'local terms and sentences.' The book has been a favourite amongst the people of Sheffield. It is full of touches of broad humour, but one fails to see in it any true picture of the manners and customs of the old people of Hallamshire. There is a flavour of grimy streets, of smoke and squalor, and of the unlovely lives of knife-grinders and cutlers all through the book. One misses, as it were, the scent of new-mown hay, and the voice of the neighbouring yeoman or of the village peasant is not heard. The talk is always the talk of the grinding 'wheel' and of the street. But By water was right in portraying the manners and the speech of the men whom he knew best. His tiny glossary of two pages, and the comparatively few rare or obsolete words to be found in his work, show that his mind was not set upon unearthing or recording the curiosities of language, if indeed he possessed the power of doing so. The Sheffield Dialect is, nevertheless, the best if not the only written example we possess of the folk-speech of the district, and in years to come it will be valued as a very curious record.
In the same 'Memoir' Mr. Middleton tells us that about the year 1859 Bywater was honoured with a visit from Prince Louis Lucien Bonaparte, who desired him 'to translate the Songs (sic) of Solomon into the Sheffield dialect for him. This he did, and was favoured with a dozen copies from the Prince. He, however, when he saw them, regretted having reduced them to such a ridiculous appearance.' His Imperial Highness kindly sent me a copy of this little work, with permission to reprint it either wholly or partially. After due consideration, however, I decided, for several reasons, not to republish it.
Two specimens, the one in prose and the other in verse, are here extracted from Bywater's Sheffield Dialect. The first is taken from a dialogue describing the life of the Sheffield apprentice of a past generation. It may be called—
The Apprentice.
OUD SAMMA SQUAREJOINT : O say, Jerra, heah's different toimes for prentis lads nah, thrubbe wot they wor when thee an me wor prentis, isn't ther, oud lad?
JERRA FLATBACK : Hah, they'n better toimes on't nah, booath e heitin and clooas ; we'n had menni a mess a nettle porridge an brawls on a Sunda mo'nin, for us brekfast ; an it wor nobbut a sup a hot watter tern uppa sum wotcake, we
