Anglo-Saxon Dialects and Textual Practices

Although we generally recognize West Saxon as the nearest thing to a "standard" form of Old English we have, Old English existed in a number of dialects. West Saxon is neither the earliest recorded form of Old English nor the form that records the earliest literary gestures in Old English. It did, however, benefit from historical circumstances that rendered it the primarily politically viable form of the language.

Mouse-over the map below of the Anglo-Saxon Heptarchy (courtesy of Matthew White)--the areas of Norse and Danish domination that follow the Scandinavian inroads of the eighth and ninth centuries are clearly marked. If you click on the hotspots below, you can can see the different versions we have of "Caedmon's Hymn" as well as two versions of the Magnificat from Luke. (Note that there are two Northumbrian texts and one West Saxon Text. I've located one around Durham and another around York, just for convenience.)

For more discussion of "Caedmon's Hymn," see Representative Poetry Online.

Suggestions for Using this Site:

• Ask students to compare some of the apparent phonetic differences between the Northumbrian versions of "Caedmon's Hymn" and the West Saxon version. For example, does the spelling of the completive prefix ('ge') in the Northumbrian text help them to clarify the pronunciation of the prefix in West Saxon? What possible conclusions might students draw from the variations between 'i' and 'e' in words like 'meahte' and 'ece'? What do such spelling variations suggest about changes in the "strength" of inflectional endings between dialects and over time?
• Ask students to consider differences in spelling for Old English consonants (for example, 'th' in Northumbrian for 'þ, ð' in West Saxon. Why would manuscripts written in the monastic context of Northumbria use a different alphabet set than those in Wessex? Instructors could use this question to lead into discussions of spelling changes in the late medieval period that resulted from moveable type.