Page:The Gentleman's Magazine - New Series, Volume 6.pdf/618

1836.] Mr. ,

AS you have not unfrequently admitted into your Miscellany curious pieces of composition in the dialects of our country, I have procured from the Shetland Islands a specimen of the language still spoken among the common people there, with the hope of seeing it perpetuated in your pages. I had endeavoured to procure in manuscript or print some glossary or list of words peculiar to that group of Islands; but, instead of such a work, received the following facetious letter, which was many years since sent by a gentleman of Shetland to his friend in Liverpool; several copies of it have been circulated in manuscript, but I am assured that it has never appeared in print. The narrative, it is plain, has been contrived to embody in it as many words and phrases peculiar to the vulgar language of the district as its compass would admit of. Though the translation with which I have accompanied it, has undergone the revisal both of scholars and a native of the country, it is still, I fear, not free from errors; for this is the only specimen of the Zetlandic tongue that I have seen; and my knowledge of the Anglo and Scoto-Northumbrian dialects does not furnish me with a key to some of its terms and phrases. I have, however, endeavoured to render it as easy and literal as I can. The words of the original should, I am told, be pronounced exactly as they are spelled.