Note 81 — Chapter IV · —THE NOUN

It sometimes happens (as Dr. Stokes points out) that if the first noun is feminine, the noun in the genitive has its initial in the second state, in fact it is treated as an adjective qualifying the preceding noun, e.g. bennath Varya, the blessing of Mary; carek Veryasek, the rock of Meriasek; fynten woys, a well of blood, but as this also happens at times when the first noun is masculine (e.g. cledha dan, Cr. 964), it probably only means that mutations were rather loosely used. The last two are “genitives of material.”