After Chaucer, Northumbrian English became a mere popular dialect
no longer represented in literature. But the form of Northumbrian
spoken north of the Tweed, Lowland Scotch, has during the next three
hundred years quite a different history. From the Scottish war of
Independence to the Union of the Crowns, Scotland had its own
literary language. It is customary to speak of three periods of
Scottish language and literature as Old, Middle and New: Old Scotch
extending down to about 1450; Middle Scotch to the Union of the
Crowns; and New Scotch covering the period after the Union. This is,
of course, simply a Northern and later form of the Northumbrian we
have discussed above.


15. SOME CHARACTERISTICS OF SCOTCH. O.E. _ă_, _ā_.

There are no monuments in O.Sco. dating back to the 13th or first
half of the 14th Century. The first of any importance that we have
is "The Bruce" of 1375. By this time the language of Scotland had
already undergone many changes that made its general character quite
different from literary or Midland English. None of these changes
tended so much to differentiate the two as the very different
development of O.E. long and short _a_. In the south O.E. _a_ >
_ē_ (_name_ > _nę̄m_ > _nēm_); but O.E. _ā_ > _ǭ_,
later _ō_ (_stān_ > _stǭn_ > _stōne_, _hām_ >
_hǭm_ > _hōme_). The change of _ā_ to _ǭ_ (probably
about 1200) took place before that of _ă_ to _ā_, else they
would have coincided and both developed to _ō_ or _ē_. The
last is precisely what took place in Scotland. O. Nhb. _ă_ >
_ā_ and early coincided with original _ā_, and along with it
developed to later _ē_, as only short _a_ did in the south. The