Page:Ralcy H. Bell - The Mystery of Words (1924).pdf/142

 the University of Oxford, compiled a work of many thousand words entitled “THE ENGLISH DIALECT DICTIONARY, Being the Complete Vocabulary of all Dialect Words Still in use, or known to have been in use During the last Two Hundred Years.” The work is great, incomplete as it is. It is a kind of sacred book. It reveals the decrees of fate to the elect; that is to say, to those who think. To one wise enough to understand, it unfolds the Law; and therefore it discovers the wisdom of the prophets. It preserves for us “the tongue of those who sit in darkness.” It presents a riddle which read one way, spells shameless metaphor; and if read another way, it gives the syntax of poetry. Here, in the words of Villon, sont les neiges d’antan. Here are the weeds of yesterday, the flowers of to-morrow. Here we may trace origins through philological processes;