ENGLISH DIALECTS. 
57 
ENGLISH DIALECTS. 
ABSTEACT OF MR. J. SHELLY's PAPER. 
(Read November 28th, 1878.) 
We hardly realize without some consideration how different is the 
language spoken in different parts of our country. A Yorkshire 
and Devonshire peasant may both be able to read a page out of 
the Pilgrim's Progress, but if they were to meet face to face they 
would not be able to understand each other's talk; probably neither 
of them would be able to understand the book if he heard it read 
by the other. The dialects differ from standard English and among 
themselves, not only in pronunciation, tone, and accent, but also in 
their vocabulary and grammar. They are in fact different though 
nearly-allied languages, having a history, and many of them a 
literature of their own. Their origin is involved in obscurity, but 
is probably to be sought in the home of the English people before 
they came into this country. It is probable that the two dialects 
of which we find evidence in our literature before the Conquest — 
the Northern and Southern — arose from the North having been 
peopled mainly by the Angles and the South by the Saxons. The 
settlement of the Jutes in Kent may have caused some of the 
peculiarities of the Kentish dialect, formerly much more marked 
than at present. The various invasions and settlements of the 
Danes in the north-eastern, and of the Normans in the southern 
and midland districts, no doubt affected the speech of the people. 
In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries we find three dialects 
noticed — the Northern, spoken from the Humber to the Firth of 
Forth, over an area corresponding nearly to the old Northumbrian 
kingdom ; the Midland, in the Midland and East Anglian counties, 
and in the district west of the Pennine range, corresponding to the 
kingdoms of Mercia and East Anglia, and the Welsh kingdom of 
Strathclyde, which was probably peopled from Mercia; and the 
Southern, in the counties south of the Thames and in Somerset 
