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

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,