an interesting book entitled _Shakespeare, his Birthplace and its
Neighbourhood_, by J.R. Wise, there is a chapter on "The
Provincialisms of Shakespeare," from which I beg leave to give a
short extract by way of specimen.

"There is the expressive compound 'blood-boltered' in _Macbeth_
(Act IV, Sc. 1), which the critics have all thought meant simply
blood-stained. Miss Baker, in her _Glossary of Northamptonshire
Words_, first pointed out that 'bolter' was peculiarly a
Warwickshire word, signifying to clot, collect, or cake, as snow
does in a horse's hoof, thus giving the phrase a far greater
intensity of meaning. And Steevens, too, first noticed that in the
expression in _The Winter's Tale_ (Act III, Sc. 3), 'Is it a boy or
a child?'--where, by the way, every actor tries to make a point,
and the audience invariably laughs--the word 'child' is used, as is
sometimes the case in the midland districts, as synonymous with
girl; which is plainly its meaning in this passage, although the
speaker has used it just before in its more common sense of either
a boy or a girl."

In fact, the _English Dialect Dictionary_ cites the phrase "is it a
lad or a child?" as being still current in Shropshire; and duly states
that, in Warwickshire, "dirt collected on the hairs of a horse's leg
and forming into hard masses is said to _bolter_." Trench further
points out that many of our pure Anglo-Saxon words which lived on into
the formation of our early English, subsequently dropped out of our
usual vocabulary, and are now to be found only in the dialects. A good
example is the word _eme_, an uncle (A.S. _{-e}am_), which is rather
common in Middle English, but has seldom appeared in our literature
since the tune of Drayton. Yet it is well known in our Northern