Cheshire Dialect

The Cheshire dialect has existed for centuries and is distinct from standard British English. The works of the 14th century poets; such as, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and others supposed to be by the Gawain poet are written in this dialect. This also includes the religious poem St. Erkenwald, which dates from the late fourteenth or early fifteenth century. Perhaps unsurprisingly many of the dialect words in Cheshire are farming terms, particularly those relating to dairy farming, such as "shippen" (or shippon) from the Old English scypen (cow-shed, stall).

Gawain


"Sir Gawain and the Green Knight" is a late 14th-century Middle English chivalric romance. The author is unknown; the title was given centuries later. Various clues suggest that the anonymous poet of Sir Gawain came from the vicinity of Wirral. The poem itself is written in the medieval dialect spoken in Cheshire, and it is noticeable that the topography of Arthur’s kingdom is vague until it reaches North Wales and Wirral. In 1925, J.R.R. Tolkien and colleague E.V. Gordon published a scholarly edition of "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight". The book, featuring a text in Middle English with extensive scholarly notes, is frequently confused with the translation into Modern English that Tolkien prepared alongside those of Pearl and Sir Orfeo, later in his life. Many editions of the latter work, first published in 1975, shortly after his death, list Tolkien on the cover as author rather than translator. It is therefore also amusingly common to see Sir Gawain erroneously ascribed to Tolkien as the original author.

It is one of the best known Arthurian stories, with its plot combining two types of folk motifs, the beheading game and the exchange of winnings. In Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, the Green Knight appears before Arthur's court during a Christmas feast, holding a bough of holly in one hand and a battle axe in the other. Despite disclaim of war, the knight issues a challenge: he will allow one man to strike him once with his axe, with the condition that he return the blow the next year. At first, Arthur accepts the challenge, but Gawain takes his place and decapitates the Green Knight, who retrieves his head, reattaches it and tells Gawain to meet him at the Green Chapel at the stipulated time. The story later contains an account of Gawain's journey to the "Green Chapel".


 * alle þe iles of anglesay on lyft half he haldez and farez ouer þe fordez by þe forlondez ouer at þe holy hede til he hade eft bonk in þe wyldrenesse of wyrale wonde þer bot lyte þat auþer god oþer gome wyth goud hert louied (All the isles of Anglesey on his left side he holds, And fares over the ford by the forelands, Over by the Holy Head, until he again had the shore. In the wilderness of Wirral dwelt there but few, That either God or man with good heart loved.)

Several scholars have attempted to find a real-world correspondence for Gawain's journey to the Green Chapel. The Anglesey islands, for example, are mentioned in the poem. In line 700, Gawain is said to pass the "Holy Head", believed by many scholars to be either Holywell or the Cistercian abbey of Poulton in Pulford. Holywell is associated with the beheading of Saint Winifred. As the story goes, Winifred was a virgin who was beheaded by a local leader after she refused his sexual advances. Her uncle, Saint Beuno, put her head back in place and healed the wound, leaving only a white scar. The parallels between this story and Gawain's make this area a likely candidate for the journey. Chester has its own version of the Winifred legend see: Shoemaker's Row.



Arrow Park
One source of evidence for paganism in Wirral is to be found in place names and field names containing the element "harrow". This possibly derives from the Old English "hearg", meaning a pagan shrine, related to the Old Norse hörg. A harrowe hay is recorded in Heswall in 1293, while a group "harrow" field names is to be found not far from the apocryphal Thor’s Stone (often wrongly assumed to be the origin of Thurstaston). Possibly the best known occurence is "Arrowe Park", with its possible connections to the Gawain legend through nearby Woodchurch and perhaps more importantly, the mysterious stone circles of Overchurch. A ninth century stone found at Overchurch was for many years in the Grosvenor Museum.



Human activity in the Wirral is truly ancient, with with excavations near Greasby Copse between 1987 and 1990 by archaeologists from the Museum of Liverpool revealing a substantial settlement with stone floor, pits, large working hollows and a fireplace together with over 12,000 early stone tools. At that time, the site was dated at 7000 BC or earlier and ascribed to the Mesolithic period. Later work dates the site to around 8,500 BC.

Greasby was an Anglo Saxon settlement, as witnessed by the form of the name, Gravesberie, in the Domesday Book. Gravesberie derives from the Old English gräf (a grove) and burh (a fortified place). This has been recorded as meaning "grove farm/settlement", or alternatively, a "stronghold or fortification by a grove, trench, canal or wood". The name was Scandinavianised to Greasby, under the influence of Old Norse speakers in Wirral (gräf and býr, with býr meaning "settlement" or "farmstead"). The story of Viking settlement in Wirral is told elsewhere on this site.

Ludchurch
Gawain's journey does not end on the Wirral. Many interpretations form a consensus and have him continuing to Ludchurch in the Staffordshire Moorlands north of Leek. This was first suggested by R. W. V. Elliot as one of the key settings for the climax of the poem's story – "The Green Chapel" – in May 1958. Elliot went on to give a scholarly modern explication of most of the local landscape elements in a series of essays in scholarly journals. His general claim that "The Green Chapel" must be somewhere in that district was supported by other scholarly work suggesting the location as Nan Tor cave, above the former railway station at Wetton Mill, to the east of Leek. One local connection is that nearby Dieulacres Abbey was a Cistercian monastery first established between 1153 and 1158 (under Ranulph De Gernon) at Poulton in Cheshire. It moved, under Ranulf de Blondeville, to the Dieulacres site at Abbey Green near Leek, Staffordshire in 1214, possibly in part as a result from raids at the former site by the Welsh.

Erkenwald
St. Erkenwald is an alliterative poem of the fourteenth century, thought to have been composed in 1386. It has sometimes been attributed to the Gawain poet. It takes as its subject Earconwald, the Bishop of London between 675 and 693.

John Stanley


John Stanley has been suggested as the as-yet unidentified "Gawain Poet". The Garter motto "Honi soit qui mal y pense" appears at the end of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (but in a different hand), and the poet exhibits a detailed knowledge of both hunting (he was Master Forester of Wirral - hence the stags on his arms) and armour. He is the same John Stanley who in 1405 was granted the tenure of the Isle of Man, which had been confiscated from the rebellious Henry Percy, 1st Earl of Northumberland. The garter connection has been used to support other candidates including John of Gaunt (who was also the 14th Baron of Halton), and Enguerrand de Coucy, seventh Sire de Coucy. De Coucy was married to King Edward III's daughter, Isabella, and was given admittance to the Order of the Garter on their wedding day. The garter motto has a rough equivalent in Gawain's exclamation "corsed worth cowarddyse and couetyse boþe" ("cursed be both cowardice and coveting", v. 2374).

John Massey
John Massey of Cotton, was a retainer in the house of Lancaster. The surname of Massey, that of a prominent Cheshire family, is associated with St Erkenwald; the names of Thomas Massey and Elizabeth Booth (a member of the Booth family of Dunham Massey) are written in St Erkenwald's only existing manuscript. Curiously, there is a Saughall Massey quite close to the supposed stone circle at Overchurch.

Related Pages

 * Stanley Palace;
 * Three Hares;
 * Bishop Lloyd's House;

Glossaries

 * A glossary of words used in the county of Chester, Robert Holland (1886);


 * A Glossary of Words Used in the Dialect of Cheshire, Egerton Leigh (1877);


 * Old Cheshire Dialect;

Green Knight

 * on Wikipedia;
 * Original Text;
 * Overchurch at Megalithic Portal;
 * Hidden Wirral on ancient sites in the area;
 * Video of the remains at Overchurch;
 * THE SITE OF OVERCHURCH, UPTON, WIRRAL: A SURVEY;
 * OVERCHURCH AND ITS RUNIC STONE;
 * The Overchurch Stone;
 * The Overchurch Mystery: Book by David Gregg;

Other References

 * Some South Cheshire Dialect - mostly dairy farming terms;
 * From Cilgwri to Westernesse - Wirral in Medieval Legend;
 * Sir John Stanley (c. 1350-1414) and the Gawain-Poet, Arthuriana, vol. 14 no. 1, 2004, p. 15-30.