The Dialect of the West of England; Particularly Somersetshire | Page 4

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. _The?¤ze here, thick there_, [thicky there, west of the Parret] _the?¤sam_ 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