Page:Glossary of words in use in Cornwall.djvu/141

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X ANTRIM AND DOWN GLCSSARY. work by Mr. David Patterson, The Provincialisms of Belfaet pointed out and corrected. Belfast: 1860. In this work the writer calls attention to the various classes of words that are wrongly pronounced, and gives long lists of these words. He also gives a list of words not to be met with in our ordinary English dictionaries. In my Glossary I have got some words from Mr. D. Patterson's lists, some from the Ollminick, and a few, principally obsolete, from local his- tories, such as HaLTiia'a History of Dotff7i (1744), Dubourdieu's Survey of Dawn (1802), and McSkimin's History of Carrickfergus (1823). But most of the words and phrases have been collected orally either by myself or by friends in different country districts, who have kindly sent me in lists, and whom I would now thank for the help they have given. Although not necessarily a part of this work, I have thought it well to add a word on the subject of the Irish language as still spoken in Antrim and Down. It has lately been said that there is no county in Ireland in which some Irish is not still spoken, not revived Irish, but in continuity from the ancient inhabitants of the country.. In 1802 the Rev. John Dubourdieu, in his Survey of Down^ thus writes: '* The English language is so general that every person speaks it ; but, notwithstanding, the Irish language is much used in the moun- tainous parts, which in this, as in most other countries, seem to have been the retreat of the ancient inhabitants." I have made enquiry this year (1880), and a correspondent sends me the following note from the mountainous district in the south of Down : — " There are a good many Irish-speaking people in the neigh- bourhood of Hilltown, but I think nearly all of them can speak English j when, however, they frequent fairs in the upper parts of the Co. Armagh, for instance at Newtownhamilton or Crossmaglen, they meet numbers of people who speak English very imperfectly, and with these people the Down men converse altogether in Irish." In the Co. of Antrim the district known as ' the Glens,' in the N.E. of the county, with the adjacent-lying island of Eathlin, has remained to some extent an Irish or Gaelic-speaking district. In the course of some years, about 1850, Mr. Robert MacAdam, the accomplished editor of The Ulster Journal of Archceology, made a collection chiefly