Rustic Speech and Folk-Lore. Elizabeth Mary Wright
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