But, as a matter of fact, nearly all our chief writers have
recognised the value of dialectal words. Tennyson was not the first
to use the above word. Near the end of the Second Act of his _Sad
Shepherd_, Ben Jonson speaks of:
Green-bellied snakes, blue fire-drakes in the sky,
And giddy flitter-mice with leather wings.
Similarly, there are plenty of "provincialisms" in Shakespeare. In
an interesting book 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.
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