SOURCE: Tolkien, J. R. R. “Ancrene Wisse and Hali Meidhad.” In Essays and Studies by Members of the English Association, vol. XIV, collected by H. W. Garrod, pp. 104-26. London: Oxford University Press, 1929.

In the following excerpt, Tolkien offers a linguistic study of Ancrene Wisse and its assorted manuscript variations.

I

The Ancrene Wisse has already developed a ‘literature’, and it is very possible that nothing I can say about it will be either new or illuminating to the industrious or leisured that have kept up with it. I have not. But my interest in this document is linguistic, and unless I am mistaken, a purely linguistic aspect of the problem will bear renewed attention, or repetition. I even believe that it may be of value to set forth a line of argument that is based on assertions of which the proper proof (or retractation) must wait for...