Rochdale occupies the centre of the most distinctively Lancashire-dialect region. As ordinarily employed, the phrase vaguely denotes the rural speech of the manufacturing districts. But beyond the Ribble, and more particularly beyond the Lune, there is unmistakable variation from the genuine Lancashire of "Tim Bobbin"; and in Furness there is an echo of Cumberland. In genuine Lancashire we have first the old-accustomed permutations of the vowels. Then come elisions of consonants, transpositions, and condensations of entire syllables, whereby words are often oddly transformed. Ancient idioms attract us next; and lastly, there are many of the energetic old words, unknown to current dictionaries, which five centuries ago were an integral part of the English vernacular. The vowel permutations are illustrated in the universal "wayter," "feyther," "reet," "oi," "aw," "neaw," used instead of water, father, right, I, now. "Owt" stands for aught, "nowt" for naught. Elisions and contractions appear in a thousand such forms as "dunnoyo" for "do you not," "welly" for "well-nigh." "You" constantly varies to thee and thou, whence the common "artu" for "art thou," "wiltohameh" for "wilt thou have me." A final _g_ is seldom heard; there is also a characteristic rejection of the guttural in such words as scratched, pronounced "scrat." The transpositions are as usual, though it is only perhaps in Lancashire that gaily painted butterflies are "brids," and that the little field-flowers elsewhere called birds' eye are "brid een." The old grammatical forms and the archaic words refer the careful listener, if not to the Anglo-Saxon of King Alfred, at all events to the _Canterbury Tales_; they take us pleasantly to Chaucer, and Chaucer in turn introduces us agreeably to Lancashire, where "she" is always "hoo," through abiding in the primitive "he, heo, hit;" and where the verbs still end in _n_: "we, ye, they loven," as in the Prologue-- "For he had geten him yet no benefice." Very interesting is it also when the ear catches the antiquated _his_ and _it_ where to-day we say _it_ and _its_. Often supposed to correspond with the poetical use of "his" in personifications (often found in the authorised version of Scripture), the Lancashire employment of _his_ is in truth the common Shaksperean one, _his_ in the county palatine being the simple genitive of the old English _hit_, as in _Hamlet_, iv. 7-- "There is a willow grows aslant the brook, That shows _his_ hoar leaves in the glassy stream." So with the obsolete possessive _it_. When a Lancashire woman says, "Come to it mammy!" how plain the reminder of the lines in _King John_-- Do, child, go to _it_ grandam, child; Give grandam kingdom, and _it_ grandam will Give it a plum, a cherry, and a fig; There's a good grandam.