I throw into a note what I have transcribed of this specimen of the old Saxon-English, or, as it is called, "Semi-Saxon."[10] In this specimen of the language as spoken by the people the barbarism is native, pure in its impurity, and unalloyed by any spurious exotic. This English spoken in the Weald of Kent, Caxton tells us, in his time, was "as broad and rude English as is spoken in any place in England." When contrasted with the diction of a northern bard, whom a singular accident retrieved for us,[11] it offers a curious picture of the English language, so different at precisely the same period. The minstrel's flow of verse almost anticipates the elegance of a writer of two centuries later. The poems of LAURENCE MINOT consist of ten narrative ballads on some of the wars of Edward the Third in Scotland and in France. The events this bard records show that his writings were completed in 1352. His editor is surprised that "the great monarch whom he so eloquently and so earnestly panegyrised was either ignorant of his existence or insensible of his merit." Minot was probably nothing more than a northern minstrel, whose celebrity did not extend many leagues. His verses convey to us a perfect conception of the minstrel character, throwing out his almost extemporaneous "Lays" on the predominant incidents of his day. All these narrative poems open by soliciting the attention of the auditors:-- LITHES! and I sall tell you tyll The bataile of Halidon Hyll. And in another,-- HERKINS how long King Edward lay, With his men before Tournay. The singularity of these "Lays" consists in coming down to us in a written form, evidently with great care and fondness, bearing their author's unknown name. They might have appropriately been preserved in Percy's "Reliques of English Poetry."[12]