Aboot our grand old dialect

Sum folk have email'd me of late to ask who else wrote Cummerlan dialect down afwore (before) I started. So I've cut and peasst'd (pasted) a laal bit fra a website I fund on that google sutch ingine. It was fra a lecture given by John Richardson of Keswick in 1876

The first who attempted to rhyme in the vernacular (of whom we have any authentic record) was the Rev. Josiah Relph, of Sebergham, who died in 1743. He was followed in succession by Evan Clark, of Wigton; Miss Gilpin, of Scaleby Castle; Miss Blamire, of Thackwood; Blind Stagg, of Burgh-by-Sands; and Robert Anderson, of Carlisle. The last has been commonly styled the Cumberland Bard, and has been the most popular of all the dialect writers. Then, there were Mark Lonsdale, John Rayson, and Woodcock Graves; and there was Alexander Craig Gibson, who, I have no doubt, was personally known to some here present. There are still living Mr. William Dickinson and Miss Powley; so that we have a continuous chain, or succession, of dialect writers, stretching from Relph to the present time.

It may be that but few educated persons take much interest in the dialect, nevertheless, if entered into without prejudice, or affectation, the study of it, as the study of most other things, may become very interesting. I have in my possession a letter which I received from the late Dr. Gibson, two or three years before his death, in which he styles it our "Grand old dialect;" and when we reflect that, to the people of Cumberland, it has for hundreds of years served every purpose for the inter- change of their ideas; that they have ever found in it words and phrases which were amply sufficient to express every emotion of their minds; that in it they have told their joys and their griefs; their hopes and their fears; and that in it they have sung their loves and their sorrows, their sports and their rejoicings,-I think that if we do not go so far as Dr. Gibson, to style it our "Grand old dialect," we may, at least, respect and value it as an old and faithful servant.

To read a laal bit more gaa to

http://www.mininginstitute.org.uk/papers/CumbrianDialect.html

Enjoy yer tuesday.