ware,
And groundes of ertheli world unhiled are,
For thi snibbing, Laverd myne;
For onesprute of gast of wreth thine.
16. He sent fra hegh, and uptoke me;
Fra many watres me nam he.
17. He out-toke me thare amang
Fra my faas that war sa strang,
And fra tha me that hated ai;
For samen strenghthed over me war thai
18. Thai forcome me in daie of twinging,
And made es Layered mi forhiling.
19. And he led me in brede to be;
Sauf made he me, for he wald me;
20. And foryhelde to me Laverd sal
After mi rightwisenes al.
And after clensing of mi hende
Sal he yhelde to me at ende.

The literal sense is:--"He sent His arrows and scattered them;
multiplied (His) lightning and so afflicted them. And the wells of
waters were shown, and the foundations of the earthly world are
uncovered because of Thy snubbing (rebuke), O my Lord! because of the
blast (Lat. _inspiratio_) of the breath of Thy wrath. He sent from
on high, and took me up; from many waters He took me. He took me out
there-among from my foes that were so strong, and from those that
alway hated me; for they were strengthened together over me. They
came before me in the day of affliction, and the Lord is made my
protection. And He led me (so as) to be in a broad place; He made me
safe, because He desired (lit. would) me; and the Lord shall requite
me according to all my righteousness, and according to the cleanness
of my hands shall He repay me in the end."

In this specimen we can already discern some of the chief
characteristics which are so conspicuous in Lowland Scotch MSS. of
the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The most striking is the
almost total loss of the final _-e_ which is so frequently required
to form an extra syllable when we try to scan the poetry of Chaucer.
Even where a final _-e_ is written in the above extract, it is wholly
silent. The words _ware_ (were), _are_ (are), _myne_, _thine_, _toke_,
_made_, _brede_, _hende_, _ende_, are all monosyllabic; and in fact
the large number of monosyllabic words is very striking. The words
_onesprute_, _forcome_, _foryhelde_ are, in like manner, dissyllabic.
The only suffixes that count in the scansion are _-en_, _-ed_, and
_-es_; as in _sam-en_, _skat'r-{`e}d_, _drev-{`e}d_, _hat-{`e}d_, etc.,
and _arw-{`e}s_, _well-{`e}s_, _watr-{`e}s_, etc. The curious form
_sal_, for "shall," is a Northern characteristic. So also is the
form _hende_ as the plural of "hand