79 
VERNACULAR NAMES 
OF BIRDS AT STAVELEY, WESTMORLAND. 
JOSEPH A. MARTINDALE, 
Staveley, Westmorland. 
THE short article on Lakeland Bird-names in last month’s 
‘Naturalist’ interested me very much, and, if I may be allowed, 
I should like to say a few words on the same subject. Staveley 
may, [ suppose, be considered to be within Lakeland, thoug 
three or four miles from the nearest lake ; so that my remarks 
May be taken as supplementary to those of Miss Armitt. Like 
all other dialectal words and modes of speech, the local names 
for birds are gradually dying away under the influence of books. 
| Boys are the great conservators of the local bird-names, and 
Probably the inventors of several of them; but, even among 
them, there has been a great change during the last thirty years 
©r so, and one finds them using book-names for such birds as 
the Barn Owl and Common Sandpiper, for which formerly they 
knew only the rustic appellations of ‘Grey Hullet’ and ‘ Willy 
Wittock.’ Forty years ago, when I first settled in Staveley, 
Comparatively few birds, with the exception of game, were 
- hown to school children by their ordinary English names; but 
the other day, when I asked some boys to write me out a list of 
nee ta? chet) 
n the ‘sixties’ no boy ever thought of calling the Wren 
anything else than ‘Chitty’ or ‘Chitty-wérén.’ The latter 
always considered most interesting, as, in all probability, the 
Only word anywhere spoken in England in which the sound of 
the letter w is given before an r. Miss Armitt’s mode of writing 
the name disguises this, for the short indefinite vowel sound 
between the w and 7 is not at all truly represented by ay; 
heither is the name divisible into ‘chittiwé’ and ‘ren,’ but as 
have written it above, ‘chitty-wérén.’ The vowel sound that 
Comes between the w and ¢ is that represented in Paleotype 
by an inverted italic e (a). I regret to say that this nasi 
Seems now obsolete in this neighbourhood, for, though ‘chitty 
@ppeared in some of the lists, not one boy could recollect 
hearing the full name. : 
. Even in so small a district as Lakeland it is probable that no 
? list of local names could be written that would be absolutely 
- March 1899, 
eee aS Se eI Bi he me re en Ee | 
Mga? < eee Ney ates 27 
pee a ae RR ge Og Sen eel 
