Since I arrived in England my friend Mr. Thoms has called my attention
to the following Note by the "English Opium Eater" in the _London
Magazine_ for May, 1823, p. 556., on a subject of great interest to me
with reference to the views I have advanced in my recently published
volume, entitled _An Account of the Danes and Norwegians in England,
Scotland, and Ireland_.
"I take this opportunity of mentioning a curious fact which I
ascertained about twelve years ago, when studying the Danish. The
English and Scotch philologists have generally asserted that the
Danish invasions in the ninth and tenth centuries, and their
settlements in various parts of the island (as Lincolnshire,
Cumberland, &c.), had left little or no traces of themselves in
the language. This opinion has been lately reasserted in Dr.
Murray's work on the European languages. It is, however,
inaccurate. For the remarkable dialect spoken amongst the lakes of
Cumberland and Westmoreland, together with the names of the
mountains, tarns, &c., most of which resist all attempts to unlock
their meaning from the Anglo-Saxon, or any other form of the
Teutonic, are pure Danish, generally intelligible from the modern
Danish of this day, but in all cases from the elder form of the
Danish. Whenever my Opera Omnia are collected, I shall reprint a
little memoir on this subject, which I inserted about four years
ago in a provincial newspaper: or possibly, before that event, for
the amusement of the lake tourists, Mr. Wordsworth may do me the
favour to accept it as an appendix to his work on the English
Lakes."
Can any reader of "N. & Q." refer me to the paper in which this "little
memoir" was inserted? (it was probably in a Cumberland or Westmoreland
paper somewhere about the year 1819;) or inform me whether it ever
appeared as an appendix to any work of Wordsworth's on the English
lakes?