Faculty Publications
Walter E. Haigh, Author of A New Glossary of the Huddersfield Dialect
Document Type
Article
Journal/Book/Conference Title
Tolkien Studies
Volume
4
First Page
184
Last Page
188
Abstract
In 1928, J.R.R. Tolkien published a six-page Foreword to A New Glossary of the Dialect of the Huddersfield District, written by Walter Edward Haigh, a long-time resident of that area. This dialect was of great interest to Tolkien as a philologist, since it comes from an area where the speech of the North and of the western Midlands overlap, and bears the linguistic marks of invasions from the Scandinavian countries, the fourteenth-century revival of Anglo-Saxon literature, and the Norman conquest. Tolkien is full of praise for the wide range of the glossary, its inclusion of both rare and common words, and the “excellence, humour, and idiomatic raciness of its illustrative quotations” (xiv). He surely must have nodded in agreement with Haigh's own unequivocal statement that a local dialect “is as worthy of our care and pride as are our ancient buildings, and more than as intimately useful,” and his encouragement of bilingualism in standard English and one's ancestral dialect (Glossary viii).
Department
Rod Library
Original Publication Date
1-1-2007
DOI of published version
10.1353/tks.2007.0009
Recommended Citation
Croft, Janet Brennan, "Walter E. Haigh, Author of A New Glossary of the Huddersfield Dialect" (2007). Faculty Publications. 6190.
https://scholarworks.uni.edu/facpub/6190
