Page:An Etymological Dictionary of the Norn Language in Shetland Part I.pdf/37

Rh significance in connection with my investigations. It was particularly necessary to visit the North Isles for a second time. I made two visits also for example to Conningsburgh and to the Westside, Sandness. Foula, unfortunately, was too far away to permit of a second visit. Such a visit would have demanded more time than I had at my disposal.

Continual investigations showed me the necessity of visiting as many places as possible, because of the difference not only in pronunciation, but also, to a still greater extent, in the very vocabulary handed down from the ancient speech. Many years ago, when Norn was spoken in the Islands, there was undoubtedly considerable difference among the dialects of the various districts and islands, as is the case in the Færoe Islands. The intercourse between the places was not frequent, and there was no written language to form a connecting link between the different dialects. But to this must be added the fact that, when Norn was broken up and gradually disappeared as an independent speech, it was not always the same element in the language that perished in the different places. This circumstance soon became clear to me during my journeys. In each new island or district to which I came, I had again to go through the whole of the material I had collected in order to discover how much of it was known or was strange in the new place, and which words in the place were equivalents of those that were strange. This diversity was specially apparent in the fishermen’s tabu-language, in the sea-terms, which might change from neighbourhood to neighbourhood, indeed, might sometimes differ even in the same village.

Districts lying apart, as, for example, the island of Unst, esp. the north of it, and Foula, where Norn had been spoken fully as long as anywhere else, and where a Norn vocabulary peculiar to themselves had been preserved, lacked altogether, on the other hand, many words of Norn origin that were quite common elsewhere, and that sometimes were rather widely distributed, especially on Mainland. Foula is a small island with a very sparse population, only about three hundred people, and this fact weakens the power of the old to resist the new, in spite of the remote situation of the island. Unst, one may say, lies apart, in a purely geographical sense, but the transformation of Baltasound, the chief place of the island, into a trading and fish-curing centre, as a consequence of the herring-fishery prosecuted on the banks to the east of the island, is reacting on the other neighbourhoods; Haroldswick and Norwick, the kernel of the north of Unst and hitherto one of the places for the preservation of Norn, lie close to Baltasound on the north, and have a great deal of intercourse with it. Moreover, the north of Unst, as the most northerly point of Great Britain, is much visited by tourists. Both Unst and Foula therefore will probably soon lose the greater part of their ancient character. Yell is in reality more isolated than Unst, and this large island, with its still very rich Norn vocabulary, will certainly be the part of Shetland where the old dialect with its intermixture of Norn will maintain itself longest.