The English Language Part 108

_Yorkshire, North and part of West Riding._--The Anglo-Saxon specimens of this area have been noticed in -- 692.

The extract from Chaucer is also from this district.

The modern dialects best known are--

1. _The Craven._--This, in northern localities, "becomes slightly tinctured with Northumbrian."--Quart. Rev. _ut supra_.

2. _The Cleveland._--With not only Northumbrian, but even Scotch characters. Quart. Rev. _ut supra_.

Danish admixture--Considerable.

All these dialects, if rightly cla.s.sified, belong to the Northumbrian division of the Angle branch of the Anglo-Saxon language; whilst, if the _prima facie_ view of their affiliation or descent, be the true one, they are the dialects of -- 692, in their modern forms.

-- 696. The cla.s.sification which gives this arrangement now draws a line of distinction at the river Ribble, in Lancashire, which separates _South_ from North Lancashire; whilst in Yorkshire, the East Riding, and that part of the West which does not belong to the Wapentake of Claro, belong to the cla.s.s which is supposed to exclude the previous and contain the following dialects:--

-- 697. _South Lancashire and Cheshire._--Sub-varieties of {553} the same dialects, but not sub-varieties of the previous ones.

The plural form in _-en_ is a marked character of this dialect--at least of the Lancashire portion.

Supposed original population--Angle rather than Saxon.

Original political relations--Mercian rather than Northumbrian.

These last two statements apply to all the forthcoming areas north of Ess.e.x. The latter is a simple historical fact; the former supposes an amount of difference between the Angle and the Saxon which has been a.s.sumed rather than proved; or, at any rate, which has never been defined accurately.

The elements of uncertainty thus developed, will be noticed in ---- 704-708.

At present it is sufficient to say, that if the South Lancashire dialect has been separated from the north, on the score of its having been _Mercian_ rather than _Northumbrian_, the principle of cla.s.sification has been based upon _political_ rather than _philological_ grounds; and as such is exceptionable.

-- 698. _Shropshire, Staffordshire, and West Derbyshire._--Supposing the South Lancashire and Cheshire to be the Mercian (which we must remember is a _political_ term), the Shropshire, Staffordshire, and _West_ Derbyshire are Mercian also; transitional, however, in character.

Shropshire and Cheshire have a Celtic frontier.

Here, also, both the _a priori_ probabilities and the known facts make the Danish intermixture at its _minimum_.

-- 699. _East Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire._--Here the language is considered to change from the mode of speech of which the South Lancashire is the type, to the mode of speech of which the Norfolk and Suffolk dialect is the type.

Danish elements may now be expected, Derbyshire being the most inland Danish area.

Original political relations--Mercian.

Specimens of the dialects in their older stages, preeminently scanty.

_Hallamshire._--This means the parts about Sheffield {554} extended so as to include that portion of the West Riding of Yorkshire which stands over from -- 696. Probably belonging to the same group with the _South_ Lancashire.

_East Riding of Yorkshire._--It is not safe to say more of this dialect than that its affinities are with the dialects spoken to the _north_ rather than with those spoken to the south of it, _i.e._, that of--

_Lincolnshire._--Frontier--On the Nottinghamshire and Leicestershire frontier, pa.s.sing into the form of speech of those counties. Pretty definitely separated from that of Norfolk. Less so from that of North Cambridgeshire. Scarcely at all from that of Huntingdonshire, and North Northamptonshire.

Danish admixture.--The number of towns and villages ending in the characteristic Danish termination _-by_, at its _maximum_; particularly in the neighbourhood of Spils_by_.

Traditions Danish, _e. g._, that of Havelok the Dane, at Grimsby.

Physiognomy, Danish.

Language not Danish in proportion to the other signs of Scandinavian intermixture.

Specimens of the dialects in its older form--Havelok[82] the Dane (?), Manning's Chronicle (supposing the MS. to have been transcribed in the county where the author was born).

Provincial peculiarities (_i.e._, deviations from the written language) nearly at the _minimum_.

_Huntingdonshire, North Northamptonshire, and Rutland._--_Anglo-Saxon period._--The latter part of the Saxon Chronicle was written at Peterboro.

Probably, also, the poems of Helena and Andreas. Hence, this area is that of the _old_ Mercian in its most typical form; whilst South Lancashire is that of the _new_--a practical instance of the inconvenience of applying _political_ terms to philological subjects.

-- 700. _Norfolk, Suffolk, and the fen part of Cambridgeshire._--Here the population is pre-eminently Angle. The political character East-Anglian rather than Mercian.

{555}

Specimens of the dialects in the Anglo-Saxon stage.--The Natale St.

Edmundi, in Thorpe's a.n.a.lecta Anglo-Saxonica.

Early English--The Promtuarium Parvulorum.

-- 701. _Leicestershire, Warwickshire, and South Northamptonshire._--Mercian (so-called) rather than West-Saxon (so-called).

Probably, approaching the written language of England more closely than is the case with the dialects spoken to the south of them.

Certainly, approaching the written language of England less closely than is the case with the dialect of Huntingdonshire, North Northamptonshire, and South Lincolnshire.

-- 702. These remarks have the following import. They bear upon the question of the origin of the _written_ language of England.

Mr. Guest first diverted the attention of scholars from the consideration of the West Saxon of the chief Anglo-Saxon writers as the mother-dialect of the present English, to the Mercian; so turning their attention from the south to the centre of England.

The general principle that a _central_ locality has the _a priori_ likelihood in its favour, subtracts nothing from the value of his suggestion.

Neither does the fact of the nearest approach to the written language being found about the parts in question; since the doctrine to which the present writer commits himself, viz., that in the parts between Huntingdon and Stamford, the purest English is most generally spoken, is, neither universally recognised, nor yet part of Mr. Guest's argument.

Mr. Guest's arguments arose out of the evidence of the MSS. of the parts in question.

That the dialect most closely allied to the dialect (or dialects) out of which the present literary language of England is developed, is to be found either in Northamptonshire or the neighbouring counties is nearly certain.

Mr. Guest looks for it on the western side of that county (Leicestershire); the present writer on the eastern (Huntingdonshire).

-- 703. It is now convenient to pa.s.s from the dialects of {556} the water-system of the Ouse, Nene, and Welland to those spoken along the lower course of the Thames.

These, to a certain extent, may be dealt with like those to the north of the Humber. Just as the latter were, in the first instance, and in the more general way, thrown into a single cla.s.s (the Northumbrian), so may the dialects in question form the provisional centre of another separate cla.s.s.

For this we have no very convenient name. The dialects, however, which it contains agree in the following points.

1. These are considered to be derived from that variety of the Anglo-Saxon which is represented by the chief remains of the Anglo-Saxon literature, _i.e._, the so-called standard or cla.s.sical language of Alfred, aelfric, the present text of Caedmon, &c.

2. About half their _present eastern_ area consists of the _counties_ ending in _-s.e.x_; viz., Sus_s.e.x_, Es_s.e.x_, and Middle_s.e.x_.