It is sometimes said that the use of dialect makes the appeal of poetry
provincial instead of national or universal. This is only true when the
dialect poet is a pedant and obscures his meaning by fantastic spellings.
The Lowland Scots element in 'Auld Lang Syne' has not prevented it from
becoming the song of friendship of the Anglo-Saxon race all the world
over. Moreover, the provincial note in poetry or prose is far from being
a bad thing. In the 'Idylls' of Theocritus it gave new life to Greek
poetry in the third century before Christ, and it may render the same high
service to English poetry to-day or to-morow. The rise of Provincial
schools of literature, interpreting local life in local idiom, in all
parts of the British Isles and in the Britain beyond the seas, is a goal
worth striving for; such a literature, so far from impeding the progress
of the literature in the standard tongue, would serve only to enrich it in
spirit, substance and form.

1. 'Yorkshire Dialect Poems', 1673-1915 (Sedgwick and Jackson 1916)

2. 'Reminiscences'

3. J. Dover Wilson, Writing in the 'Athenaeum' under the pseudonym
"Muezzin," February, 1917. The quotation is from one of four articles,
entitled "Prospects in English Literature," to which the ideas set forth
in this Preface owe much.

4. "York Plays": The Building of the Ark.




A Dalesman's Litany