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Dialect Relationships In his recent writings to do with the dialect speech of Gower, Mr. Horatio Tucker reveals the richness and interest of its vocabulary. Many words now passing out of use in English Gower, and the way in which they have been spoken, are known to have strong associations with that part of England closest to the peninsula, lying within sight across the Channel. The alien speech and manners of West and South Gower naturally have long occasioned remark. In 1696 Edward Lhwyd asked Wherein doth the English of the Vulgar in Pembrokeshire and Gowerland differ from the Western Counties of England ? A hundred years later, one of the Tourists observed that The language of the Gower people is English, the dialect rather broad and coarse, so that a traveller might fancy himself in the West of England." Surely it is helpful to have some fairly exact idea of just how far into England this similarity of country vocabulary and speech extends. The map accompanying this note attempts to picture the heart and bounds of Wessex," home of a parent West Country dialect." The method employed in constructing the map was rough-and-ready. Firstly, a glossary of sixty-eight words was gathered together. Forty of them came from an early fragment entitled A List of Words from the Gower Dialect of Glamorganshire," and was contributed by the Rev. John Collins to the Transactions of the Philological Society, in the year 1850. The rest came from Mr. Tucker's list published last year in Gower Gleanings." Then each word was taken separately and examined in Wright's English Dialect Dic- tionary," and a symbol placed in every British (mainly English) county where its use is recorded by Wright and his collaborators. Where their record includes more than one part of a single large county, the general rule is maintained and a single county dot placed on the map. This is the case often with North Devon and North West Devon to quote an example which is of the greatest relevance to Gower English words. On the other hand, it is helpful to find some part of a county specified, as with West Somerset rather than simply Somerset'. The significance of the pattern which finally showed up on the completed map is appreciated when it is compared with a second map, showing the distribution of Middle English Dialects. Such a map of the position and approximate limits of the four principal dialects- North English, West Midland, East Midland, and South West-can be found in E. E. Wardale's Introduction to Middle English." There is a very close correspondence between South Western Middle English and the wide tract of Southern England with which the relations of Gower dialect are strongest. Certainly this is true of the following counties Cornwall, Devon, Somerset, Wiltshire, Dorset