In reply to Howard J:
> Probably a Staffordshire accent rather than Derbyshire.
> A few years ago the author Alan Garner wrote about this poem in The Times and described its setting in the modern landscape. He tells how he read it to his father, who spoke the old Staffordshire dialect and had far less trouble understanding the language of the poem than Garner's tutors at Oxford.
Good job Garner isn't dead yet, or he'd be turning his grave! He's from Cheshire. The Staffs/ Cheshire border runs along the River Dane just below, and Gawain's journey from the Wirral is all in Cheshire except for the last mile or two where he crosses (barely) into Staffordshire.
My favourite line in the poem is rogh knockled knarres with knorned stones, which as a description of the crags of the Roaches area might not have been bettered.
As you can probably guess, I am from Cheshire. One of the formative experiences of my life was reading The Weirdstone while at school in Alderley Edge. However, such is the gentrification of the north Cheshire commuter belt towns that throughout my childhood I can't recall ever hearing a broad Cheshire dialect spoken. Those people who did have local accents I would place closer to a Potteries accent than Derbyshire though, typically with a Manc burr although that could be a modern twist.
Link to The Times article here (a review by Alan of an earlier translation): http://alangarner.atspace.org/times4.html
Post edited at 09:57