North Riding. What be’st thoo, leyfe?
Friesic. Hwat bist dhow, libben?
Standard English. What art thou, life?
North Riding. Fra t’ scepter’d king ti t’ slaave.
Friesic. Fen de scepterde kening ta da slave.
Standard English. From the sceptred king to the slave.
For a list of words common to the English, Dutch, and Scandinavian languages, see Trans. Phil. Soc. part i. 1858.
Much that is written and spoken at the present day is quite over the heads of our country people. Take the following, from one of our best authors:—‘He who performs every part of his business in due course and season, suffers no part of time to escape without profit. And it is well always to regard the quality rather than the quantity of your work, and bear in mind, if you delay till to-morrow what ought to be done to-day, you overcharge to-morrow with a burden which belongs not to it,’ Our country folk would fully grasp the above if put to them something like the following:—‘Him ’at diz a daay’s wark iv a daay, dizn’t waste his tahm, an’ mannishes ti git a bit foor hissel. An’ yan awlus owt ti aim ti deea t’ bit ’at yan diz deea fo’st-class, mair ’an aiming ti clash thruff a seet o’ wark onny road; an’ think on, if ya lig o’ yah sahd whahl ti morn what ya owt ti-deea ti daay, ya saddle ti morn wiv a boddun ’at it’s neea call ti bear.’
Hah am the rose o’ Sharon and the lily o’ the valley.
In a work kindly lent me by my friend Dr. Johnson of Lancaster, and published some years ago for the Philological Society, the author, quoting from Latham on the English Language, gives the above as a specimen of North Riding dialect—nay, more, of Cleveland itself. Surely the writer can never have spent a day in any part of Cleveland, for the sentence given contains but twelve words, seven of which are distinctly not Clevelandic.