pages 176-177

176                 Illustrations of Lancashire

folded very specially on the occurrence of a terrible accident, such as a coal-pit explosion. In the yearning to be foremost in help to rescue; in the gentleness, the deference to authority, the obedience to discipline, the resignation then exhibited, - this last coming not of indifference, ' but of calmness, - a capacity is plainly shown for the highest conceivable moral development.
The Dialect, - The original county dialect of Lancashire is of twofold interest. Still heard as among the rustics, it is peculiarly valuable to the student of the English language. "Our South Lancashire speech," says its most accomplished interpreter, "is second to none in England in the vestiges which it contains of the tongue of other days .... To explain Anglo-Saxon there is no speech so original and important as our own South Lancashire patois.1 To the ears of strangers who know nothing about it the sound is often uncouth and barbarous. That it is far from being so is proved by the use long made of this dialect for lyric poetry and for tales both racy and pathetic.2 There is conclusive evidence also of its sweet and meaningful pathos in the resorting to it in times of deep emotion by people

1. On the South Lancashire Dialect. By Thomas Heywood, F.S.A. Chetham Society. Vol. lvii, pp. 8, 36.
2. Vide Mr. George Milner, "On the Lancashire Dialect Considered as a Vehicle of Poetry", Manchester Literary Club Papers vol.i, p.20, 1875

Peculiarities                177

of the highest culture, who then unconsciously throw aside the learning and the vocabulary of school and college for the simplicity that never fails to touch the heart. The titles of the stories hold a conspicuous place in Mr. Axon's list of the no fewer than 279 publications illustrative of the general subject of the Lancashire dialect ,1 the literature of which, he justly remarks in the introduction, is richer than that of the popular speech of any other English county. This is so much the more noteworthy since, with the famous manufacturing epoch of 1785, everything belonging to primitive Lancashire began to experience change and decay. ln a certain sense it may be said that the dialect has not only survived unhurt, but has risen, during the last thirty or forty years, to a position worthy of the native talent; and that the latter, in days to come, will have no better commemoration than the metrical literature.Two particulars at once arrest attention. No English dialect more abounds in interesting archaisms; and certainly not one is so little tainted with expressions of the nature of slang.2

1. Vide Mr. George Milner, "On the Lancashire Dialect Considered as a Vehicle of Poetry", Manchester Literary Club Papers, Appendix to the vol. for 1876.
2. The modern slang of great towns is of course quite a different thing from the ancient dialect of a rural population. Affected mis-spellings, as of "kuntry" for country, are also to be distinguished in toto from the phonetic representation of sounds purely dialectical.