Jess wur a vool, but Lawksies!
Thur's zights aw'm wusser'n he!
It minds I o' Guy Vawks's,
Thuck vire o' he's to zee!
'Twur down in veyther's archet,
A gashly smother 'twur,
Vor when you comes to scarch it,
Thur be a zim to vur!
But 'twern't no zart o' use on't,
A zoon beginned to sneeze—
An' when I hires moor news on't,
I'll tell 'ee how a be's!
G. E. D.
[APPENDIX I]
A Bibliography of Works relating to Wilts or illustrating its Dialect.
Most of the works comprised in the following list have lately been read through, and compared with our own Glossary, and references to many of them will be found in the foregoing pages. Some may contain a more or less comprehensive Wiltshire Glossary; others only a few words. Some belong absolutely to our own county; others merely to the same group of dialects. But all are of value as bearing on the subject. The Berks, Dorset, Gloucester, Hants, and Somerset Glossaries of course contain a large proportion of words and uses that are either absolutely identical with ours, or vary but slightly therefrom, while such works as Amaryllis, Dark, Lettice Lisle, and Jonathan Merle on the one side, and Old Country Words and English Plant-names on the other, are full of examples and illustrations of the South-Western Folk-speech. Even where their scene is laid somewhat outside the borders of Wilts itself, the dialect, with but trifling alterations, would pass as ours.
S. Editha, sive Chronicon Vilodunense, im Wiltshire Dialekt, aus MS. Cotton. Faustina B III. Herausgegeben von C. Horstmann. Heilbronn: Gebr. Henninger, 1883. A handy reprint of this fifteenth century Chronicle.