The spelling and pronunciation of the modified form of the dialect

When “The bit o’ ground at huome” appeared in the Dorset County Chronicle on 11 September 1856, it was the first poem Barnes had published in DCC since ―Jeän o’ Grenley Mill‖ had appeared there on 14 September 1843—thirteen years previously almost to the day;1 and it was twelve years since the publication in 1844 of Poems of Rural Life, in the Dorset Dialect: With a Dissertation and Glossary (containing almost all the dialect poems Barnes had published in DCC in the ten-year period from the beginning of 1834 to the end of 1843), which became, retrospectively, his first collection of poems in the Dorset dialect.

Readers with a long memory and an interest in language might have been surprised by some of the spellings they encountered in this new poem. Whereas some spellings would have been familiar from Barnes's previous poems (huome in the title, -èn as the ending of the present participle in lines 2 and 3, da throughout for unemphatic auxiliary do, z for initial s in zee and zummer in lines 5 and 6, rudges for ridges in 32, etc.), others would not. Amongst the unfamiliar spellings in the first half of the poem readers would have found peäce (which might be mistaken for peace but is intended for pace) in line 3 and pleäce (i.e. place) in line 4 instead of the earlier spellings piace and pliace; raïn (10), weïgh (20), and sträight (28) for earlier râin, wâigh, and strâight; eärbs (28) for earlier yarbs; and so on.