Rustic Speech and Folk-Lore. Elizabeth Mary Wright
the hands or feet, O.E. potian; reese (I.W. Cor.), of grain: to drop out of the ear from over-ripeness, O.E. hrēosan, to fall down; lease (many dials.), to pick out, to glean, &c., O.E. lesan, to gather, collect; mint (Sc. Irel. n.Cy. Nhb. Yks. Lan. Lin. Nhp. e.An.), to purpose, intend, &c., O.E. myntan; retch (gen. dial. use in Sc. and Eng.), to stretch, extend, fig. to exaggerate, lie, O.E. reccan, to stretch, extend; sam (Wm. Yks. Lan. Der. Wor.), to gather or scrape together, to collect, O.E. samnian; smoor (Sc. Irel. Nhb. Dur. Lakel. Yks. Lan. Der. Lin. Lei. Nhp. e.An.), to smother, suffocate, O.E. smorian; tend (n.Cy. Wm. Lan. Chs. Stf. Nhp. Wor. Shr. Oxf. Som. Dev. Cor.), to kindle, light, set fire to, O.E. on-tendan; umbethink, or unbethink (Nhb. Lakel. Wm. Yks. Lan. Chs. Der. Lin. Shr. Dev.), to bethink oneself, to recollect, O.E. ymbeðencen, to think about, consider; walt (Sc. n.Cy. Yks. Lan. Chs. Der. Shr. Suf.), to totter, to lean to one side, O.E. wealtan, to roll, stagger.
Dialect Survivals in the Authorized Version
It is interesting to note how many of the archaic words of our Authorized Version of the Bible (1611) can be found remaining in the dialects. For example: blain (Sc. Dur. Yks. Lan. e.An.), a sore, an ulcer, O.E. blegen; bolled (Lin. Lei.), of corn or flax: ripe, in pod, in seed; botch (Yks.), a breaking-out on the skin; brickle (Yks. Lan. Chs. Nhp. Wor. Shr. Suf. Sur. Hmp. Dor. Som.), brittle, easily broken: ‘This man that of earthly matter maketh brickle vessels,’ Wisdom xv. 13; chanel-bone (Lin. Som.), the collar-bone, Job xxxi. 22, marginal note; charger (Yks. Chs. Sus.), a large platter, or meat-dish, A.Fr. chargeour; chest (Sc. Nhb. Suf.), to put into the coffin: ‘he [Jacob] dieth and is chested,’ Gen. 1, chapter heading; clout (var. dial. uses in Sc. Irel. and Eng.), a patch, a rag; cocker (Yks. Lan. Chs. Der. Lin.), to indulge, pamper: ‘Cocker thy child, and he shall make thee afraid,’ Ecclus. xxx. 9; coney (Yks. Lin. e.An. Ken. Sus. Wil. Cor.), a rabbit; daysman (Sc. n.Cy. Nhb.), an arbitrator, an umpire; ear (n.Cy. Yks. Lei. Hrf. Ken. Wil. Som.), to till or plough land; fitches (gen. dial. use in Sc. Irel. Eng.), vetches; leasing (Sc. Nhb. Yks.), lying, falsehood; let (Irel. Wm. Yks. Chs. Der. Lin. War. sw.Cy.), to hinder, impede; magnifical (Som.), grand, fine; marish (Sc. Irel. Yks. Chs.), a marsh, O.Fr. mareis; mote (Sc. Irel. Yks. I.W. sw.Cy.), an atom, a minute splinter of wood, or particle of straw; pill (Yks. Lan. Chs. Stf. Der. Not. Lin. Midl. Shr. e.An. Som.), to peel, strip off the outer bark; tabor (Chs. Stf. Lei. Nhp. War. Wor. Shr. Glo.), to rap, tap lightly; wist (Nhb. Yks.), knew, and known, in the phrase had I wist (Nhb. Yks. Lan.), had I known, cp.:
For feare of foole had I wist cause thee to waile,
let fisgig be taught to shut doore after taile.
Tusser, Five Hundred Pointes of Good Husbandrie, 1580.
Wrought (Sc. Irel. n.Cy. Der. Suf.), preterite of to work: worked, laboured. Some of these old words and expressions have become so common that they must now be counted as colloquialisms, as, for instance, the phrase away with, meaning to endure, put up with: ‘The calling of assemblies I cannot away with,’ Isaiah i. 13, cp. ‘I can nat away with my wyfe, she is so heedy, je ne puis poynt durer auecques ma femme, elle est si testue,’ Palsgrave, c. 1530. Another now commonplace word is ado, which has been immortalized by Shakespeare’s use of it in the title of one of his plays. It occurs in Mark v. 39: ‘Why make ye this ado, and weep?’ cp. ‘Ado or gret bysynesse, sollicitudo,’ Prompt. Parv.
Shakesperian Words in the Dialects
In the same way most of the obsolete Shakespearian words can still be traced in the dialects. The Shakespeare-Bacon theory, if not too dead and gone to be worth further combat, could easily be completely overthrown by any one who chose to array against it the convincing mass of evidence which proves Shakespeare’s intimate acquaintance with the Warwickshire dialect. Numbers of the words and phrases which Shakespeare used, and which we have since lost, still exist in his native county, and in the other counties bordering on Warwickshire. Some of them were at that date part and parcel of the standard vocabulary, and might be put by Shakespeare into the mouths of his highest personages; others again must even then have been regarded by him as dialect, and natural only to the speech of lower folk. It is Corporal Nym who says shog for move, jog: ‘Will you shog off?’ Hen. V, II. i. 47; ‘Shall we shog? the king will be gone from Southampton,’ Hen. V, II. iii. 47. It is a serving-man who uses the phrase to sowl by the ears: ‘He’ll go, he says, and sowl the porter of Rome gates by the ears,’ Cor. IV. v. 213; and it is Mistress Quickly, the hostess of a tavern, who calls herself a ‘lone woman’ when she means she is a widow: ‘A hundred mark is a long one for a poor lone woman to bear,’ 2 Hen. IV, II. i. 35. But to classify after this sort all the old words in Shakespeare would entail a classification of all the characters in the plays, and would thus be outside the scope of this book. I cannot therefore do more than give examples massed together irrespective of the question whether they were literary words or not in Shakespeare’s time:
Bavin, a bundle of brushwood, a faggot, cp.:
In stacking of bauen, and piling of logs,
Make under thy bauen a houell for hogs.
Tusser.
Bawcock, a semi-mocking term of endearment, a foolish person; biggin, a nightcap without a border:
Yet not so sound and half so deeply sweet
As he whose brow with homely biggen bound
Snores out the watch of night.
2 Hen. IV, IV. v. 26–8.
Biggin, Bolter, Blouze
The word also denoted a child’s cap, hence: From the biggin to the nightcap, signifies from childhood to old age. It is worth noting that this is the meaning which Dr. Johnson assigns to the word—cp. ‘Biggin … A child’s cap’—and he gives as the sole illustration the above quotation from Shakespeare. Bolter, used of snow, dirt, &c., means to cohere, form into lumps: ‘blood-boltered Banquo smiles upon me,’ Macb. IV. i. 123; blouze, a fat, red-faced wench, a coarse, untidy woman, also termed a blossom: ‘Sweet blowse, you are a beauteous blossom, sure,’ Tit. And. IV. ii. 72; codger, a shoemaker: ‘Ye squeak out your cozier’s catches,’ Twelfth N. II. iii. 97; day-woman, a dairymaid; dowl, down, soft feathers; drumble, to be sluggish and slow in movement; cowl, a large tub: ‘Go take up these clothes here quickly. Where’s the cowl-staff? look, how you drumble! Carry them to the laundress in Datchet-mead; quickly, come,’ Merry Wives, III. iii. 156; fettle, to prepare, make ready; fill-horse, the shaft-horse; firk, to beat; flap-jack, a pancake; gaberdine, a loose garment or smock-frock: ‘Alas, the storm is come again! my best way is to creep under his gaberdine; there is no other shelter hereabout: misery acquaints a man with strange bed-fellows,’ Temp. II. ii. 40; flaw, a sudden gust or blast of wind:
O, that that earth, which kept the world in awe,
Should patch a wall to expel the winter’s flaw!
Ham. V. i. 238, 239.
Gallow, to frighten; geck, a fool; grize, a step; haggle, to hack, mangle; inch-meal, little by little; inkle, an inferior, coarse kind of tape: ‘He hath ribbons of all the colours i’ the rainbow, … inkles, caddisses, cambrics, lawns,’ Wint. Tale, IV. iv. 208. As a simple word, inkle is dying out now, but the compound inkle-weaver is very common in the phrase: As thick as inkle-weavers, very friendly or intimate together. Insense, to cause to understand, to explain, inform, literally to put sense into. The word is usually spelt incense in Shakespeare editions, so that it becomes mixed up with incense, to enrage, incite, but insense is clearly the right spelling in such a passage as:
Sir, I may tell it you, I think I have
Incensed the lords o’ the council that he is—
For so I know he is, they know he is—
A