It is more than sixty years since Professor Conybeare in his ‘Illustrations of Anglo-Saxon Poetry (1826)’ gave us metrical versions of certain specimens of Anglo-Saxon poetry, and such versions have been from time to time increased, until now a very considerable portion of this poetry has been clothed in a modern English dress, either in prose or in verse. The form that the translation should take has varied with the taste of the translator. Thorpe, in his editions of the’ Codex Exoniensis’ (1842) and of ‘Béowulf’ (1855), contented himself with an English prose version by half-lines in parallel columns with the text. Kemble, however, had previously published his prose translation of ‘Béowulf’ (1837) in a separate volume from the text. Wackerbarth published in 1849 the first complete English verse translation of ‘Béowulf,’ using verses of three and four accents, riming irregularly, sometimes stanza-fashion, as in the opening lines:

Lo! We have learned in lofty Lays
The Gár-Danes Deeds in antient Days
And Ages past away,
The Glories of the Theod-Kings,
And how the valiant Aethelings
Bare them in Battle's Day.

The value of such an investigation as this depends upon the reliability of the methods employed; these I wish to sketch briefly.

Harrison and Sharp's ‘Béowulf,’ after careful collation with Zupitza's ‘Autotypes,’ with additional correction for quantity, has furnished the text of the poem. Every word of this text, every variation of stem, has been, by independent investigation, reduced to the West-Germanic form. The data for this step were furnished by the vocabularies and lexicons cited below, and the processes involved were pursued under the guidance of the grammars also cited in the subjoined list. The lists of words thus obtained were classified, and checked against the lists of Cook, Cosijn, Fischer, and Leioing, and all important disagreements noted. Where further investigation seemed to justify former conclusions, a reference to the author in question has been entered in the work.

An exhaustive study of the riming system of Alexander Pope was suggested by the results of a partial investigation given in the introduction to Professsor Edwin Abbott's ‘Concordance’ to the works of that poet. I first based my study of the rimes upon this ‘Concordance,’ but, finding it to be neither reliable nor exhaustive, I was obliged to dispense with this aid and examine the rimes themselves at first hand. This investigation includes all of the poems, with the exception of a short unfinished piece, called “1740,” and a stanza of five lines written on “Beaufort House Gate at Chiswick,” omitted because of incomplete rimes. The examination of the rimes follows the lines of the study of Rose's ‘Orlando Furioso’ made by Professor Albert S. Cook in Modern Language Notes for November, 1883.

In studying the language or pronunciation of any section of the country, it is necessary first of all to trace back the history of the people inhabiting it to the earliest beginnings in order to explain understandingly the dialectical peculiarities of its grammar or pronunciation. I shall, therefore, preface my remarks on the linguistic peculiarities of this region with a brief sketch of its earliest settlements and later development.

The earlier history of Western Virginia, now known as West Virginia, begins a century later than that of Eastern Virginia, or Virginia proper. In 1710 Alexander Spotswood, a Scotchman, was the deputy governor of the Colony of Virginia.

The subject of this paper as announced some time ago in the programme of this convention, is not exactly the one which it should bear. In a former paper, published in the Modern Language Notes, I tried to trace back a number of our peculiar words and speech usages to an earlier period of the language, using Shakespeare as a basis. In the present paper this method of procedure has been attempted only incidentally. In other words, I invite your attention to a study of a few of the peculiarities of the language as found in Tennessee, regardless of their origin and history. It is not to be supposed, however, that the forms pointed out are limited to one particular state or to a small territory. On the other hand, most of them are found throughout the larger portion of the South, and many of them are common over the whole country. Nothing like a complete survey of the field, or a strict classification of the material gathered, has been attempted, and many of the words treated have been discussed by others. A few cases of bad pronunciation have been noticed, rather as an index of characteristic custom than as showing anything new.