the Wanderer

features of dialect

1. Characteristic early West Saxon ie appears only in the initial combination gie, in cwidegiedda 55, giefstôlas 44, gielpes 69, ongietan 73. This feature is shared with most of The Exeter Book.
2. Late West Saxon y from earlier ie occurs in hyra 18, maþþumgyfa 92, scyppend 85; y for i occurs in gehwylce 8, rycene 112.
3. Characteristic of late West Saxon is the genitiv singular of an a stem noun in -as in giefstôlas 44. As a result of the gradual weakening of vowels in final lightly stessed syllables, there was considerable scribal variation.
4. West Saxon æ [long], from West Germanic â, occurs eighteen times in the poem; in the only example of non-West-Saxon ê, in wêgas 46, the form may have been read as wegas and so have escaped alteration.
5. In West Saxon æ [short] was featured to ea before l + consonant, but remained unfractured in Anglian and was later retracted to a. Of the 14 relevant forms in the poem, twelve show fracture. Two which do not are waldend 78, and ælda 85 (where earlier a has undergone front mutation). These forms are, however, common in poetic texts and were propably part of the general literary stock.
6. Confusion of eo and ea is found regularly in Northumbrian texts, but occurs sporadically in West Saxon also; cf. wearþan with the more usual weorþan.
7. Back mutation of e to eo before d, t, þ did not take place in West Saxon but was widespread in Anglian, as in meoduhealle 27, sweotule 11, and stânhleoþu 101. Unmutated are metudes 2, ederas 77 (earlier edoras) and gesetu 93.
8. In West Saxon u in a final lightly stressed syllable early became o before consonants other than m or ng when not proceeded by u in the stem syllable, whereas it remained in early Northumbrian and extensively in Mercian; u is retained in metudes 2, sweotule 11, weoruld 107, but has become o or e in hêafod 43, ederas 77, feterum 21, fugel 81, waþema 24, 57.
9. Syncope in the 2nd and 3rd person singular present indicativ of strong verbs has generally been held to be characteristic of West Saxon, and lack of syncope to be characteristic of Anglian. But Sisam [an author frequently quoted] has shown the unreliability of this tenet for poetry and states that all the evidence is consistent with the view that the uncontractedendings were general in Old English in early centuries, and were regarded as appropriate to verse, at least at the end of the tenth century, by writers for whom the short forms were normal in prose. All such forms in the poem are uncontracted, except gesihð 46.
10. Weak verbs of Class 2, which usually form their past with -od in West Saxon, have -ad in Anglian, as genîwad 50, 55.