CHAPTER IIISPECIMENS OF DIALECTDifficulties of the VernacularOur 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 likeoogerum(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 ist’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 enormousvocabulary 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 DialectsBut 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 thebushes 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 wordgoutyas 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 didshe 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 readingExodusix. 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 amuryan. 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 thefatandlean kinewere weasels. In Surrey, Kent, and Sussex a weasel is called akine, orkeen. An old labourer reading theBook of Genesiscame 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 benyetup 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’,Genesisxxii. 13, meant: an aud teeap cowt iv a brier.The Dame’s SchoolThe 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’erWith boist’rous revel-rout and wild uproar.An old Village DameShenstone’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 asthimble-piemaking. 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 sumto 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.
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 likeoogerum(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 ist’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 enormousvocabulary 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 thebushes 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 wordgoutyas 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 didshe 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 readingExodusix. 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 amuryan. 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 thefatandlean kinewere weasels. In Surrey, Kent, and Sussex a weasel is called akine, orkeen. An old labourer reading theBook of Genesiscame 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 benyetup 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’,Genesisxxii. 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.
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.
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.
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’erWith boist’rous revel-rout and wild uproar.
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’erWith boist’rous revel-rout and wild uproar.
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’erWith boist’rous revel-rout and wild uproar.
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 asthimble-piemaking. 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 sumto 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 IVCORRUPTIONS AND POPULAR ETYMOLOGIESIf 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 wordsmothercate(Not.), or bold and audacious intoboldacious(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 wordfancical(gen. dial.) for fanciful occurs in 1676 in a work entitledMusick’s Monument, by Mace.Druggister(Yks.Lin.Pem.e.An.Som.Cor.) for druggist is registered in Sherwood’sDictionary(1672), ‘Adruggister,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 formaingis.Squinacy(Sc.Irel.), andsquinancyin the compoundsquinancy-berry(Cum.Lan.Ess.), the black currant, are not corruptions of quinsy, but are fromO.Frenchsquinancie, quinsy. But I shall reserve the treatment of historical forms such as these for a later chapter.Latin Phrases taken into the DialectsA 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 ofNisi 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 phraseto be at hizy-prizy, it means to be quarrelsome, disagreeable. The plural formmomenty-morries(Nhb.), skeletons, stands formemento 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 Latinnolens volensappears asnolus-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 Latinnominein the formulaIn 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, orParinody(Yks.Lin.), a long tedious rigmarole, a cock and bull story, is a corruption ofPater noster. The formnon-plush(manydials.), a nonplus, dilemma, surprise, usually occurs in the phrase:at, oron a non-plush, e.g. I was taken all on a non-plutch.Vady(Sus.Dev.) is a shortened form ofvade mecum, used to denote a small leather cylinder,containing change of raiment, and other small comforts of the traveller.The Frenchrendezvousappears asrandivoo,randivoose(Dev.Cor.),randybow(Nhb.Chs.Dev.),rangevouge(Cor.), meaning a noise, an uproar, but the literary sense remains in the verbrumsey-voosey(Wil.), e.g. He went a rumsey-voosing down the lane to meet his sweetheart.Corruptions and MispronunciationsJommetryis 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 hangby jommetry; the phraseall of a jommetrymeans in pieces or tatters.Lattiprack(Wil.) for paralytic is a strange distortion.Hapsherrapsher(Cum.Lakel.) for haphazard is equally unreasonable, but agreeable withal. Forms likesolintary(Nrf.) for solitary,skelingtonorskelinton(Yks.Lan.Stf.War.Wor.Shr.Glo.w.Cy.Dor.) for skeleton, have acquired an intrusivenin 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;turmitorturmut(gen. dial.) for turnip, can all be accounted for phonetically.Hantle(Sc.Irel.andn.counties toWar.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 wouldclean 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 ofreprobatefor 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 ofivory(Irel.Not.Lin.Rut.Hrt.e.An.) for ivy. The use ofpersecutefor prosecute may be merely the result of confusion of prefixes, as in: discommode, dismolish, mislest, perdigious, preverse. The use of the native prefixun-where the standard language hasim-,in-,&c., is very frequent. For instance,unpossibleoccurs in all the dialects in Scotland, Ireland, and England. Other examples are: undecent (manydials.), unlegal (Yks.Midl.War.Hrf.), unregular (manydials.), 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’sDictionary. Besideunconvenientthereexists in many dialects the useful compoundill-convenient.Unhonestfor dishonest, though now a dialect form, occurs in literature of the sixteenth century.Curious Prefixes and SuffixesSometimes the prefixun-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 formunheeastie(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 layIn 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 inSc.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 champignonand 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 EtymologyClosely 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 becomeswicked-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 tobelfry, because bells were in it].’ One is tempted to suggest thatmadancholy(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,maddoes not mean insane, but annoyed, angry, and the suggestion is shown to be absurd.Madancholymust therefore rank with the great majority of corruptions due to sound-change, typified by the hackneyed formsparrow-grassfor asparagus. Jerusalem artichoke forgirasoleartichoke is recognized as standard English, so also is gooseberry. Dr. Johnson has: ‘Gooseberry.n.s.[gooseandberry, 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’sRural Economy of Yorkshire(1796) we find the form grossberry, and this gross- is the same as the element gros- in Frenchgroseille, a gooseberry. The Scotch form isgroset. The pronunciationcowcumber(gen. dial.use inSc.Irel.Eng.) for cucumber was early recognized as corrupt. A paragraph in a book calledThe English Physitian Enlarged(seventeenth century) is entitled: ‘Cucumers, or (according to the pronuntiation of the Vulgar) cowcumbers.’ Other examples from various dialects are:ash-faltfor asphalt;brown-kitus,brown-titus,brown-typhusfor 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-sipplesfor erysipelas; thejanders(manydials.) for jaundice;a-kingbow,king-bow(Som.), for akimbo;pockmanteau(Sc.Nhb.Lin.) for portmanteau, but the substitution ofpock-for port-is probably due to association of meaning withpock, 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 starsStopped their fiery ears,And listened while Gabriel spoke.‘The rustic EtymologerNow and then we meet with a deliberate attempt on the part of dialect speakers themselves to explain the mysteriesof word-derivation. The writer of a book entitledThe Folk and their Word-Loretells 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 soparttheridges’. 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 wordlarkwith theO.E.lācsb., joyous activity, sport,lācanvb., to play, and with the dialectlake(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 wordlake, nor by any one who understands English philology.O.E.lācanwould have given in standard English, and in most of the above-mentioned dialects, a formloke, and under no circumstances could it have acquired ther. Apparentlyto larkis a verb made from the substantivelark, the bird.O.E.lācanhas died out, but its Scandinavian cognateO.N.leika, to play, sport, remains in the dialect formlake.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; similarlypisle(Yks.), a narration of any kind, is an aphetic form of epistle.Obstropolous, a corruption of obstreperous, andobligatefor oblige, are in general dialect use in Scotland, Ireland, and England.
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 wordsmothercate(Not.), or bold and audacious intoboldacious(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 wordfancical(gen. dial.) for fanciful occurs in 1676 in a work entitledMusick’s Monument, by Mace.Druggister(Yks.Lin.Pem.e.An.Som.Cor.) for druggist is registered in Sherwood’sDictionary(1672), ‘Adruggister,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 formaingis.Squinacy(Sc.Irel.), andsquinancyin the compoundsquinancy-berry(Cum.Lan.Ess.), the black currant, are not corruptions of quinsy, but are fromO.Frenchsquinancie, 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 ofNisi 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 phraseto be at hizy-prizy, it means to be quarrelsome, disagreeable. The plural formmomenty-morries(Nhb.), skeletons, stands formemento 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 Latinnolens volensappears asnolus-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 Latinnominein the formulaIn 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.
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.
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.
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, orParinody(Yks.Lin.), a long tedious rigmarole, a cock and bull story, is a corruption ofPater noster. The formnon-plush(manydials.), a nonplus, dilemma, surprise, usually occurs in the phrase:at, oron a non-plush, e.g. I was taken all on a non-plutch.Vady(Sus.Dev.) is a shortened form ofvade mecum, used to denote a small leather cylinder,containing change of raiment, and other small comforts of the traveller.
The Frenchrendezvousappears asrandivoo,randivoose(Dev.Cor.),randybow(Nhb.Chs.Dev.),rangevouge(Cor.), meaning a noise, an uproar, but the literary sense remains in the verbrumsey-voosey(Wil.), e.g. He went a rumsey-voosing down the lane to meet his sweetheart.
Corruptions and Mispronunciations
Jommetryis 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 hangby jommetry; the phraseall of a jommetrymeans in pieces or tatters.Lattiprack(Wil.) for paralytic is a strange distortion.Hapsherrapsher(Cum.Lakel.) for haphazard is equally unreasonable, but agreeable withal. Forms likesolintary(Nrf.) for solitary,skelingtonorskelinton(Yks.Lan.Stf.War.Wor.Shr.Glo.w.Cy.Dor.) for skeleton, have acquired an intrusivenin 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;turmitorturmut(gen. dial.) for turnip, can all be accounted for phonetically.Hantle(Sc.Irel.andn.counties toWar.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 wouldclean 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 ofreprobatefor 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 ofivory(Irel.Not.Lin.Rut.Hrt.e.An.) for ivy. The use ofpersecutefor prosecute may be merely the result of confusion of prefixes, as in: discommode, dismolish, mislest, perdigious, preverse. The use of the native prefixun-where the standard language hasim-,in-,&c., is very frequent. For instance,unpossibleoccurs in all the dialects in Scotland, Ireland, and England. Other examples are: undecent (manydials.), unlegal (Yks.Midl.War.Hrf.), unregular (manydials.), 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’sDictionary. Besideunconvenientthereexists in many dialects the useful compoundill-convenient.Unhonestfor dishonest, though now a dialect form, occurs in literature of the sixteenth century.
Curious Prefixes and Suffixes
Sometimes the prefixun-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 formunheeastie(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 layIn secret shadow, far from all mens sight.(F.Q.I.iii.)
One day, nigh wearie of the yrkesome way,From her unhastie beast she did alight,And on the grasse her dainty limbs did layIn secret shadow, far from all mens sight.(F.Q.I.iii.)
One day, nigh wearie of the yrkesome way,From her unhastie beast she did alight,And on the grasse her dainty limbs did layIn secret shadow, far from all mens sight.(F.Q.I.iii.)
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 inSc.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 champignonand 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 becomeswicked-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 tobelfry, because bells were in it].’ One is tempted to suggest thatmadancholy(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,maddoes not mean insane, but annoyed, angry, and the suggestion is shown to be absurd.Madancholymust therefore rank with the great majority of corruptions due to sound-change, typified by the hackneyed formsparrow-grassfor asparagus. Jerusalem artichoke forgirasoleartichoke is recognized as standard English, so also is gooseberry. Dr. Johnson has: ‘Gooseberry.n.s.[gooseandberry, 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’sRural Economy of Yorkshire(1796) we find the form grossberry, and this gross- is the same as the element gros- in Frenchgroseille, a gooseberry. The Scotch form isgroset. The pronunciationcowcumber(gen. dial.use inSc.Irel.Eng.) for cucumber was early recognized as corrupt. A paragraph in a book calledThe English Physitian Enlarged(seventeenth century) is entitled: ‘Cucumers, or (according to the pronuntiation of the Vulgar) cowcumbers.’ Other examples from various dialects are:ash-faltfor asphalt;brown-kitus,brown-titus,brown-typhusfor 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-sipplesfor erysipelas; thejanders(manydials.) for jaundice;a-kingbow,king-bow(Som.), for akimbo;pockmanteau(Sc.Nhb.Lin.) for portmanteau, but the substitution ofpock-for port-is probably due to association of meaning withpock, 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 starsStopped their fiery ears,And listened while Gabriel spoke.
The moon and the starsStopped their fiery ears,And listened while Gabriel spoke.
The moon and the starsStopped their fiery ears,And listened while Gabriel spoke.
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 mysteriesof word-derivation. The writer of a book entitledThe Folk and their Word-Loretells 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 soparttheridges’. 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 wordlarkwith theO.E.lācsb., joyous activity, sport,lācanvb., to play, and with the dialectlake(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 wordlake, nor by any one who understands English philology.O.E.lācanwould have given in standard English, and in most of the above-mentioned dialects, a formloke, and under no circumstances could it have acquired ther. Apparentlyto larkis a verb made from the substantivelark, the bird.O.E.lācanhas died out, but its Scandinavian cognateO.N.leika, to play, sport, remains in the dialect formlake.
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; similarlypisle(Yks.), a narration of any kind, is an aphetic form of epistle.Obstropolous, a corruption of obstreperous, andobligatefor oblige, are in general dialect use in Scotland, Ireland, and England.