- Dedication
- Preface to the Second Edition
- Preface to the First Edition
- OBSERVATIONS on some of the Dialects of the West of England,
particularly Somersetshire
- A GLOSSARY of Words commonly used in Somersetshire
- POEMS and OTHER PIECES, exemplifying the Dialect of the County
of Somerset
- Good Bwye ta Thee Cot
- Fanny Fear
- Jerry Nutty
- Legend of Glastonbury
- Mr. Guy
- The Rookery
- Tom Gool
- Teddy Band--a Zong--Hunting for Sport
- The Churchwarden
- The Fisherman and the Players
- Mary Ramsey's Crutch
- Hannah Verrior
- Remembrance
- Doctor Cox
- The Farewell
- Farmer Bennet an Jan Lide, a Dialogue
- Thomas Came an Young Maester Jimmy, a Dialogue
- Mary Ramsay, a Monologue
- Soliloquy of Ben Bond
- Two Dissertations on Anglo-Saxon Pronouns
- Miss Ham on the Somerset Dialect
- Concluding Observations
OBSERVATIONS, &c.
The following Glossary includes the whole of Somerset, _East_
of the River Parret, as well as adjoining parts of Wiltshire and
Gloucestershire. West of the Parret many of the words are
pronounced very differently indeed, so as to mark strongly the
people who use them. [This may be seen more fully developed in two
papers, by T. Spencer Baynes, read before the Somersetshire
Archaeological Society, entitled the Somersetshire Dialect,
printed 1861, 18mo, to whom I here acknowledge my obligations for
several hints and suggestions, of which I avail myself in this
edition of my late relative's work].
The chief peculiarity West of the Parret, is the ending of the
third person singular, present tense of verbs, in _th_ or
_eth_: as, he _lov'th_, _zee'th_, &c., for he
loves, sees, &c.
In the pronouns, they have _Ise_ for _I_, and _er_
for _he_. In fact the peculiarities and contractions of the
Western District are puzzling to a stranger. Thus, _her_ is
frequently used for _she_. "_Har'th a doo'd it_," is,
"_she has done it_," (I shall occasionally in the Glossary
note such words as distinguishingly characterise that district).
Two of the most remarkable peculiarities of the dialect of the
West of England, and particularly of Somersetshire, are the sounds
given to the vowels A and E. A, is almost always sounded open, as
in _fäther_, _räther_, or somewhat like the usual sound
of _a_ in _balloon_, _calico_, lengthened; it is so
pronounced in bäll, cäll. I shall use for this sound the
_circumflex over the a_, thus â_ or ä_. E, has commonly
the same sound as the French gave it, which is, in fact, the
slender of A, as heard in _pane fane_, _cane_, &c. The
hard sound given in our polished dialect to the letters _th_,
in the majority of words containing those letters [as in
_through_, _three_, _thing_, think_], expressed
by the Anglo-Saxon _ð_, is frequently changed in the Western
districts into the sound given in England to the letter _d_:
as for _three_, we have _dree_
for _thread_, _dread_, or _dird_,
_through_, _droo_, _throng_, _drong_, or
rather _drang_;
_thrush_, _dirsh_, &c. The consonant and vowel following
_d_, changing places. The slender or soft sound given to
_th_ in our polished dialect, is in the West, most commonly
converted into the thick or obtuse sound of the same letters as
heard in the words _this_, these &c., and this too, whether
the letters be at the beginning or end of words. I am much
disposed to believe that our Anglo-Saxon ancestors, used
indiscriminately the letters Ð and ð for D only, and sounded them
as such, as we find now frequently in the West; although our
lexicographers usually have given the _two_ sounds of
_th_ to Ð and ð respectively. The vowel O is used for
_a_, as _hond, dorke, lorke, hort,_ in hand, dark, lark,
heart, &c., and other syllables are lengthened, as _voote, bade,
dade,_ for foot, bed, dead. The letter O in _no, gold,_
&c., is sounded like _aw_ in _awful_; I have therefore
spelt it with this diphthong instead of _a_. Such word as
_jay_ for _joy_, and a few others, I have not noted.
Another remarkable fact is the disposition to invert the order of
some consonants in some words; as the _r_ in _thrush,
brush, rush, run,_ &c., pronouncing them dirsh, birsh, hirsh,
hirn; also transposition of _p_ and _s_ in such words as
clasp, hasp, asp, &c., sounded claps, haps, aps, &c. I have not
inserted all these words in the Glossary, as these general remarks
will enable the student to detect the words which are so inverted.
It is by no means improbable that the order in which such sounds
are now repeated in the West, is the original order in which they
existed in our language, and that our more polished mode of
expressing them is a new and perhaps a corrupt enunciation.
Another peculiarity is that of joining the letter _y_ at the
end of some verbs in the infinitive mood, as well as to parts of
different conjugations, thus, "I can't _sewy, nursy, reapy_,
to _sawy_, to _sewy_, to _nursy_, &c. A further
peculiarity is the _love of vowel_ sound, and opening out
monosyllables of our polished dialect into two or more syllables,
thus:
ay-er, for air;
boo-äth, for both;
fay-er, for fair;
vi-ër for fire;
stay-ers for stairs;
show-er for sure;
vröo-rst for post;
boo-ath for both;
bre-ash for brush;
chee-ase for cheese;
kee-ard for card;
gee-ate for gate;
mee-ade for mead;
mee-olk for milk; &c.
Chaucer gives many of them as dissyllables.
The verb _to be_ retains much of its primitive form: thus
_I be, thou,_ or _thee, beest,_ or _bist, we be, you
be, they be, thä be_, are continually heard for _I am_,
&c., _he be_ is rarely used: but _he is_. In the past
tense, _war_ is used for _was_, and _were_: _I
war, thou_ or _thee wart_, he _war_, &c., we have
besides, _we'm, you'm, they'm_, for _we, you, they,
are_, there is a constant tendency to pleonasm in some cases,
as well as to contraction, and elision in others. Thus we have
_a lost, agone, abought_, &c., for _lost, gone, bought_,
&c., Chaucer has many of these prefixes; but he often uses
_y_ instead of _a_, as _ylost_. The frequent use of
Z and V, the softened musical sounds for S and F, together with
the frequent increase and multiplication of vowel sounds, give the
dialect a by no means inharmonious expression, certainly it would
not be difficult to select many words which may for their
modulation compete with others of French extraction, and, perhaps
be superior to many others which we have borrowed from other
languages, much less analogous to the polished dialect of our own.
I have added, in pursuance of these ideas, some poetical and prose
pieces in the dialect of Somersetshire, in which the idiom is
tolerably well preserved, and the pronunciation is conveyed in
letters, the nearest to the sound of the words, as there are in
truth many sounds for which we have neither letters, nor
combinations of letters to express them. [I might at some future
period, if thought advisable, go into a comparison between the
sound of all the letters of the alphabet pronounced in
Somersetshire, and in our polished dialect, but I doubt if the
subject is entitled to this degree of criticism]. The reader will
bear in mind that these poems are composed in the dialect of
Somerset, north east of the Parret, which is by far the most
general.
In the Guardian, published about a century ago, is a paper No. 40,
concerning pastoral poetry, supposed to have been written by
_Pope_, to extol his own pastorals and degrade those of
Ambrose Phillips. In this essay there is a quotation from a
pretended _Somersetshire_ poem. But it is evident Pope knew
little or nothing about the Somersetshire dialect. Here are a few
lines from "this old West country bard of ours," as Pope calls
him:
"_Cicely._ Ah Rager, Rager, cher was zore avraid,
When in yond vield you kiss'd the parson's maid:
Is this the love that once to me you zed,
When from tha wake thou broughtst me gingerbread?"
Now first, this is a strange admixture of dialects, but neither
east, west, north, nor south.
_Chez_ is nowhere used; but in the southern part _utche_
or _iche_, is sometimes spoken contractedly _che_. [See
_utchy_ in the Glossary].
_Vield_ for _field_, should be _veel_.
_Wake_ is not used in Somersetshire; but _revel_ is the
word.
_Parson_, in Somersetshire, dealer, is _pâson_.
In another line he calls the cows, _kee_, which is not
Somersetian; nor is, _be go_ for begone: it should, _be
gwon_; nor is _I've a be_; but _I've a bin_,
Somersetian.
The idiomatic expressions in this dialect are numerous, many will
be found in the Glossary; the following may be mentioned. _I'd
'sley do it_, for _I would as lief do it_. I have
occasionally in the Glossary suggested the etymology of some
words; by far the greater part have an Anglo-Saxon, some perhaps a
Danish origin; [and when we recollect that _Alfred the
Great_, a good Anglo-Saxon scholar, was born at Wantage in
Berks, on the border of Wilts, had a palace at Chippenham, and was
for some time resident in Athelney, we may presume that
traditional remains of him may have influenced the language or
dialect of Somersetshire, and I am inclined to think that the
present language and pronunciation of Somersetshire were some
centuries past, general in the south portion of our island.]
In compiling this Glossary, I give the fruits of twenty-five
years' assiduity, and have defined words, not from books, but from
actual usage; I have however carefully consulted _Junius_,
_Skinner_, _Minshew_, and some other old lexicographers,
and find many of their definitions correspond with my own; but I
avoid _conjectural_ etymology. Few dictionaries of our
language are to be obtained, published from the invention of
printing to the end of the 16th century, a period of about 150
years. They throw much light on our provincial words, yet after
all, our _old writers_ are our chief resource, [and doubtless
many MSS. in various depositories, written at different periods,
and recently brought to light, from the Record and State Paper
Office, and historical societies, will throw much light on the
subject]; and an abundant harvest offers in examining them, by
which to make an amusing book, illustrative of our provincial
words and ancient manners. I think we cannot avoid arriving at the
conclusion, that the Anglo-Saxon dialect, of which I conceive the
Western dialect to be a striking portion, has been gradually
giving way to our polished idiom; and is considered a barbarism,
and yet many of the _sounds_ of that dialect are found in
Holland and Germany, as a part of the living language of these
countries. I am contented with having thus far elucidated the
language of my native county. I have omitted several words, which
I supposed provincial, and which are frequent to the west, as they
are found in the modern dictionaries, still I have allowed a few,
which are in Richardson's Johnson.
_Thee_ is used for the nominative _thou_; which latter
word is seldom used, diphthong sounds used in this dialect are:
uai, uoa, uoi, uoy, as
guain, (gwain), quoat, buoil, buoy;
such is the disposition to pleonasm in the use of the
demonstrative pronouns, that they are very often used with the
adverb _there_. _Theäze here, thick there_, [_thicky
there_, west of the Parret] _theäsam_ here, _theazamy
here, them there, themmy there_. The substitution of V for F,
and Z (_Izzard_, _Shard_, for S, is one of the strongest
words of numerous dialects.)
In words ending with _p_ followed by _s_, the letters
change places as:
hasp--haps;
clasp--claps,
wasp--waps;
In a paper by General Vallancey in the second volume of the
_Transactions of the Royal Irish Academy_, read Dec. 27,
1788, it appears that a colony of English soldiers settled in the
_Baronies_ of _Forth Bargie_, in the county of Wexford,
in Ireland, in 1167, 1168, and 1169; and that colony preserved
their customs, manners, and language to 1788. There is added in
that paper a _vocabulary_ of their language, and a
_song_, handed down by tradition from the arrival of the
colony more than 600 years since. I think there can be no question
that these Irish colonists were from the West of England, from the
apparent admixture of dialects in the _vocabulary_ and
_song_, although the language is much altered from the Anglo-
Saxon of Somersetshire. [Footnote: This subject has been more
fully treated in the following work: A Glossary, with some pieces
of verse of the old dialect of the English colony in the Baronies
of Forth and Bargy, Co. Wexford, Ireland. Formerly collected by
Jacob Poole, of Growton, now edited with Notes and Introduction by
the Rev. W. Barnes, author of the Dorset Poems and Glossary, fcap.
8vo, 1867.] The words _nouth_, knoweth; _zin_, sin,
_vrast_, frost; _die_, day; _Zathardie_, Saturday;
_Zindii_, Sunday; and a few others, indicate an origin west
of the Parret. There are many words which with a trifling
alteration in spelling, would suit at the present time the north
eastern portion of the county: as _blauther_, bladder:
_crwest_, crust; _smill_, smell; _skir_, to rise in
the air [see _skeer_]; _vier_, fire; _vier_, a
weasel; _zar_, to serve; _zatch_, such, &c. From such
words as _ch'am_, and _ch'uh_, the southern part of the
county is clearly indicated. I think the disposition to elision
and contraction is as evident here as it is at present in
Somersetshire. In the song, there are marks of its having
undergone change since its first introduction.
_Lowthee_ is evidently derived from _lewth_ [see
Glossary] _lewthy_, will be, _abounding in lewth_, i. e.
sheltered.