1ELG506 History of The English Language: Middle English The Fox and the Wolf is a beast-epic.

It is a fable which is actually part of a series of French traditions concerning Reynard the Fox, as is alluded to in line 133, Ich am Reneuard. In this poem, Reynard the Fox attempts to delude/deceive sire chauntecler by pretending to have come to rescue him from the sickness under his breast ou hauest at ilike ounder )e spleen (line 47). This attempt to deceive sire chauntecler (the cock) is made more apparent when the fox uses medical terms offering to bleed the cock. An example of this is in line 47 when the fox mentions that the cock has the same illness under his splen. Splen is an Old French word which shows an attempt from the fox at showing his formality and professional medical language with the terminology that he uses. Another instance in which the fox shows medical knowledge is in line 45, when the fox mentions that he let out their eddre-blod. The use of these medical terms may also allude to the fox attempting to make apparent his superior status and intellect in comparison to the cock. Further evidence also implies this; from the register of his speech including Old French words such as sire (line 37) shows his attempt to speak in a more formal fashion, attempting to show his elite status and intellect. Moreover, the author uses the word kok (line 30, 31, 33) to refer to the cock, which is from the Old English word cocc, whereas the author could have used the word coq from Old French but chose not to do so. This may imply that the author wants to belittle the status and more importantly, the intellect of the cock, but it turns out that the cock is not outsmarted by the witty fox and tells the fox to go away. This seems to add to the humour of the beastepic. Soon after, the fox find a well with two buckets in order to quench his thirst and does not realize how to system works. He ends up in the well with no way out, unless someone heavier goes in the other bucket. His friend, Sigrim the wolf finds him and is tricked into entering the other bucket, thus realising the fox caused him to be trapped him in the well. According to Barnhart (104), this poem benefits from the tradition in which the fox symbolizes the clever man who deludes society, is brought to judgement, but escapes by cunning. (cited in Lambdin and Lambdin, 2002, p.74). Its date of composition was in the latter half of the thirteenth century, estimated between c1250-1275. This is the earliest example in English of a versified story dealing with Reynard the Fox, as well as being the earliest humorous beast fable extant in Middle English, even before Chaucers Nuns Priests Tale. There is only one copy of the poem in Bodleian Library, Oxford, Digby 86 (written at the Prior of Worchestershire), and it is not considered the original. It must have been written and copied in the South of England, but cannot be identified more closely with a particular dialectal area. (cited in From Old English to Standard English. Freeborn, D.). Unfortunately, due to there being only one copy of the poem, its linguistic features cannot be compared to other copies in order to see whether there are discrepancies between other versions of the poem. Its author is unknown, mainly due to the original copy not being available. This southern text has many non-northern and southern origin indicators. This is shown through the language being conservative, as the more conservative the language is, it may be said, the more southern the origins of the text will be. This is seen through its various linguistic features, such as syntax, vocabulary, morphology and phonology. This poem also seems to have been heavily influenced by

French, which may be due to the poem actually having been inspired by its French counterpart Renart the Fox. It is noticed that in the first sentence fox is spelt as <vox>, which reoccurs on line 16. The use of [v] is a feature that indicates a strong possibility of the text being southern. Vox is also spelt as wox in lines 12, 33 and 37. This illustrates the voiced pronunciation of the consonant <f> at the beginning of a word which is from the southern dialects of Old English and Middle English. The vowel <> generally turns in <a> or <e> in Middle English, like what is seen in line 2, wes coming from the Old English word ws. Moreover, in line 3, the word neuere comes from the Old English word nfre (meaning never). In line 4, erour is changed from the Old English word ror (meaning earlier), followed by strete on line 5 from the Old English word strte. So it is seen from these examples that generally the character is replaced by either an <a> or an <e>. The long a [] from Old English is shifted to a more rounded [o], which is a clear marker for a nonnorthern dialect. There are many examples of this, many of which are in the imperative form, such as Go hom in line 34, and Go wei in line 53. The original Old English word gan shifted to go due to the reflex of Old English. Additionally, other words have undergone this shift, e.g. <swo> (demons) on line 10 from the Old English <swa> and the past tense singular verb <strok> from the Old English strc. The spelling <ou> was endorsed from the French in contrast to the Old English [u] in words such as oundred in line 8 from <hundred>, hous (line 11) from hs and hounger (line 13) from hungor are used. Although the spelling was endorsed from the French, the pronunciation remained the same. There are supplementary features which manifest the influence of French on this poem. Amongst them is the Old English <cw> becoming <qu>, as well as <c> becoming <ch>, both of which are seen in the Old English word acwencan that becomes aquenche. This French influence may be due to its influences from the original French Reynard the Fox. The Old English <eo> is smoothed out into <e>, e.g. leofra becomes leuere (line 7). Lines 35 to 41 have many distinctive non-northern and conservative features. In line 39, the word hennen is third person plural, and ends in en rather than es. This is also the case with wimmen (line 8), which is a third person accusative feminine plural and hennen again (line 40) as a third person genitive plural. The en ending is closer to Old English than the northern es ending. ou is a second person accusative dative singular pronoun, which still uses the thorn character () which is conservative, like in line 91, the adverb us is used in comparison to the northern <th-> thus. <Sh> is used instead of the northern <s> in line 35, Shome.Be (line 36) is a present particle from <bon> and ich is first person singular pronoun which is a southern feature. Godes (line 36) uses the continental <g> and in the next line Qua is a third person past tense singular indicative which ends in <>. This is due to the retention of the Old English inflectional system. The pronoun Hy in line 41 (accusative), and line 42 (dative) is a 3rd person plural pronoun. Anything with h tends to link back to OE, e.g. this 3rd person plural pronoun, as opposed to the more north, scandanavian version ei. In the OE version hie is for they. Freeborn (1998) mentions the pronoun hii/hom is actually an indication of south-western dialect (page 168). The loss of most of the inflections in Old English mainly due to their reduction in sound, led to a greater reliance on word order. This is evident from the rhyming pair, strete and mete at the end of line 5 and 6 from the Old English words strt and mete. One vowel shifts, i.e. /:/ to // as well as the lengthening of the other, i.e. // becomes /:/, thus pronouncing the words as [str:ta] and [m:ta]. The reflex of the intial /f/ and /s/ becomes /v/ and /z/ in the southern dialect, e.g. vox (line 1) from fox.

The word order of the poem is Subject (S), Object (O) then Verb (V) rather than SVO, e.g. in line 13 For he ohute his hounger aquenche. For is a conjunction, and he is the subject, ohute is the past tense, 3rd person singualar verb, however it is not the main verb, hounger is the object and aquenche is the main lexical verb. It is common in Old English that the main lexical verb is mentioned at the end. This syntax is apparent in many places in the text, e.g. For him wes lo men to mete (line 6). Again For is the conjunction, him is a 3rd person, singular, masculine pronoun which is the subject in this clause. Wes is an auxiliary verb (not the main verb), lo is an adjective, men is the object, to is a preposition and mete is the main verb. Overall, the text is influenced by Old French, especially in the extract where the fox attempts to outwit another animal. The formal register of his Old French vocabulary shows that he is attempting to deceive another whilst also manifesting his superior intellect and status. The loss of inflection (levelling) that is occurring in Old English during the time of the poem is present, however the text would still be considered to be more conservative in its dialect.

Text- Lines 1-58 A vox gon out of e wode go, Afingret so at him wes wo; He nes neuere in none wise Afingret erour half so swie. He ne hoeld nouer wey ne strete, For him wes lo men to mete; Him were leuere meten one hen, en half an oundred wimmen. He strok swie oueral, So at he ofsei ane wal; Wiinne e walle wes on hous, The wox wes ider swie wous; For he ohute his hounger aquenche, Oer mid mete, oer mid drunche. Abouten he biheld wel erne; o eroust bigon e vox to erne. Al fort he come to one walle, And som er-of wes afalle, And wes e wal oueral tobroke, And on at er wes iloke; At e furmeste bruche at he fond, He lep in, and ouer he wond. o he wes inne, smere he lou, And er-of he hadde gome inou; For he com in wiouten leue Boen of haiward and of reue. On hous er wes, e dore wes ope, Hennen weren erinne icrope, Fiue, at make anne flok, And mi hem sat on kok. e kok him wes flowen on hey, And two hennen him seten ney, Wox, quad e kok, wat dest ou are? Go hom, crist e eue kare! Houre hennen ou dest ofte shome. Be stille, ich hote, a godes nome! Quap e wox, sire chauntecler, ou fle adoun, and com me ner. I nabbe don her nout bote goed, I have leten ine hennen blod; Hy weren seke ounder e ribe, at hy ne mitte non lengour libe Bote here heddre were itake; at I do for almes sake.

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Ich haue hem leten eddre-blod, And e, chauntecler, hit wolde don goed. ou hauest at ilke ounder e splen, ou nestes neuere daies ten; For ine lif-dayes be al ago, Bote ou bi mine rede do; I do e lete blod ounder e brest, oer sone axe after e prest. Go wei, quod e kok, wo e bigo! ou hauest don oure kunne wo. Go mid an at ou hauest noue; Acoursed be ou of godes moue! For were I adoun bi godes nome! Ich mi3te ben siker of ore shome

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Bibliography Dunn, C, W., Brynes, E, T., (1990) Middle English Literature, Third Edition, Routledge, Taylor and Francis Group. Freeborn, D., (1998) From Old English to Standard English: A Course Book in Language Variation across Time, Second Edition, Hampshire, Palgrave. Freeborn, D., (2011). Selected Loan Words. [online] Hampshire: Macmillian Publishers: Available from <http://www.palgrave.com/language/freeborn/site/pdfs/Loan_words_pdfs/reflexes.pdf> [Accessed 8 February 2012]. Lambdin, L.C, and Lambin, R.T., (2002) A Companion to Old and Middle English Literature, Westport, Greenwood press. Tuma, G. W., Hazell, D., (2011) The Wicked Age: Middle English Compliant Literature in Translation. [online] San Francisco: San Francisco University. Available from <http://www.sfsu.edu/~medieval/complaintlit/fox_wolf.html> [Accessed 6 February 2012]. Upton, C., Widdowson, J., (2006) An Atlas of English Dialect, Second Edition, Routledge, Taylor and Francis Group.