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

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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 variety’s sake, is pure Scotch. Miss Blamire, Stagg, Anderson, Rayson, 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.