One day last week we spent the afternoon in Arnside and Silverdale. I love these villages on the Lancashire/Cumbria border. They are so ancient and full of interesting buildings and beautiful scenery.
On our journey from Arnside to Silverdale we passed Arnside Tower which overlooks the important sand route from Hest Bank to Kents Bank. When exactly it was built, and by whom, remains a mystery, but in the late 1700s, a portion of the tower was home to Ann Wheeler. Ann (also known as Agnes) was an expert in the Westmorland dialect. In 1790, she published a book entitled
The Westmorland Dialect in Three Familiar Dialogues. This went through four editions, and a fourth dialogue was added in later publications.
The book is of tremendous historical importance, with Ann being a contemporary of Robert Burns who published his
Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect just four years earlier. While Burns is still widely read, Ann’s dialect writing is largely impenetrable to most people today. The pieces are a series of transcribed conversations, as if overheard, between village women. In the first, Mary explains to her friend Ann about her desire to escape from her abusive alcoholic husband, while Ann reminds of her duty to her children who Mary wants to leave behind. In the second, three women discuss how hard it is to survive financially once a woman has become a widow. In the third, two women debate about how to find a suitable man and, in the final piece, a young woman discusses her inheritance with an elderly neighbour.
I was delighted to discover that the Arnside and Silverdale Landscape Trust has published a collection of Ann Wheeler's dialogues. I've just ordered a copy and am really looking forward to finding out more about this formidable woman.
