Re: Elves and Ill Bethisad

michael poxon scripsit:

> I think of Shelley's "Bird thou never wert" but apart from that have never
> come across "wert".
One occurrence in the KJV, at Job 8:6:

        If thou wert pure and upright; surely now he would awake for
        thee, and make the habitation of thy righteousness prosperous.

By contrast, there are 65 occurrences of "wast" in the KJV.

OTOH, there are 81 occurrences in Shakespeare, mostly in conditional
and when-clauses, and 61 occurrences of "wast".

> Forms like "thee are" and "thee were" sound weird, at least to me.
They're found in traditional dialect in the south-east of England, and also in
old-fashioned (now basically extinct) Quaker plain speech.

--
John Cowan   jcowan@reutershealth.com  http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
Most languages are dramatically underdescribed, and at least one is
dramatically overdescribed.  Still other languages are simultaneously
overdescribed and underdescribed.  Welsh pertains to the third category.
        --Alan King

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