Leechdoms, wortcunning, and starcraft of early England. Being a ...

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Tja
:
XXXVl
PREFACE.
Letters.
Genders,
Gorman way of talking, the second t is " inorganic,"
and serves only to mark the shortness of the vowel.
Under this form the word is our Twit.
Enough has been said to show that the length of
the vowels in Saxon English is a very wide subject,
and to justify the postponement of any decisions in
the
Glossary.
In our oldest manuscripts jwjin often occurs where
it is the custom to print T. Rejp'S, led, rest, Luj-^,
'pleasure, lust, and a hundred others are examples
the superlatives end in J^orn, as ^ ag^eley^e mseben,
the very noble maiden, the participles also. In the
Codex Exoniensis the editor removed these features
of antiquity ; they offended him ; and wore not according
to Rask.^ If any such occur in the present
volume they are preserved ; they are not dialectic,
but archaic.
In genders the glossaries are untrustwortliy ; thus,
the most recent is found, as regards the few words
common to both, much wrong, when compared with
the citations in that at the end of this volume. It
is unsafe to trust compounds with je-, for the genders
of the simples, for Ge- being a form of Con- and
collective, its com])ounds are found to have a tendency
to run into the neuter."
Simples cannot always be relied
on for the gender of the compound ;
all moderns take
poppyjib for a feminine, after pyj^^, but in a wide scope
of unpublished materials I have always found it neuter.^
Occasionally a new principle comes in, and by attraction
the article agrees with the former element in the
compound, instead of the latter ; hence pserejieebpe
'
For example, Gebiej-jaS, Gepel- 1
cncoj>holen, Lb. I. xlvii. .3,
Sa'S, p. .358; I'cob', p. 3.57. Ahpeol'eS,
p. :r.)7 ; Blse'S, p. .",10.
or else Tpa, is tivo parts. This
perliaps makes kneeholly neuter ;
- Thus Sp)i£ec is feminine, fJe- remark slioukl have appeared in the
I'ppxc, neuter.
Glossary.