ok entitled _Shakespeare, his Birthplace and its
Neighbourhood_, by J.R. Wise, there is a chapter on "The
Provincialisms of Shakespeare," from which I beg leave to give a
short extract by way of specimen.

"There is the expressive compound 'blood-boltered' in _Macbeth_
(Act IV, Sc. 1), which the critics have all thought meant simply
blood-stained. Miss Baker, in her _Glossary of Northamptonshire
Words_, first pointed out that 'bolter' was peculiarly a
Warwickshire word, signifying to clot, collect, or cake, as snow
does in a horse's hoof, thus giving the phrase a far greater
intensity of meaning. And Steevens, too, first noticed that in the
expression in _The Winter's Tale_ (Act III, Sc. 3), 'Is it a boy or
a child?'--where, by the way, every actor tries to make a point,
and the audience invariably laughs--the word 'child' is used, as is
sometimes the case in the midland districts, as synonymous with
girl; which is plainly its meaning in this passage, although the
speaker has used it just before in its more common sense of either
a boy or a girl."

In fact, the _English Dialect Dictionary_ cites the phrase "is it a
lad or a child?" as being still current in Shropshire; and duly states
that, in Warwickshire, "dirt collected on the hairs of a horse's leg
and forming into hard masses is said to _bolter_." Trench further
points out that many of our pure Anglo-Saxon words which lived on into
the formation of our early English, subsequently dropped out of our
usual vocabulary, and are now to be found only in the dialects. A good
example is the word _eme_, an uncle (A.S. _{-e}am_), which is rather
common in Middle English, but has seldom appeared in our literature
since the tune of Drayton. Yet it is well known in our Northern
dialects, and Sir Walter Scott puts the expression "Didna his _eme_
die" in the mouth of Davie Deans (_Heart of Midlothian_, ch. XII). In
fact, few things are more extraordinary in the history of our language
than the singularly capricious manner in which good and useful words
emerge into or disappear from use in "standard" talk, for no very
obvious reason. Such a word as _yonder_ is common enough still; but
its corresponding adjective _yon_, as in the phrase "yon man," is
usually relegated to our dialects. Though it is common in Shakespeare,
it is comparatively rare in the Middle English period, from the
twelfth to the fifteenth century. It only occurs once in Chaucer,
whe