Welcome to the History of English Podcast, a podcast about the history of the English language.

This is Episode 112, Northern Messenger.

In this episode, we're going to officially move our chronological narrative into the 1300s.

We'll continue to look at the reign of Edward I, and we'll see how his plans to conquer

and subdue Scotland started to fall apart as Scotland rose in rebellion.

A fierce independent street could always existed in the North, so the Scots didn't need much

motivation to take up arms against Edward's forces.

The distinct culture of the North was reflected in the speech of the people.

The people of Northern England and Southern Scotland spoke a similar dialect of English,

and that dialect was quite different from the English spoken in the south of England,

where the English government was located.

During this period, we start to get a sense of just how different the dialect of the North

was.

Around the time that Scotland rose in rebellion, we have the first document composed in the

northernmost dialect of Middle English, a document called Cursor Mundi.

And for the first time, we can analyze this dialect and see why the people of the south

sometimes had difficulty understanding the English spoken in the North.

So this time, we'll look at the Northern dialect of Middle English.

But before we begin, let me remind you that the website for the podcast is historyofenglishpodcast.com,

and you can sign up to support the podcast at patreon.com slash historyofenglish.

Now this time, I want to turn our attention to the north of Britain and explore the very

important developments that were taking place there.

...