button to main menu  Clarke's Survey of the Lakes, 1787

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Page xxv:-
shouts as they went into battle, were not forgot in the beginning of this century; since Lord Viscount Dundee, as he began the battle at the Pass of Gillicrankie, encouraged his men with them in the contest between King William and the House of Stewart. Applicable to this subject, and to the uniformity of manners from uniformity of circumstances, is, that robbery is not considered as shameful amongst the Arabs; nor was it, as we learn from the old poets, amongst the Greeks in more remote times, nor, as history uniformly tells us, amongst the Borderers. In addition to history, tradition, amongst other things, tells; "that a woman had two sons; as long as her provisions lasted, she set them regularly on the table; but as soon as they were finished, she brought them forth two swords, which she placed upon the table, and said, Sons, I have no meat for you, go seek your dinner." So familiar a thing was rapine!
When I said elsewhere that Solitude preserved language from change, I might have added Customs also: Amongst the many living examples of this, I need instance none but that of the celebration of Christmas. In proportion as you advance into the more lonely and mountainous districts, so much the more is the ancient fashion of that festival perfect; the numbers of pies, and of rural attendants on conviviality increased; the waits with their fiddles pass from village to village; and the winter merry-nights (as they are called,) supply the want of the wakes, which are common (at other seasons indeed,) in the more Southern counties.
Thus have I endeavoured to give an idea of those customs amongst which I was educated, and of some far older than the present age of men. I am apprehensive that I shall be accused of having descended to trifles unworthy of notice: Let it be remembered, however, that great things have their connection with, if not often their birth from trifles, and that reasoning finds a fund of analogies in unimportant objects. I will however frankly confess, that I have mentioned several customs which are not peculiar to thee counties, that I have omitted several that are so, and that the whole is in an undigested state. My excuse for the first, is that I wished, by comparisons of things that could be called peculiar, to prompt others to a more ample investigation of so entertaining a subject, as that of resemblance of manners in different countries, and to attempt the investigation of its causes from history, either general or particular. With regard to the second, I only say, that the bounds of an Introduction did not correspond with it, and that those peculiarities will be found more at large in the history of the places to which they belong. My apology for the third is, that I was not writing a regular Essay, but throwing out a few hints, which alluded to a part of the design of the following Work.
  dialects
  etymology

IV. I come now to my fourth paragraph, or to that which respects the dialects of these parts. In a subject which opens so wide a field as this does, it cannot well be expected; but even though I touch upon its particular parts in a very slight manner, I must occasionally meddle, according to my general plan, with things that are not merely confined to it. There needs nothing else to prove how negligent an established language is of its general terms, than an examination of numberless words in the English tongue, and examining their derivation and composition. Such an examination will be most easily performed by consulting the works of Lexicographers, and then observing how obsolete the original or component parts of many common words are become. Neither will any one, conversant in history, be at a loss in accounting for the relicks of various languages intermingled with ours: The words compounded of Latin prepositions, and Saxon or French verbs and substantives, are a living instance of the heterogeneous mixture. Such things I therefore pass by: but when I said that it was perhaps not unworthy of a thinking mind to observe how words exiled from one language still retain their original signification in another of a kindred stock, I meant to be a little more particular. For if Dutch and English words were found by Busbequius, Ambassador from the Emperor to the Ottoman Court in Taurica Chersonesus, we may fairly infer, that languages which have kept company through so many nations must have been very intimate. But to return to my purpose: Bleke in the Dutch is
pale;
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