Chapter VIII: Part 8

Given originally as the mountain ash and objected to. From the correspondence it would seem to be safe to conclude that the berry of the rowan or mountain ash, is in some districts termed “dogberry,” and in the same locality the word is used for another shrub, the water elder and its berries. Perhaps the use of “dogberry” for the former may be due to carelessness in the matters pertaining to berries that have small culinary value.

NOTE 8.—FAMISH.

On the ground that a mere local peculiarity of pronunciation does not constitute a dialect word, forms like _famish_ were objected to. They are included to demonstrate a feature in the dialect where adjectives of a wholly inappropriate character are regularly used, _e.g._ “A bonny auld shindy,” “A cruel fast trotter,” “A stinken good mind,” “A famish gurt leer,” “A glorious good spree,” “Henious good roads,”—_vide Combriana_, “A ter’ble romantic way o’ throwin’ oot his feet,” “Sanctimonious as a ho’perth o’ treacle in a three quart jug,” “Ah’s ter’ble fain ye’ve come,” “A tremendus habit o’ winkin at yan,” “Parlish dear,” are common enough and seem to indicate a peculiarity worthy of noting.

NOTE 9.—GARN, GOING.

This form met with strong objection. It appears in a Dialect Essay in the West Cumberland Times, Christmas No. 1897, and several correspondents vouched for its presence in the West Ward of Westmorland. It will be safest to regard it as an extreme form and one well illustrating the difficulty of rendering the dialect phonetically with ordinary type.

NOTE 10.

In many words involving technical details, and others bordering on what some readers might regard as coarseness, no attempt has been made at defining or illustrating, but in dealing with them it has been the aim to do it in the same colloquialism a native would affect. In a work of the present character this latter purpose cannot fail to be as interesting as details which would require many sciences to confirm.

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