Under the heading of ‘The Varieties of English Speech’ an article of mine appeared in The Quarterly Review of July, 1907. The favourable reception accorded to it at the time prompted me to embark forthwith on a larger work dealing with the same subject.

Many books both scientific and popular have been written concerning dialect speech and lore, but nearly all of them are special investigations of some particular dialect. I have taken a bolder flight than this. I have not given a detailed account of any one dialect, but I have surveyed them all, and have gathered words, phrases, names, superstitions, and popular customs, here and there, wherever I found something that appealed to me, and that I felt would appeal to others as well as myself. It was impossible to make any one category exhaustive, for such was the mass of material open to me for selection, I might say I was ‘fairly betwattled and baffounded’. The only thing to be done was to make my selections fairly representative of the whole.

My aim in dealing with the linguistic side of my subject has been to show that rules for pronunciation and syntax are not the monopoly of educated people who have been taught to preach as well as practise them. Dialect-speaking people obey sound-laws and grammatical rules even more faithfully than we do, because theirs is a natural and unconscious obedience. Some writers of literary English seem to enjoy flinging jibes at dialect on the assumption that any deviation from the standard speech must be due to ignorance, if not to vulgarity besides. Since I wrote the last chapter of this book, I read in a criticism of Stanley Houghton’s Play Trust the People, this sentence describing the Lancashire ‘father an old mill-hand and the homely mother to match’: ‘They are both drawn, you feel, to the life, and talk with ease, not to say gusto, that curious lingo which seems to an outsider mainly distinguished by its contemptuous neglect of the definite article’, The Times, Friday, Feb.7, 1913. Now the definite article in north-west Lancashire is t, in the south-west and south t, or th, and in mid and south-east Lancashire th. When this t stands before a consonant, and more especially before a dental such as t, d, it is not by any means easy for the uninitiated to detect the difference in sound between the simple word and the same word preceded by the article, between, for example, table and t table, or dog and t dog. But this is not ‘contemptuous neglect’ on the part of the Lancastrian! It would be nearer the mark to say that the Lancashire dialect is characterized by its retention of a form of the definite article very difficult to pronounce in certain combinations.

Further, I have endeavoured to show by means of numerous illustrations, how full the dialects are of words and phrases remarkable not only for their force and clearness, but often also for their subtle beauty, that satisfying beauty of the thing exactly fitted to its purpose.

I have also drawn up lists showing the numbers of old words and phrases once common in English literature, still existing in the dialects. Occasionally writers of modern verse seek to restore some of the words of this type to their former position in literary English, thereby causing the reviewer to stumble dreadfully, though he thinketh he standeth. I quote the following from a literary periodical dated May2, 1913: ‘He [the poet] debates if he shall make “a nest within a reedy brake”, or, failing this delectable situation, offers himself a quaint alternative,

We had always supposed in our ignorance that “paddock” was a term applied to green fields or pastures. How Mr. ... could have seen a paddock “lope” we do not know, and perhaps it would not be kind to ask him to explain.’ The majority of educated people are familiar with the word paddock, a toad, or a frog, from its occurrence in the opening lines of Macbeth, and in Herrick’s Child’s Grace, but it will probably never again take its former place in the standard speech, though it may remain very common in the dialects.

In the chapters devoted to folk-lore I have not attempted to do more than chronicle certain superstitions and popular beliefs, leaving to my readers the fascinating pursuit of tracing superstitions to their sources, and of bringing to light hidden grains of truth in apparently silly beliefs. There is here plenty of scope both for scholarship and imagination. I once happened to mention at a dinner-party the superstition that it is a sure presage of a parting for an engaged couple to stand as fellow sponsors at a baptism. My neighbour, who was a clergyman, immediately explained the reason for this idea by telling me that in pre-Reformation days godparents were not allowed to marry each other. The Church recognized a sort of spiritual affinity between such persons, which precluded lawful marriage. It is strange to think that while joining in a Protestant service to-day, members of the Church of England are still swayed by an old law they never heard of except as it exists in the word ‘unlucky’.

In dealing with popular customs I have selected those that are less well known, and others concerning which I have myself collected information, and have omitted many which are readily accessible in works such as Hone’s Year Book and Chambers’s Book of Days.

I may mention that in collecting my material from very many miscellaneous sources, printed and oral, I have not felt justified in normalizing the orthography of the dialect quotations, especially where these have been taken from glossaries. This accounts for a certain amount of inconsistency in the orthography.

At the end of the table of contents will be found a select list of the works which I have found most useful in writing this book.

ELIZABETH MARY WRIGHT.

Oxford,
July, 1913.