Potteries dialect
Potteries is an English dialect of the West Midlands of England, almost exclusively in and around Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire. Origin and history As with most local dialects in English, Potteries dialect derives originally from Anglo Saxon Old English. The 14th-century Middle English poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, which appears in the Cotton Nero A.x manuscript uses dialect words native to the Potteries, leading some scholars to believe that it was written by a monk from Dieulacres Abbey. However, the most commonly suggested candidate for authorship is John Massey of Cotton, Cheshire (now part of Cranage outside Holmes Chapel). The same manuscript also contains three religious alliterative poems, Cleanness, Patience and Pearl, which are attributed to the same unknown author. Although the identity of the author is still disputed, J. R. R. Tolkien and E. V. Gordon writing in 1925 concluded that "his home was in the West Midlands of England; so much his language shows, and his metre, and his scenery." The first documented instance of Potteries dialect is by the prominent Staffordshire lawyer John Ward (1781–1870) and local historian Simeon Shaw in their book The Borough of Stoke-upon-Trent published in 1843, in which Ward recorded phonetically a conversation