55 



the objective case instead of in the nominative ; and singular verbs 

 instead of plural ones in almost every sentence. Instead of saying 

 "He and I are going," a Cumbrian says, "Him an' me's gaan." They 

 do not i;se the possessive case of proper nouns at all. Instead of 

 saying "George's cow and Harry's horse," they say " Gwordie coo and 

 Harry horse." Then they have an odd way of omitting the object of a 

 sentence, and leaving it to be guessed at. They will say, " They're gante 

 wesh," or " They're gante clip," without saying whether they are going 

 to wash clothes, or the sheep, or themselves ; or whether they are going 

 to clip the sheep, or a hedge, or something else. The anecdote told by 

 the butcher was an instance of this kind. A butcher went to a farmhouse 

 to ask for his weekly order, when the old dame said to him, " Nay barn, 

 we'll nut want enny this week, we're gante kill oorsels." That did not 

 mean that they were all going to commit suicide, and so would not require 

 any more meat, it simply meant that they were going to kill a sheep of 

 their own. They sometimes confound quantity and numbers in a droll 

 way, too. They will say, " A few poddish " or " A few broth," but 

 they would laugh at you if you said a few water, or a few milk. Although 

 these and other peculiarities of the idiom, which might be pointed out, 

 render the dialect almost unintelligible to strangers, they are so perfectly 

 familiar to those who speak it, that they do not hinder conversation in 

 the least. Only give two or three Cumbrians some subject of dispute — 

 for instance, the merits or demerits of some particular horse or cow, — and 

 they will argue the different points with as much energy, and as fluently, 

 as if they had all the rules of Lindley ]Murray by heart. Indeed it is when 

 listening to an argument, or " fratch " as it is called, that one may pick 

 up some of the broadest and richest specimens of the dialect. It will be 

 seen, however, by all impartial critics that the irregularities we have men- 

 tioned are simply corruptions and excrescences, which no more affect the 

 real character of the dialect than the bad EugUsh of uneducated Londoners, 

 or the coarse slang of the American rowdy affect that of the English 

 language itself. 



We will next notice some of the redeeming traits of the dialect. 

 Chief among these are its conciseness and its expressiveness. We have 



