a matter of convenience, too, the classification by counties has obvious advantages upon which it is unnecessary to dwell.

Dr. J. A. H. Murray, in the Historical Introduction to his admirable and exhaustive work on "The Dialect of the Southern Counties of Scotland," published by the Philological Society in 1873, arranges the English of Scotland, or "Lowland Scotch," in three periods: the first from the earliest known specimens to about 1475, during which time it was identical with the literary Northern English; the second from 1475 to the Union of the kingdoms, during which the Scotch, as a national language, both culminated and became obsolete; and the third from 1707 to the present day, during which it has survived as a cluster of popular dialects. After pointing out that the written language of Scotland became, by 1707, identical with that of England, he says: "It is not to be supposed, however, that the spoken language had undergone a similar change.

The Lowland Scotch had ceased to be used for literary purposes, but it still remained the common tongue of the people; and in this third period of its history it experienced a brilliant revival as the vehicle of ballad and lyric poetry. . . . These productions of the third period are not, however, of exactly the same value as witnesses to the contemporary spoken tongue of the people, as were the Scotch laws, the works of Barbour, Henry, or Dunbar. They are more or less conventional representations. To a greater or lesser extent they are almost all contaminated with the influence of the literary English-the language which their authors have been educated to write-whose rules of grammatical inflection and construction they impose upon the Scotch, to the corruption of the vernacular idiom."

These cautions are necessary in studying the works enumerated in the following list. The division into periods above indicated, and the relation which the third period of the Scottish language bears to that of England, will account for the fact that the present catalogue contains no work earlier than the beginning of the eighteenth century. The year 1707 has been taken as the date of demarcation.

Dr. Murray says "it is customary to speak of the Scotch as one dialect (or language), whereas there are in Scotland several distinct types, and numerous varieties of the Northern tongue, differing from each other markedly in pronunciation, and to some extent also in the vocabulary and grammar. The dialects of adjacent districts pass into each other with more or less of gradation, but those of remote districts (say, for example, Buchan, Teviotdale, and Ayr) are at first almost unintelligible to each other." Dr. Murray divides the Lowland Scottish dialects (which even now are spoken only over about half the area of Scotland, the Gaelic still surviving in the North and West) into three groups, and these again into eight minor divisions, or sub-dialects, each having numerous local varieties.

The North-Eastern group embraces the dialects north of the Tay; the Central from the Tay and the Gaelic border, south to the Irish Sea on the West and the Tweed on the East, excluding the counties south of this river; and the Southern group is represented by the dialect of the Border Counties, extending from the Tweed to the Solway, and from the Cheviots to the Locher Moss.

I have had valuable assistance in the preparation of this list from Dr. Murray, whose inability from lack of leisure to undertake the work himself, as was originally intended and announced, no one regrets more than myself. Dr. Murray desires to acknowledge especially the assistance of Mr. William Currie, of Galashiels, who, in response to an appeal through the newspapers, collected a large

Poor Rabbin's Ollminick for the Toun of Billfawst, containing varrious different things which ivvery parson ought t'be acquentit with. 1861. Wrote doun, prentet, an' put out, jist the way the people spakes. By Billy Mc.Cart, of the County Doun side that uset to be; but now of the Entherim road, toarst the Cave hill. Price sixpence. 1861.

The same for 1862 and 1863.

All published. This almanac is entirely in Ulster dialect, and contains many short tales and ballads, as well as popular sayings and proverbs.

Poems, Songs, and Ballads. By Henry Mc.D. Flecher.

1866. Pp. 240.

Belfast,

Contains pieces in Ulster dialect, and a short "GLOSSARY of Provincial Terms, &c."

A History of the County of Down, &c.

By Alexander Knox. M.D. Pp. viii. and 724. Dublin, 1875.

Contains at pages 49, 50 a short list of dialect words in common use. Origin and Characteristics of the People in the Counties of Down and Antrim. Read in the sub-section of Anthropology at the meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science in Belfast, August 22, 1874. By the Rev. Canon Hume, D.C.L., LL.D., F.S.A.

Notices the dialect of Ulster.

Wexford.

The Journal of the Kilkenny and South-east of Ireland Archæological Society for 1862.

Contains two long articles, edited by Herbert F. Hore, Esq., on the dialect and other characteristics of the inhabitants of the baronies of Forth and Bargy, county of Wexford. An address, written in the local dialect, to Earl Mulgrave, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, who visited Wexford in 1836, is printed in the notes to one of the papers. The same journal, for October, 1876, has a paper by Lady Wilde, p. 129.

The Banks of the Boro: a Chronicle of the County of Wexford. By Patrick Kennedy. London and Dublin, 1867. 8vo, pp. 373. Contains a GLOSSARY (pp. 6) of some words in common use. Evenings on the Duffrey. By Patrick Kennedy. Dublin and London, 1869. 8vo, pp. 404.

Contains a short "GLOSSARY of Irish and Corrupt Expressions." Transactions of the Liverpool Literary and Philosophical Society. Paper on the Dialect of Forth and Bargy, by J. A. Picton, in the volume for Session lvi., 1866-7.

A Glossary, with some Pieces of Verse, of the old Dialect of the English Colony in the Baronies of Forth and Bargy, County of Wexford, Ireland; formerly collected by Jacob Poole. Edited by William Barnes, B.D. London, J. Russell Smith. 1867. Pp. 139.

SLANG AND CANT.

IN preparing this list I have been much assisted by the catalogue of Cant and Slang works in Bohn's edition of Lowndes, and by the Bibliography appended to Mr. J. Camden Hotten's Slang Dictionary. I have, however, arranged the several publications in chronological order, revised and verified the titles, and made considerable additions. J. H. NODAL.

Date of Publication.

113

99

1565. AWDELEY, JOHN. The Fraternitye of Vacabondes, as well of ruflyng Vacabones as of beggerly, of Women as of Men, of Gyrles as of Boyes, with their proper Names and Qualities, with a Description of the Crafty Company of Cousoners and Shifters, also the XXV. Orders of Knaves, confirmed by Cocke Lovell. 8vo. Imprinted at London by John Awdeley, dwellyng in little Britayne streete without Aldersgate.

Reprinted in 12mo in 1813; and by the Early English Text Society, in its Extra Series, in 1869 (price 7s. 6d.).

1566. HARMAN, THOMAS. Caveat or Warening for Common Cursetors, vulgarly called Vagabones, set forth for the utilitie and profit of his naturall countrey, augmented and inlarged by the first author thereof; whereunto is added the tale of the second taking of the counterfeit Crank, with the true report of his behaviour and also his punishment for his so dissembling, most marvellous to the hearer or reader thereof. Newly imprinted. Quarto.

Contains the earliest known Dictionary of the Cant Language, under the title of the "Peltinge Speche or Peddeler's Frenche." Four editions were printed, viz., the first in 1566, the second and third in 1567, and the fourth, "augmented and inlarged by the first author," by Henry Middleton, in 1573. One hundred copies were reprinted by Triphook in 1814, and a copy of this reprint was priced by Mr. Quaritch in 1874 at 27s. The book, however, was issued along with Awdeley's Fraternitye of Vacabondes, in the Extra Series of the Early English Text Society for 1869 (price 7s. 6d.), edited by Mr. E. Viles and Mr. F. J. Furnivall, M.A.

1577. HARRISON, WILLIAM. Description of the Island of Britain (prefixed to Holinshed's Chronicle). Two volumes, folio.

The Second Book, edited from the first two editions of Holinshed's Chronicle, 1577, 1587, by F. J. Furnivall, M.A., was reprinted for the New Shakspere Society in 1877, under the title of Harrison's Description of England in Shakspere's Youth. An account of Beggars and Vagabonds appears in Chap. 10 "Of provision made for the poore," and Chap. 11"Of sundrie kinds of punishment appointed for malefactors," pp. 212-233.

1845. BROWN, Captain THOMAS, M.W.S. A Dictionary of the Scottish Language; comprehending all the words in common use in the writings of Scott, Burns, Wilson, Ramsay, and other popular Scottish authors. 12mo. London, published by Simpkin and Marshall (Manchester printed).

This was originally issued with the first edition of Wilson's Tales of the Borders, published in quarto, in Manchester, about 1810.

1855. Hints for Scotchmen: Scotticisms Corrected. (Never too late to learn.) 12mo. London, J. F. Shaw.

1855. PATERSON, JAMES. Origin of the Scots and the Scottish Language. Edinburgh, J. Menzies.

A second edition published by W. P. Nimmo in 1858. A book best avoided.

1858. A Handbook of the Scottish Language, a compendious Dictionary. By Cleishbotham the Younger. 8vo.

1869. STARKE, JAMES, F.S.A. Notes on the Scottish Language, in the Transactions of the Dumfries and Galloway Natural History and Antiquarian Society for 1866-7 (pp. 49-59). Dumfries, W. R. Mc.Diarmid and Co.

*1873. MURRAY, Dr. JAMES A. H. The Dialect of the Southern Counties of Scotland: its Pronunciation, Grammar, and Historical Relations. With an Appendix on the present limits of the Gaelic and Lowland Scotch, and the Dialectical Divisions of the Lowland Tongue. And a Linguistical Map of Scotland. Philological Society's Transactions for 1870-72. Also published separately.

(B.) WORKS WHICH ILLUSTRATE THE DIALECTS OF

THE COUNTIES.

Date of Publication.

Aberdeenshire.

1742. FORBES, ROBERT. Ajax, his Speech to the Grecian Knabbs, attempted in broad Buchans. By R. F., gent. To which is added a Journal to Portsmouth and a Shop-Bill in the same dialect, with a Key.

This work has been frequently reprinted. There were subsequent editions in 1755, 1761, 1765, 1767, 1785, and 1791. In an edition published by A. Brown and Co., Aberdeen, pp. 30, the Key or GLOSSARY occupies pp. 23-30.