Page:A Glossary of Words Used In the Neighbourhood of Sheffield - Addy - 1888.djvu/14

 understood that most of these words are to be found in a few of the hamlets lying to the south of Sheffield, and in another county. The most careful observer would hardly find any difference between the dialect spoken five miles to the south and that spoken five miles to the north of the river Sheath. This work, however, in no way pretends to deal with the dialect spoken in the county of Derby. Ten miles to the south of Sheffield, and especially to the south-west of that town, the dialect begins to change; indeed the difference between the dialect spoken in the villages of the northern High Peak and that spoken within a circuit of five miles or more round the Parish Church of Sheffield is very marked. Although, therefore, for dialectal purposes and for scientific convenience this glossary is strictly confined to the parishes of Sheffield, Ecclesfield, Handsworth, and Rotherham, it must not be supposed that the words to be found in it are excluded from the northern fringe of the county of Derby by the geographical line which separates the counties. A few Derbyshire words have been inserted. Such as these as could not be found to exist within the defined district have been marked 'Derbyshire? A few place-names in the parishes of Norton and Dronfield have also been introduced, and accounts are occasionally given of customs and games now existing, or which within my memory, or the memory of my informants, have existed in those parishes.

The town of Sheffield has overspread a large area of ground, and the great increase of streets, together with the influx of strangers, has done much to obliterate old words, manners, and customs, so that it is rather amongst the people living in the outlying villages than in the town itself that the remains of ancient language and customs fast fading are to be found. The immigration of strangers, owing chiefly to the development of the cutlery trade and to the large number of apprentices who, as the books of the Cutlers' Company show, have for at least two centuries come into the town from various parts of England, has probably also tended to adulterate the dialect. Care has been taken not to admit words which, on the evidence presented, do not belong to the district comprised within the glossary. Such words have been few, but it has occasionally, though rarely, happened