Elizbethan Dialect, in Maryland

[Grant Barrett]

>From http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/13/national/13BAY.html

MITH ISLAND, Md., May 10 — "I did pretty good," said Willard Laird, lifting his
day's catch of soft-shell crabs onto this pristine Colonial island, the historical
settlement of some of America's original watermen. Their descendants have been working
Chesapeake Bay for more than three centuries, surviving all manner of crustacean
predators in the bay and passing fashions on the mainland.

"There are crabs out there, running good, and the year looks more promising," said
Mr. Laird, a weather-burnished optimist sailing straight into the teeth of a warning
from numerous marine scientists and Gov. Parris N. Glendening that the Chesapeake's
signature blue crab fishery is "on the verge of collapse."

If it were to collapse, so might this salty sanctuary from the past whose 55
watermen still bear dialect traces of the first settlers' roots in Elizabethan England.


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Grant Barrett
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