re it is introduced as being a Northern word; and it absolutely
disappears from record in the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth centuries.
Bosworth's _Anglo-Saxon Dictionary_ gives no example of its use, and
it was long supposed that it would be impossible to trace it in our
early records. Nevertheless, when Dr Sweet printed, for the first
time, an edition of King Alfred's translation of Pope Gregory's
_Pastoral Care_, an example appeared in which it was employed in the
most natural manner, as if it were in everyday use. At p. 443 of that
treatise is the sentence--"Aris and gong to geonre byrg," i.e. Arise
and go to yon city. Here the A.S. _geon_ (pronounced like the modern
_yon_) is actually declined after the regular manner, being duly
provided with the suffix _-re_, which was the special suffix reserved
only for the genitive or dative feminine. It is here a dative after
the preposition _to_.

There is, in fact, no limit to the good use to which a reverent study
of our dialects may be put by a diligent student. They abound with
pearls which are worthy of a better fate than to be trampled under
foot. I will content myself with giving one last example that is
really too curious to be passed over in silence.

It so happens that in the Anglo-Saxon epic poem of _Beowulf_, one
of the most remarkable and precious of our early poems, there is a
splendid and graphic description of a lonely mere, such as would have
delighted the heart of Edgar Allan Poe, the author of _Ulalume_. In
Professor Earle's prose translation of this passage, given in his
_Deeds of Beowulf_, at p. 44, is a description of two mysterious
monsters, of whom it is said that "they inhabit unvisited land,
wolf-crags, windy bluffs, the dread fen-track, where the mountain
waterfall amid precipitous gloom vanisheth beneath--flood under
earth. Not far hence it is, reckoning by miles, that the Mere
standeth, and over it hang rimy groves; a wood with clenched roots
overshrouds the water." The word to be noted here is the word _rimy_,
i.e. covered with rime or hoar-frost. The original Anglo-Saxon text
has the form _hrinde_, the meaning of which was long doubtful. Grein,
the great German scholar, writing in 1864, acknowledged that he did
not know what was intended, and it was not till 1880 that light was
first thrown upon the passage. In that year Dr Morris edited, for
the first time, some Anglo-Saxon homilies (commonly known as the
_Blickling Homilies_, because the MS.