xxxiv 



PREFACE. 



with ancient authorities ; a long syllable often gets the 

 accent, Ijut a short vowel also is frequently found to 

 take one.^ The manuscripts have a method unexcep- 

 tionable, and discriminative, of showing that a vowel 

 is long by writing that vowel twice, and in some words 

 that mode of spelling prevails now. They give us, oc- 

 casionally, 300b, good, boom, doom, " aam, cautere,"^ 

 (whence we may conclude that the cognate Oman, will 

 have O long,^) aac, oal; pus, ^vise,'^ and so forth. The 

 information contained in this device of our forefathers 

 has not yet attracted a due share of notice ; for example, 

 tlie word Si8, a fcdli, deriving itself probably from the 

 same source as Semita, becomes in the Moesogothic 

 Sinjj-, and has been supposed to exhibit a vowel 

 necessarily, as before two consonants, short by nature ; 

 thus producing a short I in the old English. But Si5 

 we know to have a long vowel by the spelling SiiS.^ 

 It is not true that a Teutonic or Old English vowel 

 before two consonants is necessarily short. Some glos- 

 saries throw the alphabet into confusion for the sake 

 of giving short A first, then long A. Mislead by 

 accentual marks, the compilers presume that the prefix 

 A must be long, whereas the tradition of our language, 

 as in Afraid, Abroad, Abased, and the short vowel of 

 the particles which it generally represents, prove that 

 in those instances it is short. Where A represents An, 

 one, as in Ajiaeb for Anjiseb, constant, the case may be 

 different. In the parallel case of Un- the prefix, the 

 Greek Av-, the Latin In-, the vowel is undoubtedly 

 short, but in pronunciation it has an accent, as in 

 Unknown, and it is frequently found accented in the 

 MSS. Nothing but a notion that the language of 



• Vol. I. pp. xciv., xcv. 



2 Gl. C. 



' See also the Glossary. 



•" Beda, .547. 16. 



''Beda, 571. 34. See Layamon, 



25836, 25837. In Bir, Moritz, 

 Heyne has marked the vowel long, 

 rightly. We have also Gesii'S, but 

 Gesi-S'^as. 



