The beginnings of Irish English - uni-due.delan300/14_Beginnings_of... · Renewed dominance of...

In: Folia Linguistica Historica (14), 1993, 213-38.

The beginnings of Irish English

Raymond Hickey,Essen University

The intention of the present contribution is to offer a description of Irish English in itsearliest stages. Before delving into the details of the subject matter a word or two ofa general nature is called for. Apart from the philological documentation of a varietyof medieval English (in itself rather mundane) one has to do here with a linguisticsituation in which language contact and its various consequences play a central role.The linguistic situation of medieval Irish English is to say the least complex and canpotentially throw light on the principles of interaction between different languagegroups. In this respect I will be interested in two basic matters: (i) thecharacterization of the situation in which medieval Irish English arose and (ii) theattempt to trace in this early variety of the language features which later becamecharacteristic of Irish English as a whole.

1 Remarks on external language history

Initial settlement In 1169 on the request of a local lord in the south east of Ireland agroup of adventurers from England landed near Wexford. This historical fact marksthe beginning of the political association of England with Ireland. The initial foray toIreland was nothing like a systematic invasion; in a way it resembled the firstGermanic raids on Britain some 700 years earlier: a series of sorties across the se§1ato a neighbouring country without any noticeable degree of coordination. Given ourdesire for dates, we latch onto a year to mark the beginning of what with thecompression typical of distant historical hindsight looks like coherent and plannedsettlement. The first adventurers to arrive on Irish soil appear to have been quite amotley bunch. They came from Pembrokeshire in West Wales (Moody and Martin(eds.) 1967: 127ff.); we know from historical records that there were at least threelanguages represented in this early group. Anglo- Norman, a variety of medievalEnglish and to some degree Flemish. Much as the presence of the latter may serve tospice the demographic picture of medieval Ireland, for the further linguisticdevelopment of both Irish and English, Flemish is of no relevance. A few loan-wordshave survived in the archaic dialect of Forth and Bargy (more on which below) butthat is about all. No traces of a Flemish influence are to be seen in Irish. Welsh wasin all probability also among the languages of the first invaders; however traces ofWelsh are not to be seen anywhere. This leaves us with French and English whichwill presently be the topic of comment.

Spread of English The development of English in Ireland since the 12th century hasnot been continuous. This fact is due to the settlement of the island by the English andto the political conditions in England itself.

Raymond Hickey The Beginnings of Irish English of 21

Only the east and south-east coast of Ireland were settled in the late MiddleAges, above all the cities of Wexford, Waterford, Kilkenny and Dublin. At this pointin time Dublin had already gained the status of capital of the country. Like othercities in Ireland, Dublin owes its origins to a Viking settlement before the turn of themillenium (Moore 1965: 10). Because of its favourable position in the middle of theeast coast and with the central plain as its hinterland, Dublin was able to assert itselfover other urban settlements in Ireland on river estuaries. As far as English isconcerned, this fact is of some importance. The city was quickly occupied by theEnglish after its conquest; in 1171 Henry II came to Ireland and issued the Charter ofDublin in 1172 (Dooley 1972: 68ff.). From this time onwards English has existedcontinuously in Dublin, indeed within a semi-circular area around the town. Thisregion has been termed the Pale. Within the boundaries of the Pale the politicalinfluence of England has never ceased to exist. This is basically the reason for thecontinuous existence of English in Dublin: in the history of Ireland English hasmaintained the strongest influence in those areas where its political influence hasbeen mostly keenly felt. Viewed as a whole, however, only a small part of the country was colonizedwith English. After the 12th century settlements spread to other cities, e.g. in the south(Cork) and in the west (Limerick and Galway). The impact on rural Ireland wasvirtually non-existent. This is of central importance when considering the linguisticstatus of English vis à vis Irish in the late Middle Ages. There can be no talk ofEnglish being a superstrate at this stage (as it was to become in the early modernperiod). Indeed English competed with Anglo-Norman in medieval Ireland and boththese languages definitely interacted with Irish. Beyond the Pale in the centuries after the initial settlement on the east coastan ever increasing assimilation of the original English by the native Irish set in. Thisassimilation had two main reasons. For one the English settlers of this early,pre-Reformation period were of course Catholic and for another the connections withEngland were in fact quite loose. Those adventurers who saught land and politicalinfluence in Ireland evinced only nominal allegiance to the English crown. They hadbecome to a large extent independent in Ireland (Moody and Martin (eds.) 1967:133ff.). Indeed one can interpret the visits of English kings in Ireland such as that ofHenry in Dublin in the 12th century as a scarcely concealed attempt to assert theinfluence of the English court in a colony which did not lay undue emphasis on crownloyalty. In later centuries other monarchs were to follow suit. Thus John came toIreland in 1210 and Richard II twice (in 1394 and 1399). Each of these visits wasintended to serve the purpose of constraining the power of the ostensibly Englishnobility. With the severing of ties with England the original English naturally drewcloser to the native Irish. This development explains the decline of English in Ireland in the late 14thand 15th centuries. Especially after the adoption of Protestantism by the Englishgovernment, initiated by the ‘Reformation Parliament’ (1529-1536) of Henry VIII, theEnglish settlers in Ireland felt cut off and naturally identified themselves increasinglywith the native Catholic population. The lowest point in the spread of English is to be found in the first half of the16th century. English really only existed with any resilience in Dublin (more broadly,within the Pale) and in the south-east corner of the country. The resurgent Gaelicismof the 16th century lead by necessity to the recession of English influence (Moodyand Martin (eds.) 1967: 158ff.).


The linguistic situation in medieval Ireland The history of English in Ireland is notthat of a simple substitution of Irish by English. One must consider in this connectionboth the linguistic situation and the diachronic distribution of English in the country.At the time of the first English incursions the linguistic situation in Ireland was quitehomogeneous. In the 9th century Ireland was ravaged by Scandinavians just like therest of Britain. The latter, however, settled down in the following three centuries.The decisive battle against the Scandinavians (Clontarf, 1014) on the one handrepresented the final break with Denmark and Norway and on the other resulted in thecomplete assimilation of the remaining Scandinavians with the native Irish populationmuch as it did in other countries, such as England and France. For the period of theinitial invasions one can assume, in contradistinction to various older authors such asCurtis (1919: 234), that the heterogeneity which existed was more demographic thanlinguistic. Scandinavian had indeed a profound effect on Irish, particularly in thefield of lexis (see Sommerfelt in O’Cuív (ed.) 1975) but there can be no assumingthat a bilingual situation obtained in the Ireland of the 12th century. Among the invaders from the middle of the 12th century there were not onlyFlemish and English speakers but also Anglo-Normans. What cannot be reconstructedany more is the extent to which the English-speakers were different from those ofAnglo-Norman. It is probable that during later waves of immigration, when moreeducated and aristocratic English came to Ireland, Anglo-Norman was introducedand established itself in the towns. Evidence for this standpoint is offered by suchworks as the Entrenchment of New Ross in Anglo-Norman as well as contemporaryreferences to spoken Anglo-Norman in court proceedings from Kilkenny (Cahill1938: 160f.). Anglo-Norman seems to have been maintained in the cities well into the14th century as the famous Statutes of Kilkenny (Lydon 1973: 94ff.) show; thesewere composed in Anglo-Norman and admonished the native Irish population tospeak English. The large number of Anglo-Norman loanwords in Irish (Risk 1971:586ff.) which entered the language in the period after the invasion testifies to theexistence of Anglo-Norman on Irish soil from the mid 12th century to the 14thcentury.

Renewed dominance of English For the history of English in Ireland, the 16th centuryrepresents a break in its development. Politically it was marked by increasingseparatist activities on the part of the Irish (of native and/or original English stock)which ended in the final victory over the Irish by English forces in the battle ofKinsale in 1601. The subsequent departure from Ireland by native leaders (knownsomewhat romantically as the Flight of the Earls) in 1607 left a political vacuumwhich was energetically filled by the English. As of the beginning of the 17th centuryEnglish attained a dominant position in Ireland and has continued to enjoy this statusas a superstrate vis à vis Irish since. The establishment of English in Ireland in the early modern period is due tothe ‘Plantations’ (MacCurtain 1972: 89ff.). These forced settlements were carried outsporadically in the 16th century and then with great consistency in the 17th century.The first plantations originate in the time from 1549 to 1557 (Moody and Martin(eds.) 1967: 189ff.) as the two counties Leix and Offaly in the centre of the countrywere settled by force. The English who moved there were however quicklyassimilated by the native population. The same is true of the later ‘Plantations’ in theprovince of Munster in 1586-1592 (Moody and Martin (eds.) 1967: 190) which didnot lead to any change in the linguistic composition of the country. Only from the second half of the 17th century onwards, after Oliver Cromwell


had been militarily victorious over Ireland and the Irish rebels were completelyquashed, did settlements of English mercenaries on a large scale take place; theseretained their language and passed it on to following generations. After the victoryover the Catholic forces under James II by William III (Battle of the Boyne, 1690)Catholics were then excluded from political power and from higher positions insociety. At the same time thousands of immigrants settled in the north of the country.These came for the greater part from the Scottish lowlands and from the NorthMidlands of England (Adams 1958: 61ff.; 1967: 69ff.). The settlements formed thebasis for the demographic split of the country (Heslinga 1962). Due to theseimmigrants the division of Ireland came to be as much linguistic as political andconfessional.

2 Periods of Irish English and historical documents

The break in the development of English in Ireland justifies a division into a first anda second period. By this is meant the division of the history of Irish English into anearlier period from the middle of the 12th century to the late 16th century and into asecond later period which has lasted from the 17th century to the present day. One of the main difficulties for the historical linguist is in establishing a linkbetween the varieties spoken in these periods. To begin with allow me to offer acharacterisation of the more conservative types of Irish English and their historicalattestations.

Medieval period Irish English of the late Middle Ages is recorded in two sources.The first is the Kildare Poems and the second the so-called Loscombe Manuscript.The term Kildare Poems is used as a cover term for 16 poems which are scatteredamong Latin and Old French items of poetry in the Harley 913 manuscript. Their Irishsource is evident both from their theme and their language. The term ‘Kildare’ may infact not be appropriate, there are suggestions that the verse was produced inWaterford; the case for Kildare is based on the explicit mention of one Michael ofKildare as author of a poem. The series was critically edited by Wilhelm Heuser in1904 in the Bonner Beiträge zur Anglistik. The Loscombe Manuscript contains two poems (“On blood-letting” and “Thevirtue of herbs”) which according to the analyses of Heuser (1904: 71-75), Irwin(1933) and Zettersten (1967) are to considered without a doubt as Irish. Irish English of the 14th century is recorded briefly in two other sources. Thefirst is an account book of the Priory of Holy Trinity Chapel in Dublin, where thepoem “Pride of Life” was discovered. The manuscript was prepared around 1340(Heuser 1904: 66). The second source is formed by the “Acts and Statutes of the Cityof Waterford” from 1365. Although there is no critical edition of these, there areremarks on their language in Henry (1958: 66). There are a few further manuscriptswhich are either positively Irish or which can be assumed with reasonable certaintyto be so. These are listed in McIntosh and Samuels (1968).

Early Modern Period The paucity of documents from the medieval period is a majorhandicap in the linguistic analysis of this variety; the difficulty with the early modernperiod, however, is deciding how to evaluate what. There are basically three types ofrecord involved here. The first consists of a series of literary documents (mostly dramas) in which


Irish English is parodied in the form of comical figures in a largely English setting.The validity of using literary dialect for a linguistic analysis is more thanquestionable, as Sullivan (1980) in his analysis has confirmed. Such texts can onlyserve as general guidelines for the more salient features of Irish English; they coverseveral centuries and are available from the beginning of the 17th century. In essencethe difficulty is that one must rely on eye dialect; the orthography of English is notnecessarily suitable for rendering the idiosyncrasies of Irish English and indeed onecannot assume that a non-native speaker’s attempt to caricature Irish English will besatisfying and accurate. The second type of record is the word list. This is very restricted in the typeof information it provides but is obviously more accurate than the literary parody.For lexical items and restricted phonological analysis word lists serve a certainpurpose. In the early modern period there are word lists available for the archaicdialect of Forth and Bargy, notably that collected by one Captain Charles Vallenceyin 1788 and that by Jacob Poole which was later published by William Barnes in1867. The third record consists of incidental remarks on Irish English made by anauthor involved in another matter. A case in point is Sheridan in his grammar ofEnglish (late 18th century) in which he notes certain Irish English pronunciations(typical of Dublin); in the present century Hogan’s Outline of English philologyprovides a further example of this type. Neither the instances of literary parody nor early Dublin English are to beconsidered here as they represent a dialect of too late a date. This is not however thecase with the glossaries for Forth and Bargy. The records we have represent thedialect before its final demise at the end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th century.However in language, the dialect is very archaic and far more deviant from anyvariety of mainland English than the language of the Kildare Poems, written somefour hundred years earlier (see Hickey, 1987). One can speculate on the reasons for this. To begin with the glossaries ofForth and Bargy illustrate native language forms of the inhabitants of this corner ofIreland. However, the Kildare Poems were probably written by native speakers ofIrish trying their hand at the literary language English. Indeed if one stops to considerthe dominance of Irish over English in 14th century Ireland and the (later) referencesin historical records to the incomprehensible type of English spoken by the Irish (seeStanihurst, 1577 as a noted example) then the Kildare Poems are somewhatsurprising in their standardness. But this is only an apparent paradox. Going on thelegitimate assumption that the authors of these poems were native speakers of Irishthen they would have found themselves in a kind of diglossic situation in whichEnglish (or Anglo-Norman as many of the items in the Kildare Poems attest)represented a H-variety which was kept separate from the L-variety Irish. In theWexford baronies of Forth and Bargy there were monoglot speakers of English asStanihurst and others state. Here there was no standardising effect of a H-variety and,into the bargain, there was considerable contact with native-speaking Irish insurrounding areas.

3 A phonological description of the Kildare Poems

For the reconstruction of Irish English in the late Middle Ages there is very littleavailable material. The only documents of any linguistic value are theabove-mentioned Kildare Poems and the Loscombe manuscript.


It is difficult to say to what extent these works can be viewed as a truerepresentation of Irish English in the 14th century. They appear to be fairly close tothe orthographic practices of general Middle English. Nonetheless one can refer tothe recurring deviations from mainland Middle English and can evaluate them on theone hand in the light of dialects of west and south-west England, which formed theinitial input of English in Ireland, and on the other in respect of contact Irish Englishtoday with a view to reconstructing a reasonably reliable picture of medieval IrishEnglish. A third factor should be considered if one were dealing with themorphology. This is the extent to which the forms found in medieval Irish Englishmight have been hybrid compromise forms preferred in a community the speakers ofwhich had a heterogenous dialectal background on mainland Britain (a viewproposed by Samuels 1972: 108). In the following sections mention is made of the possibility rather than the factof interference from Irish. This caution is required in the case of the Kildare Poemsand the Loscombe manuscript as nearly all deviations have at least one possibleexplanation. Where there are differences between the individual items of the KildarePoems or of the Loscombe manuscript these will then be enumerated. Themorphology of the current literary documents is not to be considered here as it liesoutside the framework of the present study. Interested readers are advised to consultHeuser (1904: 35ff.) on the Kildare Poems and Zettersten (1967: 36) on theLoscombe manuscript.

3.1 Coronal fricatives and plosives

A striking features of present-day Irish English is the substitution of Englishambi-dental fricatives by dental stops.

(1) a. /3/ F [t] b. /2/ F [d]

In the orthography this shift is not apparent. Indeed it would not be possible toindicate it as English does not possess any written option for distinguishing a dentalstop from an alveolar one. The fortition of /2/ and /3/ to homorganic stops is attested for present-daycontact English. The general fortition of the supraregional standard of the Republic ofIreland can be viewed as an established transfer phenomenon especially in view ofthe fact that the realisations of the coronal stop phonemes in Irish, /t/ and /d/ arethemselves dental, i.e. [t] and [d]. In the Kildare Poems written forms are attested in which instead of t thedigraph th occurs in the ending of the third person singular of the present with verbs.

(2) a. fallyt (= fallyp) ‘falls’ b. growit (= growip) ‘grows’ c. sayt (= sayp) ‘says’

These forms are normally just registered but not commented on (see Zettersten 1967:15; Heuser 1904: 31). It is however probable that the written t was intended to


indicate the fortition of the /2/ sound to [t]. In support of this one can quote the factthat in some cases exchanges of t and th are to be found.

(3) a. lythe ‘lit’ b. sith ‘sit’ c. nogth ‘nought’

These forms which originate in the poem The virtue of herbs are only brieflycommented on by Zettersten (1967: 15); he maintains that they perhaps represent an‘aspirated consonant due to the influence of Irish’. By the term ‘aspirated consonant’he probably means a lenited consonsant (Zettersten’s terminology stems fromPedersen (1897) where the term ‘aspiration’ stands for ‘lenition’). This is howevermore of a guess than an explanation. If the orthography in the forms (3a-c) were intended to represent a lenitedconsonsant of Irish then this was still in Middle Irish /2/. Later the glottal fricative /h/corresponded to the unlenited /t/. The appearence of a lenited (fricativised) /t/ inthese words and in this position is quite unlikely. The initial mutations of Irish areonly triggered in certain morphological environments in Irish. Already by the time ofMiddle Irish the lenited forms had been denaturalised by their morphologicalfunctionalisation. In present-day contact English there are not represented at all, asituation which is inkeeping with their lack of phonetic conditioning. Two further interpretations of the th forms in (3a-c) are possible. The first isthe simpler. As the /2/ sound of English had apparently being fortified to /t/ under theinfluence of the consonant system of Irish, the digraph th may have been used as therepresentation of this dental stop in medieval Irish English. This is also the case inpresent-day Irish English. In the latter the digraph th is interpreted as either [t] or[d]. With the second phonetic interpretation the assumption is made that thedigraph th represented neither the ambi-dental fricatives /2/ or /3/ nor the dentalstops [t] or [d] but rather the particular allophone of /t/, an apico-alveolar fricativewhich is characteristic of southern Irish English in general. This sound will be indicated by the transcription introduced in Hickey(1984), viz. [8]. Here we are dealing with an allophone of /t/ which occurs after avowel and before another vowel or a pause (i.e. in an environment of phoneticweakening). This allophone is to be found in the entire Republic of Ireland (with theexception of the north) as the realisation of /t/ in the positions just described (/d/ hasa similar allophone, [8]). Because of the inadequacy of the orthography its origin inthe history of Irish English cannot be traced with any certainty. If the interpretation ofthe deviant orthography of the dialect of Forth and Bargy (see Hickey, 1987) iscorrect then it already existed for this early variant of Irish English. If one wishes toassume that the [8] sound already existed in medieval Irish English then one can onlyappeal to written forms such as those in (3a-c). Because of the few attestations in theLoscombe manuscript and their ambiguity the question of the existence of [8] in theIrish English of the late Middle Ages must be left unanswered. The assumption of thesound for the dialect of Forth and Bargy does not of necessity imply its existence forthe language of the Kildare Poems and the Loscombe manuscript as more than fourcenturies lie between the earlier and later varieties of Irish English.


3.2 Labial fricatives and approximants

The area of labial fricatives and approximants in the Irish English of the late MiddleAges is more complex than in modern Irish English. Two factors play a dominant rolehere. The first concerns the varieties of English which were imported into Irelandinitially and which would seem to have different realisations in the area of labialsounds vis à vis the East Midland dialect of Middle English; the second factor has todo with contact with Irish and the phonetic substitutions which resulted from this. It is obvious that the language of the Kildare Poems in its English base shouldresemble that of the south-west of England in the Middle English period. There areboth language external and internal reasons for this. Among the former is the fact thatthe original immigrants to Ireland came in all probability from the south ofpresent-day Wales and the south-west of England (the adjoining non-Celtic area)(Hogan 1927: 15; Curtis 1919: 234ff.). Among the language-internal reasons are certain phonological features whichare characteristic of the south/south-west of England. The most prominent of thesefeatures is initial voicing of fricatives. Due to the different orthographicrepresentation of voiced and voiceless labial and alveolar fricatives in English theinitial voicing is quite evident in these texts.

(4) a. uadir (= father) b. uoxe (= fox) c. velle (= fell)

As the grapheme u in Middle English could represent both the vowel /u/ and theconsonant /v/ one can assume the initial segment /v/ for (1a+b). The orthographic dsymbolised the consonant /d/. This is not an irregularity in Middle English as theambi-dental fricative of the present-day form is a later development (Jespersen 1909:210; Hickey 1989). The etymological comparison of the forms in (1a-c) suggests that the initialforms for these words in east Middle English had /f/. If one now looks at formswhich etymologically have /v/ one finds that a substitution has taken place. Considerthe items in (2a+b).

(5) a. wysage (= visage) b. trawalle (= travail)

In order to explain the substitution one must first of all interpret the orthography. InEnglish the grapheme w indicates the labio-velar approximant /w/. Going on the basisof the situation in present-day contact English one can suspect that the w in (2a+b)does not represent this approximant but the bilabial fricative /ß/. This sound in Irishis the realisation of the non-palatal phoneme /v/ in front of vowels (but not beforesonorants). The sound has been assumed for the Old Irish period as well (Thurneysen1946: 76) so that the same assumption for the late Middle Ages (around 1300) wouldseem to be justified. In present-day contact English the /ß/ sound does not occur for all instances ofEnglish /v/. Before front vowels one finds [v] which is the realisation of the palatalphoneme /vø/ of Irish. In view of this fact one would require an explanation for theform in (2a). It would appear that the realisation [v] for /v”/ is an innovation of


Connemara Irish which is also to be found in other dialects. In this connection acomparison with Donegal Irish may be revealing. This dialect of Irish is the mostconservative of all present-day varieties of Irish (in the segmental area) (Sommerfelt1952: 205; O’Baoill 1979: 92). It still shows the phonetic realisation [ß] and [ß"] for/v/ and /v"/ (Quiggin 1906: 111; Wagner 1979: 13f.) which correspond to theassumed values for Old Irish (Thurneysen 1946: 21f.). The symbol [ß"] represents abilabial fricative articulated with tense and spread lips. For Donegal Irish Quiggin(loc. cit.) notes that [ß"] is being replaced by [v] more and more by youngerspeakers. The conclusion from these considerations is that the assumption of a bilabialarticulation of the palatal phoneme /vø/ in the late Middle Irish period is justified.Thus both labial fricatives were articulated bilabially. The representation of thesefricatives in the Kildare Poems poems with the grapheme w is thus not surprising. This grapheme w is not only used for bilabial fricatives in word initial andmedial position but also to be found word finally.

(6) a. abowe b. hawe c. fywe

In all instances where a written Middle English v is substituted by w a final e is alsoto be found. This corresponds with the Middle English practice, which has beencontinued into Modern English in the case of the forms in (3a-c). However the vowelcould represent the off-glide [.] which is present after the bilabial sounds [ß] and[ß"]. For these sounds labial approximation is required; after articulation the lips fallback into a neutral position. As both sounds are voiced a short [.] results after thefriction. The final [ß] of Modern Irish can be transcribed narrowly as [ß.] as in:

(7) snámh [sn<:ß.q] ‘swim’

According to this phonetic reading, the form in (3a) above would be [q/buß.q]. The assumption of phonetic motivation for the written final e is moreconvincing if one considers the situation with other words. The final e, which according to many linguists (Jespersen 1909: 186f.; Prins1974: 176) was pronounced until the 14th century, was apparently silent in thelanguage of the Kildare Poems. Evidence for this is to be seen in spellings withoutthe final e in the Loscombe manuscript, for example (Zettersten 1967: 15):

(8) a. tak b. mak c. those

Reverse spellings are also attested in which a non-etymological e appears finally.

(9) a. welle b. grasshe c. schalle


These spellings are just as firm evidence as are late Middle English written formswith igh for /i:/ in forms without an etymological /x/, this then showing the loss of the/x/ sound:

(10) wright for write (Wyld 1936: 305)

3.3 Loss of nasals

A general Middle English development which one can observe in the language of theKildare Poems and the Loscombe manuscript as well is the loss of a final nasal withverb forms.

(11) a. haue ‘have’ b. come ‘come’ (Zettersten 1967: 15f.)

Possessive pronoun forms are also normally realised without a nasal in medievalIrish English, with a nasal only appearing in an intervocalic position (as a hiatusnasal) in order to avoid the contact of two vowels and to provide a consonantal onsetfor a stressed syllable, e.g. min, åin (Heuser 1904: 33). What is characteristic for medieval Irish English is the loss of nasals in theposition immediately before coronal stops.

(12) a. fowden (= founden) ‘found’ b. powde (= pounde) ‘pound’ c. mouthes (= months) ‘months’ (Zettersten, loc.cit.)

It is furthermore to be found in a few pre-velar instances.

(13) a. fowge (= fong) ‘catch’ b. gowge (= gong) ‘young’ (Zettersten, loc.cit.)

If one regards this case of nasal loss as parallel to the more frequent loss beforecoronal plosives then one can establish a connection with a process in Irish and afurther one in medieval Irish English. To begin with one should note that in Irish the word final sequence /nd/ doesnot occur. Already by the Old Irish period clusters of dental nasal plus homorganicvoiced stop were simplified to a single nasal.

(14) a. clann E cland ‘children’ b. linn E lind ‘liquid’ (Thurneysen 1946: 93)

The phonotactics of Middle Irish thus prohibited a final, post-nasal /d/. It wouldseem legitimate to view the loss of post-nasal stops in medieval Irish English inconnection with this sequential restriction in the Irish of the time.

(15) stowne ‘stand’ (Heuser 1904: 74)

The reverse spelling ferdful (for ‘fearful’, Heuser 1904: 74; Zettersten 1967: 15)


would seem to speak in favour of this interpretation although there is just a slightpossibility that that /d/ in the form just quoted is epenthetic (and so phonetically real).One apparent example of this is prisund for prisun (= ‘prison’) (Heuser 1904: 31regards this as being due to the demands of rhythm), though the same explanation,namely reverse spelling, could be postulated here.

3.4 Loss of /h/

Both in the Kildare Poems and the Loscombe manuscript one finds that anetymologically justified /h/ is often dropped. With the neutral pronoun hit ~ hyt thedropping of /h/ and with gif that of /j/ are general Middle English developments.

(16) a. is (= his) ‘his’ b. abbip (= habbip) ‘has’ c. ad (= had) ‘had’ (Heuser 1904: 31f.)

These forms could be accounted for as allegro phenomena. With the possessivepronoun of the 3rd person singular is would be a simplification of the fuller form hiswhich has established itself in the lento style of this period (the basis of theorthography for this variety). The examples in (1b+c) are forms of the verb ‘have’.The deletion of /h/ can be regarded here as analogy. In the first person singular in thelanguage of the Kildare Poems and the Loscombe manuscript the form of the personalpronoun was ich /it$/. This form coalesced with the corresponding form of the verb‘have’ and resulted in /it$qm/, a form in which the /h/ was lost after the affricate. For the Kildare Poems this would be a not unlikely explanation. But for laterattestations of Irish English this is not sufficient. In the Dublin Book from the secondhalf of the 15th century there are a number of words which show an additional /h/:

(17) a. hable (= able) b. hoke (= oak) c. hold (= old) (Henry 1958: 67)

Even the later Early Merchant Guild documents have a non- etymological /h/ as inthe following forms.

(18) a. hour (= our) b. hall (= all) c. hat (= at) (Henry, loc.cit.)

If Irish English of this period (before 1600) did not have a word initial /h/ (as somedialects of present-day mainland English, e.g. London English, Wells 1982: 322) thenforms such as those in (2a-c) and (3a-c) could be explained by orthographicinsecurity. But present-day Irish English does not offer any evidence of a putativeloss of etymological /h/ nor of a possible epenthetic /h/ in any word forms. Looking, however, at Irish one can find a tentative explanation for theappearence of /h/ in the above attestations. In Irish there is a morphologicallycontrolled process which places a /h/ before vowel-initial words under certaingrammatical conditions. The /h/ appears for instance in the third person singularfeminine of the possessive pronoun in the plural of nouns.


(19) a. a híníon /q hin"i:n/ ‘her daughter’ b. na heaglaisí /nq haglis"i:/ ‘the churches’

As the addition of /h/ in English is certainly not grammatically motivated a degree ofconfusion may have arisen among contact speakers with vowel-initial forms so that/h/ was prefixed sporadically to such words.

3.5 Consonant doubling

Among the peculiarities of the Kildare Poems and the Loscombe manuscript is thedoubling of consonants in a word-internal position. This doubling is assumed in therelevant literature to be a sign of vowel shortness (Zettersten 1967: 15f.; Heuser1904: 34; Henry 1958: 65).

(20) a. delle (= deal) b. hoppe (= hope) c. nosse (= nose) d. hotte (= hot) e. bitte (= bit) f. didde (= did)

The doubling appears in words which have a short vowel in Middle English ingeneral (1d-f). In forms such as those in (1b+c) this consonant doubling alsoindicates that in the language of the Kildare Poems and the Loscombe manuscriptthere was probably no lengthening of vowels in open syllables. However a definitedecision on this is difficult to make. There may well be a case for a differentialapplication of open syllable lengthening such that only the low vowel /a/ waslengthened if one is correct in assuming that a single consonant after a stressed vowelindicates that the latter was long, cf. forms of the verb make such as makid ‘made’.Two difficulties arise here, however. The first is that the assumption that singleconsonants indicate preceding long stressed vowels implies a very consistent use oforthography which simply may not have held. The second difficulty concerns thenature of the phenomenon which is termed ‘open syllable lengthening’ in thetraditional literature. If it is the case, as Minkova (1982) has demonstrated withconsiderable conviction, that the vowel lengthening was due to loss of the schwa informs analogous to those in (1b+c) then a form like makid should at best only showlengthening by analogy with the uninflected form of the infinitive as there is noalteration in the quantity of the preterite form until the internal /k/ is deleted. Of assistance in deciding on the present matter may be variant spellings in theKildare Poems. One of these, Pers of Birmingham, has monosyllabic words withreflexes of Old English /a/ and a final -e, e.g. make, take. If Minkova’s thesis that theloss of schwa led to vowel lengthening as a kind of quantity compensation is validthen one can assume a long /a:/ in nam ‘name’ and indeed in make as this has thevariant mak. If the -e was phonetic then it is most unlikely to be dropped in repeatedoccurrences of the same word in the same short text. Furthermore the form makrhymes with the form sake in Pers of Birmingham which is another indication of apurely orthographic -e. If the rhyming evidence holds then one can safely assumegeneral lengthening of the low vowel /a/ as nam(e) rhymes with game and mak(e)with take. A further question which arises with the orthography in (1a-f) whether therewas a phonetic basis for this doubling, i.e. whether geminates still existed in this


variety of Middle English. It is safe to assume that at this period consonant quantitydifferences had already been lost (Jespersen 1909: 146; Jordan/Crook 1974: 152;Kurath 1956: 441). But in Irish the phonological distinction between long and shortconsonants in this position still existed at this time and indeed is retained in DonegalIrish (Wagner 1979: 16; O’Baoill 1979: 88). While the possibility that the lengthdifference was maintained in this variety of English because of preservativeinterference from Irish cannot be dismissed entirely, the orthographic evidencesuggests that the consonant doubling had the purpose of indicating vowel shortnessbecause the forms which exhibit such doubling do not necessarily have to be reflexesof older forms with geminates in Old English. In the non-literary texts of Irish Englishin the 14th and above all in the 15th century such consonant doubling is frequent withwords where the only interpretation is as an indicator of vowel shortness.

(21) a. lyff (= life) b. wrytt (= write) c. gottes (= goats) d. strettes (= streets) (Henry 1958: 65)

3.6 The interpretation of the sequences ‘sch’ and ‘ss’

In Middle English texts there are a plethora of orthographical devices forrepresenting the sound /$/. Those which were used at the beginning of the MiddleEnglish period are: s and ss (Mossé 1969: 35). Later on sch was used (Scragg 1974:46) as were sh and ssh (Berndt 1960: 10). In the Kildare Poems the final two optionsare not attested (Heuser 1904: 29f.). In the Harley 913 manuscript, which contains theKildare Poems, the sequences sch and ss occur along side simple s. The interpretation of the sequence sch as a representation of thepalatal-alveolar fricative /$/ receives support from both the orthographic practice inother dialect areas on mainland England in the Middle English period and theetymological comparison with modern forms which show /$/.

(22) a. scholder ‘shoulder’ b. schame ‘shame’ c. schores ‘shores’ (Heuser 1904: 29)

The digraph ss also points to the /$/ sound. It does not occur in all the poems andexcludes the option of sch.

(23) a. flesse (= flesh) b. uerisse (= fresh) (Heuser 1904: 30)

Due to the complementary distribution of sch and ss in the poems one can assume thatboth spellings represent the same /$/ sound. A degree of confusion is caused in some forms by the simple grapheme s.Normally it represents /s/ in the Kildare Poems; in some cases one is forced onetymological grounds to assume that it stands for /$/.

(24) a. sal (= shall)


b. sul (= should) (Heuser, loc. cit.)

Both these words are irrelevant with regard to the question of an Irish influence asetymologically they already contain /$/. There are however forms in which the orthography would seem to suggest a/$/ sound rather than /s/.

(25) a. grasshe (= grass) b. hasshe (= has) (Heuser 1904: 74; Zettersten 1967: 15)

In the Loscombe manuscript from which the forms are derived the sequence ssh isused to represent /$/. These forms are interesting in connection with the substitutionof /s/ by /$/ in present-day contact English. They show /$/ after a low vowel andbefore a pause. In this position, however, /$/ is not attested for /s/ in contact English.The substitution in the latter variety occurs immediately preceding or followingplosives and after /r/. But in this position one does not find it in the medievalmanuscripts although there are ample attestations for this position which triggers thesubstitution in present-day contact English.

(26) a. speche b. mystere c. forst (Zettersten 1967: 16)

3.7 Phonological processes

3.7.1 Vowel raising

When compared with general East Midland Middle English texts many examplesfrom the Kildare Poems and the Loscombe manuscript show a raising of shortvowels. Above all the raising affects the vowel /e/, written e. Raising of /a/ a to /o/ ois also to be found. The first of these instances is the one which deserves particularinterest as it is not usually present in other dialects of Middle English (unless as areflex of Old English /e:/ before velars). The raising of /e/ to /i/ is to be found most frequently in syllables withsecondary stress. It would appear to be conditioned as it only occurs beforealveolars. The sounds, which triggered this raising, are usually /t/ and /s/ as well asnasals, the latter causing a more general type of raising. In post-stress position theraising is most common with plural endings.

(27) a. namis b. herbis c. synnis d. enemys (Zettersten 1967: 14)

The letters i and y probably represented the same sound as there are no grounds forassuming that a front high rounded vowel existed at any time in Irish English. Thisassumption would seem to be correct although the vowel /y/ had maintained itselflongest in the south west varieties of Middle English. In the latter dialect /y/ wasindicated orthographically by u (Fisiak 1968: 39) and largely confined to stressedsyllables. In the Kildare Poems and the Loscombe manuscript i and y are free


orthographic variants of each other. For instance with the present tense ending of thethird person singular i and y ~ yth are attested without any apparent conditioning.

(29) a. fallip b. commip c. semyp (Zettersten 1967: 14f.)

Even if a /y/ sound had existed in the speech of the first settlers it would not havereceived any support through Irish as there are no front rounded vowels in the latterlanguage (nor were there at any stage). The high vowel /—/ always appears in positions of secondary stressespecially when these are plural forms ending in a nasal. In the Kildare Poems thetwo most common plural endings of Middle English, -s and -n are represented.Although the nasal plural was recessive in later Middle English (Fisiak 1968: 79)there are sufficient examples for it in both the Kildare Poems and the Loscombemanuscript.

(30) a. wortyn ‘warts’ b. wykyn ‘weeks’ c. kine ‘cows’ d. been ‘bees’ (Zettersten 1967: 16)

The raising of /e/ to /i/ is not well attested in positions other than before nasals. Oneexample which does occur frequently shows the raising before /l/.

(31) silf ‘self’

In the Kildare Poems and the Loscombe manuscript this word is only attested withraising. The raising before nasals results in diphthongisation in those forms in whicha stressed vowel is present. It also involves cluster simplification and allophonicshift.

(32) a. streinp b. leinp (Heuser 1904: 35)

In these forms the medial stop /k/ in the cluster has been simplified out. The nasal hasbeen shifted from a presumably velar to a dental point of articulation. In this respectthese forms are exactly parallel to their realisations in present-day contact English. In Middle English the vowel in both the words just quoted is /î/. Because of araising tendency associated with the following nasal the /î/ is diphthongised. The endelement of the new diphthong corresponds to the vowel found in the forms withmonophthongal raising. Parallel to the vowel raising in unstressed position there is in the KildarePoems and above all in the Loscombe manuscript a vowel shift in post-stressposition before /r/. The shift is not identical with the lowering of vowels before /r/which is attested in present-day contact English (and in the history of English).Nonetheless it would seem to be a contact phenomenon. The shift is to a high backvowel /u/ as is attested in the following forms:

(33) a. wondur b. sommur (Zettersten 1967: 15)

The orthography is in accord with the Old and Middle Irish practice of indicating avelar sound by a preceding /u/ (Greene 1973: 127). What is interesting in thisconnection is the fact that the velarisation with /r/ would appear to have been


particularly marked (cf. Thurneysen (1946: 97) who speaks of ‘r-quality’ (=velarisation) for instance with Old Irish fiur ‘man’ (dative singular) from fer(nominative singular)). The velarisation of /r/ in (6a+b) was probably strengthenedby the /u/ of the first, stressed syllable of the above forms and thus lead to thisorthographic representation.

3.7.2 Metathesis

In the history of Irish metathesis is well attested. It is already to be seen in the manyorthographic variants of words in Old Irish (Thurneysen 1946: 113). In the MiddleIrish period metathesis is frequent with loan-words from Anglo-Norman and Latin.Here it is necessary to distinguish different types of metathesis. On the basis of theexchanged segments one can offer a provisional classification: (i) metathesis inwhich /s/ and a plosive alter their sequence and (ii) metathesis in which either twosonorants or an /r/ and a (short) vowel change in sequence. The first type is to be seen with loan-words, but it is not attested in theKildare Poems.

(34) a. coláiste /-$t"-/ E college /-dg-/ b. páiste /-$t"-/ E page /-dg-/

The second type is to be found in the Kildare Poems and in the Loscombe manuscriptin as much as a short vowel and /r/ are involved.

(35) a. fryst E first b. forst E frost c. Gradener E Gardener d. prog E porg (Zettersten 1967: 16)

This metathesis only takes place with short vowels; this restriction is in keeping withthat which applies to present-day Irish English. It is difficult to interpret this metathesis as a transfer phenomenon. For onething the first type of metathesis is to be found neither in the Kildare Poems nor inlater Irish English. For another one should not attach undue importance to theoccurrence of metathesis involving a short vowel and /r/ as it is almost universal indialects of mainland Britain. It is already quite common in Old English (Campbell1959: 184f.). It continues in the Middle English period and indeed reverses manyinstances of earlier metathesis.

(36) a. gærs F grass b. cerse F cress c. brinnen F burn (Luick 1940: 917)

In Old English the form in (2b) is actually recorded. Thus one could just as wellpostulate that the metathised form was imported with the original settlers rather thanarising on Irish soil. The continuation of /r/ ~ short vowel metathesis in Irish English should be


seen not so much in the light of an instance of direct transfer phenomenon but ratheras a type of linguistic behaviour which gained support due to similar phenomema inIrish.

3.7.3 Epenthesis

Epenthesis is a phonological process which is quite extensive in Irish (just as ismetathesis). It is not just quantitatively common, the number of cluster types whichare susceptible to epenthesis is quite high. In present-day contact English epenthesis is to be found as a transferphenomenon. It occurs in Irish English as well, albeit not with quite the distributionas in Irish. Epenthesis is a general process which is attested for many languages andvarieties. Here, as with other phonological processes, one can maintain that thesignificance of a process, which is attested in the contact language, diminuishes withthe degree that the process in question is one which is of a general nature. The difficulty with ascertaining whether epenthesis is recorded in a writtentext lies in the fact that it is not usually orthographically represented. In the documentsunder consideration here there are however a number of cases of epenthesis whichare evident in writing. If one is to draw conclusions from the forms one has in a giventext about the language as a whole then one must ask to what extent standardisationplayed a role. For instance in the written documents for the dialect of Forth andBargy there are a whole series of forms with epenthesis. In the Kildare Poems on theother hand there are far fewer instances. Nonetheless these are interesting due to thephonotactic environment of the epenthesis in question. When viewing epenthesis one finds that depending on its extent in a languageor variety it is liable to occur most frequently in medial or final position and, giventhat, in initial position. The language of the Kildare Poems shows epenthesis in wordinitial position, thus implying that it had maximal epenthesis; consider the followingforms with epenthetic vowels medially and initially.

(37) a. Auerill (= April) b. uerisse (= fresh) (Heuser 1904: 29)

The form in (1b) in which the epenthesis occurs in a word initial cluster is a hapaxlegomenon in the Kildare Poems and the Loscombe manuscript (the form wouldseem to be attested isolatedly in mainland dialects of Middle English as well). (1a)is recorded several times, once in the poem ‘Pers of Birmingham’ (one of the KildarePoems) and twice in the poem ‘Virtue of Herbs’ in the Loscombe manuscript; there isa slight possibility that (1a) was imported with epenthesis already contained in theword form as it is also recorded in other Middle English dialects, e.g. in ScottishEnglish (Onions 1966: 46). For the existence of epenthesis in the language of the Kildare Poems and theLoscombe manuscript two further facts can be cited. The first is that epenthesis isrecorded in the dialect of Forth and Bargy extensively, a dialect which, as has beennoted above, is closely connected with the language of the Kildare Poems (seeHeuser 1904: 56ff.; Zettersten 1967: 13f.; Henry 1958: 75ff.). The second fact refersto language internal arguments, the main one being that syncope is not attested in theKildare Poems. If one considers forms with internal unstressed vowels betweensegments which together would represent a legal syllable onset then one still does notfind syncope:


(38) a. wonderis / wondris b. breeren / breren c. noreren / norren

Now there is a causal connection between epenthesis and syncope. In those languagesin which epenthesis is extensively recorded syncope is hardly known (for instance inDutch, see Hickey, 1985). Thus the lack of syncope in the language of the KildarePoems would offer supportive evidence for the view that it also showed epenthesis.

3.7.4 Final devoicing and fortition after sonorants

Apart from changes in place of articulation (fricative to plosive) there are otheralterations in the area of coronal obstruents. What I am alluding to here is finaldevoicing which is well attested in the language of the Kildare Poems.

(39) a. callit ‘called’ b. ihelpyt ‘helped’ c. purget ‘purged’ d. delet ‘dealed’ (Heuser 1904: 31; Zettersten 1967: 15)

Despite these forms one cannot speak of general final devoicing. There is for instanceno such devoicing for labials and velars; it would appear to be restricted to alveolarsand dentals. This fact is connected with an aspect of final devoicing in medieval IrishEnglish. It only occurs when the sounds affected are in unstressed syllables. As thereare no attestations of voiced final labial or velar stops in unstressed syllables in theKildare Poems alveolar stops remain the only sounds which are affected by thisprocess. Final devoicing is viewed here as a phonological process which isphonetically motivated: in anticipation of the pause after a word a stop becomesvoiceless when it is also in an unstressed syllable, i.e. when the decline in phonationwithin the word has already begun in the unstressed syllable. There is a further process which when viewed phonetically can have the sameeffect as final devoicing, but which is differently motivated. In a position after asonorant, above all after /n/, a plosive in medieval Irish English shows a tendency tobe devoiced. A condition on this process is that the stop in question be homorganicwith the preceding sonorant.

(40) a. fent ‘fend’ b. spent ‘spend’ c. trent ‘separated’ (Heuser 1904: 31)

In order to distinguish between the two kinds of voiceless final stops the terms ‘finaldevoicing’ and ‘fortition after sonorants’ are used here. Although fortition after sonorants is quite well attested for present-daycontact English and in general Irish English, the significance of the forms in (2a-c) interms of interference is slight as fortition after /n/ is common in mainland varieties ofMiddle English. Especially in late Middle English many instances of a preterite in /d/after /n/ changing to /t/ with simultaneous loss of the preterite ending are frequentlyrecorded.


3.8 Concluding remarks

Reviewing the selection of features of medieval Irish English I have presented hereone can maintain that the language in the form in which it has been passed down to usshows both the influence of Irish (contact) and traces of the mainland dialects fromwhich English in Ireland is derived. The deviations are on the whole minor and notas numerous and as striking as one would perhaps imagine given that the authors ofthe Kildare Poems were obviously native speakers of Irish or at the very least goodbilinguals. If one compares the language to that of the dialect of Forth and Bargy ofthe early modern period then one sees that the latter is far more deviant from anyvariety of mainland English than the language of the Kildare Poems, written somefour hundred years earlier. But as suggested above, the relative standardness of theEnglish used could be a consequence of the desire of the authors to use an acceptablewritten form of the language rather than to offer a genuine reflection of the spokenEnglish of their period.

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