The poetry of the people includes
the ballad and the verse tale, lyric in all its forms, and some kinds of
satire; and for all these dialect is a fitting instrument. It possesses
in the highest degree directness of utterance and racy vigour. How much
of their force would the "Biglow Papers" of J. R. Lowell lose if they were
transcribed from the Yankee dialect into standard English!
But the highest quality of dialect speech, and that which renders it
pre-eminently fitted for poetic use, is its intimate association with all
that lies nearest to the heart of the working man. It is the language of
his hearth and home; many of the most cherished memories of his life are
bound up with it; it is for him the language of freedom, whereas standard
English is that of constraint. In other words, dialect is the working
man's poetic diction--a poetic diction as full of savour as that of the
eighteenth-century poets was flat and insipid.
It is sometimes said that the use of dialect makes the appeal of poetry
provincial instead of national or universal. This is only true when the
dialect poet is a pedant and obscures his meaning by fantastic spellings.
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