.
Here is ample proof of the survival of Anglo-French in our dialects.
Indeed, their chief philological use consists in the great antiquity
of many of the terms, which often preserve Old English and Anglo-French
forms with much fidelity. The charge often brought against dialect
speakers of using "corrupt" forms is only occasionally and
exceptionally true. Much worse "corruptions" have been made by
antiquaries, in order to suit their false etymologies.
CHAPTER X
LATER HISTORY OF THE DIALECTS
With the ascendancy of East Midland, and its acceptance as the chief
literary language, the other dialects practically ceased to be
recorded, with the exception (noted above) of the Scottish
Northumbrian. Of English Northumbrian, the sixteenth century tells us
nothing beyond what we can glean from belated copies of Northern
ballads or such traces of a Northern (apparently a Lancashire) dialect
as appear in Spenser's _Shepherd's Calendar_. Fitzherbert's _Boke
of Husbandry_ (1534) was reprinted for the E.
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