"Dialects reflect the general language diversified by localities. A dialect is a variation in the pronunciation, and necessarily in the orthography, of words, or a peculiarity of phrase or idiom, usually accompanied by a tone which seems to be as local as the word it utters. It is a language rarely understood out of the sphere of the population by whom it is appropriated. A language is fixed in a nation by a flourishing metropolis of an extensive empire; a dialect may have existed coeval with that predominant dialect which by accident has become the standard or general language; and, moreover, the contemned dialect may occasionally preserve some remains or fragments of the language, which, apparently lost, but hence recovered, enable us rightly to understand even the prevalent idiom.

"It is among our provincial dialects that we discover many beautiful archaisms, scattered remnants of our language, which explain those obscurities of our more ancient writers, singularities of phrase, or lingual peculiarities, which have so often bewildered the most acute of our commentators....These provincial modes of speech have often actually preserved for us the origin of English phraseology, and enlightened the philologist in a path unexplored.

"A language, in the progress of its refinement, loses as well as gains in the amount of words, and the good fortune of expressive phrases. Some become equivocal by changing their signification, and some fall obsolete, one cannot tell why, for custom or caprice arbitrate, guided by no law, and often with an unmusical ear. These discarded but faithful servants, now treated as outcasts, and not even suspected to have any habitation, are safely lodged in some of our dialects. As the people are faithful traditionists, repeating the words of their forefathers, and are the longest to preserve their customs, they are the most certain antiquaries; and their oral knowledge and their ancient observances often elucidate many an archæological obscurity.

"Words are not barbarous nor obsolete because no longer used in our written composition, since some of the most exquisite and picturesque, which have ceased to enrich our writings, live in immortal pages."-DISRAELI (Amenities of Literature).

"I am only anxious to repeat, that we never know how wide a field for speculation and reflection may be opened by the recovery and preservation of a single obscure provincialism; and that in contributing to such an object, we may be preparing the materials for observations on language, far more important than I have in this instance been able to submit to the reader."- SIR E. W. HEAD, Bart. (Classical Museum, No. IV, p. 63).

PREFACE.

THE following Glossary is intended to contain a collection. of the Provincial Words and Phrases used in a portion of the county of Durham which extends from Middleton in Teesdale to Darlington. The district selected may be considered as bounded on the east by the river Skern, on the west by the Hudshope Burn, on the north by a line parallel to the course of the river Tees, and distant from it about nine or ten miles, and on the south by the river Tees, for about thirty miles in its course.

* "The Muse this largest shire of England having sung,
Yet seeing more than this did to her task belong,
Looks still into the North, the bishopric and views,
Which with an eager eye, whilst wistly she pursues,
Teis as a bordering flood (who thought herself divine),
Confining in her course that county Palatine,
And York, the greatest shire, doth instantly begin

To rouse herself: quoth she, "Doth every rillet win
Applause for their small worths, and I, that am a queen,
With those poor brooks compar'd? Shall I alone be seen
Thus silently to pass, and not be heard to sing?
When as two countries are contending for my spring:
For Cumberland, to which the Cumri gave the name,
Accounts it to be hers, Northumberland the same,
Will need'sly hers should be, for that my spring doth rise,
So equally 'twixt both, that he were very wise,

In the establishment of the Saxon octarchy, the county of Durham was probably included in the kingdom of Deira, the southernmost of the two which are frequently compre

Could tell which of these two me for her own may claim.
But as in all these tracts, there's scarce a flood of fame,
But she some valley hath, which her brave name doth bear;
My Teisdale nam'd of me, so likewise have I here,
At my first setting forth, through which I nimbly slide;
Then Yorkshire which doth lie upon my setting side,
Me Lune and Bauder lends, as in the song before

Th' industrious Muse hath show'd: my Dunelmenian shore,
Sends Huyd to help my course, with some few other becks,
Which time (as it should seem) so utterly neglects,

That they are nameless yet; then do I bid adieu
To Bernard's battled towers, and seriously pursue

My course to Neptune's court, but as forthright I run,
The Skern, a dainty nymph, saluting Darlington,
Comes in to give me aid, and being proud and rank,
She chanc'd to look aside, and spieth near her bank,

Three black and horrid pits, which for their boiling heat,

(That from their loathsome brims do breath a sulpherous sweat)
Hell kettles rightly call'd, that with the very sight,
This water-nymph, my Skern, is put in such a fright,
That with unusual speed she on her course doth haste,
And rashly runs herself into my widen'd waist,

In pomp I thus approach great Amphitrite's state."

Drayton's Polyolbion. 29th Song.

For the early history of Teesdale, reference may be made to the County Histories by Hutchinson and Surtees: for a description of the scenery, to

Hutchinson's Excursion to the Lakes, p. 325 to the end.

Arthur Young's Tour in the North of England, vol. ii, p. 179, Notes. Tour in Teesdale, 2d Edit. (York, 1813); last Edit. 1848.

Walbran's Antiquities of Gainford.

Letter from J. B. S. Morritt, Esq., to Sir W. Scott. See Life of

Scott, vol. iii, p. 372 (Edit. 1839).

Scott's Rokeby, canto ii, st. 2, Note: Appendix, Note A.

Teisa, a Poem, by Anne Wilson (Newcastle, 1778).

hended under the general name of Northumberland. Historians, however, are not well agreed as to the exact limits of Deira* and Bernicia.

Hitherto there has been no Glossary of words peculiar to the county of Durham, or any part of it. The manuscript Glossary of Kennett, in the British Museum, and the Glossaries of Ray, Grose, and Brockett, doubtless comprise this county.

I must not omit to mention a manuscript Collection of Words used in the Bishoprick of Durham and some adjacent Counties,' in the handwriting of Gray, the poet, which was recently purchased by Peter Cunningham, Esq. It contains 195 words, and was probably furnished to the poet by his friend Dr. Warton.

Ritson also appears to have made a collection of such words. In a letter to his relative, Joseph Frank, Esq., "You must either make use of my collection of Durham words or send me yours. Parson Boucher, vicar of Epsom (who is preparing a glossary of ancient and

he says:

* "The British kingdoms of Deyfir and Bryneich (Latinized into Deira and Byrnicia) were divided from each other by a forest, occupying the tract between the Tyne and Tees. This border-land, now the Bishopric of Durham, does not seem originally to have belonged to either kingdom; but in subsequent times the boundary between Deira and Bernicia was usually fixed at the Tyne."-Palgrave's History of the Anglo-Saxons.

"Durham was a portion of the Province of Bernicia, which, together with Deira, formed the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Northumberland, the most cultivated because the most learned of the states into which Saxon England was divided."-See Preface to Anglo-Saxon Ritual of Durham. See also Bosworth's Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, p. xvi. † Lansdown Collection, 1033, 79 f.

local words, which he tells me is in great forwardness), anxiously desires to peruse the Durham words."*

The principal classes of words included in this Glossary may be thus defined; (and here I am following and quoting from the author of the Herefordshire Glossary :')

1. "Words used by classical writers, but now obso

lete."

2. "Words not obsolete, but used only in poetry, or as technical terms.

3. "Words which are not known to have ever been used

in the language of educated persons."

4. "Words substantially the same as words current in the language of educated persons, but modified in form. In some cases the provincial form is more ancient than the literary form. In some cases there is a variety of forms, without any indication by which the greater or less antiquity of either can be determined. In other cases the provincial form is a corruption of the literary form, arising from ignorance."+

It will be readily assumed that many of the words comprised in this Glossary are current as provincialisms in other parts of the county, also in that part of Yorkshire which is separated by the Tees from the district here selected, and in other parts of England.

Many words are inserted herein which are found in the

* Ritson's Letters. 2 vols., 1833. Vol. ii, p. 248.

+ See Herefordshire Glossary, p. vi; also Forby's Vocabulary of East Anglia. Introduction, p. 109; Latham on the English Language, 1st Ed. p. 77; Article on 'Dialect' in Penny Cyclopædia.

See Hunter's Hallamshire Glossary, p. xxvi.