Folk-Speech of Cumberland and Some Districts Adjacent

Folk-Speech of Cumberland and Some Districts Adjacent - Being Short Stories and Rhymes in the Dialects of the West Border Counties

One or two of the Cumberland stories included in this volume, as well as some of the pieces in rhyme, have already been circulated very largely in newspapers, pamphlets, and collections. Their reappearance, along with many hitherto unpublished additions, in this aggregated form, is due mainly to the popularity attained by them separately. Whether they may be as popular in this more pretentious guise as in their humbler, and perhaps, more appropriate form, remains to be tried. I claim superiority over most of the earlier workers in the same philological ground in respect of the greater purity of my dialect. The Cumberland speech as written herein is pure Cumbrian, as the speech of the Scottish pieces, introduced for varietys sake, is pure Scotch. Miss Blamire, Stagg, Anderson, Rayson,v and others, have all written their dialect pieces, more or less, in the Scoto-Cumbrian which prevails along the southern side of the west Border. In other respects my inferiority to those deservedly popular writers is sufficiently evident. But, as expositions of the folk-speech of those parts of the County where, and where only, the unadulterated old Norse-rooted Cumbrian vernacular is spoken, I claim for these Tales and Rhymes the distinction of surpassing all similar productions, excepting only the dialect writings of my friend Mr. Dickinson, and perhaps the Borrowdale Letter of Isaac Ritson, and the Gwordie and Will of Charles Graham. I should not omit to state, however, that Mr. John Christian of London, and a writer who assumed the nom de plume of Jack Todd, have evinced in their contributions to the local press, a mastery over the dialect of Whitehaven and its vicinity which makes us wish that their pens had been more prolific. For the illustrations I have attempted of the speech of High Furness and its Westmorland border, I ask no such distinction. The dialect there, as in the adjacent parts of Cumberland, is vitiated by an intermixture of that of the County Palatine, of which Furness forms a portion; and as it is spoken, so, ifvi written at all, should it be written. These appear here for the reason already assigned for the introduction of the Rhymes given in the dialect of Dumfriesshire. ......Buy Now (To Read More)

Product details

Ebook Number: 62370
Author: Gibson, Alexander Craig
Release Date: Jun 11, 2020
Format: eBook
Language: English