Arthur Ransome and the Dialect of Norfolk

The Buckingham Journal of Language and Linguistics 2015 Volume 8 pp 79-98 ARTHUR RANSOME AND THE DIALECT OF NORFOLK Graeme Davis University of Buckingham [email protected] ABSTRACT Arthur Ransome provides information about the dialect of the English county of Norfolk as it was actually spoken in the 1930s. Two of his novels (Coot Club and The Big Six) are set on the Norfolk Broads. In these he offers some Norfolk vocabulary within the reported speech of some of his characters, along with some direct reflection on the dialect. However his masterpiece of Norfolk dialect is within Coots in the North (his unfinished novel, not published during his lifetime) where he presents what is in effect an extended Norfolk dialogue of over two-hundred lines. Ransome was an astute observer of language, and records the Norfolk dialogue with apparent accuracy and without contrivance. 1. INTRODUCTION Norfolk dialect is a Southern English dialect once commonplace throughout the county of Norfolk and of which fragments survive in use today. There is considerable overlap with the dialect of neighbouring Suffolk, and several nineteenth century accounts described the two together as East Anglia dialect. Twentieth century writers made the distinction between Norfolk and Suffolk. Arthur Ransome, a resident of Suffolk, is clear that his Coots are speaking the dialect of Norfolk. Norfolk dialect has a history as long as the English settlement of the British Isles, though with few texts to preserve it. Horatio Nelson tells us “I am a Norfolk man, and glory in being so”, and in the rare occasions when his words are recorded verbatim it is possible that we glimpse the Norfolk dialect of the second half of the eighteenth century. For example his words to Hardy “Do you anchor” should be interpreted as a Norfolk imperative, not a Standard English interrogative (“Anchor!” not “are you anchoring?”) As all English regional dialects, Norfolk declined abruptly during the nineteenth century, with many of the philologists and antiquarians then recording it aware that they were capturing something which was dying. Today there are people in Norfolk with a sound system influenced by the dialect and who use a few words of the dialect, perhaps as a matter of conscious choice reflecting 79 ARTHUR RANSOME AND THE DIALECT OF NORFOLK an expression of regional identity. Many Norfolk residents will make a conscious decision to use a Norfolk dialect word or a Norfolk phrase which displays syntax different to Standard English. Norfolk is often a form of language which is in part learnt and used as an affirmation of regional pride. Most records of Norfolk dialect were produced after the decline of the dialect. Among the nineteenth century studies of Norfolk are dictionaries (of what they term East Anglia dialect) by Robert Forby (1830), John Greaves Nall (1866) and Walter Rye (1895), the latter in the English Dialect Society’s series of (mostly) county-by-county dialect glossaries. These dictionaries preserve what the authors regard as distinctive lexis. While there are some wider language notes both in print and on the internet these are not extensive. Written texts in the dialect (including attempts to write down spoken Norfolk) are scant. Those texts that do exist are frequently in part artificial in that they present a density of dialect forms within a passage that is scarcely credible for the date of their composition. In effect they present Norfolk not as it was at the time of a particular text but as the writers think it might have been a century or more before, or as it might perhaps be in their day in some hypothetical Norfolk village untouched by the communication of the age. Frequently the dialect as it is presented is best regarded as a form of language play where the form of the dialect is more important than the meaning. Inevitably such use is frequently comic. Thus The Eastern Daily Press published in 1893 Broad Norfolk, a volume reprinting articles and letters in the dialect previously published in the newspaper, very many of them humorous in intent. Similarly Brereton Knyvet Wilson’s Norfolk Tales and Memories (two volumes, 1930 and 1931) exploits the comic potential of the dialect and present through a series of short anecdotes a form of the language we can be confident was never actually spoken in the form set out. When presented with a line such as “Well, ivery time yew yow, yew lose a chow” (in the anecdote “Ivery time you yow”) my faith in the accuracy of the representation is strained. Knyvet Wilson is inconsistent in the language he presents, while his overt direct comment on “The Norfolk Way of Talking” is disorganised. Knyvet Wilson’s recording of Norfolk has been described as “authentic” and “genuine” (reviews of the 2005 reprint) yet it has little about it that is either. In the inter-war years comedian Sidney Grapes utilised Norfolk dialect in his performance and in a series of letters to Norfolk’s newspaper the Eastern Daily Press – letters signed “boy John” and subsequently collected as The Boy John Letters. While the dialect can indeed be glimpsed in such material it is important to bear in mind that Grapes was exploiting its comic potential and exaggerating features in order to express a regional identity. What “boy John” writes is not an accurate reflection of the dialect of that time or any time. Similarly the folk singers The Kipper Family in the 1980s used Norfolk dialect for comic effect and cannot be regarded as an authority. The association of this regional dialect with comedy has been exploited in the 80 THE BUCKINGHAM JOURNAL OF LANGUAGE AND LINGUISTICS VOLUME 8 early twenty-first century by The Nimo Twins. Today Norfolk can be a commodity marketed to tourists through such vehicles as mugs and tea-towels which give examples of vocabulary. Against a background of sources in Norfolk dialect which are much less copious than we would like, and frequently unreliable, it is therefore particularly welcome to come across Ransome’s un-self-conscious and seemingly accurate representation of a dialect he knew well. The fragments found in Coot Club and The Big Six are valuable; outstanding for the study of the dialect is the conversation he constructs in Coots in the North, which can be extracted (as in Appendix One) and which provides an extensive and reliable source for 1930s Norfolk, perhaps the best single source now available. Arthur Ransome was a talented observer of language. His novels are littered with overt references to dialect, including Norfolk, Lake District, London and Lowland Scots. Arthur Ransome studied at Yorkshire College (now Leeds University) though he dropped out after two terms. He worked for a publisher in London (Grant Richards) and began to write. Later he taught himself Russian and became a fluent Russian speaker. Linguistics as an academic discipline scarcely existed in his day, yet Ransome demonstrates many of the skills of observation and interpretation that are key to the discipline. Above all, Ransome knew about language. In Missee Lee he imitates the non-native speaker English of Soong Ching-ling (wife of the leader of the 1911 revolution Sun Yat-sen and a friend of Ransome’s) and gets it right in terms of some of the characteristic issues of pronunciation and grammar displayed by this generation of Chinese learners of English. Language play is apparent in the invention of words expressing a created identity. Nancy Blackett plays the role of an Amazon pirate and uses a form of nautically-inspired slang “jib-booms and bobstays” and “shiver my timbers” along with invented swear-word substitutes as “barbecued billygoats” and “galoots”. In Secret Water and Great Northern she changes her invented swear words to reflect the created story of these novels, respectively eels and birds. Ransome correctly observes that regional dialect is associated with social class. Most of the children in Ransome’s “Swallows and Amazons” series are from middle class families and speak without a marked regional dialect. There’s an occasional throw-back to the Victorian middle-class nursery in a term such as Mrs Dudgeon’s “honest Injun”. In the novels set in the Broads the contrast is between those who do and those who don’t speak in a dialect. The Ds – Dick and Dorothy Callum, children of an archaeologist – use a form of Standard English throughout and have some difficulty understanding Norfolk. Norfolk residents include Tom Dudgeon, the son of a doctor, and Port and Starboard, twin daughters of a solicitor. These three understand the Norfolk dialect but don’t themselves speak it. Dialect is the province of a different social class. It is a servant who is represented as speaking Lowland 81 ARTHUR RANSOME AND THE DIALECT OF NORFOLK Scots, and her dialect is see as a source of humour by Port and Starboard who imitate such utterances as “Time for the bairrns to be stirrin’. It’s a braw and bonny mornin’” and “Can she no?”, as well as the set phrase “Never say dee till ye’re deid”. London dialect is represented by a wherry-man and his wife, presented through the characteristic elided /h/: “‘alf”, “‘usband”, “‘e”, “‘andsome”. The clearest example of Lakeland English comes not from the families of the Amazons (long-term residents of the area) but from the charcoal burners they visit (in Swallowdale). Norfolk dialect is presented primarily through three sons of Horning boat- builders, Joe, Bill and Pete, who have the use of an old boat they have named Death and Glory. These three children – called the “Death and Glories” and also when protecting birds’ nests as part of the Coot Club called “Coots” - are aware that their register is not that of Standard English.

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