It is known from municipal records and guild ordinances that cycles of biblical pageants were acted in many of the more prosperous towns of England, however, all of them are now lost, except for the cycles of Chester, York, Wakefield (to which the Towneley cycle probably once belonged) and the N. town cycle or Ludus Coventriae. The origins of the cycles are obscure. There is an early reference for 1378, and it is generally supposed that from this date a series of plays was in existence and was regularly performed, but the texts of the pageants preserved in manuscripts are all written very late: fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.
    It is the aim of our paper to examine the linguistic status of three cycle plays: Noah of the Towneley cycle (MS HMi in the Henry E. Hamilton Library, California), which is thought to have been written in about 1450, and other two versions belonging to the Chester cycle: Noah´s Flood , MS. Add. 10,305 (1592) and The Deluge, MS. Harl. 2124 (1600) both in the British Museum. The cycles in their present form are the product of successive revisions, alterations and interborrowings. The plays are written in a modified form of the local dialect and conformity to the official writing norm is evident, nevertheless, they still show clear linguistic residues of their northern roots.