(Esther/Hester) - Forest Dialect to Listen to. (General)

by Jefff , West London, Middlesex, Friday, November 21, 2014, 00:39 (3659 days ago) @ mrsbruso

Hi Terri,
in case you've not found them, these links should give you a little feel of modern folk speaking Vurrist dialect. From my viewpoint, I was born in Cinderford in 1962, by '72 I'd learned to be wary of our next door neighbour, Bert Griffiths. Not because he wasn't a nice bloke, far from it. Just that he was an elderly Forester of the old school, always wore his flat cap, three piece wool suit and muffler, except in high summer when he might remove his jacket & muffler when cutting the long grass in front of his house, with a scythe !. Anyhow, despite us all being born & bred Vurristers, no-one in our family or the immediate neighbours (some of which had spent years teaching local school children!) could understand much of what he said in his strong dialect... so as kids we were always worried he might talk to us as it could be hard work replying without seeming rude.

This album is worth a listen, recorded around 1980 at the Angel inn, Coleford. "Forest Talk", an evening of songs, poetry and humour from the FoD with Harry Beddington, Winidred Foley, Dick Brice, Keith Morgan. You can catch some snippets from this website, the links may work better if opened in new windows.

http://www.allmusic.com/album/forest-talk-mw0002160221

Keith Morgan, one of the readers, has produced some great books and films too, as on this old BBC webpage, the links still work for me and hopefully for others too. To listen to them just click the links next to each person's name and mugshot.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/gloucestershire/voices2005/mining_in_the_forest.shtml

http://www.bbc.co.uk/gloucestershire/voices2005/meet_the_people.shtml

from http://www.bbc.co.uk/gloucestershire/voices2005/

Just bear in mind most if not all those speaking are school-educated and well-read folk from the late C20th. Now think back a hundred years or more, when many couldn't read or write and hardly anyone travelled out of their local community, the standards of education, spelling, literacy etc were far different again, plus Foresters usually don't sound their "H"s at the start of a word. Church ministers and census officials recorded what they heard, or thought they heard, from people who might have never been to school, hence so many spelling variations. Even some of those ministers and officials wern't as literate as we might expect nowadays. Similarly with placenames on early Ordnance Survey maps - they were surveyed in the field by Army engineers who weren't necessarily from the area being mapped, if they didn't know the name of a place or feature they asked a local, hence dialect problems etc meant some placenames appear to have changed over the years as can be seen between map revisions.

This much longer recording from 2004 includes many of the same people including my mother's friend Elsie Olivey. Elsie was born in 1921 and worked as school secretary as well as writing scripts for the Cinderford Wesley Players Pantomime, so an "educated" lady. Their voices are much more typical of the gentle burr you'd hear in the Dean today, as with most regional dialects it's become much more "refined" & easily understood compared to our ancestor's speech.
http://sounds.bl.uk/Accents-and-dialects/BBC-Voices/021M-C1190X0014XX-0301V0

Re the old dialect his webpage has a useful Vurrist dictionary.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/gloucestershire/voices2005/glossary.shtml

As MPG wisely suggests Youtube has some good clips, for a start lookout for Robin Morgan, a working freeminer who has appeared on several tv shows in recent years, eg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KFE5WiMW7PA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wN-FTIQLQS8

This excellent film "Between Two Rivers" was made in the early 60s by the great Dennis Potter, a son of Berry Hill who left for an Oxford education and fame as a tv playright, so his narrator's voice film isn't as strong as some of the other speakers, all of which are local Foresters trying to put on their best "BBC voices" of course ;-)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bv-qUNhU9HI
(Sadly the BBC no longer wants this clip on Youtube, maybe try this instead
http://bufvc.ac.uk/dvdfind/index.php/title/av77151

https://www.sungreen.co.uk/Coleford-Glos/Between_two_rivers.html

You can hear some of the older local folk, including Elsie Olivey, speaking in a gentle Forest burr (but not the true old dialect) on this 1986 film about the Forest in general, centred on Cinderford,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SKIHH3BD4ik

Hoping this all helps and the links work in the USA !