Page:Archaeological Journal, Volume 6.djvu/465

 NOTICES OF AECHAEOLOOICAL PUBLICATIONS. 311 for if, as some fondly believe, the illustrious Alfred did, uno flatu, and by a single act of sovereign authority, subdivide the realm of England into forty counties, he certainly did not distribute the various dialects of its inhabi- tants into the same number of compartments. Hence, an author who professes to record his experience of the idioisms and dialectic peculiari- ties of Leicestershire, of Kent, or of Cumberland, must not be considered as pledging himself that they will not be found to extend far beyond the conventional boundaries to which he has confined his researches. The sources of provincial variety in the language of the country may be classified under the following general heads : — I. Peculiar and local words, arising from an original difference of race. II. The partial failure or desuetude of words once in general use, but now surviving only in certain districts. These two sources supply the most interesting and important examples, and are those which throw most light on the history and literature of the past. III. In addition to these we have words of great antiquity, the local prevalence of which has been the natural consequence of local causes : thus, the ivarping of lands by the natural or artificial operation of streams of water seems to have first obtained its distinguishing name in the district watered by the Humber, although it is not now entirely confined to the country traversed by that river. So the vines or reens of Somerset- shire are, we believe, confined to the low moors, where that mode of drainage and of demarcation is practised. IV. Again, the prevalence of certain occupations, and of the appropriate words to which they give birth, has often led to the general use of those words within the district. A mere vocahulum artis, as such, ought not indeed to find a place in a provincial glossary ; but where it assumes a secondary sense, or becomes otherwise known and used in ordinary conver- sation, it deserves insertion. Of these there are numerous examples." V. Some of the words in such collections are importations, more or less recent, from foreign languages, which have thus obtained a partial settle- ment in this country. The (jruves, coes, and stoles of the High Peak are all evidently borrowed from the phraseology of the low German miners, by whom it is probable they were imported. Merries (cherries) and the mer- rying season are to be found, we believe, only in the southern countries, and may, perhaps, be presumed to owe their birth to the Channel Islands, and adjacent parts of Fi'ance. How jifjtfot got out of France or Scotland into Leicestershire (as we learn from Dr. Evans that it has), is a mystery ; but we have heard, from unexceptionable authority, that the long residence of French prisoners on parole near Wincanton left among the surrounding countrymen a strong tincture of colloquial gallicism. VI. Another and a very large supply of local words is derived from mere corruptions or variations in the pronunciation or orthography of common language. The books are full of them. Such expressions as gattards, ' We arc told by Mr. Sandys (the reputed kindly) r/ossan, l)oing the term which, in author of the " Specimens of Cornish Dia- strictness, is applied only to certain promisintr lect "), that any prosperous undertaking may appearances in a vein of ore. be described in that county as keenly (i. e.