T WILLIAMS.

Bishop's Hull, Taunton,
7th September, 1873.

INTRODUCTION.

The following paper from the pen of Dr. Prior was read at a Conversazione
of the Society at Taunton, in the winter of 1871, and as it treats the
subject from a more general point of view than is usually taken of it, we
print it with his permission as an introduction to our vocabulary:--

On the Somerset Dialects.

The two gentlemen who have undertaken to compile a glossary of the
Somerset dialect, the Rev. W. P. Williams and Mr. W. A. Jones, have done
me the honour to lend me the manuscript of their work; and the following
remarks which have occurred to me upon the perusal of it I venture to lay
before the Society, with the hope that they may be suggestive of further
enquiry.

Some years ago, while on a visit at Mr. Capel's, at Bulland Lodge, near
Wiveliscombe, I was struck with the noble countenance of an old man who
was working upon the road. Mr. Capel told me that it was not unusual to
find among the people of those hills a very refined cast of features and
extremely beautiful children, and expressed a belief that they were the
descendants of the ancient inhabitants of the country, who had been
dispossessed of their land in more fertile districts by conquerors of
coarser breed. A study of the two dialects spoken in the county (for two
there certainly are) tend, I think, to corroborate the truth of this
opinion.

It will be urged that during the many centuries that have elapsed since
the West Saxons took possession of this part of England the inhabitants
must have been so mixed up together that all distinctive marks of race
must long since have been obliterated. But that best of teachers,
experience, shows that where a conquered nation remains in greatly
superior numbers to its conqueror, and there is no artificial bar to
intermarriages, the latter, the conqueror, will surely be absorbed into
the conquered. This has been seen in our own day in Mexico, where the
Spaniards, who have occupied and ruled the country nearly four hundred
years, are rapidly approaching extinction. Nay, we find that even in a
country like Italy, where the religion, language, and manners are the
same, the original difference of races is observable in different parts
of the peninsula after many centuries that they have been living side by
side.

It seems to be a law of population that nations composed of different
stocks or types can onl