Please supply the source of the following (believed literary) quotation:
"'Tis gi'e an' teake,
An' woone vor others seake"

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Request for Question Clarification by pinkfreud-ga on 17 Apr 2004 11:06 PDT

This sounds like something from Robert Burns, but I have not found it
among his writings.

It might help if we knew where you came across the quote. Any details
would be welcome.

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Clarification of Question by chris4-ga on 18 Apr 2004 06:04 PDT

Dear pinkfreud-ga,

This is one of two couplets tooled on a bookbinding.  Your guess at
William Barnes is a shrewd one because the other couplet definitely is
by Barnes ("Vor Do'set dear / Then gi'e woone cheer").  But what I
need is the exact source of this quotation.
Regards,
chris4-ga

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Clarification of Question by chris4-ga on 22 Apr 2004 02:40 PDT

Dear chromedome-ga,
I would be grateful if you can.  I'm even prepared to up the ante another $10.
Regards,
chris4-ga

Earlier I mentioned Robert Burns. Upon further investigation, this
quote seems much more similar to the works of the British poet William
Barnes, who wrote in Dorset dialect. Barnes used "gi'e" for "give,"
"woone" for "one," "vor" for "for," and spelled words with a long A
sound, such as "take" and "sake" as "teake" and "seake."

Here's a Barnes verse:

Since I do miss your vaice an? feace
In prayer at eventide,
I?ll pray wi? woone said vaice vor greace
To goo where you do bide

http://www.bartleby.com/66/97/5597.html

I don't have access to Barnes' complete works, and I haven't been able
to find your quote, but I'd bet the ranch that Barnes is the author. I
hope a Researcher with additional literary sources will be able to
nail this.

It could be a bit of a slog to locate.  My local university shows
three volumes of poetry by Barnes in Dorset dialect, as well as
several of "selected poetry."

The next week will be rather hectic for me (I'm winding up my own
course of studies); but if this question is still unanswered in the
beginning of May I'll make time to get over there and look.

-Chromedome

I'm afraid I have bad news for you, Chris.

I spent all of this afternoon at the university library, reading
Barnes' dialect poetry (and boy, does my head hurt!).  I read through
his Dorset poems in their entirety twice, looking for this phrase;
once from front to back, and once from back to front.  Of course it's
impossible for me to guarantee that this couplet was not in there, but
if it is it eluded my scrutiny quite successfully.

So now we have essentially three possibilities.  One, of course, is
that I managed to miss the pertinent quote in the course of two
read-throughs.  Second, that this is from a piece of writing which has
not made it into the Barnes' recognized canon.  This is also quite
possible, as the editor of the "complete" works that I'd been reading
had many things to say about the difficulty of assembling the project.
 Barnes was a voluminous writer on many topics, and it is quite
possible that this specific poem was overlooked, or that it was a
fragment used to punctuate what was otherwise a piece of prose
writing.  The third possibility is that our quote here is from one of
the numerous lesser poets who, following Barnes, wrote poetry in
dialect.

Still and all, it was a rather satisfying day.  I've been a poetry
buff since childhood, and Barnes had not previously come to my
attention.  Some of my ancestors hailed from that part of the world,
and various flavours of Devon/Somerset dialect are alive and well in
my father's home province of Newfoundland.  Reading Barnes, then (or
Lorna Doone, for that matter), is like listening to my old neighbours
from high school days.

This is what I love most about Google Answers...the opportunity to
broaden my horizons on a daily basis.

Sorry I'm unable to settle this for you.  But hey, if you ever want
biographical information about William Barnes, I'm your man!

-Chromedome