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English in Scotland, Where it became in a social and literary
sense a distinct language), we have little history. We know,
however, that they continued to exist as local and popular forms
of speech, as well from occasional specimens and from the fact
that they exist still as from the statements of writers during
the interval. Thus Puttenham in his Arte of English Poesie
(1589) says:-
“ Our maker [i.e. poet] therfore at these dayes shall not follow
Piers Plowman, nor Gower, nor Lydgate, not yet Chaucer, for their
language is now not of use with us: neither shall he take the termes
of Northern-men, such as they use in dayly talke, whether they be
noble men or gentle men or of their best clarkes, all is a [=one]
matter; nor in effect any speach used beyond the river of Trent,
though no man can deny but that theirs is the purer English Saxon
at this day, yet it is not so Courtly nor so currant as our Southerne
English is, no more is the far Westerne mans speach; ye shall
therefore take the usual speach of the Court, and that of London and
the shires lying about London within lx myles, and not much above.
I say not this but that in every shyre of England there be gentlemen
and others that speake but specially write as good Southerne as we
of Middlesex or Surrey do, but not the, common people of every shire,
to whom the gentlemen, and also their learned clarkes do for the
most part condescend, but herein we are already ruled by th' En lish
Dictionaries and other bookes written by learned men."-Arierls
Reprint, p. 157. »
In comparatively modern times there has been a revival of
interest in these forms of English, several of which following in
the wake of the revival of Lowland Scots in the 18th and 19th
centuries, have produced a considerable literature in the form
of local poems, tales and “ folk-lore.” In these respects Cumberland,
Lancashire, Yorkshire, Devon, Somerset and Dorset, the
“ far north ” and “ far west ” of Puttenham, where the dialect
was felt to be so independent of literary English as not to be
branded as a mere vulgar corruption of it, stand prominent.
More recently the dialects have been investigated philologically,
a. department in which, as in other departments of English
philology, the elder Richard Garnett must be named as a pioneer.
The work was carried out zealously by Prince Louis Lucien
Bonaparte and Dr A. ]. Ellis, and more recently by the English
Dialect Society, founded by the Rev. Professor Skeat, for the
investigation of this branch of philology. The efforts of this
society resulted in the compilation and publication of glossaries
or word-books, more or less complete and trustworthy, of most
of the local dialects, and in the production of grammars dealing
with the phonology and grammatical features of a few of these,
among which that of the Windhill dialect in Yorkshire, by
Professor Joseph Wright, and that of West Somerset, by the
late F. T. Elworthy, deserve special mention. From the whole
of the glossaries of the Dialect Society, and from all the earlier
dialect works of the 18th and 10th centuries, amplified and
illustrated by the contributions of local collaborators in nearly
every part of the British Isles, Professor Joseph Wright has
constructed his English Dialect Dictionary, recording the local
words and senses, with indication of their geographical range,
their pronunciation, and in most cases with illustrative quotations
or phrases. To this he has added an English Dialect Grammar,
dealing very fully with the, phonology of the dialects, showing
the various sounds which now represent each Old English sound,
and endeavouring to define the area over which each modern form
extends; the accidence is treated more summarily, without
going minutely into that of each dialect-group, for which special
dialect grammars must be consulted. The work has also a very
full and valuable index of every word and form treated.
The researches of Prince L. L. Bonaparte and'Dr Ellis were
directed specially to the classification and mapping of the
existing dialects) and the relation of these to the dialects of Old
and Middle English. They recognized a Northern dialect lying
north, of a line drawn from Morecambe Bay to the Humber,
which, with the kindred Scottish dialects (already investigated
and classed),2 is the direct descendant of early northern English,
1 See description and map in Trans. of Philol. Soc., 1875-1876, p. 570.
2 The Dialect of the Southern Counties of Scotland, its Pronunciation,
Grammar and Histor-ical Relations, with an Appendix on the present
limits of the Gaelic and Lowland Scotch, and the Dialectal Divisions
of the Lowland Tongue; and a Linguistical Map of Scotland, by
James A. H. Murray (London, 1873).
and a Southwestern dialect occupying Somerset, Wilts, Dorset,
Gloucester and western Hampshire, which, with the Devonian
dialect beyond it, are the descendants of early southern English
and the still older West-Saxon of Alfred. This dialect must in the
14th century have been spoken everywhere south of Thames;
but the influence of London caused its extinction in Surrey,
Sussex and Kent, so that already in Puttenham it had become
“ far western.” An East»Midland dialect, extending from south
Lincolnshire to London, occupies the cradle-land of the standard
English speech, and still shows least variation from it. Between
and around these typical dialects are ten others, representing the
old Midland proper, or dialects between it and the others already
mentioned. Thus “north of Trent ” the North-western dialect
of south Lancashire, Cheshire, Derby and Stafford, with that of
Shropshire, represents the early West Midland English, of which
several specimens remain; while the N orth-eastern of Nottingham
and~ north Lincolnshire represents the' dialect of the Lay of
H avelok. With the North Midland dialect of south-west Yorkshire,
these represent forms of speech which to the modern
Londoner, as to Puttenham, are still decidedly northern, though
actually intermediate between northern propgriand midlanrl, land
preserving interesting traces of the midland pronouns and verbal
inflections. There is an Eastern dialect in the East Anglian
counties; a Midland in Leicester and Warwick shires; a
Western in Hereford, Worcester and north Gloucestershire,
intermediate between south-western and north-western, and
representing the dialect of Piers Plowman. Finally, between the
east midland and south-western, in the counties of'Buckingham,
Oxford, 'Berks, Hants, Surrey and Sussex, there is a dialect
Which must have once been south-western, but of which the most
salient characters have been rubbed OH by proximity to London
and the East Midland speech. In, east Sussex and Kentithis
South-eastern dialect attains to a more distinctive character.
The Kentish form of early Southern English evidently maintained
its-existence more toughly than that of the counties immediately
south of London. It was very distinct in the days of Sir Thomas
More; and even, as we see from the dialect attributed 'to Edgar
in Lear, was still strongly marked in the days ~of“Shakespeare.
In the south-eastern corner of Ireland, in the barohies of Forth
and Bargy, incounty Wexford, a very archaic form of English, of
which specimens have been preserved, ” was still spoken in the
18th century. In all probability it dated from -the first English
invasion.” -In many parts of Ulster forms of. Lowland Scotch
dating to the settlement under James' I. are still spoken; but the
English of Ireland generally seems to represent 16th and 17th
century English, as in the pronunciation of tea, wheat (tay,
whait), largely affected, ofcourse, by the native Celtic. The
subsequent work of the English Dialect Society, and the facts set
forth in the English Dialect Dictionary, confirm in a general way
the classification of Bonaparte and Ellis; but they bringout
strongly thefact that only in a few cases can the boundary
between dialects now be determined by precise lines. For every
dialect there is a central region, larger or smaller, in which its
characteristics are at a maximum; but towards the edges of the
area these become mixed and blended with the features .of the
contiguous dialects, so, that it is often impossible to define the
point: at which the one dialect ends and the other begins. The
fact is that the various features of a dialect, whether its distinctive
words, characteristic pronunciations or special grammatical
features, though they may have the same centre, have not all the
same circumference. Some of them .extend to a certain distance
round the centre; others to a much greater distance. The only
approximately accurate way to map the area of any dialect,
whether in England, France, Germany or elsewhere, is to take
a well-chosen set of its characteristic features*-words, senses,
sounds or grammatical peculiarities, and draw a line round the
area over which each of these extends; between the innermost
and outermost of these there will often be a large border district.
If the same process be followed with the contiguous dialects,
3 A Glossary (with some pieces of Verse) of the Old Dialect of the
English Colony of Forth and Bargy, collected by lacob Poole, edited
by W. Barnes, B.D. (London, 1867).<noinclude><references/></div></noinclude>