POWYS and the English borderlands share much in common.
Prior to the outbreak of the coronavirus and lockdown restrictions many of us crossed the border every day for work, education or leisure.
Many of us have family living either side of the border while many live in towns and villages which straddle the boundary or in lands once part of the Kingdom of Mercia which would become the Marcher Lordships of Caus, Bishop's Castle, Clifford, Clun, Ewyas Lacy, Kington, Huntington, Montgomery, Oswestry, Whittington and Wigmore following the Norman conquest in 1066.
The lands of Caus and Montgomery spanned modern day Shropshire and northern Montgomeryshire and its earliest inhabitants had likely been the first to speak their own local dialect.
The so-called ancestors of the modern day speakers of Montgomery Gentle.’
In the 10 centuries since the dialect has more or less become lost though certainly many archaic words were still in regular use as recently as the 1800s.
A dialect glossary from 1896 shares some of the words with examples. How many do you recognise? Remember these words were used across Powys and the border areas of modern day Shropshire and Herefordshire.
1. Aftermath, or latter math - the second mowing or the second crop of grass, which, though occasionally harvested, is generally grazed. Aftermath becomes after-grass in Shropshire. Believed to have been a mutation of the Welsh word adloedd, which means ad-ladd, ‘to mow again.
2. Brivit - a thorough search.
3. Crudled - curdled, congealed. - The milk crudled in a minute.'
4. Cornel - corner.
5. Cinnraund - come. "The man has cinnaraund.’
6. Glat - a hole in a hedge.
7. Peannet - a magpie. A corruption of the Welsh, pia, pioden, a magpie .
8. Pentice - the open shed of a blacksmith's shop where horses are shod.
9. Swinge - to singe.
10. Slawns - shoes
11. Simple - unwell, sickly.
12. Tyne or tine - to repair hedges or fences.
13. Viage - a journey or a rejoicing.
14. Wut (pronounced Woont) - a mole
15. Cassetly or cassently - uncertain showery weather
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