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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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, if 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.

The work rests its claims to favourable consideration entirely on its value as a faithfully rendered contribution to the dialect literature of the country. No higher estimate is sought for it. The production of its various contents has been an occasional amusement indulged in during some of the intervals of leisure and repose afforded by pursuits of a more important, more engrossing, and it is hoped, a more useful character, with which, had it in any wise interfered, it had not been proceeded with. Its composition has been a relaxation, not a task; a divertisement, not an occupation; and had its success when published been deemed incompatible with these conditions, it had not appeared.