William Barnes was a Dorset born poet. He was born on February the 22nd in 1801 in Sturminster Newton and was educated locally, up to the age of 13 when he ended his schooling to become a solicitors clerk. In 1823 he became a schoolmaster, opening a school in Wiltshire. He moved to Dorchester where he ran another school in the county town. From 1862 to his death in 1883 he was rector of a small parish near Dorchester.
Towards the end of his life Barnes was recognised as a great poet by some of the foremost literary men of his time. Thomas Hardy regarded him as an equal, and Lord Tennyson, Edmund Gosse, Gerard Manley Hopkins and Coventry Patmore wrote of his abilities and acheivements. After the publication of his complete poems edited by Bernard Jones and published in 1962, a later generation praised his work, including W.H. Auden, E.M. Forster and Siegfried Sassoon.
In his lifetime William Barnes wrote over 800 poems, some in Dorset dialect and created many other works, including an extensive English grammar quoting from more than 70 different languages.
You can download his entire book of poetry for free (legally!) Poems of Rural Life in the Dorset Dialect (1844) by clicking this link.
There are many poems but we have chosen this one as an example.
The Girt Woak Tree That’s in the Dell
The girt woak tree that’s in the dell!
There’s noo tree I do love so well;
Vor times an’ times when I wer young,
I there’ve a-climb’d, an’ there’ve a-zwung,
An’ pick’d the eäcorns green, a-shed
In wrestlèn storms vrom his broad head.
An’ down below’s the cloty brook
Where I did vish with line an’ hook,
An’ beät, in plaÿsome dips and zwims,
The foamy stream, wi’ white-skinn’d lim’s.
An’ there my mother nimbly shot
Her knittèn-needles, as she zot
At evenèn down below the wide
Woak’s head, wi’ father at her zide.
An’ I’ve a-plaÿed wi’ many a bwoy,
That’s now a man an’ gone awoy;
Zoo I do like noo tree so well
‘S the girt woak tree that’s in the dell.
An’ there, in leäter years, I roved
Wi’ thik poor maïd I fondly lov’d,—
The maïd too feäir to die so soon,—
When evenèn twilight, or the moon,
Cast light enough ‘ithin the pleäce
To show the smiles upon her feäce,
Wi’ eyes so clear’s the glassy pool,
An’ lips an’ cheäks so soft as wool.
There han’ in han’, wi’ bosoms warm,
Wi’ love that burn’d but thought noo harm,
Below the wide-bough’d tree we past
The happy hours that went too vast;
An’ though she’ll never be my wife,
She’s still my leäden star o’ life.
She’s gone: an’ she’ve a-left to me
Her mem’ry in the girt woak tree;
Zoo I do love noo tree so well
‘S the girt woak tree that’s in the dell
An’ oh! mid never ax nor hook
Be brought to spweil his steätely look;
Nor ever roun’ his ribby zides
Mid cattle rub ther heäiry hides;
Nor pigs rout up his turf, but keep
His lwonesome sheäde vor harmless sheep;
An’ let en grow, an’ let en spread,
An’ let en live when I be dead.
But oh! if men should come an’ vell
The girt woak tree that’s in the dell,
An’ build his planks ‘ithin the zide
O’ zome girt ship to plough the tide,
Then, life or death! I’d goo to sea,
A saïlèn wi’ the girt woak tree:
An’ I upon his planks would stand,
An’ die a-fightèn vor the land,—
The land so dear,—the land so free,—
The land that bore the girt woak tree;
Vor I do love noo tree so well
‘S the girt woak tree that’s in the dell.
William Barnes – Dorset Poet
William Barnes was born in 1801 at Bagber, near Sturminster Newton in North Dorset. He was educated locally and worked as a solicitor’s clerk until 1823, when he became a schoolmaster. In 1827 he married Julia Miles (with whom he fell in love as a sixteen year old girl, after seeing her alight from a mailcoach in Dorchester) at Holy Trinity Church in Nailsea in North Somerset where her father was employed as a customs officer. Her death, in 1852, affected him deeply; many of his poems describe his love for her. He was ordained in 1848 and was appointed curate at Whitcombe near Dorchester. Barnes died in 1886; his obituary in the Saturday Review read: ‘There is no doubt that he is the best pastoral poet we possess, the most sincere, the most genuine, the most theocritan; and that the dialect is but a very thin veil hiding from us some of the most delicate and finished verse written in our time.’Amongst his books of poetry are Poems of Rural Life in the Dorset Dialect (1844), Hwomely Rhymes (1859), both written in the Dorset dialect, and Poems of Rural Life in Common English (1868).
I have selected several poems purely on the basis of their effect on me, a native of Dorset and one who still remembers how the dialect was spoken by his older relatives.
Easter Zunday
Vull a Man
Linden Lea
The Girt Woak Tree
The Wife a-Lost
The Young that Died in Beauty
The Geate a-Vallen To