William Barnes

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English writer, clergyman and philologist (1801–1886)

title: "William Barnes" type: doc version: 1 created: 2026-02-28 author: "Wikipedia contributors" status: active scope: public tags: ["1801-births", "1886-deaths", "19th-century-english-anglican-priests", "19th-century-english-male-writers", "19th-century-english-poets", "alumni-of-st-john's-college,-cambridge", "burials-in-dorset", "english-male-poets", "english-philologists", "writers-from-dorset", "artists-from-dorset", "people-from-mere,-wiltshire"] description: "English writer, clergyman and philologist (1801–1886)" topic_path: "people/1800s" source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Barnes" license: "CC BY-SA 4.0" wikipedia_page_id: 0 wikipedia_revision_id: 0

::summary English writer, clergyman and philologist (1801–1886) ::

::data[format=table title="Infobox Christian leader"]

Field	Value
type	priest
honorific_prefix	The Reverend
name	William Barnes
image	William Barnes poet.jpg
caption	Rev. William Barnes
birth_date
birth_place	Bagber, Dorset, England
death_date
death_place	Winterborne Came, Dorset, England
buried	St Peter's Church, Winterborne Came, Dorset, England
nationality	English
occupation
religion	Anglican
alma_mater	St John's College, Cambridge
::

William Barnes (22 February 1801 – 7 October 1886) was an English polymath, priest, mathematician, He wrote over 800 poems, some in Dorset dialect, and much other work, including a comprehensive English grammar quoting from more than 70 different languages. A linguistic purist, Barnes strongly advocated against borrowing foreign words into English, and instead supported the use and proliferation of "strong old Anglo-Saxon speech".

Life and work

Barnes was born in the parish of Bagber, Dorset, to John Barnes, a tenant-farmer in the Vale of Blackmore. Between 1818 and 1823 he worked in Dorchester, the county town, as a solicitor's clerk, then moved to Mere in neighbouring Wiltshire and opened a school.

::figure[src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3c/The_Grave_of_William_Barnes_-_Winterborne_Came.jpg" caption="Barnes's memorial and grave at [[St Peter's Church, Winterborne Came"] ::

Barnes was ordained into the Church of England in 1847, taking a BD degree from St John's College, Cambridge, in 1851. He served curacies at Whitcombe Church in Whitcombe, Dorset, from 1847 to 1852, and again from 1862. He became rector of St Peter's Church, Winterborne Came, with Winterborne Farringdon, Dorset, from 1862 to his death. Shortly before his death, he was visited at Old Came Rectory by Thomas Hardy and Edmund Gosse; in a letter, Gosse wrote that Barnes was "dying as picturesquely as he lived":

::quote

|quote= "The Fall"

The length o' days ageän do shrink An' flowers be thin in meäd, among The eegrass a-sheenèn bright, along Brook upon brook, an' brink by brink.

Noo starlèns do rise in vlock on wing— Noo goocoo in nest-green leaves do sound— Noo swallows be now a-wheelèn round— Dip after dip, an' swing by swing.

The wheat that did leätely rustle thick Is now up in mows that still be new, An' yollow bevore the sky o' blue— Tip after tip, an' rick by rick.

While now I can walk a dusty mile I'll teäke me a day, while days be clear, To vind a vew friends that still be dear, Feäce after feäce, an' smile by smile. |source = }}

Barnes first contributed the Dorset dialect poems for which he is best known to periodicals, including Macmillan's Magazine; a collection in book form Poems of Rural Life in the Dorset Dialect, was published in 1844. A second collection Hwomely Rhymes followed in 1858, and a third collection in 1863; a combined edition appeared in 1879. A "translation", Poems of Rural Life in Common English had already appeared in 1868. His philological works include Philological Grammar (1854), Se Gefylsta, an Anglo-Saxon Delectus (1849), Tiw, or a View of Roots (1862), and a Glossary of Dorset Dialect (1863), and among his other writings is a slim volume on "the Advantages of a More Common Adoption of The Mathematics as a Branch of Education, or Subject of Study", published in 1834.

Barnes is buried in Winterborne Came churchyard beneath a Celtic cross. The plinth of the cross has the inscription: 'In Memory of William Barnes, Died 7 October 1886. Aged 86 Years. For 24 Years Rector of this Parish. This Memorial was raised to his Memory by his Children and Grandchildren." On 4 February 1889 a bronze statue of William Barnes by Edwin Roscoe Mullins (1848–1907) was unveiled outside St Peter's Church in High West Street, Dorchester.

Ralph Vaughan Williams set to music four of Barnes' poems: "My Orcha'd in Lindèn Lea" and "Blackmwore Maidens" in their "Common English" versions ("Linden Lea" and "Blackmwore by the Stour", respectively), "The Winter's Willow", and "In the Spring".

Linguistic purism

Barnes had a strong interest in linguistics; he was fluent in Greek, Latin, French, Hebrew, Hindi, Italian, Russian, Welsh, Cornish and Old English. He called for the purification of English by removal of Greek, Latin and foreign influences so that it might be better understood by those without a classical education. His coinages included such words as sun-print for photograph, wortlore for botany, and welkinfire for meteor. His strain of purism resembles the later "blue-eyed English" of composer Percy Grainger, and in certain instances the terms in David Cowley's How We'd Talk if the English had WON in 1066.

Style

Uniquely fond of the Dorset dialect, which he felt to be particularly near to English's Anglo-Saxon roots, Barnes wrote many of his poems in the local parlance of Dorset. Additionally, as well as avoiding the use of foreign words in his poetry, Barnes frequently employed alliterative verse, the repetition of consonantal sounds. Examples of this can be heard in the lines "Do lean down low in Linden Lea" and "In our abode in Arby Wood".

References

Encyclopædia Britannica. "William Barnes".
Poetry Foundation. "William Barnes".
Phillips, Andrew. (1996). "The Rebirth of England and the English: The Vision of William Barnes". Anglo-Saxon Books.
(28 January 2014). "Johnson: What might have been". [[The Economist]].
Barnes, Williams. (1878). "An Outline of English Speech-Craft". [[Charles Kegan Paul.
Hyams, John. (1970). "Dorset". [[Pavilion Books.
Cousin, John William. (1910). "A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature". [[J. M. Dent]].
While he was there he began writing poetry in the [[West Country dialects. Dorset dialect]], as well as studying several languages—Italian, [[Persian language. Persian]], German and French, in addition to [[Greek language. Lord Tennyson]] and [[Gerard Manley Hopkins]]. He was a teetotaller and [[Vegetarianism. vegetarian]].Gregory, James. (2002). [https://eprints.soton.ac.uk/467032/2/886115_v.2.pdf "The Vegetarian Movement in Britain c. 1840–1901"]. eprints.soton.ac.uk. Retrieved 1 October 2022.
{{acad
Poetry Foundation. "The Fall".
{{NHLE
(23 January 2019). "In Praise of Dorset and of William Barnes".
University of Toronto Libraries. "William Barnes".
Chedzoy, Alan. (2011). "The People's Poet: William Barnes of Dorset". [[The History Press]].

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