Chapter IV: Old English Prose

Since the extant prose (with the exception of slavish glosses) is by its very nature closer to the vernacular than the poetry, we should probably not expect to encounter in it as large a proportion of those constructions associated with compact, synthetic speech as might be found in the poetry. Also, if there is a progression or a shifting with respect to any phenomenon in the language, we might reasonably expect to find it reflected in the prose rather than in the poetry. And so, the decline of our case-construction in OE speech is probably more accurately indicated by its use in prose writings.