Shrill nightingales? "shill", "shrill", and "sh'ill" in the dialect poems of William Barnes

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dc.contributor.authorBurton, T.
dc.date.issued2016
dc.description.abstractWilliam Barnes’s dialect poems provide ample evidence (unnoticed by lexicographers) of the survival in Dorset in the nineteenth century of the complete range of medieval senses of the words shill and shrill, both positive and negative. The senses for the adjective fall into four groups (with corresponding senses for the adverb): (a) ‘clear, audible’; (b) ‘loud, resonant’; (c) ‘melodious, sweet-sounding, pleasing to the ear’; (d) ‘high-pitched, piercing, sharp’. None of these senses can be restricted to one particular spelling, and it is impossible to know whether Barnes and his publishers regarded shill and shrill as separate, unrelated words or as different forms of the same word. The survival of the complete range of senses in this one area in the south-west of England offers, nevertheless, a remarkable testimony to the resilience of the language outside the mainstream, and should prompt further enquiry as to whether any of the earlier senses that are obsolete in present-day standard English may have survived in other regions also.
dc.description.statementofresponsibilityT. L. Burton
dc.identifier.citationAnglia: Zeitschrift fuer Englische Philologie, 2016; 134(2):239-259
dc.identifier.doi10.1515/ang-2016-0025
dc.identifier.issn0340-5222
dc.identifier.issn1865-8938
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/2440/108304
dc.language.isoen
dc.publisherMax Niemeyer Verlag GmbH
dc.rightsCopyright status unknown
dc.source.urihttps://doi.org/10.1515/ang-2016-0025
dc.titleShrill nightingales? "shill", "shrill", and "sh'ill" in the dialect poems of William Barnes
dc.typeJournal article
pubs.publication-statusPublished

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