THE GEOGRAPHICAL OR ETHNOLOGICAL POSITION OF SHEFFIELD AS REGARDS DIALECT.
In order to determine in some degree the elements which have entered into the composition of the dialect spoken in this district, it may be useful to give a sketch of the position which Sheffield occupied before the Norman Conquest.[1]
About six miles to the south-west of Sheffield, towards the high moors, is a little place called Ringinglowe.[2] Immediately above it, still higher up, is a stretch of moorland called White Moss. In this moss, or moor, a stream rises which on modern maps is called Limb (properly Lim) Brook.[3] The brook flows through Whirlow, and under Whirlow Bridge. It passes through a narrow valley, now oddly known as Ryecroft Glen (there are no glens in Mid-England), and then, crossing under the Abbeydale Road, it meets another
- ↑ The greater part of the remarks which follow appeared in a paper entitled 'The Vale of the Sheaf,' which I contributed to Notes and Queries on the 15th of November, 1886.
- ↑ In a survey of Hallamshire dated 1574 it is referred to as 'a great heape of stones called Ringinglawe; from wch one Thomas Lee had taken and led away a greate sort of stones: being by one sicke or brook which parts Derbyshire and Hallamshire' (Hunter's Hallamshire, p. 12). These stones were doubtless then used as meres or boundaries, but originally the heap may have been a round burial mound, or mound surrounded by a circle, as the word Ringinglowe suggests
- ↑ Hunter calls if Limb Dyke. In the modern 'Castle Dyke' there is evidently a reference to a fortified position.
