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What is the meaning of "that" in the following sentence,

She baked five pies. And when they came out of the oven, they went that overbaked the crusts were too hard to eat. So she say to her daughter, "Darter," says she, "Put you them there pies on the shelf, and leave'em there a little, and they'll come again." She meant, you know, the crust would get soft.

(Source: TOM TIT TOT : AN ENGLISH FOLK TALE ILLUSTRATED BY EVALINE NESS)

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Does "they went that overbaked the crusts were too hard to eat" mean "they went overbaked that the crusts were too hard to eat" ? or "they went very overbaked the crusts were too hard to eat" ?

Does "that" is "a inversion of that in the sentence" or "that is used to give emphasis to an adjective, overbaked"?

Does "Put you them there pies on the shelf" mean? Is this sentence, "Put you them there pies on the shelf" a grammatically correct sentence?

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    I'm not certain if it's a mistake or not (it may be an older form of grammar—which would make sense if it's a folk tale), but you can replace that with so if you want to understand the meaning: They went so overbaked the crusts were too hard to eat.
    – Jason Bassford
    May 4, 2019 at 8:43
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    "That" is a degree modifier of "overbaked". The "there" component of "them there" is used locatively (cf. "those pies there"). Rather old-fashioned, but still heard colloquially, especially in the north of England.
    – BillJ
    May 4, 2019 at 9:38

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That is a dialect form of so (= "to such a degree").

It is common in Yorkshire, where I live: "I were that hungry, I couldn't wait for my dinner".

Them is another dialect expression, for those (adjective): "them pies".

In addition, in some dialects here or there is sometimes added after a demonstrative (this/these, that/those as well as the dialect them) for extra emphasis: "This here pie is for you."

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  • that as an adverb of degree is more widely used than just Yorkshire. Evaline Ness, the author, is American. The Cambridge Dictionary lists it as meaning "as much as suggested", and Merriam-Webster lists it as "to such an extent".
    – JavaLatte
    May 18, 2019 at 13:12
  • I didn't mean to suggest it was only Yorkshire, I just gave it as an example. But Standard English uses that as an adverb of degree only in negative polarity contexts: "I wasn't that interested". Using it In non-negative contexts, as in the example, is non-standard.
    – Colin Fine
    May 18, 2019 at 13:20

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