the county, it is mixed with that of Westmorland. In the east, towards 

 Crossfell, it has many Northumbrian words ; while in the west, of late 

 years, since the iron manufacture has become so much developed, the 

 Cumbrian, Irish, Welsh, Cornish, and other dialects, have become in some 

 instances rather awkwardly jumbled together. It is, therefore, only in 

 the central part of the county that the Cumberland dialect is spoken in 

 its purity ; and this central part may be defined as a tract of country 

 surrounding the Skiddaw and Blencatlira range of mountains, and ex- 

 tending about fifteen miles east and west from their base, and some five 

 or six north and south. 



To those persons who have always looked upon the dialect as 

 something exceedingly vulgar and outlandish, it will no doubt appear 

 paradoxical when we refer to its being spoken in its purity. It 

 will therefore be as well to observe here that there is nothing 

 necessarily vulgar about it. One may be vulgar either with or without 

 it. There are some people excessively vulgar who do not speak the dia- 

 lect, while there are others who use no other form of speech who have not 

 a particle of vvilgarity about them. They make quite as great a mistake 

 who think that all dialect words are corruptions, or wrong pronunciations 

 of ordinary English. On the contrary, there can be little doubt but that 

 a great many words now used in standard books, were formerly so used 

 exactly in the form in which we now find them in the dialect, but have 

 since been modified and altered to suit our modern ideas of speech. In 

 proof of this, if we look into the writings of some old authors — books 

 which, no doubt, were standard works at the time they were published — 

 we find numbers of old words written in just the same way as they are 

 now used in dialect writing ; and it is quite possible that many old dames, 

 who have spent all their lives up in the dales, could give a much more 

 sensible explanation of some doubtful passages in Chaucer than many 

 learned members of the Philological Society. 



We will, however, proceed to point out a few of the peculiarities 

 of vocalism and idiom which render the dialect so difficult to understand 

 by persons not acquainted with it. One of the first things that will 

 strike a stranger on hearing it is the way in which the double vowel or 



