174 BULLETIN OF THE ESSEX INSTITUTE. 



stock, which has almost certainly taken in a Scotch-Irish 

 strain on its way through Worcester, Rutland or London- 

 derry ; and it is hardly perched in New Hampshire before 

 it is off for the West. 



All these things affect the family speech, and I really 

 think that we of Essex County are stability itself compared 

 with them, especially on the sea-board. The dialect of 

 Marblehead or the Shoals remained the same, I suppose, 

 until it died out ; and having just found a few words of it 

 in the Marblehead History, I sent them to the Secretary 

 with some Gloucester words, and referred to the account 

 of the word schooner in Worcester's Dictionary. You know 

 the rig and the name are said to have been invented in 

 Gloucester ; but even I find it hard to believe that the 

 verl) scoon was used in Gloucester in 1740, unless it were 

 a Marbleheader who stood by and said, " How she scoonsP 

 which is quite possible. I have heard scoot used to ex- 

 press haste without grace, but never scoon. 



1 could see no Dutch dement in the few Marblehead 

 words I found, unless pixilated, (bewildered in the dark), 

 could be connected with pikzwart, (pitchdark), which it 

 may not be at all. There was a French element, and I 

 suppose the Cornish strain, manifest there in names be- 

 ginning with Tre, might account for anything. The Mar- 

 blehead pronunciation quoted by Mr. Chadwick, ] barn in 

 a born for born in a barn, reads like the dialect of 

 Gwenny, the little Cornish maid in "Lorna Doone." John 

 Fisk says Cornish is allied to Gselic and Welsh, and the 

 last person who spoke it in England died in 1770. Think 

 of carrying a language out of the world in your own per- 

 son ! 



The Haskells, who left a numerous progeny in Glouces- 

 ter, Salem and Marblehead, are said to have hailed from 



1 "Harper's Monthly," Vol. xlix, p. 189. 



