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speak of the similarity of the two generally, the gentleman to whom 

 I have already referred wrote to me when he was staying at Elsinore 

 in Denmark, saying that the dialect used there was so Uke to the 

 dialect used in the Lake country, that a countryman from here 

 and a countryman from that neighbourhood would, if speaking 

 their respective dialects, be almost able mutually to understand 

 one another. I put this in some measure to the test, for I pro- 

 cured a Danish Bible, and I found — thanks in a great measure to 

 my acquaintance with the Cumbrian dialect — that there were 

 whole verses and even whole chapters that I could read without 

 much help from the dictionary. 



I have mentioned Cleasby's Icelandic Dictionary, which, 

 according to what I can gather from those who know the subject 

 well, is most exhaustive, not in Icelandic alone, but also in its 

 quotations from the classic literature of Scandinavia, and its 

 comparison of Icelandic with the cognate languages. It is the pro- 

 duction of a Westmorland gentleman from Stainmore, who spent a 

 great part of his life and fortune in elucidating the subject he had 

 taken in hand, and who I think may reasonably be presumed to 

 have owed some of the great ardour which animated him, as well 

 as his great success in the work, to the fact that the dialect he 

 had at first known was in some measure cognate with the language 

 he thus took up. 



The Norse words we have most unmistakeably in our dialect 

 are what may be called home words. For example, in the old 

 fashioned houses which many of you may remember to have seen, 

 there was a beam which extended across the house and across the 

 old fashioned open chimney ; it served for suspending the long 

 crook from, and was also used for hanging bacon or meat from in 

 the open space above the fire ; this was always known as the 

 rannal boak. Now rann in the Icelandic means house, balk is a 

 beam, hence in the rannal boak we have the house beam. The 

 word ransack is from the same root, and means in Icelandic to 

 search a house, reminding us of the house-searching or plundering 

 propensities of the Norsemen. 



Few who know anythmg about the hearth fires formerly used in 



