The ridiculous charge has been made that Bret Harte’s dialect is not Californian or even American, but is simply cockney English. The only reason ever given for this statement is that Bret Harte uses the word “which” in its cockney sense, and that this use was never known in America.
Which I wish to remark,
And my language is plain,
is the most familiar instance, and others might be cited. Thus, in Mr. Thompson’s Prodigal we have this dialogue between the father of the prodigal and a grave-digger:—
“‘Did you ever in your profession come across Char-les Thompson?’
“‘Thompson be damned,’ said the grave-digger, with great directness.
“‘Which, if he hadn’t religion, I think he is,’ responded the old man.”
This use of “which” is indeed now identified with the London cockney, but it may still be heard in the eastern counties of England, whence, no doubt, it was imported to this country. Though far from common in the United States, it is used, according to the authorities cited below, in the mountainous parts of Virginia,[110] in West Virginia,[111] in the mountain regions of Kentucky,[112] especially in Eastern Kentucky,[113] and in the western part of Arkansas.[114]
Professor Edward A. Allen of the University of Missouri says that this use of “which” is “not Southern, but Western.”
Moreover, upon this point also we can cite the authority of Richard Malcolm Johnston, for the cockney use of “which” frequently occurs in his tales of Middle Georgia; as, for instance, in these sentences:—
“And which I wouldn’t have done that nohow in the world ef it could be hendered.”