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The Forest of Dean in Gloucestershire was home to one
of the smaller coalfields in Great Britain. The collieries and small coal
workings in the area some were home to close-knit communities, communities
which developed remarkable series of local dialects - words in one town
would have a meaning that would be lost on someone from a town just two
miles down the road. Keith Morgan explains:
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Keith Morgan
Keith believes that mining had a strong influence on the Forest dialect. |
You got totally different words, and that mean the same thing two miles
down the road. Just the way you were talking to somebody.
'How bist thee old butty, how's the acker cutting?'
Well that's just a greeting to your friend, how you feeling
sort of thing, but it also referred to pit life, where your butty was
a system of payment, it went to the Butty Man. 
Of course, Keith has his own theory as to the origins
of the Forest dialect. He explains:
Our dialect goes right back to Celtic times, that's when it started. A
lot of the words we use come from that time. Then you got a lot of it
which is pure old English - the use of the pronouns thee and thou is pure
Old English. But a lot of words came out of the mines and the pits during
the forties, fifties and so on.
From listening to Keith, mining comes across as the strong
influence on the Forest dialect. Keith reveals his thoughts on why this
unique regional variant developed, he says:
Because they were such isolated communities years ago, and people that
worked in the pit, ne'er went far really, it was such an insular life.
This belief is reinforced by Charles, who remembers life
at the pit. He revealed:
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Charles Harvey
Charles remembers life in the Forest of Dean |
Back in them days we worked in the pits, you go out at night playing darts,
or skittles, or crib, or whatever it was and it was such a friendly atmosphere.
Charles also remembers how this atmosphere changed when
mining died out in the area and other industries moved in, he says:
When Northern [a colliery] closed - that was Christmas 1965 - a lot of
the men were employed as nylon spinners at Gloucester. Rank Zerox [also]
came to Mitcheldean.
They [miners] knew their job, they dressed and talked
according to the mining and the situation they were in.
Now then, they had to go into work in the factory, with
a collar and tie on and [it was] a totally different environment altogether.
A lot of them just couldn't adapt to this new way of life.
I mean men, maybe 50 or 55 [years of age], worked the
mines all their life, now all of a sudden they gotta go and work in a
factory, where maybe this whatever is coming down the line is gotta have
a hole drilled exactly there, and there's another one, and another one,
there's millions of 'em.
Because life in the mines, there was never ever two days
the same. There was a variety, the work was always different. You were
doing the same job, but every day was different to the other one.
This is possibly one reason why the old dialect of the
Forest is not as strong as it once was. As modern technology makes communication
on a wider scale easier, these old dialects are becoming less well known
to today's generation and the worry is that they'll all but die out with
maybe just one or two phrases lingering on.
Keith and Charles talk about life in the
Forest of Dean and reveal some of the fabled Forest dialect:
 Listen
to the Keith Morgan clip in 56k
Listen
to the Keith Morgan clip in broadband
Listen
to the Charles Harvey clip in 56k
Listen
to the Charles Harvey clip in broadband
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