I have mentioned Tennyson in this connexion because he was a careful student of English, not only in its dialectal but also in its older forms. 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. 3), 'Is it a boy or a child?'--where, by the way, every actor tries to make a point, and the audience invariably laughs--the word 'child' is used, as is sometimes the case in the midland districts, as synonymous with girl; which is plainly its meaning in this passage, although the speaker has used it just before in its more common sense of either a boy or a girl."