He went on to offer various illustrations of this. Thus, 'a native hundreder, beinge asked where hee was borne, answereth, "Where shu'd y bee y bore, but at Berkeley hurns, and there, begis, each was y bore." Or thus, "Each was 'geboren at Berkeley hurns"'. As Smyth explained, 'so naturall is the dialect of pronouncinge the l[ett]re "y" betweene words endinge and beginninge with consonants, that it seemes droppinge from the aire into our mouthes', as in the case of 'each ha kild a ferry vat y hogg', 'watt y ge Tom y some nin y wel y din'd', or 'th'art my pretty dick y'. At the same time, local speech frequently replaced the letter 'v' with the letter 'f ' and vice-versa, as in 'fewed for viewed' or 'fenison for venison', and 'vethers for feathers' or 'vire for fire'. Equally, 'g' was often used for 'c', as in 'guckowe for cuckowe; grabs for crabs; a guckold for a cuckold, and the like'.

The hundreders had various other distinctive usages. For example, 'thicke and thucke, for this and that, rush out with vs at every breath'. They would say 'putton vp, for put it up', or 'cutton of, for cut it of ', and 'many the like'. They often omitted the possessive pronoun 'your', as in 'howe fare fader and moder', 'when sawe you fader and moder', or 'fader and moder will bee heere to morrowe'. They used either 'gay' or 'goe', depending on the circumstance: 'gaye, is let vs goe, when my selfe goes as one of the company: but, goe, is the sendinge of others when my selfe staies behinde'. Certain words could change their meaning according to context. Thus 'hild' might be employed in the sense of 'I wou'd it was hild', meaning 'I would it were flead, or the skyn of ', or else as 'y w'ood t'wert hild', meaning 'I would thou were hanged'. The word 'tyd' could mean 'wanton', or if used in the sense of 'a tyd bit', it would signify 'a speciall morsell reserved to eat at last'. Smyth managed to convey, about as well as is possible on paper, the sound of local pronunciation. Thus hundreders would pronounce neighbourhood 'neighboriden', wenches 'wenchen', and ashes 'axen'; or they would say 'harroust' for harvest, 'meese' for moss, and 'meeve' for move, as in 'meeve them a lich, i.e. move them a like'. Certain familiar sayings and phrases give some idea of the way in which these people must have sounded. 'What? wil't y pisse a bed, i.e. what will you pisse your bed?'; 'y wud al y cud, i.e. I would doe it if I could'; 'each ha'nnot wel y din'd, i.e. I have not well dyned'; 'ga'as zo'm of thuck bread, i.e. give mee some of that bread'; 'ch'am w'oodly agreezd, i.e. I am wonderfully agreived'; 'thuck vire don't y bran, i.e. this fire doth not burne'; 'Gyn y com y and tyff y the windowes, i.[e]. Jone, come, and trim vp the windowes, (meaninge with flowers)'. Finally, Smyth recorded a variety of the dialect words which were commonly used in the hundred. A sample of verbs would include: 'to veize' meaning to chase, 'to loxe' or 'to vocket', meaning to purloin, and 'to songe' meaning to receive. Common adjectives were 'camplinge, i.e. brawlinge, chidinge'; 'flippant, i.e. slippery, quick, nimble'; and 'an angry or crosse natur'd wench' would be described as 'an attery, or thwartover wench'. Out in the fields would be heard words such as 'a shard, i.e. a gapp or broken place in an hedge'; 'a loppertage, i.e. a lowe place where a hedge is trodden downe'; 'the pugg, i.e. the refuse corne left at winnowinge'; 'agrible, i.e. a crabstocke to grast vpon'; 'hurts, i.e. bilbaries'; 'pilsteers, i.e. pillow beers'; and phrases such as 'beanes thick yeare are orribly hang'd, i.e. beanes this yeare are horribly codded'; and 'this hay did well y henton, i.e. dry or wither well'. Other vocabulary and its use included, 'you speake dwelth, i.e. you talke you know not what'; 'each ha songd to a childe, i.e. I have byn godfather at a childes christeninge'; 'hee wants boot a beame, i.e. hee wants money to spend'; 'hur is dothered, i.e. shee is amazed, aston-ished'; 'hur ha's well y tund her geer to day, i.e. shee hath applied her booke to day'; and 'hur goes too blive for mee, i.e. shee goes too fast for mee'.

The hundred of Berkeley does not appear to have been unusual in the way its speech registered the ways of local life and expressed the contours of parochial identity. For scores of other communities around the country it was language which articulated their relationship with their environment and organized the understanding of their experience. It was language which bound their members together, and distinguished them from others, at the most basic and fundamental level.

The Confusion of Tongues

Given the often highly localized nature of spoken English in the myriad speech communities which made up the nation, it is hardly surprising that communication between them could be very difficult. To those from outside a district or region the vocabulary and pronunciation of native inhabitants could be as opaque as any other foreign language. Contemporaries often noted that people from different parts of the country simply found it difficult to understand each other. Given the inflection and intonation, together with the rapid speed of delivery and the colloquial devices which characterize real speech, the practical business of comprehension could be even greater than might be conveyed on paper. As Daniel Defoe acknowledged when he tried to render the dialect of Somerset, 'it is not possible to explain this fully by writing, because the difference is not so much in the orthography of words, as in the tone, and diction'.

Thus, one commentator explained in 1530, the language was 'so dyuerse in yt selfe that the commen maner of spekynge in Englysshe of some contre can skante be vnderstondid in some other contre of the same londe'. Little had changed at the beginning of the seventeenth century when Richard Verstegan could concur '(as by often experience is found), that some Englishmen discoursing together, others being present and of our own nation, and that naturally speak the English toung, are not able to vnderstand what the others say, notwithstanding they call it English that they speak'. For long after this period, the same refrain would be heard. 'Bring together two clowns from Kent and Yorkshire, and I will wager a ducat that they will not be able to converse, for want of a dialect common to them both.'

This communication problem goes some way towards explaining contemporary patterns of migration. Athough this was a society in which people were highly mobile, the great majority of movement and resettlement tended to be over relatively short distances. Youngsters who travelled in search of service or apprenticeship, for example, usually ventured no further than the nearest large town or the next parish, often a distance of less than a dozen miles. They rarely journeyed, in other words, outside their 'country', or speech community. As for those individuals who were driven to seek subsistence or opportunity further afield, there is some evidence to suggest that they gravitated towards the neighbourhoods of towns or cities where other of their 'countrymen' and women or kinsfolk were already settled. This tendency may also have been influenced by speech recognition, among other factors of common culture. Most graphically of all, patterns of settlement in North America during the seventeenth century were highly determined by geographical origins, with the result that the dialects of particular English localities influenced regional speech patterns in the colony thereafter.

It was not only long-distant migrants across Britain who might encounter difficulties in this respect, but also general travellers around the country on business or pleasure. At a time when the roads were poor and certain communities could be relatively isolated, strangers, or 'foreigners', were often rare and frequently regarded with suspicion. It must have been very easy for locals to make their own speech incomprehensible and to feign misunderstanding of an unwitting outsider. Thus, although by the Elizabethan period most Cornishmen spoke English, 'to a stranger they will not speake it', warned Richard Carew, and 'if meeting them by chance, you inquire the way or any such matter, your answere shalbe, "Meea nauidna cowz asawzneck", "I can speake no Saxonage"'. The same experience was suffered by one English visitor to Scotland in the 1670s. He found that in the border regions between Highlands and Lowlands the locals spoke both English and Gaelic, 'yet these people are so currish, that if a stranger enquire the way in English, they will certainly answer in Erst [Erse], and find no other language than what is inforc'd from them with a cudgel'.

The reception given to travellers throughout England might be no different, as three soldiers from Norfolk discovered when they undertook a tour of the country in 1634. It was one thing to attend a service in Carlisle cathedral, to be struck by the 'Scottish tone' of the choir and find that 'the sermon in the like accent, was such, as wee would hardly bring away, though it was deliver'd by a neat young scholler . . . one of the bishop's chaplaines . . .'. But it was quite another to be out in the Westmorland countryside, riding between Penrith and Kendal, and to discover that in asking directions of 'the rude, rusticall, and ill-bred people, with their gainging and yating', they 'could not understand them, neither would they vnderstand vs'. A different triumvirate from Norfolk found the locals more willing but only slightly more comprehensible when they passed through Nottinghamshire in 1662. They were 'very ready to instruct us in our way. One told us our "wy lig'd" by "youn nooke" of "oakes" and another that wee "mun" goe "strit forth", which manner of speeches not only directed us, but much pleas'd us with the novelty of its dialect.'

Meanwhile John Ray, an Essex man, was encountering so many dialect words as he toured around the country in the course of his scientific investigations that he found 'in many places, especially in the north, the language of the common people is to a stranger very difficult to be understood'. The geologist and physician, John Woodward, had similar difficulties when visiting Nettleton near Caistor, Lincolnshire, in the 1680s. 'I have allmost learnt to speake to them in their own language', he announced in due course. 'For instance, if any should ask me the way to Lincoln, I could say, "Yaw mun een goo thruft yon beck, then yaw'st com to a new yate, then turr off to th'raight, o'er a brig that lays o're a hoy doyke, and than yaw'st not hove ore a maile to th'next tawn".' When Thomas Kirke, an antiquary from Cookridge in the West Riding, was up at Berwick-upon-Tweed in May 1677, he was utterly bemused by the bell-man proclaiming the death of a local man in the streets: 'he liggs aut thi sext dour wethin the hoord gawt closs on the hauthir haund, and I wod yaw gang to his [burial] before twa a clock'. Small wonder, then, that when the Lincolnshire man, William Stukeley, was in Newcastle in the mid-eighteenth century he found that 'as one walks the streets, one can scarce understand the common people, but are apt to fancy one's self in a foreign country'.

Given such experiences, it becomes possible to understand why Daniel Defoe could form the opinion, on the basis of his extensive tours around Britain in the early eighteenth century, that the local dialects of England were as opaque to the outsider and as mutually exclusive to each other as the patois of provincial France. Through travel, he reported, I became particularly acquainted with the common people, as well as with the country, in every place where I came; I observ'd their language, that is, the several dialects of it, for they strangely differ in their way of expressing themselves, tho' the same tongue; and there is as much difference between the English tongue, as spoken in the north of England, and the same tongue, as spoken in the west, as between the French spoken in Normandy and that of Gascogne, and Poictou . . .

The equally well-travelled William Marshall was later able to bear out this opinion. ' The languages of Europe are not more various, or scarcely ore different from each other, than are the dialects of husbandmen in different districts of this island.' One peregrinatory group which regularly encountered such problems was the assize judges whose office required them to make biannual tours around one of the six jurisdictions in the course of presiding over the criminal courts. The different vocabulary and pronunciation of people in the various regions could make verbal testimonies very difficult for them as 'foreigners' to comprehend. Certainly Roger North, who rode the western circuit after the Restoration, noticed how much more difficult it became to understand the dialects the further he went from London and he recorded some of 'the gross difference . . . in the speech of several counties, by which they may be known'. Even to local officials, the testi-mony of country folk before the courts could be very difficult to under-stand. In a sermon before the Suffolk assizes in 1618 the Ipswich preacher Samuel Ward advised magistrates of the need to be long-minded, to endure the rusticity and homelinesse of common people in giving evidence after their plaine fashion and faculty, in time, and multitude of words, happely with some absurdities of phrase and gestures, nor impatient towards their foolish affected eloquent tearmes, nor any thing else whereby the truth of their tale may be guessed at.

It is for this reason, however, that transcriptions of depositions given before the courts can provide such a vivid insight into the spontaneous speech of ordinary men and women in this period. Unfortunately, the value of such records is seriously impaired by the way in which the clerk of the court often glossed what was said and sometimes even replaced dialect words and expressions with conventional ones. A graphic example of this is afforded in the evidence given by a Yorkshire tradesman during a case before the court of Chancery at Westminster in 1609. The clerk went back over what he had taken down and deleted the word 'vurse' before replacing it with the standard 'horse'. Three years earlier, in a Star Chamber case brought up to Westminster from the West Country, the clerk who heard the word 'strayeshorne' simply wrote it out in large clear letters, so that there could be no ambiguity. The vicar of Box in Wiltshire, John Coren, was suing some of his parishioners for defamation after they had alleged that he had been spending too much time with Phillipa Bewshin, wife of the vicar of Claverton, Somerset. The neighbours had begun to talk, saying that he 'should be strayeshorne' or that 'he must be shorne strayer'.

Despite this heavy level of mediation between the actual words of the deponent and the resulting transcript, it is still possible in some cases to detect the popular voice sounding through the text. In September 1591, for example, John Massee, a tailor from Minster in Kent, was overheard to exclaim ' That there woulde never be a myrrie worlde before there were a newe alteracon. "And for my pecke of maulte, sett the kell one fyer, and by God's wounds, the queene ys a whore!"' About the same time, William Clarke, a minstrel, and William Charles, both of Hornchurch in Essex, were being censured for having said to their neighbour Hugh Wylcockes that he was 'a basket butcher and he should flea a cow in the wood with Alison's wife, meaning that he should have his pleasure of her'. On the evening of Monday, 4 September 1648, goodwife Northcliffe of Sowerby in Yorkshire was cooking in her kitchen when Samuel Smith, Nathan Townsend, and Robert Cham heard her say, ' "That is a sharpe thwitle. It cutts such thyn collops."'

In cases of personal abuse popular speech would often be at its most expressive. Hence, when, a little before Christmas 1587, Isabell Swan and Lawrence Thompson were walking together past the shop of George Smith in the high street of Wearmouth, County Durham, they met Anne Walton who said to Lawrence, ' "Will you presume to goe in a ladies companie?". Whereunto the said Isabell made aunswer, "I may as tite be a ladye as thou arte!"' At which point George Smith turned to Isabell and said, ' "Thou art a tanterband and a tanterbande whore!"' Equally fierce words were being exchanged at an alehouse in Bury, Lancashire, one day in September 1604 when Martin Kaye, a husbandman of the town, shouted at the landlord, Lawrence Whiteheade, ' "Thou arte a mutner, a sheepe stealer, and a pulterer!"' At Wakefield, in the West Riding, the inhabitants found their peace disturbed in December 1639 by Henry Dicconson, a yeoman from Bramley, bawling the insult, ' "Thou shakeragg blewe beard!"', at Henry Sikes of Hunslet.

When such insults and allegations were written down on paper in the form of a defamatory letter or scurrilous rhyme it becomes possible to see both the vocabulary and the pronunciation of provincial people who wrote as they spoke. Thus in May 1612 a group of Devonshire villagers, including Richard Fowler and John Yeo, scrawled out a libellous verse suggesting that Richard Painter and Mary Wise of neighbouring Launcells in Cornwall were guilty of fornication. Together with various phonetic spellings and local words, it demonstrates the replacement of 'f ' with 'v', characteristic of West Country speech, and suggests the pronunciation of 'Wise' to rhyme with 'feast' and 'November' with 'timber'. The composition, 'folded up in manner of a letter' and affixed to a horse which was tethered to a stile in the highway near its victims' home, began thus: I thought it fitt to write unto you all in a few talls, That all of you must remember the mowheis pals. How Richard Penter and Marie Wise, When they were at Yeo to the feast. Begin yf you will know the 29 of November, He proved himself a veri come timber. But yf there be anie that are willing to know, Let them aske of Dick Voller or els of John Yeo. And the will tell you in plaine tals, That the found them two out by the mowheis pals. The pals are bad and verie ferking, But the ould abed but a litle gerking.

In certain cases, especially those of slander perhaps, the validity of the whole cause might depend on the meaning of particular words which, because of their local or vulgar usage, were not generally known and understood by the court. One evening in 1629, for example, Elizabeth Poynton, Isabell Roberts, and Winifred Beardsley all dined together at the inn of Thomas Maylyn in the parish of St Mary's, Nottingham. After the meal, Roberts and Beardsley fell into an argument 'very lowde togeather' in which a number of those present overheard the one say to the other: ' "Thou sitest like a saynt. Thou art a little dule, but thou art as cunning as the great dule. But take heed the old dule catch thee not, for thou goest tetling and tatling from one house to another and thou art enough to sit a whole end of a towne togeather at debate or strife".' Clearly the bench did not know the meaning of the word 'dule', the import of which was crucial to Beardsley's claim to have been defamed. Thus, Elizabeth Poynton and two other witnesses, Sara Ludlam and Theodore Greanes, were brought forward to give their understanding of the term. Once enlightened, the counsel, or 'proctor', to the plaintiff, Mr Hatfield Reckles, could assert that 'when any body doth use in the[ir] speech the worde "dule", mencioned in the deposicions of the said three witnesses, the intention and meaninge of the party speakinge is of the devell, the common enemy of mankinde . . .'.

Students of regional dialect have long realized the importance of legal records in general, and defamation cases in particular, as sources of evidence for popular speech in former centuries. In the 1850s the canon and chancellor of York, James Raine, whose father had been a founder member of the Surtees Society and the editor of many extracts from documents relating to the north-east of England, began work on a substantial 'Glossary of the Northumbrian Dialect' which remained uncompleted on his death in 1896. Among hundreds of examples gleaned from ecclesiastical proceedings in the diocese of Durham, he discovered, for example, 'fosson', meaning 'use' or 'advantage', when he came across a case from 1601 in which one woman called another 'an arrant theefe, for I bought a whie at Durham and thou haist had the fooson of her ever since'. A 'dub', he noted, meant a reach, or piece of still water, as revealed when Isabel Walker said to Ralph Blakeston in 1624 that 'the devill and he danced in a dubb together and there the devill traled him by his head hare'. Interesting social customs lay behind words such as 'stang', or the name given in the north to the wooden pole used for carrying scolds. In 1609 a woman from Heighington heard a report that another 'did so much abuse her husband, as in reproch thereof, [by] her next neighbors was caried upon a stang about the town'.

Similarly, in 1912 an Essex clergyman, Andrew Clark, worked through some of the archdeaconry papers relating to his native county for the first half of the seventeenth century and brought to light many local words and expressions. A more recent analysis of cases from the quarter sessions and assizes from the Elizabethan period in Essex also throws up a variety of dialect words clearly in use well before lexicographers began systematically to record the local vernacular in the nineteenth century. It reveals certain vocabulary drawn from agricultural life such as 'boar's frank' (a pig pen), 'cronge' (a handle), and 'scavell' (a small spade); and others related to hunting and warrening, such as 'jebots' (clamorous horn notes blown to frighten game), 'muses' ( holes in a park fence for rabbits to pass through), and the verb 'to withstall' meaning to snare. It brings to light local terms related to weaving such as 'packlane' ( pack for wool) and 'bay chain' (type of wool), and the names for weapons, including a 'dag' ( hand-gun) and a 'loakstake' ( pikestaff ). Among other words it recovers are 'flue' (a mouth-pipe) and 'wholve' (a culvert), while 'to fetch a wanlace' meant to form an intercepting party, and a 'warp of ling' referred to four of these fish. Insight into pronunciation is also given in the rendering of expressions such as 'wossarwante' (whose servant), 'were fellen' (very villain), and 'worccelle' (wassail).76 By the same token, a small sample of suits taken from the splendid run of quarter sessions rolls from seventeenth-century Wiltshire unearths a completely different set of local words. A few of those relating to the cloth trade, for example, would include: 'cipers' (fine gauze), 'fardle' (bundle), 'harnys' (coarse linen), 'kiddier' (huckster), 'thrumes' (end of a weaver's warp).

Other forms of parochial record can be equally valuable as guides to both local vocabulary and pronunciation. The partially educated and semi-literate officials who often made entries in manorial rolls or local accounts, clearly wrote as they spoke in a broken and phonetic English which gives some insight into speech patterns. This is rarely more graphically illustrated than when the constable of Fixby, near Huddersfield, wrote 'omney beney' in his returns for April 1640. These documents of local administration can cast much light on traits of pronunciation. The churchwardens' accounts of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century London, for example, evidence the frequent and systematic use of certain spellings which distinguish them from written documents penned by the capital's learned elite at this time and appear to indicate some quite clear characteristics. Their orthography suggests, among other things, the pronunciation of a short 'o' as a short 'a', as in 'caffen' for coffin and 'band' for bond. Equally, a short 'a' seems often to have been sounded as a short 'e', as in 'Jenuarie' for January and 'perresh' for parish. Long 'a' and 'ai' were frequently replaced with 'i' or 'y': thus 'byes' for bays and 'rile' for rail. And 'ou' or 'ow' were often represented by 'u': thus 'shutt' for shout and 'fulle' for fowl. Meanwhile, a careful analysis of twenty-two sets of churchwardens' accounts of the period from Cornwall, Devon, Somerset, and Dorset, identifies nine clear characteristics of West Country pronunciation and grammatical form which consistently differentiate it from that of London. One contemporary was in so little doubt that the broad dialect of people from that part of the world was reflected in their writing that he claimed 'we see their jouring speech even upon their monuments and grave-stones'.

At the same time, dialect words were not infrequently used in such sources. Thus, from the corporation minutes of early Tudor York we hear of 'kirk' for church, 'lig' for lie, and the expression 'ilkan' for 'every one'. A set of archdeaconry records from Elizabethan Oxfordshire contains 'brat' for rubbish, 'earnes' for messages, and 'pack' for worthless person. The manorial rolls of Wakefield for the 1660s return a variety of terms from the West Riding countryside, such as 'shot' (corner of land), 'hebble' (foot bridge), mistal (cow shed), 'nabbi' ( hill), and 'slakki' (hollow). The parish registers of Bakewell in Derbyshire, beginning in 1677, reveal as many examples of another local vocabulary, including 'nugg' ( pin), 'stale' ( handle), 'piggin' (small pail ), 'wiskit' ( basket), 'droughts' (teams), and 'urchants' ( hedgehogs).

In the same way, personal manuscript writings such as diaries, account books, and letters can be suggestive of particular dialects and idiolects. For example, the devotional treatises of Robert Parkyn, curate of Adwick-le-Street near Doncaster until 1569, have been said to represent 'some of the most authentic specimens of dialect prose dating from the mid-Tudor period', in which the author 'continues unaffectedly to use many . . . dialect forms even when copying the works of recent southern writers like More and Stapleton'. The diary of Henry Machyn provides the very different example of a London merchant-taylor of the same period. If Machyn's spelling can be taken to reflect his pronunciation then he seems to have dropped his 'hs' in cases such as 'olles' for holes, but sounded them in others, as in 'hoythe' for oath. In some instances the 'th' sound might be pronounced as 'd', as in 'doys' for those, and in others as 'f ', as in 'frust' for thrust. Sometimes a 't' sound might be pronounced 'th', as in 'a-boythe' for about, and a 'v' might be sounded as 'f ', as in 'a-boyffh' for above. The account book of Richard Bax, a yeoman farmer who lived near Dorking, Surrey, in the mid-seventeenth century, suggests the articulation of the letter 'i' as an 'e' in words such as dinner ('denner' ), timber ('tember' ) and mill ('mell' ), as well as the sounding of a 'c' in words such as sawing ('scaeing' ), supper ('scoper' ), and sold ('scoulde' ).

Dialects could vary, particularly in terms of their vocabulary, not only between regions and localities but also between particular trades and groups of workers. Occupational speech patterns were thus superim-posed upon an already complex configuration of geographically determined ones and individuals might belong simultaneously to a number of separate linguistic communities. Most specialized trades and crafts had their own words for their particular tools and practices and in many cases different professions might use different terms to describe the same object. 'Each company would be thought a little nation | And coyn a dialect in their own fashion', commented one seventeenth-century poet. There were, noted William Congreve in 1695, 'country-clowns, sailers, tradesmen, jockeys, gamesters, and such like, who make use of cants or peculiar dialects in their several arts and vocations'. In 1688 the Cheshire gentleman, Randle Holme, included short glossaries of the terms peculiar to most of the major trades and callings in his monumental Academy of Armoury. But when Samuel Johnson came to compile his famous English dictionary two generations later, he was compelled to omit this bewildering terminology of 'art and manufacture' owing to its sheer size and the fact that so little of it was written down. 'I could not visit caverns to learn the miner's language, nor take a voyage to perfect my skill in the dialect of navigation, nor visit the warehouses of merchants, and shops of artificers, to gain the names of wares, tools and operations, of which no mention is found in books.'