Query: "will" "woll"

[Gerald Cohen]

Would someone familiar with the history of English be able to help on this?--

    "Won't" is known to be a contraction of "woll not" (= will not).
But where does the "o" in this present tense "woll" come from? My
Anglo-Saxon grammar gives present-tense forms only with "i" ("wille,
wilt, wil(l), pl.: willath). Did the "o" spread from the preterit
("wolde")?
    OED2, under "will" (verb,#A2, A4) presents examples with both "i"
and "o", e.g.1505: "And so wole the kynge my lorde do"; 1616: "I wil
gather all nations against Ierusalem to battell."
     Were the various forms of "will" "(will, wule, wole", etc.) use
in free variation? Was their usage dialectally determined? Is there
any rationale to the presence of "will" or "woll" in a given citation?

     Any assistance would be much appreciated. This e-mail is the
result of  a student asking me how "won't" could be a contraction of
"will not."

---Gerald Cohen