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The language is a dialect of medieval English, demeter. It begins:

The fayre hede fro the halce...

Thanks Orson.

...hit to the erthe.

I have ?EUT for 15 but can't make anything meaningful.
I think 9 is AT TABLE but can't explain the wordplay. The nearest I get is forgettable, but that doesn't really work.
And I have two across answers starting with I : IONIC and INORNATE, one is entered with the first letter moved, the other is entered normally. Have I got one of these wrong ?

Meursault, 15 is GOUT, which is also a relish.

9 Forge = oven

Move Ionic but not Inornate.

Stupid of me. I couldn't work out the A from (A)T TABLE, but it was in the clue all the time as 'one'. And I had 7 wrong, no wonder I couldn't find an answer to 15. Thanks, Orson.

Tough few weeks for slowcoach here. Thanks all for the help as ever and I understand the theme here, but I'm still confused on the across ones. I have 27 starting with E but 6 gives the start as an N. maybe I have 6 wrong. Or does more than one letter move in the across answers? And how does the first letter of the answer relate to the characters if you drop the I from one answer but not another????

rrrRobbo, from last to first.

All of the initial letters of across answers (except 39) spell 2 characters from this old fable. One character has two 'I's (if you use a preceding title to his name), and the other character has one 'I'. The same apparent confusion occurs with across answers starting 'N' and 'R'.

Only the first letter moves in the across entries relating to the second character.

27 is an entry where the first letter moves. It ends up starting with 'A'. 6 is a US version of tram tracks.

Thanks Meursault. Still confused though. How do the across entries relate to the second character?

Ah. Penny dropped. Ignore me.

Despite my criticism for the amount of time this puzzle took, I suppose I can't have it both ways. We had that 20 minute puzzle back in May, and we've had various other quick solves this year. We've had a multitude of vanilla puzzles. On this occasion likely my reaction was on account of the fact I didn't have the necessary time over the weekend. But I'm glad I made time for it today. A good puzzle. Even now, I look at 2 and think, "Well, you could have had ALBANY there (without even needing to change 18)." But maybe the setter thought that would make the puzzle too easy. The setter's entitled to a smile at this...