Selected Text I: Bede's Death Song. There is no fragment of the Northumbrian dialect of Old English accessible to us that is identifiable as 'Old Cumbrian,' but it is unavoidably true that later Cumbrian is descended from Northumbrian Old English. The first text is the supposed final words of the Anglo-Saxon historian Bede, a Northumbrian man who died in 735 in what is now Tyne-and-Wear. A version of this text exists in the West Saxon dialect (the dialect most often used in textbooks), so we can compare forms, although bear in mind that a lot of the differences will come down to spelling. I will first provide the original text (St. Gallen manuscript 254) in Northumbrian, and then a word-for-word translation, and then an idiomatic translation to modern English.
Fore them neidfaerae thoncsnotturra to ymbhycggannae huaet his gastae aefter deothdaege
naenig uuiurthit than him tharf sie aer his hiniongae godaes aeththa yflaes doemid uueorthae.
Before the needjourney aware to consider what for his spirit after [his] death-day
none becomes [more] than him [that] must before his going-hence good or evil deemed will-be.
'Before the inevitable journey, nobody is wiser than he who is compelled to consider, before he sets off, which of his actions will be deemed good and evil after he has died.'
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