greater interest than either the Northumbrian or Anglo-Saxon.

Unfortunately, the amount of extant Old Mercian, before the Conquest,
is not very large, and it is only of late years that the MSS.
containing it have been rightly understood. Practically, the study of
it dates only from 1885, when Dr Sweet published his _Oldest English
Texts_.

But there is more Mercian to be found than was at first suspected; and
it is desirable to consider this question.

An important discovery was that the language of the oldest Glossaries
seems to be Mercian. We have extant no less than four Glossaries in
MSS. of as early a date as the eighth century, named respectively, the
Epinal, Erfurt, Corpus, and Leyden Glossaries. The first is now at
Epinal, in France (in the department Vosges); the second, at Erfurt,
near Weimar, in Germany; the third, in Corpus Christi College,
Cambridge; and the fourth, at Leyden, in Holland. The Corpus MS. may
be taken as typical of the rest. It contains an enumeration of a
large number of difficult words, arranged, but imperfectly, in
alphabetical order; and after each of these is written its gloss
or interpretation. Thus the fifth folio begins as follows:

Abminiculum . adiutorium.
Abelena . haeselhnutu.
Abiecit . proiecit.
Absida . sacrarium.
Abies . etspe.
Ab ineunte ætate . infantia.