Rustic Speech and Folk-Lore. Elizabeth Mary Wright
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,
That Flower of Jesse yet bears the price
As most of heal,
To slake our sorrows every deal.
Stanza vii.
Steven (Cum. w.Yks.), a gathering; an appointment. Hence, to set the steven, a phrase meaning to agree upon the time and place of meeting, O.E. stefn, a voice. The phrase ‘at unset stevene’ occurs in Chaucer’s Knightes Tale, l. 666, and in other early poems. In the Cokes Tale we read concerning ‘Perkin Revelour’ and his friends:
And ther they setten steven for to mete
To pleyen at the dys in swich a strete.
ll. 19, 20.
Shep (Cum. Lin. Som. Dev.), a shepherd. This form is familiar to us as occurring in the opening lines of Piers Plowman:
In a somer seson whan soft was the sonne,
I shope me in shroudes as I a shepe were.
Toll-booth (Sc. Yks.), a place where tolls are paid, a town or market hall. Matthew, according to Wyclif (1388), was ‘sittynge in a tolbothe’, Matt. ix. 9. Thwittle (n.Cy. Cum. Yks. Lan.), a large knife. Simkin, the miller of Trumpington, had one:
A Sheffield thwitel baar he in his hose.
Reves Tale, l. 13.
The word is a derivative of thwite (Sc. n.Cy. Lan. Der. Shr. Dev.), to pare wood, to cut with a knife, O.E. þwītan, to cut, shave off.
Survivals of old Substantives
‘Hit were to tore [hard] for to telle of þe tenþe dole’ of these old substantives still surviving in the dialects, but I will add just a few more in a list: ask (Sc. Irel. n.Cy. to Chs. and n.Lin.), a newt, lizard, O.E. āðexe, cp. Germ. Eidechse; bree (Sc. n.Cy. Yks. Lan. Chs.), the eyelid, the eyebrow, O.E. brǣw, the eyelid; cloam (Pem. Nrf. Dor. Som. Dev. Cor.), crockery, earthenware, O.E. clām, clay; dig (Irel. Yks. Lan. Chs.), a duck, cp. ‘Here are doves, diggs, drakes’ Chester Plays, c. 1400, Deluge, 189, ‘anette, a duck, or dig,’ Cotgrave; gavelock (Sc. Nhb. Dur. Cum. Wm. Yks. Lan. Der. Not. Lin. Nrf. Suf.), an iron crowbar, O.E. gafeluc, a spear; holster (Som. Dev. Cor.), a hiding-place, O.E. heolster, a place of concealment; ham (Not. Nhp. Glo. Sus. Wil. Dor. Som. Dev.), flat, low-lying pasture, land near a stream or river, O.E. hamm, a pasture or meadow inclosed with a ditch; haffet (Sc. Irel. Nhb. Cum. Wm.), the temple, the side of the face, O.E. healf-hēafod,