subj._ 17, 138, 172; wile _pr. s._ 88, wollde _pt. s._ 5; to don _dat. inf._ 32, doþ _pr. s._ 29, 109, missdoþ 157, don _pp._ 61, 118. #Vocabulary:# Scandinavian are afell 28, aȝȝ 44, baþe 10, fra 67, gætenn 52, griþþ 133, laȝhenn 44, lahȝhre 43, mec 85, occ 117, sahht(nesse) 140, skerrenn 88, skill (læs) 27, summ 27, takenn 40, till 49, (inn)till 18, þeȝȝ 74, þeȝȝre 32, þohh 28, usell 4, usell(dom) 24, and the suffix in (modiȝ)leȝȝc, (gredit)leȝȝc 167; possibly also bandess 10, come 148, deȝeþþ 41. French is gluter(nesse) 167; long i in Crist shows new borrowing from French. #Dialect:# East Midland bordering on the North; a mixed dialect, which possibly accounts for the wavering in the representation of #eo#, #ēo#. The large Scandinavian element in the vocabulary and the absence of u in final syllables (372/34) point to the East; the representation of #ā# + #w#, the development of #c#, #g#, and perhaps the uniform appearance of #ā# as a in this thirteenth-century text, show Northern influence. Lambertz has noted so many correspondences between the phonology of Orm and that of the Rushworth gloss on the Gospel of S. Matthew as to make it probable that they belong to the same dialectal area. The Northern border of Lincolnshire was most probably the place where the Ormulum was written. #Metre:# For the scheme of the Septenarius see p. 327. Orm’s verse is monotonously regular; every line has its fifteen syllables exactly counted out and ends in x́ x; the caesura comes after the eighth syllable; the rhythm is iambic without substitution. For the sake of this uniformity he does violence to the natural accent in Niþþrédd 35, Bisscópess 51, Enngléss 69, sahhtnésse 140, drihhtíness 171, though Schipper regards such cases as examples of ‘hovering accent,’ wherein the stress is distributed equally over the two syllables having the word-accent and the verse-accent,--a spondee rather than an iamb. Elision takes place regularly before an initial vowel or h, sonẹ, leȝȝdẹ 2, vnnornẹ, wrecchẹ 4, heffnẹ 12, mihhtẹ 36, wolldẹ 54, wilẹ 88, seȝȝdẹ 94, whasẹ 154, &c. Sometimes e is not written, as in whas 90; crasis is found elsewhere in he̋t (= he itt), ȝhőt (= ȝho itt), þűtt (= þu itt), and similar combinations.