English.-Where is the old lame mare that you were leading up the lane from the mead?

Dorset.-Where's the wold leäme meäre that you were a-leädèn up the leäne from the meäde?

Mr. Barnes infers from Frisian usage that the Dorset peasants have not done more in these diphthongs than perpetuate the breath-sounds of their forefathers, who said yarm for arm, beäm for beam, and meärc for mark, just as the Frisians say leaf for leaf, neam for name, and so forth. The Dorset usage of z, v, and d, for s, f, and th, is confined to words of Teutonic or English roots, and words that have been imported in later times are not meddled with. It is good Dorset to say zand or vind; bad, to say zaint, vamine, vigure, zabbath.

Dorset is not a good dialect for punning, as it can show a large number of words to which it gives a distinct sound according to the meaning, the same words having only one sound in ordinary speech. The copia verborum of the dialect is still more remarkable. Witness the following specimens:-Shelter is a screen against what falls from above, as rain; leuth, a screen from cold wind blowing sideways. To ceäre, is to be uneasy about what has happened or is happening; to ho, is to be anxious for the future. The root of a tree is simply its root; the moot the bottom of a stem after it is felled, with all its roots on to it. The parson do marry a couple; the man do marry wi' the woman. A wride of hazel is all the stems that grow from one root; a hazel-bush may contain many wrides. A choor (char) is a recurring term of work, as washing or house-cleaning; a job is a single stroke of any work or business.

But it is the Dorset poems that are the best apology for the dialect after all. No arbitrary, unmeaning patois would have supported the pathos to which this form of English furnishes just the setting and no more-as the Scottish forms do to Burns's best poems; and it would only have spoilt Mr. Barnes's genuine humour, which depends on no tricks of language for its point. In naming Burns, it is not meant to set up the Dorset poems in comparison with his; no greater mistake could be made in defining the real merits of Mr. Barnes, who stands quite alone among English writers. You could not gather from his writings that he had ever read a verse of other poets, nor adopted a single line of thought or mode of speech. And yet it would be hard to discover writings more entirely free from affectation than these. It is as Hogg has said, 'A man may be sair mista'en about many things, sic as yepics and tragedies, and even lang set elegies about the death o' great public characters, and hymns, and odes, and the like; but he canna be mista'en about a sang.' Just so on reading Vol. 111.-No. 222.

Y

the

the Dorset songs; you are puzzled to find an exact standard of comparison, but they have a true ring of their own which cannot be mistaken. Sleep did come wi' the dew,' 'Rivers don't gie out,'The Weepèn' Liady,' 'The Väices that be gone,' and 'Jenny out vrom hwome,' in the first volume; and Ellen Brine o' Allenburn,' 'Slantèn Light o' Vall,'' Bleake's House in Blackmoor,''Knowlwood,' and Faetherhood,' in the second, are all not only poems of great beauty, but sure to be recognised as such on a first reading.

The Dorset poor themselves heartily enjoy these poems; and it is hard to say which succeed best before a cottage audience, the pathetic or the humorous ones. 'The Waggon a-Stooded' (stuck in the mud), describing an accident with a load of furze, is always welcome. It is an eclogue with three interlocutors, or in Dorset idiom with 'dree o' m a-ta'kèn' o't:'

1.-Well, here we be then wi' the vust poor lwoad

O' vuzz we brought a-stooded in the road.

2.-The road, George? Noa. There's nar a road. That's wrong. If we'd a road, we mid ha got along.

1.-Noo road? Ees 'tis; the road that we do goo.

2.-Do goo, George? noa. The pleäce we can't get droo. 1.-Well, there, the vust lwoad we've a-haled to dae

Is here a-stooded in theäs bed o' clae.

Here's rotten groun'! an how the wheels do cut!
The little oone's a-zunk up to the nut.'

After a good deal of criticism on the driving that brought the accident about, a spade is sent for to dig the wheels out; and meanwhile the load is to be lightened :

1.-Well, we must lighten en; come, Jeämes, then hop Upon the lwoad, and just fling off the top.

2.-If I can clim' en; but 'tis my consaït

That I shall awverzet en wi' my weight.

1. You awverzet en! Noa, Jeämes: he won't vall: The lwoad's a-built so firm 's a wall.'

This is the confident remark of the man who had had the chief hand in 'setting' the load; and on the strength of it the other climbs, falls of course, bringing the load with him, but unconsoled by the slightest admission on the part of his stolid companion, who looks on with a broad grin and sets all down to the ant-hills on the turf-track:

'1.-Lo'k there, thik fellor is a-vell lik' lead,

An' haef the vuzzen wi'n, heels awver head.

*

The lwoad wer built so firm 's a rock,
But two of theäsem emmet butts would knock
The tightest barrel out o' hoop.'

'Merry

'Merry Bleäke o' Blackmwore' is another great favourite. It tells how John Blake, having two hundred pounds left him by his uncle, determined to build a house of his own. His consultations with his wife and 'maïdens,' his reckonings with the workmen, and his grand housewarming when all was done, are told with much humour, and with the same faultless truth of observation that is so conspicuous in the history of Mrs. Poyser's ways and doings. When nothing else remains to be done towards the effective inauguration of the house, the swallows duly take possession of the eaves, and the poem finishes.

'An' when the morrow's zun did sheen,
John Bleäke beheld, wi' jäy an' pride,
His bricken house, an' pworch, an' green,
Above the Stower's rushy zide.
The zwallows left the lwonsome groves
To build below the thatchen oves;
An' robins come vor crums o' lwoaves:
"Tweet, tweet," the birds all cried;
"Sweet, sweet," John's wife replied;
"Dad, dad," the children cried so glad
To merry Bleäke o' Blackmwore.'

The excellent poem called 'Faetherhood' gives an example of the spirit and swing which Mr. Barnes can throw into his verses. This that follows is supposed to come straight out of the warm heart of a father, who is met after a cold journey by the pleasant voices and little-mouthed laefs' of his children at his own fireside:

'Let en zit, wi' his dog an' his cat,

Wi' ther noses a-turned to the vire;
An' have all that a man should desire:
But there isn't much reädship* in that—
Whether vo'k mid have children or no,

Woudden meake mighty odds in the maïn:
They do bring us mwore jäy wi' more ho,†

An' wi' mwore we've less jäy wi' less païn :
We be all like a zull's ‡ idle sheäre out,
An' shall rust out unless we do wear out,
Like do-nothèn, rue-nothèn,
Dead-alive dumps.'

Yet, clever and admirably truthful as the humorous poems and the mere narratives are, Mr. Barnes seems to be greatest in the expression of a pathetic sentiment, always of the extremest gentleness and tenderness, but always wholesome, and never bordering on what is maudlin or dull. It has been urged, and it is probably often thought by fresh readers of the 'Dorset Poems,' * Common sense. † Care or anxiety for the future. Y 2

+ Plough.

that

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that the dialect has nothing to do with the pathetic element in them; in other words, that if, in a given poem of the kind, the forms of ordinary English were to be substituted for the dialect forms, the pathos would remain undiminished and unaltered. A little reflection, and-still more surely-a growing familiarity with the genius of Mr. Barnes, will show that this notion is erroneous. It is undoubtedly possible to light upon single stanzas of the more serious poems which scarcely suffer at all by a translation into English. It is equally possible to find single passages of Burns in which it is of no consequence whether we read frae or from, guid or good; or single verses of the Bible where the effect would not be destroyed by the substitution of you for thou, and have for hast. But who, for that reason, would desire to see an Anglicized edition of Burns's serious poetry, or a version of the Bible according to Dr. Conquest? And thus it is in the case of Mr. Barnes. In spite of the apparent evidence to the contrary which single instances may furnish-and such instances will be found very few and far between-there are a thousand touches natural and easy in his Doric, which would have been unattainable in Attic. Who would write 'raving' for 'riavèn' in the following admirable song? or what should we get out of common English in return for all the sound and vigour of 'wiave da dreve wiave in the dark-water'd pon' '?

'JENNY OUT VROM HWOME.

O wild-riavèn west winds! as you da roar on,
The elems da rock an' the poplars da ply,

An' wiave da dreve wiave in the dark water'd pon’—
Oh! wher da ye rise vrom, an wher da ye die?

O wild-riavèn winds! I da wish I cood vlee
Wi' you, lik' a bird o' the clouds, up above
The rudge o' the hill an' the top o' the tree,
To wher I da lang var an' vo'kes I da love.

Ar else that in under theäs rock I cood hear

The soft-zwelling sounds ye da leäve in your road,
Zome words ya mid bring me, vrom tongues that be dear,
Vrom friends that da love me, all scattered abrode.

O wild-riavèn winds! if ya ever da roar

By the house an' the elems vrom wher I'm a-come,
Breathe at the winder ar call at the door,

up

An' tell ya've a-voun' me a-thinkèn o' hwome.' X

Again, in 'Väices that be gone,' it would be hopelessly grotesque to talk of the

banks, where James would sit

Playing upon the clarionet
To voices that are gone.'

And

And how should we render into common English that pregnant thought of the girls and boys being now 'married off all woys'? Yet observe the effect of both passages as they stand in the poem. "THE VÄICES THAT BE GONE.

When evemen shiades o' trees da hide

A body by the hedge's zide,

An' twittren birds, wi' playsome flight,
Da vlee to roost at comèn night,
Then I da santer out o' sight

In archet, where the pleäce oonce rung
Wi' laefs a-rised an' zongs a-zung
By väices that be gone.

There's still the tree that bore our swing,
An' t'others where the birds did zing:
But long-leaved docks da auvergrow
The groun we trampled biare below,
Wi' merry skippèns to an' fro

Beside the banks, wher Jim did zit
A-playèn on the claranit

To väices that be gone.

How mother, when we us'd to stun
Her head wi' all our näisy fun,
Did wish us all agone vrom hwome:
An' now that zome be dead, an' zome
Be gone, an' all the pliace is dumb,

How she da wish, wi' useless tears,
To have agen about her ears
The väices that be gone !
Var all the mäidens an' the bwoys,
But I, be married off all woys,
Ar dead an' gone; but I da bide
At hwome alwone at mother's zide;
An' of en, at the evemen tide,

I still da santer out wi' tears

Down droo the archet, wher my ears
Da miss the väices gone.'

More than once we have seen this poem draw the tears from eyes of listening cottagers; nor must it be supposed that the refinement of education is necessary to the reader before he can read Mr. Barnes's poems with such a result. A clownish reader will read clownishly, whether he read in English or in the Dorset dialect; and a chance hand from the plough-tail would probably make a very poor thing of 'Väices that be gone.' But put the book into the hands of one of the thoughtful and deephearted men that may be met with, not so rarely either, even among

Dorset

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