Sidney Oldall Addy

“ I have borrowed my last two examples from a parish which forms one of the boundaries of Hallamshire on the south, but they are near enough to be used as arguments in favour of the Scandinavian influence which prevailed in this district.
In the town and neighbourhood of Sheffield the student of dialect will sometimes meet with words of Scandinavian origin, as for example "wheelswarf." Every Sheffield man has heard of Jack Wheelswarf, the local alias of a grinder. Wheel-swarf means wheel-dust, or dust from a grinding wheel, svarf being the Old Norse word for file dust. ”

“ THE byrlaw, or town law, was common to the Danish districts of England, and it seems to have been adopted in places where Danish influence did not prevail. Everybody in Sheffield is familiar with the districts or divisions called Ecclesall Byrlaw and Brightside Byrlaw. As byrlaw is variously spelt and pronounced I give the form adopted by the New English Dictionary, which has the advantage of being in accordance with the etymology of the word. Old people in the neighbourhood of Sheffield pronounce the y of the first syllable like the ee in "beer," and make "law" into "low." ”

“ In the Court Leet this person was a public officer chosen by the jury for a year, and for a particular district. If chosen by the Court Leet he was, in a liberal sense of the phrase, a town justice, the "town" being a mere village or a little collection of houses. If chosen by the parties themselves he was a specially appointed arbitrator, and not a town justice at all.
In this district the word byrlaw has acquired a secondary meaning. It means a district having its own byrlaw or local law court. The borough of Sheffield appears to have had no such court, for "Sheffield Byrlaw" is unknown. ”