Note 602 — Chapter X · HAPPY ENGLAND

Cockney dialect is closely akin to Kentish, and abounds in venerable verbal relics: “The stranger enters, but he nonetheless pays his toll; he does not leave any mark on London, but London leaves an indelible stamp upon him. The children of the foreigner, the children of the Yorkshireman or Lancastrian, belong in speech neither to Yorkshire nor Lancashire, they become more Cockney than the Cockneys; and even the alien voices of the east end, notably less musical than those of our own people, take on the tones of London’s ancient speech.”—MacBride, Mackenzie, London’s Dialect, An Ancient form of English Speech, with a Note on the Dialects of the North of England, and the Midlands and Scotland, p. 8.