To the absence originally of general literary
information, and to the very recent rise of the study of
grammatical analysis, are these anomalies and irregularities to be
attributed.
We see, therefore, that _'ch'ud, ch'am,_ and _'ch'ill_,
are simply the Anglo-Saxon _ich_, contracted and combined
with the respective verbs _would, am,_ and _will_; that
the _'c'_ and _'ch'_, as quoted in the lines given by
Miss Ham, are contracts for the Anglo-Saxon _iche_ or
_I_, and nothing else. It may be also observed, that in more
than one modern work containing specimens of the dialect of
Scotland and the North of England, and in, I believe, some of Sir
Walter Scott's novels, the word _ise_ is employed, so that
the auxiliary verb _will_ or _shall_ is designed to be
included in that word; and the printing or it thus, _I'se_,
indicates that it is so designed to be employed. Now, if this be a
_copy_ of the _living_ dialect of Scotland (which I beg
leave respectfully to doubt), it is a "barbarism" which the
Somerset dialect does not possess.
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