Schnörkel in Modern German designates a twisted ornament, a ‘scroll’ or ‘flourish.’ In some of the earlier dictionaries, e. g. in Steinbach's Vollständiges Deutsches Wörter-Buch (Breslau, 1734) and in Frisch's Teutsch-Lateinisches Wörter-Buch (Berlin, 1741), the word occurs as Schnerkel, and this, no doubt, is the more original form; the change of e into ö being due to the influence of the neighboring sch, as in löschen, Schöffe, schöpfen, Schöpfer, schröpfen, schwören, which originated from Middle High German leschen, scheffe, schepfen, schepfere, schrepfen, swern? It is well known that in such cases the vowels ö and e are found interchangeably from a time earlier than the beginning of the sixteenth century. E. g. Luther in his later works clings to the e (in spelling schepffen, schweren, etc.), while in his earlier writings the ö is found at least in a few cases. On the whole the vowel ö is gaining ground; but in some instances the uncertainty between e and ö is not settled before the end of the eighteenth century. It is in accordance with these facts that, although Schnerkel is still used in the first half of the eighteenth century, yet the word is spelled Schnörchel, e. g. in Kramer's Wort-Buch in Teutsch-Italiänischer Sprach (Nürnberg, 1678).

My reason for offering the present contribution to a subject no longer considered as affording opportunities for remarkable discoveries is the following: Among the characteristic terms employed by students of Old French philology there are two which, consecrated by long usage, occur more frequently, probably, than any others. These two are “free “(frei, libre) and “checked” (gedeckt, entravé); they are used to refer to the position of vowels in Popular Latin, the vowel being called “free” when standing before a single consonant or certain consonant combinations, “checked” in other circumstances. Now I dare say that there is no definition of such fundamental importance which betrays more inconsistencies and difficulties to the careful scholar than does this one as stated in its present form in the various manuals on Old French. After seeking in vain either to find any single definition that seemed satisfactory or to combine the statements of different scholars into one comprehensive presentation of the point in question, I concluded that there must be something radically wrong with the traditional method of expressing the definition, and determined to make an independent investigation of the whole matter.

The study of Indirect Discourse in Anglo-Saxon has hitherto received comparatively little attention. We occasionally meet with discussions of this construction in grammatical studies of selected Anglo-Saxon writings. Kühn and Wohlfarht, in their treatments of the syntax of the works of Ælfric, have done little more than to mention Indirect Discourse; Nader, however, has furnished a far more satisfactory account of it as found in the Beowulf. Such studies are as a rule of a sketchy character and are also extremely unsatisfactory owing to the restricted field within which the work has been done.