Notes on Books.
Previously interested in Yorkshire and its idiosyncrasies, and favourably known for the vivid delineation presented in his study of 'A Yorkshire Tyke,' Mr. Cowling may be accepted as a trustworthy guide regarding the particular dialect which he has chosen to expound. The task he set himself when he decided to undertake a grammar of a rural folk was by no means a light one. He admits that the elucidation presented many difficulties, and he shows the right spirit of the student and the assiduous specialist when he says that he is doubtful of having been entirely successful at all points. In a case of this kind finality is hardly possible, and it is always satisfactory to get a large, minute, and well-measured survey, even if occasionally we find no more than approximate results. With Mr. Cowling one is never at a loss to discover what principles of discussion he favours, what traditions he has examined and carefully defined, what comparisons he has instituted, and the character of the conclusions he has drawn. The consequence is that we rise from a perusal of his volume with the conviction that it makes a genuine and luminous contribution to the scientific exposition of Northern English.
"Hackness," says Mr. Cowling, "is a small village on the upper reaches of the Derwent, and its dialect agrees, as far as my ear is a judge, with that which I have heard in Staintondale, Fylingdales, Goathland, and Brompton." Thus the speech expounded here is obviously prevalent over an area large enough to warrant the assumption that it is a dialect, and not merely a local patois. Naturally, as it is at the present time, it has peculiarities that to some extent differentiate its characteristics from the basis whence it has been evolved, while essentially it remains the mode of expression that has prevailed in the same region for centuries. Thus it is pleasant to feel, as we do in reading these pages, that we can look back from this exposition in a direct line to the writers of the fourteenth century, as these are represented by the Early English Psalter, the York Plays, and Richard Bolle of Hampole. Broadly, the dialect belongs to the grand division of our language which was long spoken and written, and which, to some extent, still has both colloquial and literary value, in the North of England and the Scottish Lowlands. When the late Sir James Murray produced his standard work, 'The Dialect of the Southern Counties of Scotland,' he definitely said that "Barbour at Aberdeen, and Richard Rolle de Hampole, near Doncaster, wrote for their several countrymen in the same identical dialect." This statement, defensible as regards grand general lines of comparison, is challenged by Mr. Cowling, because of certain peculiarities of pronunciation that respectively mark the extremes thus confidently identified. With such divergences, he avers, Middle Scots and Middle York shire cannot be scientifically considered the saint dialect; and he adds that a comparison of modern forms "would doubtless reveal the points of difference." Obviously his contention is acute and plausible, while it is also possible to say that the family likeness prevails, and is not substantially impaired by the inevitable development of individual features.
Utilizing, as a convenient basis of study, 'The Pricke of Conscience' and other Early English works, Mr. Cowling has apparently mingled freely with the peasantry of these days, and patiently discovered the continuous relationship of their speech to his chosen standards of comparison. Like other dialectal investigators, he emphasizes the importance of getting into close touch with comparatively untutored folk, for these will always be found to represent most accurately the traditional forms of expression which have come to them as their natural heritage. The pulpit, the newspaper, and the schoolmaster are beginning to have their inevitable influence in Yorkshire as elsewhere, and the time will come—later, perhaps, in Mr. Cowling's chosen district than in many places—when it will be no longer possible to recognize in the spoken language that affinity with earlier modes of utterance Which may still be discovered.
After a lucid and suggestive Introduction, Mr. Cowling systematically presents the results of his study under two grand heads. In his first part he gives an explicit delineation of phonology, which he follows with careful and elaborate chapters on historical development and the functions of vowels and consonants respectively. In the second part the grammar of the dialect is exhaustively presented, resemblances, with local differences, between Northumbrian English and Lowland Scots being instructively noted. Then follow literary extracts, skilfully chosen and dexterously interpreted for purposes of elucidation; and the work closes with a full and suggestive Word-List and an adequate Index. Altogether this notable addition to the "Cambridge Archæological and Ethnographical Series" abundantly merits a hearty welcome from all serious students of the English language.
Elizabethan Puritan divines, like reforming minorities all the world over, sought to gain converts by publishing an account of their tenets and of the story of their sufferings under persecution. To this end they gathered together a mighty mass of propagandist material, which, however, they were to a great extent debarred from printing by the evermore increasing strictness of the censorship of the press. Some of their "copy," it is true, reached the outside world in the form of the Marprelate Tracts; some supplied material for 'A Parte of a Register,' which, after being printed in Scotland and shipped to London, met destruction at the hands of the authorities, so that only a few copies remain. The rest of this store of Puritan history, so painfully gathered, copied, and kept—it is thought—by John Field, Roger Morrice, and some nameless "most faithful, understanding and observing gentleman, who died about the end of Elizabeth's reign," is still in manuscript, and has come to be housed in that quiet Bloomsbury
