RUSTIC SPEECH AND FOLK-LORE

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The cover image was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.

RUSTIC SPEECH

AND

FOLK-LORE

BY

ELIZABETH MARY WRIGHT

HUMPHREY MILFORD
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
LONDON EDINBURGH GLASGOW NEW YORK TORONTO
MELBOURNE BOMBAY
1913

OXFORD: HORACE HART
PRINTER TO THE UNIVERSITY

PREFACE

Under the heading of ‘The Varieties of English Speech’ an article of mine appeared in The Quarterly Review of July, 1907. The favourable reception accorded to it at the time prompted me to embark forthwith on a larger work dealing with the same subject.

Many books both scientific and popular have been written concerning dialect speech and lore, but nearly all of them are special investigations of some particular dialect. I have taken a bolder flight than this. I have not given a detailed account of any one dialect, but I have surveyed them all, and have gathered words, phrases, names, superstitions, and popular customs, here and there, wherever I found something that appealed to me, and that I felt would appeal to others as well as myself. It was impossible to make any one category exhaustive, for such was the mass of material open to me for selection, I might say I was ‘fairly betwattled and baffounded’. The only thing to be done was to make my selections fairly representative of the whole.

My aim in dealing with the linguistic side of my subject has been to show that rules for pronunciation and syntax are not the monopoly of educated people who have been taught to preach as well as practise them. Dialect-speaking people obey sound-laws and grammatical rules even more faithfully than we do, because theirs is a natural and unconscious obedience. Some writers of literary English seem to enjoy flinging jibes at dialect on the assumption that any deviation from the standard speech must be due to ignorance, if not to vulgarity besides. Since I wrote the last chapter of this book, I read in a criticism of Stanley Houghton’s Play Trust the People, this sentence describing the Lancashire ‘father an old mill-hand and the homely mother to match’: ‘They are both drawn, you feel, to the life, and talk with ease, not to say gusto, that curious lingo which seems to an outsider mainly distinguished by its contemptuous neglect of the definite article’, The Times, Friday, Feb. 7, 1913. Now the definite article in north-west Lancashire is t, in the south-west and south t, or th, and in mid and south-east Lancashire th. When this t stands before a consonant, and more especially before a dental such as t, d, it is not by any means easy for the uninitiated to detect the difference in sound between the simple word and the same word preceded by the article, between, for example, table and t table, or dog and t dog. But this is not ‘contemptuous neglect’ on the part of the Lancastrian! It would be nearer the mark to say that the Lancashire dialect is characterized by its retention of a form of the definite article very difficult to pronounce in certain combinations.

Further, I have endeavoured to show by means of numerous illustrations, how full the dialects are of words and phrases remarkable not only for their force and clearness, but often also for their subtle beauty, that satisfying beauty of the thing exactly fitted to its purpose.

I have also drawn up lists showing the numbers of old words and phrases once common in English literature, still existing in the dialects. Occasionally writers of modern verse seek to restore some of the words of this type to their former position in literary English, thereby causing the reviewer to stumble dreadfully, though he thinketh he standeth. I quote the following from a literary periodical dated May 2, 1913: ‘He [the poet] debates if he shall make “a nest within a reedy brake”, or, failing this delectable situation, offers himself a quaint alternative,

Or I shall see with quiet eye,

The dappled paddock loping by.

We had always supposed in our ignorance that “paddock” was a term applied to green fields or pastures. How Mr. ... could have seen a paddock “lope” we do not know, and perhaps it would not be kind to ask him to explain.’ The majority of educated people are familiar with the word paddock, a toad, or a frog, from its occurrence in the opening lines of Macbeth, and in Herrick’s Child’s Grace, but it will probably never again take its former place in the standard speech, though it may remain very common in the dialects.

In the chapters devoted to folk-lore I have not attempted to do more than chronicle certain superstitions and popular beliefs, leaving to my readers the fascinating pursuit of tracing superstitions to their sources, and of bringing to light hidden grains of truth in apparently silly beliefs. There is here plenty of scope both for scholarship and imagination. I once happened to mention at a dinner-party the superstition that it is a sure presage of a parting for an engaged couple to stand as fellow sponsors at a baptism. My neighbour, who was a clergyman, immediately explained the reason for this idea by telling me that in pre-Reformation days godparents were not allowed to marry each other. The Church recognized a sort of spiritual affinity between such persons, which precluded lawful marriage. It is strange to think that while joining in a Protestant service to-day, members of the Church of England are still swayed by an old law they never heard of except as it exists in the word ‘unlucky’.

In dealing with popular customs I have selected those that are less well known, and others concerning which I have myself collected information, and have omitted many which are readily accessible in works such as Hone’s Year Book and Chambers’s Book of Days.

I may mention that in collecting my material from very many miscellaneous sources, printed and oral, I have not felt justified in normalizing the orthography of the dialect quotations, especially where these have been taken from glossaries. This accounts for a certain amount of inconsistency in the orthography.

At the end of the table of contents will be found a select list of the works which I have found most useful in writing this book.

ELIZABETH MARY WRIGHT.

Oxford,
July, 1913.

CONTENTS

SELECT LIST OF WORKS CONSULTED

Addy, Sidney Oldall.—A Glossary of Words used in the neighbourhood of Sheffield, including a selection of local names, and some notices of folk-lore, games, and customs. E.D.S. 1888.

Atkinson, J. C.—A Glossary of the Cleveland Dialect: explanatory, derivative, and critical. London, 1868.

Baker, Anne Elizabeth.—Glossary of Northamptonshire Words and Phrases, with examples of their colloquial use. London, 1854.

Bible.—Wyclif, John.—The Holy Bible, containing the Old and New Testaments with the Apocryphal books, in the earliest English version made from the Latin Vulgate by John Wycliffe and his followers [c. 1380]. Ed. J. Forshall and F. Madden. Oxford, 1850.

Blakeborough, Richard.—Wit, Character, Folk-lore, and Customs of the North Riding of Yorkshire, with a glossary of over 4,000 words and idioms now in use. London, 1898.

Brockett, John Trotter.—A Glossary of North Country Words in use. 3rd edition corrected and enlarged by W. E. Brockett. Newcastle, 1846.

Browne, Sir Thomas.—Works [1640-80]. Ed. Simon Wilkin. 3 vols. 8vo, London, 1892-94.

Burne, Charlotte Sophia.—Shropshire Folk-Lore: a sheaf of gleanings. Ed. by C. S. Burne, from the collections of Georgina F. Jackson. London, 1883. See Jackson.

Chamberlain, Mrs.—A Glossary of West Worcestershire Words. With glossic notes by Thomas Hallam. E.D.S. 1882.

Chope, R. Pearse.—The Dialect of Hartland, Devonshire. E.D.S. 1891.

Cole, R. E. G.—A Glossary of Words used in south-west Lincolnshire (Wapentake of Graffoe). E.D.S. 1886.

Coles, Elisha.—A Dictionary, English-Latin, and Latin-English; containing all things necessary for the translating of either language into the other. 2nd ed. enlarged. London, 1679.

Cope, William. H.—A Glossary of Hampshire Words and Phrases. E.D.S. 1883.

Cotgrave, Randle.—A French and English Dictionary. London, 1673. [1st ed. 1611.]

Couch, Thomas Q.—The History of Polperro, a fishing town on the south coast of Cornwall: being a description of the place, its people, their manners, customs, modes of industry, &c. by the late Jonathan Couch. Truro, 1871.

Courtney, M. A. and Couch, Thomas Q.—Glossary of Words in use in Cornwall. West Cornwall by Miss M. A. Courtney. East Cornwall by Thomas Q. Couch. E.D.S. 1880.

Cunliffe, Henry.—A Glossary of Rochdale, with Rossendale Words and Phrases. Manchester, 1886.

Darlington, Thomas.—The Folk-Speech of South Cheshire. E.D.S. 1887.

Dartnell, George Edward, and Goddard, Edward H.—A Glossary of Words used in the county of Wiltshire. E.D.S. 1893.

Dickinson, W.—A Glossary of the words and phrases pertaining to the dialect of Cumberland. Re-arranged, illustrated, and augmented by quotations by E. W. Prevost, Ph.D., F.R.S.E. London, 1899.

Ducange, C. D.—Lexicon manuale ad Scriptores Mediae et Infimae Latinitatis, ex glossariis C. D. D. Ducangii et aliorum in compendium accuratissime redactum. Par W.-H. Maigne D’Arnis. Paris, 1866.

Easther, Alfred.—A Glossary of the dialect of Almondbury and Huddersfield. Compiled by the late Rev. Alfred Easther. Ed. from his MSS. by the Rev. Thomas Lees. E.D.S. 1883.

Ellwood, T.—Lakeland and Iceland: being a glossary of words in the dialect of Cumberland, Westmoreland, and North Lancashire which seem allied to or identical with the Icelandic or Norse. E.D.S. 1895.

Elworthy, Frederic Thomas.—The West Somerset Word-book. A glossary of dialectal and archaic words and phrases used in the West of Somerset and East Devon. E.D.S. 1888.

English Dialect Dictionary, The. Edited by Joseph Wright. 1896-1905.

Evans, Arthur B.—Leicestershire Words, Phrases, and Proverbs, ed. with additions and an introduction by Sebastian Evans. E.D.S. 1881.

Ferguson, Robert.—The Dialect of Cumberland, with a chapter on its place-names. London, 1873.

Five Original Glossaries. Series C. English Dialect Society. Edited by the Rev. Walter W. Skeat, M.A. London, 1876.

Five Original Glossaries. Series C. English Dialect Society. London, 1881.

Fletcher, J. S.—Recollections of a Yorkshire Village. London, 1910.

Friend, Hilderic.—A Glossary of Devonshire Plant Names. E.D.S. 1882.

Gibson, Alexander Craig.—The Folk-Speech of Cumberland and some districts adjacent. London, 1869.

Godefroy, F.—Dictionnaire de l’ancienne langue française et de tous ses dialectes du IXᵉ au XVᵉ siècle. 1881- .

Gomme, Alice Bertha.—The traditional Games of England, Scotland, and Ireland, collected and annotated by Alice Bertha Gomme. London, 1894.

Gregor, Walter.—Notes on the Folk-Lore of the North-East of Scotland. Folk-Lore Soc. vii. 1881.

—— The Dialect of Banffshire: with a glossary of words not in Jamieson’s Scottish Dictionary. Trans. Phil. Soc. London, 1866.

Hammond, Joseph.—A Cornish Parish: being an account of St. Austell, town, church, district, and people. London, 1897.

Harland, John.—A Glossary of Words used in Swaledale, Yorkshire. E.D.S. 1873

Harland, John, and Wilkinson, T. T.—Lancashire Folk-Lore: illustrative of the superstitious beliefs and practices, local customs and usages of the people of the County Palatine. London, 1867.

Hatzfeld, A., Darmesteter, A., et Thomas, M. A.—Dictionnaire général de la langue française du commencement du XVIIᵉ siècle jusqu’à nos jours. Paris [n. d.].

Heslop, R. O.—Northumberland Words. A Glossary of Words used in the County of Northumberland and on the Tyneside. E.D.S. 1892-94.

Hewitt, Sarah.—Nummits and Crummits, Devonshire customs, characteristics, and folk-lore. London, 1900.

—— The Peasant Speech of Devon. And other matters connected therewith. 2nd ed. London, 1892.

Holland, Robert.—A Glossary of Words used in the County of Chester. E.D.S. 1886.

Inwards, Richard.—Weather Lore; a collection of proverbs, sayings, and rules concerning the weather. London, 1893.

Jackson, Georgina F.—Shropshire Folk-Lore, edited by Charlotte Sophia Burne from the Collections of Georgina F. Jackson. London, 1883. See Burne.

—— Shropshire Word-book, a glossary of archaic and provincial words, &c., used in the county. London, 1879.

Jago, Fred. W. P.—The ancient language, and the dialect of Cornwall with an enlarged glossary of Cornish provincial words. Truro, 1882.

Johnson, Samuel.—A Dictionary of the English Language. London, 1755.

Kirkby, B.—Lakeland Words. A collection of dialect words and phrases, as used in Cumberland and Westmoreland, with illustrative sentences in the North Westmoreland dialect. Kendal, 1898.

La Curne de Sainte-Palaye.—Dictionnaire historique de l’ancien langage françois ou glossaire de la langue françoise depuis son origine jusqu’au siècle de Louis XIV. Niort, 1882.

Leigh, Egerton.—A Glossary of Words used in the Dialect of Cheshire. London, 1877.

Levins, Peter.—Manipulus Vocabulorum. A dictionary of English and Latin words arranged in the alphabetical order of the last syllables [1570]. Ed. H. B. Wheatley. Camden Society, 1867.

Littré, É.—Dictionnaire de la langue française. Paris, 1878.

Long, W. H.—A Dictionary of the Isle of Wight dialect, and of provincialisms used in the island. London, 1886.

Lowsley, B.—A Glossary of Berkshire Words and Phrases. E.D.S. 1888.

Lucas, Joseph.—Studies in Nidderdale: upon notes and observations other than geological, made during the progress of the Government geological survey of the district, 1867-72. London, c. 1882.

Moisy, Henri.—Glossaire comparatif anglo-normand donnant plus de 5,000 mots aujourd’hui communs au dialecte normand et à l’anglais. Caen, 1889.

Morris, M. C. F.—Yorkshire Folk-talk, with characteristics of those who speak it in the North and East Ridings. London, 1892.

Nevinson, Rev. Thomas K. B.—Local Provincialisms, being a MS. collection made by the Rev. Thomas K. B. Nevinson, Medbourne Rectory, Market Harborough.

New English Dictionary, A, on historical principles. Ed. J. A. H. Murray, H. Bradley, W. A. Craigie. Oxford, 1884-.

Nicholson, John.—The Folk Speech of East Yorkshire. London, 1889.

Nodal, John H., and Milner, George.—A Glossary of the Lancashire Dialect. E.D.S. 1875.

Northall, G. F.—A Warwickshire Word-book, comprising obsolescent and dialect words, colloquialisms, &c., gathered from oral relation, and collated with accordant works. E.D.S. 1896.

—— English Folk-Rhymes. A collection of traditional verses relating to places and persons, customs, superstitions, &c. London, 1892.

Ormerod, Frank.—Lancashire Life and Character. Rochdale, 1910.

Palsgrave, Jehan.—Lesclarcissement de la langue francoyse. 1530.

Parish, W. D.—A Dictionary of the Sussex Dialect and collection of provincialisms in use in the County of Sussex. Lewes, 1875.

Patterson, William Hugh.—A Glossary of Words in use in the Counties of Antrim and Down. E.D.S. 1880.

Peacock, Edward.—A Glossary of Words used in the Wapentakes of Manley and Corringham, Lincolnshire. 2nd ed., revised and considerably enlarged. E.D.S. 1889.

Promptorium Parvulorum sive Clericorum, Lexicon Anglo-Latinum princeps, auctore fratre Galfrido Grammatico dicto, e predicatoribus Lenne episcopi, Northfolciensi, A.D. circa 1440. Camden Society, 1843-65.

Robertson, J. Drummond.—A Glossary of Dialect and Archaic Words used in the County of Gloucester. Ed. by Lord Moreton. E.D.S. 1890.

Robinson, C. Clough.—A Glossary of Words pertaining to the dialect of Mid-Yorkshire; with others peculiar to Lower Nidderdale. E.D.S. 1876.

—— The Dialect of Leeds and its neighbourhood. London, 1862.

Robinson, F. K.—A Glossary of Words used in the neighbourhood of Whitby. E.D.S. 1876.

Rye, Walter.—A Glossary of Words used in East Anglia. Founded on that of Forby. With numerous corrections and additions. E.D.S. 1895.

Taylor, Francis Edward.—The Folk-Speech of South Lancashire: a glossary of words which are, or have been during the last hundred years, in common use in that portion of the County Palatine situate between Bolton and Manchester. Manchester, 1901.

Tusser, Thomas.—Five Hundred Pointes of Good Husbandrie. The ed. of 1580 collated with those of 1573 and 1577. Together with A Hundreth Good Pointes of Husbandrie, 1557. Ed. W. Payne and S. J. H. Herrtage. E.D.S. 1878.

Wright, Joseph.—The English Dialect Grammar. 1905.

ABBREVIATIONS

The asterisk * prefixed to a word denotes a theoretical form.

INTRODUCTION

Among common errors still persisting in the minds of educated people, one error which dies very hard is the theory that a dialect is an arbitrary distortion of the mother tongue, a wilful mispronunciation of the sounds, and disregard of the syntax of a standard language. Only quite recently—May 5, 1910—in reviewing a book called The Anglo-Irish Language, a writer in the Times Literary Supplement says: ‘The Anglo-Irish dialect is a passably good name for it ..., but it is something more than a dialect, more than an affair of Pidgin English, bad spelling, provincialisms, and preposterous grammar.’ Here we have a very good modern instance of the old error. A dialect, we are to understand, consists of ‘Pidgin English, bad spelling, provincialisms, and preposterous grammar’. This comes of reading dialect stories by authors who have no personal knowledge of any dialect whatever, and who have never studied any language scientifically. All they have done, perhaps, is to have purchased the Dialect Glossary of some district, or maybe they have asked a friend to supply a little local colouring. A lady once wrote to the Secretary of the English Dialect Society as follows: ‘Dear Sir, a friend of mine intends writing a novel, the scene of which is to be laid in Essex in the sixteenth century. Will you kindly give her a few hints as to the local dialect of that period?’ Authors of this type put into the mouths of their dialect-speaking characters a kind of doggerel which the above definition aptly describes, their readers then run away with the idea that this hotch-potch is the ‘spit and image’ of a real, living, English dialect. As a matter of fact, our English dialects exemplify so well the sound-laws of living speech, and the historical development of an originally inflected language, that the Neuphilologen in Germany are calling for Dialect Reading Books for German students studying English. A Professor in the University of Giessen has just bought fifty copies of Wright’s Grammar of the English Dialects for his Seminar. Now and then a solitary German student is sent over to England to encamp in a remote country village and write a learned Dissertation on the characteristic vowel-sounds of the district; an arduous task for a young foreigner whose knowledge of literary English as she is spoke is an uncertain quantity. But the field of English dialects offers other allurements besides those which attract the philologist and the grammarian. The language-specialist merely digs and quarries, as it were, in the bare soil and rock, where he finds rich ores amply sufficient to repay his pains and toil, but there remains plenty of room for the rest of us who are less laboriously inclined, and at every turn are enticing paths. The real charm lies in the fact that it is a ‘faire felde ful of folke’, natural, homely, witty folk. If this book succeeds in pointing out a few of the many ways in which the study of our English dialects may not only contribute to the advancement of knowledge, but also give us a clearer insight into the life and character of the British peasant and artisan, it will have achieved the aim and object of its existence.

‘Countryman. We old men are old chronicles, and when our tongues go they are not clocks to tell only the time present, but large books unclasped; and our speeches, like leaves turned over and over, discover wonders that are long since past.’

The Great Frost of January, 1608. Social England Illustrated, A Collection of XVIIth Century Tracts, p. 166.

CHAPTER I
DIALECT SPEAKERS

Insignificance of London

With the spread of education, and the ever-increasing means of rapid locomotion throughout the length and breadth of the land, the area where pure dialects are spoken is lessening year by year. It used to be Mam and Dad and Porridge, and then ’twas Father and Mother and Broth, but now ’tis Pa and Ma and Soup, is a saying concerning farmers’ children in the Midlands. In the words of an old North-country woman: T’young ’uns dizn’t talk noo leyke what they did when ah wer a lass; there’s ower mich o’ this knackin’ [affected talk] noo; bud, as ah tells ’em, fooaks spoils thersens sadly wi’ knackin’. An’ then there’s another thing, when deean, they can mak nowt bud mashelshon [mixed corn] on’t. There is a very old proverb in Cheshire, applied to any one who goes out of the country for improvement, and returns without having gained much; such a one is said to have ‘been at London to learn to call a streea a straw’. It is not often now that one could hear it said: Ah deean’t gan bauboskin’ [straying away] aboot leyke sum on ’em, ah sticks ti t’heeaf. The place where a mountain or fell sheep is born, and where it continues to live and pasture, is called its heaf, and the word is often in the Northern counties thus picturesquely used in a figurative sense. When one looks at the placards announcing in large letters the extraordinarily cheap day trips offered by the Great Western or the Midland Railway, or sees hoardings decorated with garish posters portraying the arid sands and cloudless skies of Blackpool or Morecambe, how dim and distant seem those past days when in their stead he who runs might read an advertisement such as this: ‘The York four-days Stage Coach begins on Friday the 12th of April. All that are desirous to pass from London to York, or from York to London, or any other place on that road, let them repair to the Black Swan in Holborn, or to the Black Swan in Conney Street in York, at both which places they may be received in a Stage Coach every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, which performs the whole journey in four days (if God permits), and sets forth at five in the morning.’ Small wonder if people then stuck to their heaf, and dialects remained pure and unadulterated. But even to-day one can still find country places where our great cities are known only by name. The inhabitants may ask us casually: Hoo’s traade doon London waay?—but you feel, in so doing, they merely wish to make polite conversation. Two or three years ago we lunched at a small village inn not far from Skipton in Yorkshire, and before leaving the landlord asked us to write our names in his visitors’ book. When we had finished, he read over the entry, and said, ‘Ah, you come from Oxford, perhaps you know London?’ ‘Oh, yes,’ we said, ‘we go to London sometimes.’ ‘Then you’ll happen know my brother,’ was the confident rejoinder. This last summer we stayed at a most primitive inn—with a courtesy title of Hotel—on the moors under the shadow of Penyghent. The landlord fetched us and our luggage from the station, and as he was uncording a box of books he observed, ‘You come from Oxford then.’ ‘Yes,’ said I, feeling proud of my connexion with that ancient Seat of Learning. ‘Oh!’ said mine host of the Golden Lion, ‘How’s hay down there?’

The Yorkshire Bite

To gain the full benefit and enjoyment of a sojourn in a country village, it is an immense advantage to be able to speak the dialect yourself, or at any rate to be able to understand and respect it. That is why we prefer the West Riding of Yorkshire to any other part of England, for there we are at home with the native, and are not looked upon as ‘foreigners’. The name Yorkshire has become a synonym for acuteness not unmixed with a touch of unscrupulousness. In Lincolnshire, for example, when anything is done which is very clever, sharp, or unscrupulous, they say: That’s real Yerksheer. To put Yorkshire on a person means in Lancashire to cheat, trick, or overreach him; in Lancashire and Lincolnshire a sharp overreaching person is called a Yorkshire bite. Even in his own country the Yorkshireman has this reputation. It was a native who told us the following story. Two Yorkshiremen, whom we will call A. and B., were accustomed to send their horses to the same Show. A.’s horse always won prizes, and B.’s never did. One day B. complained to A. ‘I can’t think why Mr. So-and-so (the judge) never gives me a First Prize; my horse is every bit as good as yours.’ ‘Well,’ said A., ‘I tell you what you had better do before the next Show; you send Mr. So-and-so a good big ham.’ The day came, and this time it was B.’s horse that won the First Prize. A. was both angry and astonished. He went to B. and asked: ‘Did you send that ham?’ ‘Yes,’ said B., ‘but I sent it in your name, not mine.’ Another Yorkshireman on his death-bed found satisfaction in the thought that he had outwitted an Insurance Company. ‘Ah’ve dun ’em, Joe, ah’ve dun ’em. T’doctor says ah’m bahn [I am going] to dee, an’ ah wor nobbud insiured six munths sin,’ he boasted to a sympathizing friend. It would, however, be grossly unfair to judge the Yorkshireman on the strength of this proverbial characteristic. He has very many other qualities equally characteristic and much more desirable, but which become famed in phrase and story only when found in an exaggerated form, as for instance the tenacity of purpose shown by that celebrated Yorkshire Oddity William Sharp, popularly known as Old Three Laps, who died in the year 1856. When a young man of thirty he became engaged to be married. The wedding-day was fixed, but when the appointed hour came, only the bridegroom appeared in church. At the last moment the bride’s father, dissatisfied about the marriage settlements, refused to allow his daughter to marry the man of her choice. The disappointed bridegroom returned to his home, went to bed, and vowed he would stay there, and never speak again to any one. He kept his word up to the time of his death, forty-nine years later, when he is said to have exclaimed shortly before his end, ‘Poor Bill! poor Bill! poor Bill Sharp!’ A Yorkshireman has a very strong sense of his own dignity, and some ‘South-country’ people mistake his attitude of independence for impertinence, and because he will not brook a condescending manner or a dictatorial speech, and because he says exactly what he means, they style him rude. Many stories are told of a certain grocer in Settle noted for his treatment of impertinent customers. A lady one day walked into his shop and inquired very abruptly: ‘What are eggs to-day?’ ‘Eggs,’ was the prompt reply. At Kettlewell once a man and his wife, evidently on a cycling tour from ‘down South’, came into the inn, and demanded tea in such peremptory tones, that the landlady turned her back on them, and we heard them muttering: ‘She’s bound to give us something.’ If you want to be well served at a Yorkshire inn, the first thing to do is to take note of the name over the door before you cross the threshold; then you can address the landlady as ‘Mrs. Atkinson’ (pronounced Atkisson), for you will need her name constantly, if you wish your conversation to be agreeable to her. ‘Down South’ we are very chary in our use of proper names in conversation; we can talk to an acquaintance or a friend by the hour addressing him only as ‘you’. In the North, we should intersperse our remarks freely with ‘Mr. Brown’ if he is an acquaintance, or ‘John’ if he is a friend. It is a noticeable fact that in the North men call each other by their Christian names, where in the South they would use the surname without the formal Mr. But to return to inns. Having duly passed the time of day with the landlady, you will next have to converse with her serving-maid, whose name has yet to be discovered. We have adopted a plan of addressing her always as ‘Mary’, till she gives us better information. The last damsel we thus met told us her name was Dinah, and further, that she was ‘a Lancashire lass’. In Yorkshire if you ask a person his or her name you must say: ‘What do they call you?’ You might not be understood if you said: ‘What is your name?’ The first question in the Catechism has often met with no response other than a vacant stare from children in Sunday Schools. A story is told of a clergyman near Whitby who went one day into the village school, and seeing a new face among the boys, said: ‘Well, my lad, and who are you?’ Boy: ‘Aw, ah’s middlin’; hoo’s yoursen?’

Tea in the Parlour

The Kettlewell landlady was so charmed by our greeting, and our use of her name and her dialect, that on our very first visit she treated us to her old family silver tea-spoons, and on the next occasion we not only had the tea-spoons, but we had a real old Queen Anne silver teapot as well, and a perfect feast of cakes, laid out in the private parlour where the foot of the tripper never trod. We came upon an inn full of trippers once, and though we were shown to a seat at a table, we could get no further attention, for nobody seemed to have time to fetch us any lunch. At last we secured the ear of the daughter of the house, and we pleaded our cause in her native tongue, whereupon she quickly fetched her parents, and the table was laid, and spread with ample fare in the twinkling of an eye.

In a seventeenth-century Tract—Of Recreations—in which are put forth the delights of ‘riding with a good horse and a good companion, in the spring or summer season, into the country’, the author goes on to tell us: ‘And if you happen, as often it falleth out, to converse with countrymen of the place; you shall find them, for the most part, understanding enough to give you satisfaction: and sometimes country maids and market wenches will give as unhappy answers as they be asked knavish and uncivil questions. Others there be, who, out of their rustical simplicity, will afford you matter of mirth, if you stay to talk with them.’

CHAPTER II
RICH AND EXPRESSIVE VOCABULARY

It is generally supposed that the vocabulary of dialect-speaking people is very small; indeed, it has been stated as a scientific fact that the common rustic uses scarcely more than 300 words. The most cursory glance at the English Dialect Dictionary, however, will suffice to convince anybody that this statement is incorrect. The six volumes of this Dictionary contain in all over 5,000 pages, and the number of simple and compound words in the first volume (A-C) is 17,519; and from the careful statistics given of the contents of this volume, it may safely be inferred that the whole Dictionary contains over 100,000 words.

As may be expected, we find in this vocabulary an immense variety of terms or phrases for expressing one and the same idea. For instance, there are approximately 1,350 words meaning to give a person a thrashing, and an almost innumerable quantity meaning to die, and to get drunk. There are some 1,300 ways of telling a person he is a fool. A few names taken at random are: chuffin head, coof, gapus, gauvison, goostrumnoodle, Jerry pattick, mee-maw, ning-nang, nornigig, rockey-codlin, Sammy-suck-egg, snool, stooky, Tom-coddy, yawney, yonnack. A fine cumulative effect is produced by a few introductory adjectives, with or without a final pronoun, in such personal remarks as: Thoo goffeny goavey, it’s thoo at’s daft Watty; You drumble-drone, dunder-headed slinpole; Thah gert, gawmless, sackless, headed fooil thah. There are about 1,050 terms for a slattern, such as: daffock, dawps, drazzle-drozzle, flammakin, hagmahush, lirrox, mad Moll o’ the woods, mawkin, moggy, rubbacrock, slammock or slommocks, trail-tengs, trash-mire, wally-draigle.

Names for the Smallest Pig

Among animals possessing a large variety of names the smallest pig of a litter holds a very prominent place with over 120 titles to distinction, such as: Anthony-pig, cadme, Daniel, dilling (a very old word for darling, occurring in Cotgrave’s Dictionary and Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy), greck, little Josey, Nicholas, nisgal, pedman, ritling, runt, squab, treseltrype, wrenock. That handsome bird the hickwall, or green woodpecker, Gecinus viridis, figures under almost every letter of the alphabet; whilst the sparrow and the stickleback also rank high on the list. Among flowers, the ox-eye daisy and the foxglove have the largest number of different names. The foxglove is called: fairy fingers, fairy glove, fairy petticoats, fairy thimbles, witches’ thimbles, bloody man’s fingers, dead man’s bells, flop-a-dock, poppy-dock, pop-guns, &c., &c. One would fain find in Thormantle, or Thor’s-mantle, a trace of ancient mythology, but the most probable explanation of the term is that it is a corruption of tormentil from Potentilla Tormentilla, a flower which shares with the foxglove the name Thor’s-mantle.

Names for a Brook

It would be an interesting experiment to try and trace out geographically the use of the various words denoting a stream of water: beck, burn, dike, sike, strype, water, &c., &c. The New English Dictionary tells us that beck is ‘the ordinary name in those parts of England from Lincolnshire to Cumberland which were occupied by the Danes and Norwegians’. Another authority, Mr. Oliver Heslop, says: ‘This term, which is found in Danish and Norwegian settlements in England, occurs about sixty-three times in the county of Durham. In Northumberland it is represented in the solitary case of the River Wansbeck, and in this it is questionable whether the second syllable is originally beck,’ and further: ‘The line dividing the more northern burn from the s.Dur. and Yks. beck is a sharp one. It runs along the ridge between Wear and Tees from Burnhope Seat eastwards to Paw Law Pike. The tributaries to the Wear, on the n. side of this ridge, are burns, and the similar affluents to the Tees, on its s. side, are becks.’ In Kettlethorpe church, in Lincolnshire, is an epitaph on a former Rector of the parish, the Rev. John Becke, who died in 1597:

I am a Becke, or river as you know,

And wat’red here yᵉ Church, yᵉ schole, yᵉ pore,

While God did make my springes here for to flow;

But now my fountain stopt, it runs no more.

Beck is a Norse word, O.N. bekkr, a brook, occurring already in Middle English, as, for instance, in Hampole’s Psalter, c. 1330: ‘Do til thaim as till iabin in the bek of cyson,’ Ps. lxxxii. 8. Burn is an English word, O.E. burna, burne, a brook, and is found in Sc. Irel. Nhb. Dur. Cum. Yks. Stf. Sike is also a native word, O.E. sīc, a watercourse, which comes down further south to Lei. and Nhp. Strype is a purely Scotch name. Jamieson thus defines it: ‘A strype is distinguished from a burn. The gradation seems to be: watter, a river; burn, a brook; burnie, a small brook; strype, a rill of the smallest kind.’ Though a water means a river in Scotland, in England it more usually denotes a smaller stream. The term is found in Dur. Yks. and Lan., and is common in Som. and Dev. An amusing incident once occurred at a Village Penny Reading entertainment where one of the songs on the programme was the well-known ballad poem, On the Banks of Allan Water. The pathetic notes of the last lines:

On the banks of Allan Water

There a corse lay she.

had hardly died away when the audience burst into a roar of laughter. They had understood the climax to be some kind of practical joke played by the miller’s daughter: ‘There o’ corse [of course] lay she!’

Names for a Girl

Attempts have been made to show the geographical distribution of the words for girl, or young woman. Ellis states it roughly thus: ‘mauther in Norfolk, maid in the South, wench in no bad sense in the Midlands, and lass generally in the North, girl,’ he adds, ‘is rather an educated word.’ The word mawther occurs in the Promptorium Parvulorum (circa 1440), the compiler of which was a Norfolk man. Sir Thomas Browne (1605-82) mentions it as one of the words ‘of common use in Norfolk, or peculiar to the East Angle countries’. It occurs in Ben Jonson’s Alchymist, 1610; and Tusser, who was an Essex man, uses it two or three times in his Fiue Hundred Pointes of Good Husbandrie, 1580:

No sooner a sowing, but out by and by,

with mother or boy that Alarum can cry:

And let them be armed with sling or with bowe,

to skare away piggen, the rooke and the crowe.

The word is used in Glo. Hrt. and Wil. besides East Anglia. At a trial once in Norfolk the Judge inquired who could give evidence of what had just been stated; the reply was: A mawther playing on a planchard Maid is the equivalent used in Dor. Som. Dev. Cor. When a new baby arrives, the question as to its sex is always put thus: Is it a boy or a maid? A similar use is found in the Bible, cp. ‘If she bear a maid child,’ Leviticus xii. 5. In the sense of young woman, or girl, the word maid occurs frequently in the Authorized Version of the Bible, whereas the word girl only occurs twice; e.g. ‘The maid [Esther] was fair and beautiful,’ Esther ii. 7; ‘Can a maid forget her ornaments?’ Jeremiah ii. 32. The daughter of Jairus, aged twelve, is in St. Matthew ix. 24 ‘the maid’, though in St. Mark she is ‘the damsel’. Wyclif termed her ‘the wenche’, a term which occurs in the Authorized Version in 2 Samuel xvii. 17, ‘And a wench went and told them.’ In Yorkshire and Lancashire wench is a term of endearment; in Cheshire it is simply the feminine of lad; in Oxfordshire they summon cows with the cry: Come, wench, come, wench; in Gloucestershire the well-known rhyme runs:

A wickering [giggling] wench and a crowing hen,

Is neither good to God nor men.

It is to Gloucestershire also that belongs the story of the local preacher who declaimed with terrific fervour: There you go, you chaps and wenches, head over heels to hell, like zhip [sheep] drow a glat lass may be of any age, though commonly she is a young girl. The word is often used as a term of address, e.g.

Owd lass, says I, tha’rt heigh i’ boan

An’ rayther low i’ beef.

Natterin’ Nan.

The East Anglian Bor

One of the most comprehensive terms of familiar address is the East Anglian bor, applied to persons of either sex and of all ages, e.g. Hullo, bor! where be you a’goin? The plural is together, e.g. Well, together, how are ye all? Bor is an old native word, O.E. būr, which we have in the literary language as the second element in neighbour. How convenient it would be if we could adopt bor into the upper circles of the spoken language, for use at those awkward moments when, after a lapse of years, we unexpectedly find ourselves face to face with an old acquaintance, whose name has slipped from our memories. How openly cordial we could be, and at the same time so comfortably ambiguous: And is it really you, bor? How glad I am to see you again! But if we were to attempt to lay a plundering hand on the dialects with intent to enrich our standard speech by handy and convenient dialect words, we should be embarrassed by the wealth before us. What literary word, for instance, conveys the full meaning of the common dialect term feckless (Sc. Nhb. Dur. Cum. Wm. Yks. Lan. War.), the lineal descendant of Shakespeare’s effectless? It means: incapable, incompetent, without resource, shiftless, helpless, and a great deal more besides, all in a handy nutshell. There are scores of adjectives, the forceful individuality of which we instinctively feel, and yet find very hard to convey in the terms of a verbal definition. We are driven to string together inadequate synonyms, or pile up pedantic phrases. A feckless body we define as: a person incapable of any effective effort; waughy (n.Cy.), we say, is used in illness, nearly always during convalescence, to express the feebleness, shakiness, and light-headedness after confinement to bed. It also means weak in body, especially when accompanied by a tendency to faint, e.g. I felt that waffy, I should hev siled doon upo’ th’floor, if missis hedn’t gen me sum brandy. Chuff (n.Cy. n.Midl. Midl.) is proud, pleased, denoting a combination of fussiness and serene self-satisfaction. We certainly have here much meaning in little room, as Dr. Johnson found in the word shrew, which he defines as: ‘A peevish, malignant, clamorous, spiteful, vexatious, turbulent woman.’

A gradely Lass

A few words such as canny, dour, pawky, have gained a recognized position in the standard speech, through having been introduced by educated Scotchmen. Some of the meanings of canny are expressed in the adjective gradely, a word generally quoted as characteristic of the Lancashire dialect, in the phrase a gradely lass. It belongs, however, also to Cum. Wm. Yks. Chs. Stf. Der. Shr. In origin it is a form of graithly, a Scandinavian word, O.N. greiðligr, ready, prompt, and it can mean: (1) respectable, honest, (2) handsome, comely, (3) friendly, kind, (4) clever, (5) having full possession of one’s senses, (6) genuine, good, (7) considerable, big. A similarly compact word in general dialect use throughout Scotland and England is jannock, or jonnock; like gradely, also of Scandinavian origin, cp. Norw. dial. jamn, even, level, of which jannock is apparently a derivative form. The commonest meaning is fair, honest, straight-forward: Yü may trist she. I tellee ’er’s jonnick tü tha back-bone (Dev.). Another attractive adjective in general dialect use is peart, a delightful word, which positively sounds: brisk, lively, spirited, cheerful, in good health, sharp, and intelligent. It has nothing to do with pert either in form or meaning. It is used specially of persons just recovered from an illness, e.g. Pretty peart again now—but it may also be used of animals and plants. We may remark: Them onions look peart, in contemplating the onion-bed. A common proverbial saying in Cheshire is: Poor and peart like the parson’s pig, whereby hangs a tale. The proverb is traced back to the days when the parson had to take some at least of his tithe in kind, when the pig reserved for him was wont to be a small and thin one, and consequently specially brisk and active compared with the pigs that went to market. More obvious similes are: as peart as a lop [flea]; as peart as a pyet [magpie]; as peart as a cock-robin; and with a figurative touch: as peart as a spoon. Closely connected with the literary uncouth, is the widespread dialect adjective unkid. It looks at first sight like the poor relation from the country, clad in rough rustic garb, but as a matter of fact it is historically a perfectly correct form, cp. M.E. unkid, not made known, -kid = O.E. cȳðed, p.p. of cȳðan, to make known. Indeed our uncouth is less regularly developed in pronunciation. Unkid may be found in all the dialects in England and Ireland, meaning: (1) strange, unusual; (2) untidy, e.g. The missis took a dill a paayns uv our Becca, but ’er couldna larn ’er to be tidy. ’Er sims reg’lar unkid, ’er do (Wor.); (3) uncanny, horrid; (4) lonely, depressed; (5) cross, sulky; (6) stormy; (7) of the weather: close, sultry. Some of the terms for describing persons of sullen, ill-tempered, or peevish dispositions are worth quoting: e.g. cappernishious, crumpsy, frabby, glumpy—If he’s glumpy, let him glump—muggaty, perjinkety, snippety. To address a cantankerous person engaged in a quarrelsome discussion as ‘You nasty brabagious creature’ must give the speaker a pleasant sense of having said the right thing at the right moment.

An ugsome Sair

Other very expressive adjectives are: dowly (Sc. Nhb. Dur. Cum. Wm. Yks. Lan. Lin.), lonely, melancholy; of places: retired, lonesome, e.g. A desput dowly, deeathly spot t’won [live] in, an old word found in Middle English, cp. ‘He fell to þe ground All dowly, for dole, in a dede swone,’ Destruction of Troy, c. 1400; gaumless (Yks. Nhb. Wm. Lan.), stupid, senseless, vacant, ignorant, without judgment, e.g. Well, if I ever did see annyb’dy so gaumless! Seems as if yo’d noo notion o’ nowt, cp. O.N. gaumr, heed, attention; perky, sharp, saucy, impudent, e.g. Sabina’s Bill is perkier then ony uther lad as I iver clapt eyes on; I sent him wo’d he wasn’t to mislest that theäre maggit nest e’ my plantin’, an’ I gets wo’d back fra him as he’d consither it, bud if I’d send him sixpence he was sewer he wodn’t; skiddley (Som.), small, diminutive, used generally with little, to intensify or to add contempt, e.g. Her ax me nif I’d like vor to take ort; an’ I zaid, thanky mum, s’I; an’ then if her didn bring me out a little skiddley bit o’ bird’n cheese, ’bout ’nough to put in a rabin’s eye; ugsome (Sc. n.Cy.), frightful, horrible, a derivative of O.N. ugga, to fear, e.g. a ghastly wound is: an ugsome sair, and a savage bull may be said to have ‘leuk’t at us varry ugsomely’; wairsh (Sc. Irel. n.Cy. Midl. Dev.), tasteless, insipid, cp. ‘A kiss and a drink of water is but a wersh disjune,’ Ramsay, Proverbs, 1737, and ‘werysshe as meate that is nat well tastye, mal savouré’, Palsgrave, Lesclarcissement de la langue francoyse, 1530; wambly (Sc. Lan. Wil. Dev. Cor.), insecure, unsteady.

T’onest Triuth

Some forceful adjectives have resulted from the simple addition of an ordinary suffix to an ordinary standard English word, e.g. dateless (Wm. Yks. Lan. Chs. Der. Lin.), stupified, foolish, disordered in mind, having the faculties failing through age, insensible, as from a blow, literally, without a date, unconscious of time; deedy (Sc. Yks. Midl. Hmp. Sus. Wil. Dor.), full of activity, industrious, painstaking, earnest, e.g. a deedy body, a practical person, an industrious worker. It was once a literary word, cp. ‘In a messenger sent is required ... that he be speedy, that he be heedy, and, as we say, that he be deedy,’ Adams, Lycanthropy, 1615; eyeable (Chs. n.Midl. Midl. Cor.), pleasing to the eye, sightly, as the man who was selling ready-made clothes in the market said of his stock-in-trade: There’s a many things that’s eyeable, but isn’t tryable, or buyable, but theäse things is eyeable, an’ tryable, an’ buyable an’ all; hurryful (Shr.), quick, hasty, hurried, e.g. It inna the ’urriful sort o’ folk as bringen the most to pass, for they runnen about athout thar yed ŏŏth ’em; easyful (w.Yks. Shr.), knowful (Yks.), yonderly (Lakel. Wm. Yks. Lan. Chs.), are good, homely substitutes for indolent, well-informed, absent-minded, literary adjectives, which by comparison with the dialect ones sound prosaic and harsh. Indeed, yonderly in particular, when applied to persons, is an untranslatable epithet, and yet one which exactly describes certain types of mind. It can also convey a sense of the pathetic, e.g.

Then Nan lewkt at ma wi a lewk

Soa yonderly an’ sad.

Natterin’ Nan.

Yonderish (Yks. Lan.), on the other hand, is not a friendly and gentle term, it can be even abusive, when used in speaking to persons who think themselves superior to other people, e.g. Theaw needsno’ be so yonderish, theaw’rt nowt ’at’s owt [thou art nothing that is anything]. Very expressive too are some of the participial adjectives, such as: gaustering (Chs. War. Yks. Lan. Lei. Lin.), blustering, bumptious, e.g. Sike a braungin’, gausterin’ taistrill [such a swaggering, bumptious, good-for-nothing rascal]; snazzling (Yks. of the wind or weather), cold, biting, bleak; to lead a threppoing, pungowing life (Chs.) means the sort of life where it is hard to make both ends meet, when one is puzzled how to get on, a hand to mouth sort of existence; all cottered into snocksnarls signifies in an entangled heap; a oondermoinded nassty trick is a nicely explicit phrase; so is the sentence: I was so cumpuffled I didn’t know what I was about; throssan-, or thrussen-up (Lakel. Cum. Wm. Yks. Lan.)—literally, thrust-up—means conceited, forward. A Yorkshire woman, when on a visit to her son in the South, was asked by a lady in rather a patronizing manner, what she thought of South-country ladies. She replied: Wah, to tel ye t’onist triuth, the’r nowt bud stuk-up thrussen-up things wi’ nowt mich abaht ’em, the’r all ahtside.

Natterin’ Nan

It is not easy to make a typical selection of what may be called expressive words, partly because the choice is so very wide, and partly because one is apt to exaggerate the merits of words which appeal to one personally, and so one is not an impartial judge. There are certain quaint dialect words which bring back to one’s mind the days of one’s childhood, the old family nurse, or the gardener who reigned supreme in the garden of long ago, and so for old sake’s sake these words express more than meets the ear of a stranger. Here, however, is a sample of verbs of various kinds: brevit (gen. use in Midl. counties), to search, ransack, &c., as in the following account of a visit to the dentist: Soo the doctor, a lukes at my tooth a bit, an’ begins a-brevetin’ abaout among his bench o’ tules, an’ a says, tell ye what Joo, a says, yo’ mut grin an’ aboide this turn. Soo ah says, ah cain’t grin if ye doon’t lave me noo tooshes, ah says. Soo a says, Ah, but yo’ can Joo, a says, yo’ can grin o’ the wrong soide; cabobble (e.An. Cor.), to mystify, puzzle, confuse, e.g. You wholly cabobble me; chunner (Sc. Yks. Lan. Chs. Der. War. Shr.), to grumble, mutter, murmur. A clergyman, asking an infirm old woman how she was, received as an answer: I goes on chunner, chunner, chunner. Whereupon he proceeded to give her a homily showing how wrong it was to be discontented, when he was stopped by the old woman: Bless you, Parson, it’s not me that chunners, it’s my innards! Fratch (n.counties), to quarrel, dispute, as for example, when a loud noise of wrangling voices is heard, some one may suggest that it is two women fratching, or forty men fighting; glox (Hmp. Wil.), of liquids: to roll about, make a gurgling sound when shaken inside a vessel; goggaz (Chs.), to stare, e.g. What a’t tha goggazin’ at naï? Tha’s noo moor manners abaït thee till if tha’d bin born in a wood; guggle (various dialects), to gurgle, make a bubbling sound, which looks at first sight like a made-up word, but which was known to Cotgrave, and to Dr. Johnson, who has: ‘To Guggle. v.n. [gorgoliare, Italian] To sound as water running with intermissions out of a narrow mouthed vessel’; gnatter, natter (Sc. and n.counties), to grumble, complain, fret, e.g. Natterin’ Nan, which is the title of the most famous of Ben Preston’s dialect poems:

Bud t’wahst o’ fouts [faults] at I’ve seen yet,

I’ woman or i’ man,

Is t’weary, naagin’, nengin’ turn

At plaaged puir natterin’ Nan.

A local Dick

Cp. E. Fris. gnattern, murren, verdriesslich sein; knacker (Glo.), of the teeth: to chatter. A local preacher—such as is termed in Yorkshire ‘a local Dick’—was once preaching a sermon on the Last Day, in which he foretold the end of the sinners present in chapel: Every limb of your bodies will shake like the leaves of an aspen tree, and your teeth will knacker in your heads like frost-bitten mariners. Maffle, moffle (Chs. Nhp.), to spend recklessly, squander, waste in trifles. In the accounts of a certain parish, where all the money could not be accounted for, appeared this item: ‘To moffled away £40.’ Maunder (gen. dial.), to talk idly and incoherently, to mumble; mopple (Yks.), to confuse, puzzle. At a cottage prayer-meeting a Minister was, as it is called, ‘engaged’ in prayer, when he became annoyed by one of those present, who continually broke in with ejaculations such as: Glory! Amen! Yus! &c. Suddenly the Minister stopped, tapped the disturber on the shoulder and said: Drop it, mun, tha mopples me. Moither (gen. dial.), to confuse, perplex, bewilder, e.g. A wur that moithered, a didn’ knoo wheer a was to a wik [week]. Mary Lamb’s grandmother used to say to her: ‘Polly, what are those poor crazy moythered brains of yours thinking of always?’ C. Lamb’s letter to Coleridge, Oct. 17, 1796. Nivel (Glo. Oxf.), to sneer, turn up the nose in disdain. A small boy in a Sunday School class, reading about David and Goliath, was asked what was meant by ‘disdained’ in ‘when the Philistine looked about, and saw David, he disdained him’. Ans. He nivelled at un. Cp. Fr. Norm. dial. nifler, flairer avec bruit, en parlant d’un chien. Scrawk (Yks. Not. Lin. Nhp.), to scratch, mark, e.g. M’m, me scrawk th’ paaintins [painted woodwork of a room] M’m! I know my wark better; scrouge (var. dial.), to squeeze, press, crowd, e.g. Now dwoan’t ’ee come a scrougin’ on I zo; scrunge (n.Cy. Nhb. Stf. Glo. Oxf. Hmp. I.W. Wil.), with the same meanings as scrouge, e.g. We were that scrunged, we couldn’t move; thrutch (Yks. Lan. Chs. Der.), to crowd, squeeze, huddle together, O.E. þryccan, to press, push. A proverbial saying applied to any one who has a great deal to say about the conduct or characters of other people and is not above suspicion himself, runs: Where there’s leeost reawm, there’s moast thrutchin’. But the classical illustration of the use of this word comes in the story of Noah and the ancestor of the Lancashire folk. This gentleman was swimming about in the Flood, and meeting the Ark, he called out to Noah to take him aboard, which the latter declined to do, on the grounds of lack of space, adding by way of apology: We’re thrutched up wi’ elephants. Trapes (gen. dial.), to trudge, go on foot, walk heavily or wearily, &c. An old woman on her death-bed was asked to take a message to a previously deceased person, when she retorted sharply: Di ya think ah sall he’ nowt ti deeah i’ heaven bud gan trapsin’ aboot, latin’ [searching] for hor? Yammer (Sc. Irel. Nhb. Lakel. Yks. Lan. Lin. War.), to lament, cry aloud fretfully, O.E. gēomrian, to mourn, complain.

All of a Goggle

A good descriptive word, which might well be adopted into the standard speech, is fantigue (gen. dial.). To be in a fine fantigue is to be in a state of fussy excitement, or a fit of ill temper, usually without sufficient cause. Similarly, to be all in a confloption (e.An. Cor.) well conveys the idea of flurry, confusion; to be all in a scrow (n.Cy.) is specially used of that annually recurrent state of domestic disorder known as spring-cleaning; to be all of a goggle (Glo. Hmp. I.W. Wil.) is to be trembling and shaking all over; to be all of a jother (Yks.) is a parallel phrase. A stout old woman describing her first experience of a railway journey, said: Ah’ll niver gan in yan o’ thae nasty vans nae mair. Ah trimmel’d and dither’d while [until] ah wur all iv a jother. All of a quob (Wil. Cor.) means in a heap. A Cornish woman describing the way railway porters take luggage out of a train said: They pitch it down all of a quob. A preacher in a Lincolnshire chapel gave out as his text, ‘Behold, the bridegroom cometh.’ Just then a newly married couple walked in, and the strangeness of the coincidence so upset the orator, that he exclaimed: Mi brethren, I’m clean blutterbunged. To be in a wassle (Glo.) is to find oneself in a muddle, or fix, as the preacher said when he got lost in his discourse: My friends, you must excuse me, and sing a hymn, for I am in a regular wassle. To be gone all to skubmaw is to be in a state of wreckage, broken in pieces. A Cornish minister is reported to have prayed: Lord! send down Thy mighty armour from above, and scat all our stony hearts to skoobmah.

Appropriate-sounding Words

Then there are numerous appropriate-sounding terms such as: fiz-gig (Yks. Der. Not. Lin. Nhp. War. I.W.), a disrespectful term for a girl or woman fond of gadding about, cp. ‘Trotière, a raump, fisgig, fisking huswife,’ Cotgr.; pelrollock (Shr.), an ill-dressed, worn-out looking woman; scallibrat (Yks.), a passionate, noisy child, a young vixen; sledderkin (Cum.), a sauntering, slovenly person; snapperdol (Lan.), a gaily dressed woman. A simple onomatopoeic word for palpitation of the heart is glopping (Lei.); such too is pash (n.counties), for a downpour of rain, e.g. Hout, tout! What’s the gude of praying for moderate rain and shooers? What we want is a gude even-doon pash! But the name of this type of word is legion, and to illustrate it at all adequately would require the scope of a dictionary.

Homespun Compounds

In the days of King Alfred, and of Ælfric, the Abbot of Eynsham, literary English possessed numbers of good, home-grown, compound words, which have since been lost, and replaced by some more learned or diffuse substitute. People said then: book-craft for literature; star-craft for astronomy; father-slayer for parricide; deed-beginner for perpetrator of crime; together-speech for colloquy; old-speech for tradition; well-willing for benevolent, O.E. bōc-cræft, tungol-cræft, fæder-slaga, dǣd-fruma, samod-sprǣc, eald-sprǣc, welt-willende. Sometimes again we have replaced the old compound by a more concise but less picturesque synonym. For lore-house we say school; for dim-house, prison; for again-coming, return, O.E. lār-hūs, dim-hūs, eft-cyme. In the spoken dialects we have the natural development of a living tongue, practically untouched by what are called the learned influences; hence, where in the literary language we should use a word of Latin origin, we frequently find a homespun compound used by dialect-speakers. We shall see in a later chapter to what a large extent these compounds are figurative and metaphorical; the few here quoted belong only to the simplest type: beet-need (n.Cy. Yks. Lan.), a person or thing that helps in an emergency, cp. O.E. bētan, to improve; cap-river, a termagant; cover-slut (Lei. Nhp. War. Shr.), a long apron used to hide an untidy dress; has-been (Sc. n.Cy. Lakel. Yks. Chs. Lin. War. Shr.), a person, animal, or thing, formerly serviceable but now past its prime, as the old Lincolnshire man said: It stan’s to reason at yung college-gentlemen like you knaws a vast sight moore then a worn-oot hes-been like me, bud you weänt better God Almighty an’ ten commandments e’ my time, an’ soä I’ll just stick to ’em while I’m happ’d up [till I am buried]; he-said, or he-say (Wm. w.Yks.), a rumour; never-sweat (Yks. Rdn. Oxf.), an idle lazy fellow; rip-stitch (Lakel. Yks. Lan.), a romping boisterous child, e.g. What a rip-stitch that lad is! If aw send him out i’ th’mornin’ wi’ his things o’ reet an’ tidy, he’ll come back at neet like a scarecrow; rogues-agreed (Som.), confederates, e.g. They purtend avore the justices how they ’adn never a-zeed wan t’other avore, but lor! anybody could zee they was rogues-agreed; good-doing (e.An.), charitable; penny-tight (Lin.), short of money; uptake (Sc. n.Cy. Nhb. Cum.), intelligence, comprehension, generally in the phrase in or at the uptake, e.g. He’s gleg i’ the uptak [quick in understanding].

Some fine shades of Meaning

Fine shades of meaning are often expressed in the dialects by some slight variation in pronunciation which to our ears might sound purely arbitrary or accidental, and also by the distinctive use of one or other of two words which from a dictionary point of view are synonymous. For example, drodge and drudge both mean a person who works hard, but the difference is this: a drudge is always kept working by a superior, a drodge is always working because she cannot get forward with her work; the word drodge implies blame, and drudge none. Geeble (g soft), gibble (g soft), jabble (Bnff.), signify a quantity of liquid. The word geeble contains the notion of contempt and dissatisfaction. When there is a small quantity and greater contempt and dissatisfaction indicated, gibble is used, and when a larger quantity, jabble is used. Muxy and puxy (Som.) mean miry, but a muxy lane would be merely a muddy lane, whereas a puxy lane would be at least ankle-deep in mud; steal and slance (Lan. Chs.) mean thieve. A boy may take a piece of pie from his mother’s larder, and he will have slanst it, but if he did the same thing from his neighbour’s place he would have stolen it. Words like this would never be confused by people accustomed to use them in everyday life.

CHAPTER III
SPECIMENS OF DIALECT

Difficulties of the Vernacular

Our difficulty in understanding the vernacular of a dialect-speaker arises in great measure from the fact that many of the sounds being unfamiliar to us, we cannot tell which syllable belongs to which word, and so we cannot rightly divide up the sentence into its component parts. This would of course be much more easily done if we could at once write down on paper what we have heard, and then stake it off in sections, like the cryptic word which the Kentish woman wrote to the village schoolmaster, to explain the absence of her boy from school: keptatometugoataturin, which became quite clear when divided up thus: kept-at-ome-tu-go-a-taturin, that is, kept at home to go a-harvesting-potatoes. For instance, what sounds like oogerum (Yks.) stands for a whole sentence: hug her them, that is, carry them for her. The sentence always quoted as the classic puzzle of this type is: ezonionye-onionye, which being interpreted means: have any of you any on you? Another catch specimen of Yorkshire dialect is t’weet maks’m pike’m, the wet makes them pick themselves, used of fowls cleaning themselves after rain. Then further, many of the commonest words have by the unhindered action of the laws of living speech become so worn down, that we hardly recognize them in this their dialect form, though we are using them every day ourselves in the standard language. Take for example such a sentence as: I shall have it in the morning, which has been pared down to: as-et-it-morn (Yks.). Our forefathers a thousand years ago would have said: Ic sceal hit habban on ðǣm morgne, every single word of which remains firm and intelligible in its skeleton shape of: as [I shall]-et [have it]-it [in the]-morn. Add to this an enormous vocabulary of words non-existent in literary English, it is no wonder if sometimes the accents of a country rustic sound in our ears like an unknown tongue. A story is told of a Yorkshireman who went into a store of general wares in London and asked: What diz ta keep here? Ans. Oh, everything. Yorkshireman: Ah deean’t think thoo diz. Hesta onny coo-tah nobs [pieces of wood that secure the tie for the legs of cows when being milked]?—a question which reduced the cockney salesman to a state of helpless amazement.

Specimens from various Dialects

But to illustrate more fully what has been stated above, I will here give some specimens culled promiscuously from various dialects: cost dibble tates? (Chs.), can you set potatoes; hoore’s his heeaf-hod? (n.Yks.), where is his home?; hod thi clack (e.Yks.), be silent; till the want-snap (Som.), set the mole-trap; t’deear beeals oot on t’jimmer (Yks.), the door creaks on the hinge; us lads wur shollin’ doon a stie (n.Yks.), we boys were sliding down a ladder; what have you got there? Ans. Nobbut a whiskettle o’ wick snigs (Chs.), only a basketful of live eels; t’titter oop t’sprunt mun ower a bit (n.Yks.), the one soonest up the hill must wait awhile; thoo mun think ma on ti remmon it (Yks.), you must remind me to remove it; tak the sharevil an’ the kipe, an’ goo an’ get up some o’ them frum tatoes out o’ the slang (Shr.), take the garden fork and the wicker measure, and go and get up some of those early potatoes out of the narrow strip of ground; whot ail’th’n? Aw, they zeth he’th got a pinswill in ’is niddick (Dev.), a boil on the back of his neck; gan through the yet, an swin the field wi’the beass in’t (Nhb.), go through the gate and traverse diagonally the field with the cattle in it; you needna be afeard o’ gweïn through the leasow, they’n mogged the cow as ’iled poor owd Betty Mathus (Shr.), you need not be afraid of going through the meadow, they have moved to another pasture the cow that gored poor old Betty Matthews; they war fearful fain to pike amang t’shrogs some shoups, bummelkites, and hindberries (w.Yks.), they were very glad to glean among the bushes some dog-rose hips, blackberries, and wild raspberries; an’ the leet windle ne’er blubbereth or weeneth, but look’th pithest and sif’th (Dev.), and the little delicate child never cries or whimpers, but looks piteous and sighs; ae’s pinikin, palchy, an’ totelin, ae’s clicky an’ cloppy, an’ a kiddles an’ quaddles oal day (Cor.), he is ailing, delicate, and imbecile from old age, he is left-handed and lame, and he potters about and grumbles all day; shoe maddles an taums ower in a sweb (w.Yks.), she talks incoherently, and from weakness falls down in a swoon; she shruk so wonnerful that I fared hully stammed (Ess.), she shrieked so strangely, that I was wholly overcome with amazement; it’s a soamy neet, ah’s ommast mafted (Yks.), it’s an oppressive night, I am almost overpowered by the great heat; when t’ bent’s snod, hask, cranchin an’ slaap, it’s a strang sign of a pash (w.Yks.), when the coarse moorland grass is smooth, brittle, crackling under the foot and slippery, it’s a strong sign of a sudden downpour of rain; it snew, an’ it stoured, an’ it warn’t while efter dark at ah wossel’d thruff an’ wan yamm (n.Yks.), it snowed, and the wind was driving the snow in gusts, and it was not till after dark that I had battled through and reached home; does it ever rain here? Ans. Why, it donks an’ dozzles an’ does, an’ sumtimes gi’s a bit of a snifter, but it never cums iv any girt pell (Cum.), it drizzles and rains slightly, and is misty, and sometimes there is a slight shower, but it never comes with any great downpour of rain; a cam doon wee a dousht an’ a pardoos, an sair did it rackle up ma banes, it wiz nae jeesty job (Bnff.), I fell with a sudden fall, striking the ground with great violence, and sorely did it shake my bones, it was no jesting matter; hee’s waxen a gay leathe-wake, fendible, whelkin, haspenald-tike (Yks.), he has grown a fine supple, hard-working, big, youth; I is to gie notidge at Joanie Pickergill yeats yown t’neet, t’moorn at moorn, an’ t’moorn at neet, an’ neea langer as lang’s storm hods, cause he c’n get na mair eldin (n.Yks.), I am to give notice that J. P. heats his oven to-night, and to-morrow, morning and night, and no longer as long as the snow lasts, because he can get no more fuel; tendar! tendar! [guard] stop the injun, left ma boondle on the planchen [platform] (Cor.). An old man having an order for some gravel was asked whether it was ready. He replied: Naw, Sur, but we’ve a got un in coose, we must buck [break] et, an’ cob [bruise into small pieces] et, an’ spal [break into yet smaller pieces] et, an’ griddle [riddle] et twice, an’ then et’ll be fitty (Cor.). A Cornish girl applying for a housemaid’s situation was asked: What can you do? Ans. I can louster and fouster, but I caan’t tiddly; I can do the heavy work, and work hard at it, but I can’t do the lighter housework. Sometimes a request for an interpretation of mysterious words only draws forth more of the same nature, for instance: Mester, that back kitchen’s welly snying [swarming] wi’ twitch-clogs. What do you mean by twitch-clogs, Mary? Whoi, black-jacks (Chs.). But ‘Mester’ was still in blissful ignorance of the presence of black-beetles in his back kitchen. The following conversation is reported from Somersetshire: I wish you would tell me where you get your rennet. Why, I buys a vell and zalts’n in. A vell! whatever is that? Don’ee know hot a vell is? Why a pook, be sure! Dear me, I never heard of that either; what can it be? Zome vokes call’n a mugget. I really cannot understand you. Lor, mum! wherever was you a-brought up to? Well, to be sure! I s’pose you’ve a-zeed a calve by your time? Of course I know that. Well then, th’ urnet’s a-tookt out of the vell o’ un. Some one who had never heard the word gouty as used in Cheshire to mean wet, spongy, boggy, asked: What is a gouty place? Ans. A wobby place. What’s a wobby place? A mizzick. What’s a mizzick? A murgin. A judge at the Exeter assizes asked a witness: What did you see? Witness: A did’n zee nort vur the pillem. Judge: What’s pillem? Witness: Not knaw what’s pillem? Why, pillem be mux a-drowed. Judge: Mux! What’s mux? Witness: Why mux be pillem a-wat [mud is wet dust]. An assault case came before a magistrate in a Yorkshire Police Court. Magistrate—to plaintiff: Well, my good woman, what did she do? Plaintiff: Deeah? Why, sha clooted mi heead, rove mi cap, lugged mi hair, dhragged ma doon, an’ buncht ma when ah was doon. Magistrate—to clerk: What did she say? Clerk (slowly and decisively): She says the defendant clooted her heead, rove her cap, lugged her hair, dhragged her doon, an’ buncht her when sha was doon. Sometimes the inability to comprehend is on the side of the country rustic. At a school in Wensleydale a South-country inspector, examining a class on the Bible, said: Neow tell me something abeout Mouses. Cats kill ’em, was the prompt rejoinder. A lady reading Exodus ix. 3, ‘There shall be a very grievous murrain,’ to a Sunday School class of Cornish children, was puzzled by the seemingly irrelevant comment made by one of her scholars: Ants is awful things, aint ’em? Afterwards she discovered that an ant in Cornwall is called a muryan. A similar story comes from Sussex. A lady who had been giving a lesson on Pharaoh’s dreams was startled to find that all the boys supposed that the fat and lean kine were weasels. In Surrey, Kent, and Sussex a weasel is called a kine, or keen. An old labourer reading the Book of Genesis came to this verse: ‘And Israel said, It is enough; Joseph my son is yet alive: I will go and see him before I die’ (chap. xlv. 28). There’s a hatch zomewhere in this story, vor however could wold Jacob zee hes zon Joseph if hee’d ben yet alive? If he’d ben yet up alive, or dead, how could there be any of ’en left vor his father to zee? That’s what I wants to know (I.W.). It must have been a more highly educated person who understood the coroner’s question: Did you take any steps to resuscitate the deceased? Ans. Yes, sor, we riped [rifled] ’ees pockets (Nhb.). An old woman once asked a neighbour the meaning of the word Jubilee. Ans. Why, ’tes like this, if yiew an’ yieur auld man ’ave ben marrid fifty years, ’tes a Golden Wedden’, but if the Lord ’ave took un, ’tes a Jewbilee. A local preacher expounding the Bible to a rural congregation in North Yorkshire told his hearers that the ‘ram caught in a thicket’, Genesis xxii. 13, meant: an aud teeap cowt iv a brier.

The Dame’s School

The quaintly-worded command, Ye mun begin an’ aikle nai (Chs.), has more significance than meets the eye of those who read it now, for it records a faint echo from the times of that ancient institution once common to every village, but now obsolete, namely, the Dame’s School, the theme of Shenstone’s poem, The School-Mistress (1742), wherein he sought to imitate the ‘peculiar tenderness of sentiment remarkable throughout’ the works of Spenser:

In ev’ry village mark’d with little spire,

Embow’r’d in trees, and hardly known to fame,

There dwells, in lowly shed, and mean attire,

A matron old, whom we school-mistress name;

Who boasts unruly brats with birch to tame.

The ‘Ye mun begin an’ aikle nai’ [you must begin and get dressed for going now] was the signal given by an old dame who kept a school near Wrenbury to her ‘little bench of heedless bishops’ that lessons were over for the day.

But now Dan Phoebus gains the middle skie,

And liberty unbars her prison-door;

And like a rushing torrent out they fly,

And now the grassy cirque han cover’d o’er

With boist’rous revel-rout and wild uproar.

An old Village Dame

Shenstone’s old dame kept a ‘birchen tree’ from which she cut her ‘scepter’; he does not mention the other weapon of torture wielded by these female tyrants, which was the thimble. The poor children were rapped on the head with a thimbled finger, and the operation was known as thimble-pie making. The old dame that I remember, who must have been one of the last of all her race, was of milder mood than these. Her name was Mrs. Price, and she dwelt in a remote and picturesque corner of Herefordshire called Tedstone Delamere. I cannot call it a village, or even a hamlet, for the houses were so very few and far between. Mrs. Price’s scholars were mere baby creatures, old enough to run about and get into mischief, or court danger, and yet too young to be sent to the parish school with their bigger brothers and sisters. So busy mothers were glad to pay a trifling sum to have these little ones tended by a motherly old widow-woman for a few hours every morning. But the time came when age and infirmity debarred her from even this light task, and her cottage no longer resounded with those noises which ‘Do learning’s little tenement betray’. I found her one day sitting all alone with an open Bible on the table beside her, and her spectacles lying idle in her lap. She looked tired and dispirited, and said her eyes were so bad that she had been obliged to stop reading, and sit doing nothing. Naturally I offered to read aloud to her awhile, and I inquired what had been engaging her attention. ‘Oh,’ said she, ‘I’d just got to where the frogs came up upon Pharaoh.’ I took the book, and read on and on, for each time I came to ‘the Lord hardened Pharaoh’s heart’, the aged Mrs. Price evinced such satisfaction over the prospect of yet another Plague, that I had not the heart to cut a long story short. At last when Pharaoh had finally bidden the Israelites ‘be gone’, I closed the Bible, and as I did so, the old lady exclaimed, ‘Ain’t that nice readin’!’ One would not have thought that the history of the seven Plagues of Egypt was exactly the portion of Scripture best fitted to cheer and comfort a lone and feeble old woman. Perhaps it stirred old fires in her blood, rekindling memories of the days when children deemed her ‘the greatest wight on ground’, when she held the reins of power, distributing rewards and punishments as the honoured head of a Dame’s School.

CHAPTER IV
CORRUPTIONS AND POPULAR ETYMOLOGIES

If we are to avoid on the one hand the danger of regarding a dialect as nothing better than a wilful perversion of standard English, we yet must not allow ourselves to be beguiled by the smooth-running course of true sound-laws, or the rural charm of quaint words, into the opposite error of supposing that irregularities and distortions do not exist. There are in the dialects numbers of words which can only be regarded as corruptions and mispronunciations of literary English, but considered relatively to the whole vocabulary the proportion of them is very small. Many even of the most obvious are not without a certain interest as examples of popular etymology, or of practical word-formation, as, for instance, when smother and suffocate are blended into the useful word smothercate (Not.), or bold and audacious into boldacious (Der. Cor.). Some apparent corruptions are in reality old forms which can be found in the literary language in the earlier stages of its existence. For example: abuseful (Yks. Lin. War. Shr. Hrf. Glo.) for abusive is not uncommon in seventeenth-century literature, though it must have died out later, as it is not noted by lexicographers such as Bailey and Johnson. The word fancical (gen. dial.) for fanciful occurs in 1676 in a work entitled Musick’s Monument, by Mace. Druggister (Yks. Lin. Pem. e.An. Som. Cor.) for druggist is registered in Sherwood’s Dictionary (1672), ‘A druggister, drogueur.’

Or again, the dialect form may not be directly taken from the standard language, but may be traced back through some other linguistic channel which has influenced its development, e.g. angish (Irel.) is not a mispronunciation of anguish, but it is developed from the Gaelic form aingis. Squinacy (Sc. Irel.), and squinancy in the compound squinancy-berry (Cum. Lan. Ess.), the black currant, are not corruptions of quinsy, but are from O.French squinancie, quinsy. But I shall reserve the treatment of historical forms such as these for a later chapter.

Latin Phrases taken into the Dialects

A few Latin phrases have made their way into the dialects, where they have assumed curious forms and meanings. For example: hizy-prizy (Nhb. Yks. Chs. Der. Som. Dev.), a corruption of Nisi prius, a law-term. It is used to signify any kind of chicanery or sharp practice, or, used as an adjective, it means litigious, tricky; and in the phrase to be at hizy-prizy, it means to be quarrelsome, disagreeable. The plural form momenty-morries (Nhb.), skeletons, stands for memento mori, remember that thou must die, the name given to a small decorative object containing a skeleton or other emblem of death, cp. ‘I make as good use of it as many a man doth of a Death’s-head or a memento mori,’ 1 Hen. IV, III. iii. 35. The Latin nolens volens appears as nolus-bolus (Wil.), nolum-wolum (Wil. Dev.), hoylens-voylens, oilins-boilins (Cum.). A mother sending off an unwilling child to school will say: Oilins-boilins, but thee shall go. Nominy (Nhb. Dur. Yks. Lan. Chs. Der. Nhp.) represents the Latin nomine in the formula In Nomine Patris, &c., the invocation used by the preacher before the sermon. It means: (1) a rigmarole, a long rambling tale, a wordy, tiresome speech; (2) a rhyming formula or folk-rhyme. A knitting nominy used by girls in Northamptonshire is as follows:

Needle to needle, and stitch to stitch,

Pull the old woman out of the ditch.

If you ain’t out by the time I’m in,

I’ll rap your knuckles with my knitting-pin.

Paddy-noddy, or Parinody (Yks. Lin.), a long tedious rigmarole, a cock and bull story, is a corruption of Pater noster. The form non-plush (many dials.), a nonplus, dilemma, surprise, usually occurs in the phrase: at, or on a non-plush, e.g. I was taken all on a non-plutch. Vady (Sus. Dev.) is a shortened form of vade mecum, used to denote a small leather cylinder, containing change of raiment, and other small comforts of the traveller.

The French rendezvous appears as randivoo, randivoose (Dev. Cor.), randybow (Nhb. Chs. Dev.), rangevouge (Cor.), meaning a noise, an uproar, but the literary sense remains in the verb rumsey-voosey (Wil.), e.g. He went a rumsey-voosing down the lane to meet his sweetheart.

Corruptions and Mispronunciations

Jommetry is interesting for the sake of its meaning. It is used in Gloucestershire in the sense of magic; anything supported in a mysterious and unknown manner might be said to hang by jommetry; the phrase all of a jommetry means in pieces or tatters. Lattiprack (Wil.) for paralytic is a strange distortion. Hapsherrapsher (Cum. Lakel.) for haphazard is equally unreasonable, but agreeable withal. Forms like solintary (Nrf.) for solitary, skelington or skelinton (Yks. Lan. Stf. War. Wor. Shr. Glo. w.Cy. Dor.) for skeleton, have acquired an intrusive n in common with many words in the literary language, as messenger, scavenger, &c. Skelet (Sc. Lin. Cor.) is not a corruption, but a pure French form, cp. ‘Scelete, a skeleton,’ Cotgrave. Pronunciations such as: chimbly (var. dials.) for chimney; singify (Yks. Lan. Der. Brks. e.An. Hmp. I.W.) for signify; synnable (Yks. Lan. Chs. Stf. Shr. Suf. Ken.) for syllable; ulster (Cor.) for ulcer; pumptial (Not. Rut. Lei. Shr. Som.) for punctual; turmit or turmut (gen. dial.) for turnip, can all be accounted for phonetically. Hantle (Sc. Irel. and n. counties to War. Wor. Shr.) is a perfectly legitimate contraction of handful, but besides the ordinary meaning, it can also denote a large quantity. A story is told of a Scotch minister who alluded in his sermon to the fact that a number of his flock had joined the Baptists, thus: I thocht till ha’e gethered ye under my wings, as a hen gethereth her chickens, but a hantle o’ ye ha’e turn’t oot to be deuks, an’ ta’en to the water.

A ‘nice Derangement of Epitaphs’

Occasionally one literary word is mistaken for another, and adopted in its place, as, for instance, information (Lin. Sus. Som. Dev.) used for inflammation; sentiment (Lin. Nrf.) for sediment. A farmer having been asked if he would clean out a pond, replied: No, sir, I can’t undertake the job; there’s a sight of sentiment in that there pit. Profligate (Shr. Dev.) for prolific is a surprising change of adjective, especially when applied to the guileless and innocent. I remember my old nurse, when she took to minding chickens because we had outgrown the need of her daily ministrations, telling me that she had collected a ‘sitting’ of a certain kind of eggs, because she thought it would produce ‘a profligate hatch’. This is paralleled by the use of reprobate for probationer. The Vicar’s daughter asked a young girl if she had joined the parochial Guild. The reply was: Oh, yes, Miss! Last week I were took in as a reprobate (Lin.). A youth writing home from Canada to his father the village blacksmith, in describing the Coronation festivities in the city where he dwelt, wrote: The soldiers fired three volumes. A rheumatic old woman, who had been taken with several others for an excursion on a very hot day, said to me: Have you heard what a very nice exertion we had yesterday? Quite recently too, I was told of a man who had been ‘crossed in love’ in his youth, that he had been a woman-atheist ever since. One is constantly reminded of Mrs. Malaprop and her ‘nice derangement of epitaphs’. Unction (Sc.) for auction, with its derivative unctioneer, is probably a phonetic change; and the same may be said of ivory (Irel. Not. Lin. Rut. Hrt. e.An.) for ivy. The use of persecute for prosecute may be merely the result of confusion of prefixes, as in: discommode, dismolish, mislest, perdigious, preverse. The use of the native prefix un- where the standard language has im-, in-, &c., is very frequent. For instance, unpossible occurs in all the dialects in Scotland, Ireland, and England. Other examples are: undecent (many dials.), unlegal (Yks. Midl. War. Hrf.), unregular (many dials.), unsensible (Sc. Dur. Yks. War. Sur.), unpatient (Sc. Dur. Lan.), unpeaceable (Yks. Som.), unperfect (n.Cy. Yks. Lan. Som.), unpassable (Sc. Yks. Som.). The three last were once good literary forms, and may be found with quotations from learned authors in Johnson’s Dictionary. Beside unconvenient there exists in many dialects the useful compound ill-convenient. Unhonest for dishonest, though now a dialect form, occurs in literature of the sixteenth century.

Curious Prefixes and Suffixes

Sometimes the prefix un- is a superfluous addition, as in: unbeneath (n.Yks.), beneath; unempt (Nhp. Hrf. Oxf. Bdf. Wil.), to empty; ungive (Lan. Chs. Lei. Nhp. Bdf. Hnt.), to relax, give way, thaw, though this last form has the support of early literary evidence. But on the other hand, un- is used in the formation of practical native words, for which the standard language substitutes words of foreign extraction, for example: uncome (Sc. Wm. Yks. Lan. Lin.), not arrived; unfain (Sc. Yks.), reluctant; unhandy (Pem. Glo. Ken. Dor.), incapable; unfriend (Sc. Nhb. Yks. Not. Hrf. Dev.), an enemy. Ungone (n.Cy. Yks. Lan. Lin.), not gone, not sent, is merely making one simple word out of two, with no gain in meaning, but ‘he’s just ungone’, for ‘he is at the point of death’, rises almost into poetic simplicity. In the hybrid form unheeastie (n.Yks.), indolent, we have an old word which recalls the ‘lowly asse’ of Spenser’s Una:

One day, nigh wearie of the yrkesome way,

From her unhastie beast she did alight,

And on the grasse her dainty limbs did lay

In secret shadow, far from all mens sight.

(F.Q. I. iii.)

It would be easy to collect together a large number of words with curiously assorted suffixes, and many of these words are decidedly effective. To quote a few examples: affordance (Cum.), ability to meet expense; abundation (Chs. Shr. Stf. Wor. Hrf. Glo.), abundance; blusteration (Cum. Lin.), the act of blustering; prosperation (Yks. Chs. Shr.), prosperity, as used in the old toast at public dinners, Prosperation to the Corporation; comparishment (Irel.), comparison; timeous (Sc. Irel.), timely; timmersome (gen. dial. use in Sc. Irel. Eng.), timorous; unnaturable (Yks. Lan. Lin. Nhp.), unnatural. Corruptions not infrequently are due to the blending of one word with another; for instance, champeron (Oxf. Brks.) is a contamination of champignon and mushroom, M.E. muscheron, Fr. mousseron; jococious (n.Cy. Yks. Ess.) is a compound of jocose and facetious; obsteer (Lin.), sulky, awkward, is an amalgamation of obstinate and austere; tremense (Ken.) embraces both tremendous and immense; thribble (Sc. Nhb. Cum. Yks. Lan. Der. Not. Lei. War. Wor. Ess. Ken.) is treble under the influence of three; boldrumptious (Ken.) is the magnificent product of bold, and rumpus, and presumptuous, and its meaning may be gathered from such a sentence as: that there upstandin’, boldrumptious, blowsing gal of yours came blarin’ down to our house. Battle-twig (Yks. Stf. Der. Not. Lin. Lei. Nhp.), an earwig, is a corruption of beetle + earwig, contaminated with battle + twig.

Corruptions due to popular Etymology

Closely akin to these are the corruptions due to what is called popular etymology, where an unfamiliar word or syllable becomes converted into a familiar one. Occasionally it is possible to trace some association of meaning to account for the change in pronunciation, as when week-days becomes wicked-days (w.Cy. Som.), probably with an idea of contra-distinction to Sundays and Holy Days. Illify (Lakel. Cum. Yks. Lan. Stf. Lin.) for vilify explains itself. The common example given to illustrate this change is the standard English word belfry. Dr. Johnson states the case thus: ‘Belfry. n.s. [Beffroy, in French, is a tower; which was perhaps the true word, till those, who knew not its original, corrupted it to belfry, because bells were in it].’ One is tempted to suggest that madancholy (Yks. Lan.) for melancholy started life as a descriptive term for victims of melancholia, but unfortunately there is the fact that just in those districts where the word occurs, mad does not mean insane, but annoyed, angry, and the suggestion is shown to be absurd. Madancholy must therefore rank with the great majority of corruptions due to sound-change, typified by the hackneyed form sparrow-grass for asparagus. Jerusalem artichoke for girasole artichoke is recognized as standard English, so also is gooseberry. Dr. Johnson has: ‘Gooseberry. n.s. [goose and berry, because eaten with young geese as sauce].’ Modern philologists, however, scorn this simple solution, and referring us to a French original, they say gooseberry is a corruption of *groise-berry, or *grose-berry. In Marshall’s Rural Economy of Yorkshire (1796) we find the form grossberry, and this gross- is the same as the element gros- in French groseille, a gooseberry. The Scotch form is groset. The pronunciation cowcumber (gen. dial. use in Sc. Irel. Eng.) for cucumber was early recognized as corrupt. A paragraph in a book called The English Physitian Enlarged (seventeenth century) is entitled: ‘Cucumers, or (according to the pronuntiation of the Vulgar) cowcumbers.’ Other examples from various dialects are: ash-falt for asphalt; brown-kitus, brown-titus, brown-typhus for bronchitis; chiny oysters (Wil.) for China asters; Polly Andrews (Glo. Wil.) for polyanthus; rosydendrum (Chs.) for rhododendron; curly-flower (Lin.) for cauliflower; fair-maid (Cor.) for fumade, fumadoe, a cured (formerly smoked) pilchard, Sp. fumado, smoked; hairy-sipples for erysipelas; the janders (many dials.) for jaundice; a-kingbow, king-bow (Som.), for akimbo; pockmanteau (Sc. Nhb. Lin.) for portmanteau, but the substitution of pock- for port-is probably due to association of meaning with pock, a bag, sack, or wallet; airy-mouse, hairy-mouse, raw-mouse (Hmp. I.W. Wil.), rye-mouse (Glo. Wil.), for rear-mouse, the bat, O.E. hrēre-mūs; screwmatic (War. Nrf.) for rheumatic; tooth-and-egg (Nhb. Lan. Der. Not. Lin.) for tutenag, an alloy of copper, zinc, and nickel. Years ago—years and years and donkey’s ears, as the saying is—when motor-cars were yet unborn, and when even tram-cars were unknown to country children, I can remember my father trying to explain to the little carol-singers at Christmastime, that they had introduced a corrupt reading into the text of their carol, when they sang:

The moon and the stars

Stopped their fiery ears,

And listened while Gabriel spoke.

‘The rustic Etymologer

Now and then we meet with a deliberate attempt on the part of dialect speakers themselves to explain the mysteries of word-derivation. The writer of a book entitled The Folk and their Word-Lore tells of ‘the rustic etymologer’ who explained that the reason why partridges are so called is ‘because ... they love to lie between the furrows of ploughed land, and so part the ridges’. Further, he tells us that: ‘a cottager lamenting that one of a litter of puppies had a hare-lip (divided like that of the hare), or, as she pronounced it, air-lip, explained that it was so called because it admitted the air through the cleft, which prevented the little creature sucking properly.’ But these are not the folk who are responsible for the absurd popular etymology which associates the modern colloquial and slang use of the word lark with the O.E. lāc sb., joyous activity, sport, lācan vb., to play, and with the dialect lake (Sc. Nhb. Dur. Cum. Wm. Yks. Lan. Chs. Der. Not. Lin. Glo.), to play, sport, amuse oneself. This error is the invention of non-philological people who speak standard English. It could not have been propounded by any one who uses the word lake, nor by any one who understands English philology. O.E. lācan would have given in standard English, and in most of the above-mentioned dialects, a form loke, and under no circumstances could it have acquired the r. Apparently to lark is a verb made from the substantive lark, the bird. O.E. lācan has died out, but its Scandinavian cognate O.N. leika, to play, sport, remains in the dialect form lake.

For mere distortion and mispronunciation a good illustration is the variety of dialect shapes which the word breakfast assumes, such as: bracksus, brecksus, brockwist, buckwhist, &c. A remark often heard in Ireland is: Well, I have the price av me supper now, an’ God is good for the brukwust. Dacious (Lin. Som.), impudent, rude, is an aphetic form of audacious, e.g. Of all th’daacious lads I iver seed oor Sarah’s Bill’s th’daaciousest. Demic (Yks. Not. Lin.), the potato-disease, is an aphetic form of epidemic; similarly pisle (Yks.), a narration of any kind, is an aphetic form of epistle. Obstropolous, a corruption of obstreperous, and obligate for oblige, are in general dialect use in Scotland, Ireland, and England.

CHAPTER V
ARCHAIC LITERARY WORDS IN THE DIALECTS

The linguistic importance of the dialect-vocabulary for the study of our English language and literature in its earlier periods cannot be over-estimated, for herein is preserved a wealth of historical words familiar to us in our older literature, but lost to our standard speech. Numbers of words used by Chaucer and the early Middle English poets, by Shakespeare, and by the translators of the Bible, which are now treated as archaisms to be explained in footnotes and appendices to the text, still live and move and have their being among our rural population to-day. Take for illustration this line from the Middle English alliterative poem, Sir Gawayne and the Green Knight (l. 2003):

Þe snawe snitered ful snart, þat snayped þe wylde.

‘Attercop’ and ‘Bairn’

The three principal words have disappeared from the literary language, and to give an exact rendering of these two brief sentences we should have to paraphrase them something like this: The snow, full keenly cold, blew on the biting blast, which pinched the deer with frost. But if we turn to the dialects, there we find all three: snitter (Sh.I. Yks.), to snow, sb. a biting blast; snar, snarry (Cum. Yks.), cold, piercing; snape (n.Cy. Dur. Lakel. Cum. Yks. Lan. Chs. Stf. Der. Lin. War. Shr.), to check, restrain, &c. The difference between snart and snar is accounted for by the fact that it is a Norse word. An adjective in Norse takes a t in the neuter, and this t not being recognized on these shores as an inflexional ending was sometimes adopted into English as if it belonged to the stem of the word, as for example in the literary words scant, want, athwart, cp. Icel. snarr, swift, keen, neut. snart. Many a delightful old word which ran away from a public career a century or two ago, and left no address, may thus be discovered in its country retreat, hale and hearty yet, though hoary with age. It is hard to make a choice among so many, especially where the chosen must be few, but the following may perhaps serve as representatives of the remainder: attercop (Sc. Irel. Nhb. Cum. Wm. Yks. Lan. Chs. Wil.), a spider. This was in Old English attorcoppe, a spider, from ātor, attor, poison, and coppe, which probably means head, the old idea being that spiders were poisonous insects. In the M.E. poem The Owl and the Nightingale (c. 1225), the owl taunts the nightingale with eating ‘nothing but attercops, and foul flies, and worms’. Wyclif (1382) has: ‘The eiren [eggs] of edderes thei tobreeken, and the webbis of an attercop thei wouen,’ Isaiah lix. 5. Bairn or barn (Sc. Irel. and all the n. counties to Chs. Der. Lin.), a child, O.E. bearn, a child, a son or daughter, M.E. barn or bern. Owing to its use among educated Scotch people, this word has gained some footing in our colloquial speech, and it has always had a place in poetical diction, but its real stronghold is Scotland and the North. Perhaps no other word breathes such a spirit of human love and tenderness as this does. How infinitely superior is the barns to our commonplace the kids; or a bit bairn, or bairnie to that objectionable term a kiddie! Pillow-bere (Irel. n.Cy. Yks. Chs. Der. Lin. Shr. e.An. Ken. Sus. Som. Cor.), a pillow-case. We read of Chaucer’s ‘gentil Pardoner’ that:

... in his male he hadde a pilwebeer,

Which that, he seide, was oure lady veyl.

Prologue, ll. 694, 695.

The word also occurs in several of the wills published in Wells Wills, by F. W. Weaver, 1890, as, for instance, in that of Juliane Webbe, of Swainswick, dated Jan. 11, 1533: ‘Julian Woodman vj shepe, a cowe &c. a salteseller, a knede cover, a stand, my ijⁿᵈ apparell of my body, a flockebed &c. ij pelowberys.’ Char, or chare (many dials.), an errand, a turn of work, an odd job, O.E. cerr, a turn, temporis spatium. We retain the word in the compound charwoman, and in a disguised form in ajar, which literally means on the turn. An old proverbial saying (1678) runs: ‘That char is char’d, as the goodwife said when she had hanged her husband.’ Shakespeare has the word in:

the maid that milks

And does the meanest chares.

Ant. & Cleop. IV. xv. 75.

Charming the Bees

Charm (gen. use in midl. and s. counties), a confused intermingled song or hum of birds or bees, e.g. Ow the birds bin singin’ this mornin’, the coppy’s all on a charm. It is also used of the sound of many voices. A Herefordshire farmer’s wife writing to me about her five children under seven years of age, added: ‘You can guess what a charm they make.’ The O.E. form was cierm, a noise, with a verb cierman, to make a noise. Palsgrave (1530) has: ‘I chitter, I make a charme as a flock of small byrdes do when they be together.’ But we know the word best in Milton’s lines:

Sweet is the breath of morn, her rising sweet,

With charm of earliest birds.

Par. Lost, iv. 641.

The phrase to charm or cherm bees belongs here, and has no connexion with the ordinary word charm, of French origin. To charm bees is to follow a swarm of bees, beating a tea-tray, or ringing a stone against a spade or watering-can. This music is supposed to cause the bees to settle; but another object in doing thus is to let the neighbours know who owns the bees, if they should chance to settle on adjacent property. Har, or harr (Sc. Nhb. Dur. Cum. Wm. Yks. Lan. also Mid. e.An. Hmp. Wil. Som.), the upright part of a gate or door to which the hinges are fastened, O.E. heorr, a hinge. Chaucer, in describing the ‘Mellere’, tells us:

Ther nas no dore that he nolde heve of harre,

Or breke it at a rennyng with his heed.

Prol. ll. 550, 551.

Hulk (n.Cy. Nhb. Nhp.), a cottage, a temporary shelter in a field for the shepherd during the lambing season, O.E. hulc, tugurium. The ‘lodge in a garden of cucumbers’, Isaiah i. 8, is in Wyclif’s Bible: ‘an hulke in a place where gourdis wexen.’ Marrow (gen. dial. use in Sc. Irel. and n. counties to Chs. Der.), a match, equal, a mate, spouse, &c. The word is found in the Promptorium Parvulorum (c. 1440): ‘Marwe, or felawe yn trauayle, socius, sodalis, compar.’ We are chiefly familiar with it in the ballad of The Braes of Yarrow, which begins:

Busk ye, busk ye, my bonny bonny bride,

Busk ye, busk ye, my winsome marrow.

Mommet (n.Cy. Wm. Yks. Lan. War. Wor. Shr. Hrf. Wil. Dor. Som. Dev. Cor.), an image, effigy, a scarecrow, &c., M.E. mawmet, an idol, O.Fr. mahummet, mahommet, ‘idole en général,’ La Curne; Mahumet, one of the idols of the Saracens. It is the same word as Mahomet, Arab. Muhammed. The form in Shakespeare is mammet:

a wretched puling fool,

A whining mammet.

Rom. & Jul. III. v. 185.

Words used for marshy places

In Wyclif’s Bible it is mawmet: ‘And thei maden a calf in tho daies, and offriden a sacrifice to the mawmet,’ Acts vii. 41; ‘My little sones, kepe ȝe ȝou fro maumetis,’ 1 John v. 21. Quag (gen. dial. use in Sc. and Eng.), a quagmire. This word occurs in The Pilgrim’s Progress, in the description of the Valley of the Shadow of Death: ‘behold, on the left hand there was a very dangerous Quag, into which, if even a good man falls, he finds no bottom for his foot to stand on: Into that Quag King David once did fall, and had, no doubt, therein been smothered, had not he that is able plucked him out.’ Immediately afterwards the same ‘Quag’ is called a ‘Mire’: ‘when he sought, in the Dark, to shun the Ditch on the one hand, he was ready to tip over into the Mire on the other.’ Mire, a bog, a swamp, is common in the Lake District and Devonshire. Yet another word with the same meaning is mizzy (n.Cy. Lan.), used by the Lancashire author of Sir Gawayne and the Green Knight (c. 1360) in one of the most picturesque passages in the whole poem, the account of Sir Gawayne’s ride through the forest on Christmas Eve:

Þe hasel & þe haȝ-þorne were harled al samen,

With roȝe raged mosse rayled ay-where,

With mony bryddeȝ vnblyþe vpon bare twyges,

Þat pitosly þer piped for pyne of þe colde.

Þe gome [man] vpon Gryngolet glydeȝ hem vnder,

Þurȝ mony misy & myre, mon al hym one.

ll. 744-9.

Words used by Middle English Poets

Rise (gen. dial. use in Sc. Irel. Eng.), a branch, twig, O.E. hrīs, a twig. ‘Cherries in the ryse’ is an old London Street Cry, as we know from Lydgate’s poem entitled London Lyckpeny:

Then vnto London I dyd me hye,

Of all the land it beareth the pryse:

Hot pescodes, one began to crye,

Strabery rype, and cherryes in the ryse.

Stanza ix.

Another instance of the use of the word may be taken from the old carol The Flower of Jesse (c. 1426):

Of lily, of rose of ryse,

Of primrose, and of fleur-de-lys,

Of all the flowers at my device,