Daisy
18 Dec 2010
Language / The Future of Polish Language [179]
Polonius3
My great grandparents in rural Dorset still spoke Wessex dialect as a first language, it was still spoken in rural areas of Dorset and Somerset well into the 20th century, I remember my great grandparents speaking it. Thomas Hardy referred to it in a poem about WWI
Polonius3
My great grandparents in rural Dorset still spoke Wessex dialect as a first language, it was still spoken in rural areas of Dorset and Somerset well into the 20th century, I remember my great grandparents speaking it. Thomas Hardy referred to it in a poem about WWI
I walked in loamy Wessex lanes, afar
From rail-track and from highway, and I heard
In field and farmstead many an ancient word
Of local lineage like 'Thu bist,' 'Er war,'
'Ich woll,' 'Er sholl,' and by-talk similar,
Nigh as they speak who in this month's moon gird
At England's very loins, thereunto spurred
By gangs whose glory threats and slaughters are.
Then seemed a Heart crying: 'Whosoever they be
At root and bottom of this, who flung this flame
Between kin folk kin tongued even as are we,
Sinister, ugly, lurid, be their fame;
May their familiars grow to shun their name,
And their brood perish everlastingly.'
From rail-track and from highway, and I heard
In field and farmstead many an ancient word
Of local lineage like 'Thu bist,' 'Er war,'
'Ich woll,' 'Er sholl,' and by-talk similar,
Nigh as they speak who in this month's moon gird
At England's very loins, thereunto spurred
By gangs whose glory threats and slaughters are.
Then seemed a Heart crying: 'Whosoever they be
At root and bottom of this, who flung this flame
Between kin folk kin tongued even as are we,
Sinister, ugly, lurid, be their fame;
May their familiars grow to shun their name,
And their brood perish everlastingly.'
