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New England Dialect, Isaac Bassett Choate (continued)
sir! you means Massy Island." How familiar the old East England exclamation, "Lord o' massy!" has been made throughout New England! Not only has the liquid this effect upon e, but in several words it affects i as well. A "spire" of grass is pronounced speer in New England, while the "spire" of a church is called spire; but the time was, when in both its uses the word was speer in Old England. Thomas Fuller, speaking of a shire which abounded in churches and in landed gentry, said it was rich in spires and squires. It is plain that he sounded the vowel alike in both. It is worth while to note that the New England pronunciation of "esquire" has become square.
The liquid l seems also to have influenced the vowel before it. In East Essex, e is, in such case, sounded as short a. The farmer says, "Ay talled my missis to tall ye to bring faw bushel." This side the ocean, by a similar freak, "yellow" is made yallow, and a "yell" becomes a yall.
The same East Essex farmer, when asked what he purposed to do with his scythe, said, "Dear heart! ay wants to maw my musta'd." The giving the o sound as aw is common through all the eastern counties of England. The local pronunciation of Boston, in Lincolnshire, has been shown to be Bawston, and that is very properly preserved here in New England. "Yell hev to ax at the lawge" (lodge), said a woman who was asked direction to Sudbury, in Suffolk.
To compare this eastern coast pronunciation with that prevailing within the limits of the old Mercian kingdom of the interior, — the region of Berkshire, Shropshire, Herefordshire, and Staffordshire, — one has only to listen to our friends of the West as they speak of "Baästan Caäman." The Berkshire rustic hails his fellow with, "A sharp marnin', Jarge."
The dialect of the south of Lincolnshire has been made familiar by Tennyson, whose boyhood home was in that section.
"Doctors, they knaws nowt, for a says what's nawways true;
Naw soort o' koind o' use to saäy the things that a do."
Right in this same neighborhood, at Somercotes, the direction given a wayfarer was, "Ye want to goo by that guide-post, and thruff the ma'shes by the fut-road." That word thruff (through) has the salt of the hoary old sea upon it. The only equivalent I recall for the word is duff (dough), and this only sailors have kept with an affection for its associations, while to most minds the origin of the word has been lost together with the loss of its proper spelling. When the Macquolds were travelling, and writing "About Yorkshire," only a few years ago, upon visiting Addleborough, their pronunciation of the name of the town was corrected, and they were told that it was Addlebruff.
There is a South Lincolnshire sound of o which is to be heard in New England, but which is rare. Take this, which occurs in an English writer,
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