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CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
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{Illustration: Decorative Title Page
encompassing all text
from "English Dialects" through "1912"}
ENGLISH DIALECTS
From the Eighth Century
to the Present Day
by the
REV. WALTER W. SKEAT,
Litt.D., D.C.L., LL.D., Ph.D.,
F.B.A. Elrington and Bosworth
Professor of Anglo-Saxon and Fel-
low of Christ's College. Founder
and formerly Director of the
English Dialect Society
"English in the native garb;"
_K. Henry V._ V. 1. 80
Cambridge
at the University Press
1912
* * * * *
With the exception of the coat of arms
at the foot, the design on the title page
is a reproduction of one used by the earliest
known Cambridge printer, John Siberch, 1521
_First Edition_ 1911.
_Reprinted_ 1912.
* * * * *
PREFACE
The following brief sketch is an attempt to present, in a popular
form, the history of our English dialects, from the eighth century
to the present day. The evidence, which is necessarily somewhat
imperfect, goes to show that the older dialects appear to have been
few in number, each being tolerably uniform over a wide area; and
that the rather numerous dialects of the present day were gradually
developed by the breaking up of the older groups into subdialects.
This is especially true of the old Northumbrian dialect, in which the
speech of Aberdeen was hardly distinguishable from that of Yorkshire,
down to the end of the fourteenth century; soon after which date, the
use of it for literary purposes survived in Scotland only. The
chief literary dialect, in the earliest period, was Northumbrian or
"Anglian," down to the middle of the ninth century. After that time
our literature was mostly in the Southern or Wessex dialect, commonly
called "Anglo-Saxon," the dominion of which lasted down to the early
years of the thirteenth century, when the East Midland dialect
surely but gradually rose to pre-eminence, and has now become the
speech of the empire. Towards this result the two great universities
contributed not a little. I proceed to discuss the foreign elements
found in our dialects, the chief being Scandinavian and French. The
influence of the former has long been acknowledged; a due recognition
of the importance of the latter has yet to come. In conclusion, I give
some selected specimens of the use of the modern dialects.
I beg leave to thank my friend Mr P. Giles, M.A., Hon. LL.D. of
Aberdeen, and University Reader in Comparative Philology, for a few
hints and for kindly advice.
W. W. S.
Cambridge
3 March 1911
TABLE OF CONTENTS
PREFACE
I. DIALECTS AND THEIR VALUE. The meaning of _dialect_. Phonetic decay and
dialectic regeneration. The words _twenty_, _madam_, _alms_. Keats;
use of _awfully_. Tennyson and Ben Jonson; use of _flittermouse_.
Shakespeare; use of _bolter_ and _child_. Sir W. Scott; use of
_eme_. The English _yon_. _Hrinde_ in Beowulf.
II. DIALECTS IN EARLY TIMES. The four old dialects. Meaning of
"Anglo-Saxon." Documents in the Wessex dialect.
III. THE DIALECTS OF NORTHUMBRIA; TILL A.D. 1300. The Anglian period.
Beda's History and "Death-song." The poet Cædmon. Cædmon's hymn.
The Leyden Riddle. The Ruth well Cross. Liber Vitæ. The Durham
Ritual. The Lindisfarne and Rushworth MSS. Meaning of a "gloss."
Specimen.
IV. THE DIALECTS OF NORTHUMBRIA; A.D. 1300-1400. The Metrical Psalter;
with an extract. Cursor Mundi. Homilies in Verse. Prick of
Conscience. Minot's Poems. Barbour's Bruce; with an extract. Great
extent of the Old Northern dialect; from Aberdeen to the Humber.
Lowland Scotch identical with the Yorkshire dialect of Hampole.
Lowland Scotch called "Inglis" by Barbour, Henry the Minstrel,
Dunbar, and Lyndesay; first called "Scottis" by G. Douglas.
Dr Murray's account of the Dialect of the Southern Counties of
Scotland.
V. NORTHUMBRIAN IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY. Northumbrian of Scotland and
of England in different circumstances. Literature of the fifteenth
century; poems, romances, plays, and ballads. List of Romances.
Caxton. Rise of the Midland dialect. "Scottish" and "English."
Jamieson's Dictionary. "Middle Scots." Quotation from Dunbar.
VI. THE SOUTHERN DIALECT. Alfred the Great. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.
Old English Homilies. The Brut. St Juliana. The Ancren Riwle. The
Proverbs of Alfred. The Owl and the Nightingale. A Moral Ode.
Robert of Gloucester. Early history of Britain. The South-English
Legendary. The Harleian MS. 2253. The Vernon MS. John Trevisa.
The Testament of Love.
VII. THE SOUTHERN DIALECT OF KENT. Quotation from Beda. Extract from an
Old Kentish Charter. Kentish Glosses. Kentish Sermons. William of
Shoreham; with an extract. The Ayenbite of Inwyt. The Apostles'
Creed in Old Kentish. The use of _e_ for A.S. _y_ in Kentish. Use
of Kentish by Gower and Chaucer. Kentish forms in modern English.
VIII. THE MERCIAN DIALECT. East Midland. Old Mercian Glossaries of the
eighth century. The Lorica Prayer. The Vespasian Psalter. The
Rushworth MS. Old Mercian and Wessex compared. Laud MS. of the
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. The Ormulum. The English Proclamation of
Henry III. (_see the facsimile_). Robert Mannyng of Brunne (Bourn).
West Midland. The Prose Psalter. William of Palerne. The Pearl and
Alliterative Poems. Sir Gawayne and the Grene Knight.
IX. FOREIGN ELEMENTS IN THE DIALECTS. Words from Norman, Italian,
Spanish, Dutch, etc. Celtic. List of Celtic words. Examples of
Latin words. Greek words. Hebrew words. List of Scandinavian
words. French words. Anglo-French words; _gauntree_. Literary
French words, as used in dialects.
X. LATER HISTORY OF THE DIALECTS. Spenser. John Fitzherbert. Thomas
Tusser. Skinner's Etymologicon (Lincolnshire words). John Ray.
Dialect glossaries. Dr Ellis on Early English Pronunciation. The
English Dialect Society. The English Dialect Dictionary. The
English Dialect Grammar.
XI. THE MODERN DIALECTS. Prof. Wright's account of the modern English
Dialects.
XII. A FEW SPECIMENS. Some writers in dialect. Specimens: Scottish
(Aberdeen, Ayrshire, Edinburgh). Northern England (Westmorland).
Midland (Lincoln, S.E. Lancashire, Sheffield, Cheshire). Eastern
(N. Essex, Norfolk). Western (S.W. Shropshire). Southern
(Wiltshire, Isle of Wight, Sussex).
BIBLIOGRAPHY
INDEX
FACSIMILE. The only English Proclamation of Henry III. Oct. 18, 1258
*** _For a transcription of the Facsimile see_ pp. 75-6.
{Transcriber's Note:
The Facsimile is not included in this e-text.}
CHAPTER I
DIALECTS AND THEIR VALUE
According to the New English Dictionary, the oldest sense, in
English, of the word _dialect_ was simply "a manner of speaking"
or "phraseology," in accordance with its derivation from the Greek
_dialectos_, a discourse or way of speaking; from the verb
_dialegesthai_, to discourse or converse.
The modern meaning is somewhat more precise. In relation to a language
such as English, it is used in a special sense to signify "a local
variety of speech differing from the standard or literary language."
When we talk of "speakers of dialect," we imply that they employ a
provincial method of speech to which the man who has been educated to
use the language of books is unaccustomed. Such a man finds that the
dialect-speaker frequently uses words or modes of expression which he
does not understand or which are at any rate strange to him; and he is
sure to notice that such words as seem to be familiar to him are, for
the most part, strangely pronounced. Such differences are especially
noticeable in the use of vowels and diphthongs, and in the mode
of intonation.
The speaker of the "standard" language is frequently tempted to
consider himself as the dialect-speaker's superior, unless he has
already acquired some elementary knowledge of the value of the science
of language or has sufficient common sense to be desirous of learning
to understand that which for the moment lies beyond him. I remember
once hearing the remark made--"What is the good of dialects? Why not
sweep them all away, and have done with them?" But the very form of
the question betrays ignorance of the facts; for it is no more
possible to do away with them than it is possible to suppress the
waves of the sea. English, like every other literary language, has
always had its dialects and will long continue to possess them in
secluded districts, though they are at the present time losing much of
that archaic character which gives them their chief value. The spread
of education may profoundly modify them, but the spoken language of
the people will ever continue to devise new variations and to initiate
developments of its own. Even the "standard" language is continually
losing old words and admitting new ones, as was noted long ago by
Horace; and our so-called "standard" pronunciation is ever
imperceptibly but surely changing, and never continues in one stay.
In the very valuable _Lectures on the Science of Language_ by
Professor F. Max Müller, the second Lecture, which deserves careful
study, is chiefly occupied by some account of the processes which he
names respectively "phonetic decay" and "dialectic regeneration";
processes to which all languages have always been and ever will be
subject.
By "phonetic decay" is meant that insidious and gradual alteration in
the sounds of spoken words which, though it cannot be prevented, at
last so corrupts a word that it becomes almost or wholly unmeaning.
Such a word as _twenty_ does not suggest its origin. Many might
perhaps guess, from their observation of such numbers as _thirty,
forty_, etc., that the suffix _-ty_ may have something to do with
_ten_, of the original of which it is in fact an extremely reduced
form; but it is less obvious that _twen-_ is a shortened form of
_twain_. And perhaps none but scholars of Teutonic languages are aware
that _twain_ was once of the masculine gender only, while _two_ was so
restricted that it could only be applied to things that were feminine
or neuter. As a somewhat hackneyed example of phonetic decay, we may
take the case of the Latin _mea domina_, i.e. my mistress, which
became in French _ma dame_, and in English _madam_; and the last of
these has been further shortened to _mam_, and even to _'m_, as in the
phrase "Yes, 'm." This shows how nine letters may be reduced to one.
Similarly, our monosyllable _alms_ is all that is left of the Greek
_ele{-e}mosyn{-e}_. Ten letters have here been reduced to four.
This irresistible tendency to indistinctness and loss is not,
however, wholly bad; for it has at the same time largely contributed,
especially in English, to such a simplification of grammatical
inflexions as certainly has the practical convenience of giving us
less to learn. But in addition to this decay in the forms of words, we
have also to reckon with a depreciation or weakening of the ideas they
express. Many words become so hackneyed as to be no longer impressive.
As late as in 1820, Keats could say, in stanza 6 of his poem of
_Isabella_, that "His heart beat awfully against his side"; but at
the present day the word _awfully_ is suggestive of schoolboys' slang.
It is here that we may well have the benefit of the principle of
"dialectic regeneration." We shall often do well to borrow from our
dialects many terms that are still fresh and racy, and instinct with a
full significance. Tennyson was well aware of this, and not only wrote
several poems wholly in the Lincolnshire dialect, but introduced
dialect words elsewhere. Thus in _The Voyage of Maeldune_, he has
the striking line: "Our voices were thinner and fainter than any
flittermouse-shriek." In at least sixteen dialects a _flittermouse_
means "a bat."
I have mentioned Tennyson in this connexion because he was a careful
student of English, not only in its dialectal but also in its older
forms. But, as a matter of fact, nearly all our chief writers have
recognised the value of dialectal words. Tennyson was not the first
to use the above word. Near the end of the Second Act of his _Sad
Shepherd_, Ben Jonson speaks of:
Green-bellied snakes, blue fire-drakes in the sky,
And giddy flitter-mice with leather wings.
Similarly, there are plenty of "provincialisms" in Shakespeare. In
an interesting book entitled _Shakespeare, his Birthplace and its
Neighbourhood_, by J.R. Wise, there is a chapter on "The
Provincialisms of Shakespeare," from which I beg leave to give a
short extract by way of specimen.
"There is the expressive compound 'blood-boltered' in _Macbeth_
(Act IV, Sc. 1), which the critics have all thought meant simply
blood-stained. Miss Baker, in her _Glossary of Northamptonshire
Words_, first pointed out that 'bolter' was peculiarly a
Warwickshire word, signifying to clot, collect, or cake, as snow
does in a horse's hoof, thus giving the phrase a far greater
intensity of meaning. And Steevens, too, first noticed that in the
expression in _The Winter's Tale_ (Act III, Sc. 3), 'Is it a boy or
a child?'--where, by the way, every actor tries to make a point,
and the audience invariably laughs--the word 'child' is used, as is
sometimes the case in the midland districts, as synonymous with
girl; which is plainly its meaning in this passage, although the
speaker has used it just before in its more common sense of either
a boy or a girl."
In fact, the _English Dialect Dictionary_ cites the phrase "is it a
lad or a child?" as being still current in Shropshire; and duly states
that, in Warwickshire, "dirt collected on the hairs of a horse's leg
and forming into hard masses is said to _bolter_." Trench further
points out that many of our pure Anglo-Saxon words which lived on into
the formation of our early English, subsequently dropped out of our
usual vocabulary, and are now to be found only in the dialects. A good
example is the word _eme_, an uncle (A.S. _{-e}am_), which is rather
common in Middle English, but has seldom appeared in our literature
since the tune of Drayton. Yet it is well known in our Northern
dialects, and Sir Walter Scott puts the expression "Didna his _eme_
die" in the mouth of Davie Deans (_Heart of Midlothian_, ch. XII). In
fact, few things are more extraordinary in the history of our language
than the singularly capricious manner in which good and useful words
emerge into or disappear from use in "standard" talk, for no very
obvious reason. Such a word as _yonder_ is common enough still; but
its corresponding adjective _yon_, as in the phrase "yon man," is
usually relegated to our dialects. Though it is common in Shakespeare,
it is comparatively rare in the Middle English period, from the
twelfth to the fifteenth century. It only occurs once in Chaucer,
where it is introduced as being a Northern word; and it absolutely
disappears from record in the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth centuries.
Bosworth's _Anglo-Saxon Dictionary_ gives no example of its use, and
it was long supposed that it would be impossible to trace it in our
early records. Nevertheless, when Dr Sweet printed, for the first
time, an edition of King Alfred's translation of Pope Gregory's
_Pastoral Care_, an example appeared in which it was employed in the
most natural manner, as if it were in everyday use. At p. 443 of that
treatise is the sentence--"Aris and gong to geonre byrg," i.e. Arise
and go to yon city. Here the A.S. _geon_ (pronounced like the modern
_yon_) is actually declined after the regular manner, being duly
provided with the suffix _-re_, which was the special suffix reserved
only for the genitive or dative feminine. It is here a dative after
the preposition _to_.
There is, in fact, no limit to the good use to which a reverent study
of our dialects may be put by a diligent student. They abound with
pearls which are worthy of a better fate than to be trampled under
foot. I will content myself with giving one last example that is
really too curious to be passed over in silence.
It so happens that in the Anglo-Saxon epic poem of _Beowulf_, one
of the most remarkable and precious of our early poems, there is a
splendid and graphic description of a lonely mere, such as would have
delighted the heart of Edgar Allan Poe, the author of _Ulalume_. In
Professor Earle's prose translation of this passage, given in his
_Deeds of Beowulf_, at p. 44, is a description of two mysterious
monsters, of whom it is said that "they inhabit unvisited land,
wolf-crags, windy bluffs, the dread fen-track, where the mountain
waterfall amid precipitous gloom vanisheth beneath--flood under
earth. Not far hence it is, reckoning by miles, that the Mere
standeth, and over it hang rimy groves; a wood with clenched roots
overshrouds the water." The word to be noted here is the word _rimy_,
i.e. covered with rime or hoar-frost. The original Anglo-Saxon text
has the form _hrinde_, the meaning of which was long doubtful. Grein,
the great German scholar, writing in 1864, acknowledged that he did
not know what was intended, and it was not till 1880 that light was
first thrown upon the passage. In that year Dr Morris edited, for
the first time, some Anglo-Saxon homilies (commonly known as the
_Blickling Homilies_, because the MS. is in the library of Blickling
Hall, Norfolk); and he called attention to a passage (at p. 209) where
the homilist was obviously referring to the lonely mere of the
old poem, in which its overhanging groves were described as being
_hrimige_, which is nothing but the true old spelling of _rimy_. He
naturally concluded that the word _hrinde_ (in the MS. of Beowulf) was
miswritten, and that the scribe had inadvertently put down _hrinde_
instead of _hrimge_, which is a legitimate contraction of _hrimige_.
Many scholars accepted this solution; but a further light was yet to
come, viz. in 1904. In that year, Dr Joseph Wright printed the fifth
volume of the _English Dialect Dictionary_, showing that in the
dialects of Scotland, Northumberland, Durham, and Yorkshire, the word
for "hoarfrost" is not _rime_, but _rind_, with a derived adjective
_rindy_, which has the same sense as _rimy_. At the same time, he
called attention yet once more to the passage in _Beowulf_. It is
established, accordingly, that the suspected mistake in the MS. is no
mistake at all; that the form _hrinde_ is correct, being a contraction
of _hrindge_ or _hrindige_, plural of the adjective _hrindig_, which
is preserved in our dialects, in the form _rindy_, to this very day.
In direct contradiction of a common popular error that regards our
dialectal forms as being, for the most part, "corrupt," it will be
found by experience that they are remarkably conservative and antique.