The Dialect of the West of England; Particularly Somersetshire Part 1

The Dialect of the West of England Particularly Somersetshire.

by James Jennings.

TO THA DWELLERS O' THA WEST,

Tha Fruit o' longvul labour, years, In theaze veo leaves at last appears.

Ta you, tha dwellers o' tha West, I'm pleas'd that tha shood be addresst: Vor thaw I now in Lunnan dwell, I mine ye still--I love ye well; And niver, niver sholl vorget I vust draw'd breath in _Zummerzet_; Amangst ye liv'd, and left ye zorry, As you'll knaw when you hire my storry.

Theaze little book than take o' me; 'Tis all I ha just now ta gee An when you rade o' _Tommy Gool_, Or _Tommy Came_, or _Pal_ at school, Or _Mr. Guy_, or _f.a.n.n.y Fear_,-- I thenk you'll shod vor her a tear) _Tha Rookery_, or _Mary's Crutch_, Tha cap o' which I love ta touch, You'll vine that I do not vorget My naatal swile--dear Zummerzet.

JAS. JENNINGS.

PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION.

In preparing this second edition of my relative's work, I have incorporated the results of observations made by me during several years' residence in Somersetshire, in the centre of the district.

I have also availed myself by kind permission, of hints and suggestions in two papers, ent.i.tled "Somersetshire Dialect," read by T. S. Baynes in 1856, and reprinted from the Taunton Courier, in London, in 1861.

During the forty years which have elapsed since the first edition, very much light has been thrown on the subject of Provincial Dialects, and after all much remains to be discovered. I consider with Mr. Baynes that there is more of the pure Anglo-Saxon in the west of England dialect, as this district was the seat of cla.s.sical Anglo-Saxon, which first rose here to a national tongue, and lasted longer in a great measure owing to its distance from the Metropolis, from which cause also it was less subject to modern modification.

I shall be happy to receive any suggestions from Philological scholars, which may increase the light thrown on the subject, and by which a third edition may be improved.

_Hagbourn Vicarage, August,_ 1869.

PREFACE.

The usefulness of works like the present is too generally admitted to need any apology for their publication. There is, notwithstanding, in their very nature a dryness, which requires relief: the author trusts, therefore, that, in blending something imaginative with the details of philological precision, his work will afford amus.e.m.e.nt to the reader.

The Glossary contains the fruit of years of unwearied attention to the subject; and it is hoped that the book will be of some use in elucidating our old writers, in affording occasional help to the etymology of the Anglo-Saxon portion of our language, and in exhibiting a view of the present state of an important dialect of the western provinces of England.

A late excursion through the West has, however, induced the Author to believe that some valuable information may yet remain to be gathered from our Anglo-Saxon dialect--more especially from that part of it still used by the common people and the yeomanry. He therefore respectfully solicits communications from those who feel an interest in this department of our literature; by which a second edition may be materially improved.

To a _native_ of the west of England this volume will be found a vade-mec.u.m of reference, and a.s.sist the reminiscence of well-known, and too often unnoted peculiarities and words, which are fast receding from, the polish of elegance, and the refinement of literature.

In regard to the _Poetical Pieces_, it may be mentioned that most of them are founded on _West Country Stories_, the incidents in which actually occurred. If some of the subjects should be thought trifling, it must not be forgotten that the primary object has been, to exemplify the Dialect, and that common subjects offered the best means of effectuating such an object. Of such Poems as _Good Bwye ta thee Cot_; _the Rookery_; and _Mary Ramsey's Crutch_, it may be observed, that had the Author _felt_ less he might, perhaps, have written better.

_Metropolitan Literary Inst.i.tution, London, March 25, 1825._

OBSERVATIONS, &c.

The following Glossary includes the whole of Somerset, _East_ of the River Parret, as well as adjoining parts of Wiltshire and Gloucestershire. West of the Parret many of the words are p.r.o.nounced very differently indeed, so as to mark strongly the people who use them. [This may be seen more fully developed in two papers, by T. Spencer Baynes, read before the Somersetshire Archaeological Society, ent.i.tled the Somersetshire Dialect, printed 1861, 18mo, to whom I here acknowledge my obligations for several hints and suggestions, of which I avail myself in this edition of my late relative's work].

The chief peculiarity West of the Parret, is the ending of the third person singular, present tense of verbs, in _th_ or _eth_: as, he _lov'th_, _zee'th_, &c., for he loves, sees, &c.

In the p.r.o.nouns, they have _Ise_ for _I_, and _er_ for _he_. In fact the peculiarities and contractions of the Western District are puzzling to a stranger. Thus, _her_ is frequently used for _she_. "_Har'th a doo'd it_," is, "_she has done it_," (I shall occasionally in the Glossary note such words as distinguishingly characterise that district).

Two of the most remarkable peculiarities of the dialect of the West of England, and particularly of Somersetshire, are the sounds given to the vowels A and E. A, is almost always sounded open, as in _father_, _rather_, or somewhat like the usual sound of _a_ in _balloon_, _calico_, lengthened; it is so p.r.o.nounced in ball, call. I shall use for this sound the _circ.u.mflex over the a_, thus a_ or a_. E, has commonly the same sound as the French gave it, which is, in fact, the slender of A, as heard in _pane fane_, _cane_, &c. The hard sound given in our polished dialect to the letters _th_, in the majority of words containing those letters [as in _through_, _three_, _thing_, think_], expressed by the Anglo-Saxon __, is frequently changed in the Western districts into the sound given in England to the letter _d_:

as for _three_, we have _dree_

for _thread_, _dread_, or _dird_,

_through_, _droo_, _throng_, _drong_, or rather _drang_;

_thrush_, _dirsh_, &c. The consonant and vowel following _d_, changing places. The slender or soft sound given to _th_ in our polished dialect, is in the West, most commonly converted into the thick or obtuse sound of the same letters as heard in the words _this_, these &c., and this too, whether the letters be at the beginning or end of words. I am much disposed to believe that our Anglo-Saxon ancestors, used indiscriminately the letters and for D only, and sounded them as such, as we find now frequently in the West; although our lexicographers usually have given the _two_ sounds of _th_ to and respectively. The vowel O is used for _a_, as _hond, dorke, lorke, hort,_ in hand, dark, lark, heart, &c., and other syllables are lengthened, as _voote, bade, dade,_ for foot, bed, dead. The letter O in _no, gold,_ &c., is sounded like _aw_ in _awful_; I have therefore spelt it with this diphthong instead of _a_. Such word as _jay_ for _joy_, and a few others, I have not noted.

Another remarkable fact is the disposition to invert the order of some consonants in some words; as the _r_ in _thrush, brush, rush, run,_ &c., p.r.o.nouncing them dirsh, birsh, hirsh, hirn; also transposition of _p_ and _s_ in such words as clasp, hasp, asp, &c., sounded claps, haps, aps, &c. I have not inserted all these words in the Glossary, as these general remarks will enable the student to detect the words which are so inverted.

It is by no means improbable that the order in which such sounds are now repeated in the West, is the original order in which they existed in our language, and that our more polished mode of expressing them is a new and perhaps a corrupt enunciation.

Another peculiarity is that of joining the letter _y_ at the end of some verbs in the infinitive mood, as well as to parts of different conjugations, thus, "I can't _sewy, nursy, reapy_, to _sawy_, to _sewy_, to _nursy_, &c. A further peculiarity is the _love of vowel_ sound, and opening out monosyllables of our polished dialect into two or more syllables, thus:

ay-er, for air; boo-ath, for both; fay-er, for fair; vi-er for fire; stay-ers for stairs; show-er for sure; vroo-rst for post; boo-ath for both; bre-ash for brush; chee-ase for cheese; kee-ard for card; gee-ate for gate; mee-ade for mead; mee-olk for milk; &c.

Chaucer gives many of them as dissyllables.

The verb _to be_ retains much of its primitive form: thus _I be, thou,_ or _thee, beest,_ or _bist, we be, you be, they be, tha be_, are continually heard for _I am_, &c., _he be_ is rarely used: but _he is_. In the past tense, _war_ is used for _was_, and _were_: _I war, thou_ or _thee wart_, he _war_, &c., we have besides, _we'm, you'm, they'm_, for _we, you, they, are_, there is a constant tendency to pleonasm in some cases, as well as to contraction, and elision in others. Thus we have _a lost, agone, abought_, &c., for _lost, gone, bought_, &c., Chaucer has many of these prefixes; but he often uses _y_ instead of _a_, as _ylost_. The frequent use of Z and V, the softened musical sounds for S and F, together with the frequent increase and multiplication of vowel sounds, give the dialect a by no means inharmonious expression, certainly it would not be difficult to select many words which may for their modulation compete with others of French extraction, and, perhaps be superior to many others which we have borrowed from other languages, much less a.n.a.logous to the polished dialect of our own.

I have added, in pursuance of these ideas, some poetical and prose pieces in the dialect of Somersetshire, in which the idiom is tolerably well preserved, and the p.r.o.nunciation is conveyed in letters, the nearest to the sound of the words, as there are in truth many sounds for which we have neither letters, nor combinations of letters to express them. [I might at some future period, if thought advisable, go into a comparison between the sound of all the letters of the alphabet p.r.o.nounced in Somersetshire, and in our polished dialect, but I doubt if the subject is ent.i.tled to this degree of criticism]. The reader will bear in mind that these poems are composed in the dialect of Somerset, north east of the Parret, which is by far the most general.

In the Guardian, published about a century ago, is a paper No. 40, concerning pastoral poetry, supposed to have been written by _Pope_, to extol his own pastorals and degrade those of Ambrose Phillips. In this essay there is a quotation from a pretended _Somersetshire_ poem. But it is evident Pope knew little or nothing about the Somersetshire dialect. Here are a few lines from "this old West country bard of ours," as Pope calls him:

"_Cicely._ Ah Rager, Rager, cher was zore avraid, When in yond vield you kiss'd the parson's maid: Is this the love that once to me you zed, When 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 _pason_.

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 p.r.o.nunciation 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' a.s.siduity, 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, ill.u.s.trative 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: