Oxford
HORACE HART, PRINTER TO THE UNIVERSITY
A Glossary of Words
USED IN THE
COUNTY OF WILTSHIRE.
BY
GEORGE EDWARD DARTNELL
AND THE
REV. EDWARD HUNGERFORD GODDARD, M.A.
London:
PUBLISHED FOR THE ENGLISH DIALECT SOCIETY
BY HENRY FROWDE, OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS WAREHOUSE.
AMEN CORNER, LONDON, E.C.
1893.
[All rights reserved.]
The following pages must not be considered as comprisingan exhaustive Glossary of our Wiltshire Folk-speech. Thefield is a wide one, and though much has been accomplishedmuch more still remains to be done. None but those whohave themselves attempted such a task know how difficult itis to get together anything remotely approaching a completelist of the dialect words used in a single small parish, to saynothing of a large county, such as ours. Even when thewords themselves have been collected, the work is little morethan begun. Their range in time and place, their history andetymology, the side-lights thrown on them by allusions inlocal or general literature, their relation to other Englishdialects, and a hundred such matters, more or less interesting,have still to be dealt with. However, in spite of many difficultiesand hindrances, the results of our five years or moreof labour have proved very satisfactory, and we feel fullyjustified in claiming for this Glossary that it contains themost complete list of Wiltshire words and phrases whichhas as yet been compiled. More than one-half of the wordshere noted have never before appeared in any WiltshireVocabulary, many of them being now recorded for the firsttime for any county, while in the case of the remaindermuch additional information will be found given, as wellas numerous examples of actual folk-talk.
The greater part of these words were originally collectedby us as rough material for the use of the compilers of the[vi]projected English Dialect Dictionary, and have been appearingin instalments during the last two years in the Wilts ArchæologicalMagazine (vol. xxvi, pp. 84-169, and 293-314; vol.xxvii, pp. 124-159), as Contributions towards a WiltshireGlossary. The whole list has now been carefully revised andmuch enlarged, many emendations being made, and a veryconsiderable number of new words inserted, either in thebody of the work, or as Addenda. A few short stories, illustratingthe dialect as actually spoken now and in Akerman'stime, with a brief Introduction dealing with Pronunciation, &c.,and Appendices on various matters of interest, have also beenadded; so that the size of the work has been greatlyincreased.
As regards the nature of the dialect itself, the subjecthas been fully dealt with by abler pens than ours, andwe need only mention here that it belongs to what isnow known as the South-Western group, which also comprisesmost of Dorset, Hants, Gloucester, and parts of Berksand Somerset. The use of dialect would appear graduallyto be dying out now in the county, thanks, perhaps, tothe spread of education, which too often renders the rustichalf-ashamed of his native tongue. Good old English as atbase it is,—for many a word or phrase used daily and hourlyby the Wiltshire labourer has come down almost unchanged,even as regards pronunciation, from his Anglo-Saxon forefathers,—itis not good enough for him now. One here, andanother there, w