Elizabeth Mary Wright

“ Sometimes the Barghest takes the shape of a large dog, donkey, pig, or calf; sometimes only its terrifying shrieks are heard, as it passes by at midnight, boding death to any one who happens to hear the sound. ”

“ To go like a dinner of broth is to go successfully without hitch or friction; short and sweet like a donkey’s gallop; to go buzzing away like a dumbley-dory [a bumble-bee] in a snoxun [a foxglove] , or like a dumble-dore in a warming-pan, is said of a humdrum preacher; she’s like an old ewe dressed lamb-fashion is said of an old woman gaily dressed; she’s in and out of folkses housen like a fiddler’s elbow is said of a gossiping woman; to be like a fly in a glue-pot is to be in a state of nervous excitement; to have a memory like a frog-tail is to have a bad memory, or none at all ”

“ Like a chip in a mess of milk, or like a chip in porridge, said of a person or thing of no importance, useless; to stare like a choked throstle, or like a throttled earwig; like a cow handling a musket, said of a person doing something in a clumsy manner; to look like death on a mopstick is to look miserable; to work like Diggory is to work hard. ”

“ Country folk in Cornwall used to put a prayer-book under a child’s pillow as a charm to keep away the pixies. The still prevailing superstition that it is unlucky for a woman after child-birth to go into anybody’s house—some say even to cross her own threshold—before she goes to be churched, is no doubt a remnant of the old belief that the mother until kirk’t was not safe from the power of the fairies. ”

“ 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. ”

“ If the first lamb that you see in spring has its head towards you, it is an omen of good luck for the whole year, but if the tail is towards you, misfortune will be your lot. According to an old Scotch proverb ‘dirt’s luck’, so that in moving from one house to another it is unlucky to get possession of a clean house, swept and garnished by the outgoing tenant. An old usage for bringing luck to a new house was for the incoming tenant to go into every room bearing in his hands a loaf and a plate of salt. ”

“ On a calm, hot day, when the air near the surface of the ground is seen to quiver in the sunlight: The summer-colt rides, or: The summer-goose flackers; the Northern Lights are the Merry Dancers; heavy masses of fleecy white cloud are Wool-packs, or they are the Shepherd’s Flock. The evening star becomes the Shepherd’s Lamp, whilst the moon, more prosaically, does duty as the Parish Lantern. ”

“ If a Cornish miner should meet a snail as he is on the way to the mine, he would drop before it a crumb from his dinner, or a bit of grease from his candle, to ensure good luck. To find a toad in the tin-mine is an augury of good luck to the miner. If when you hear the cuckoo for the first time you turn a penny over in your pocket, you will never be without one all the year. Some say that if when you first hear the cuckoo the sounds proceed from the right hand, it signifies that you will be prosperous, but if from the left, ill-luck is before you. ”

“ Customs on Christmas Eve Christmas is everywhere the most popular festival of the whole year, combining as it does the religious and social sides of life in a way none of the other ecclesiastical Holy-days do. The Church with its message of ‘Peace on earth, goodwill towards men’, as it were, comes down and takes the hand of the people and says let us unite together to celebrate the mystery of family life at the altar of the home. Hence it appeals more forcibly than any other festival to young and old, rich and poor, town-dweller and country rustic, without distinction of creed or class. ”

“ 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. ”

“ When the Devil is so minded he amuses himself by hunting this miserable ghost over the moor with his hell-hounds, at which time Tregeagle is heard to roar and howl in so dreadful a manner that his name has passed into a proverb. ”

“ We are all of us familiar with the usual ceremonies which usher in the New Year—the sitting up to watch the Old Year out and the New Year in, the ringing of the church bells immediately after the last stroke of twelve, the handshaking, and exchange of greetings. ”

“ 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. ”

“ On no account must the first-foot be a woman. In most places the luckiest kind of first-foot is a fair-haired man. A man of dark complexion, a flat-footed man, or one afflicted with a squint brings bad luck. But in some parts of Yorkshire where the lucky-bird is the first person who enters the house on Christmas Day, if it is a dark-haired man who thus ‘lets Christmas in’, he is welcomed as a bringer of good luck, whilst a red-haired man is esteemed a harbinger of ill-luck. ”

“ POPULAR PHRASES AND SAYINGS To most people the details contained in the preceding chapter will seem but the dry bones of dialect speech; they would prefer the bones to be covered with sinews and flesh. Dialect speech as the embodiment of living, many-sided, human nature is perhaps nowhere so closely seen as in a collection of the figurative terms and phrases applied to people and things. ”

“ Phrases denoting State of Health Before passing on to a list of ailments and their cures, it may be interesting first to look at some typical words and phrases used by dialect-speakers in describing their state of health. It may be assumed as a general axiom that a woman never admits to being perfectly well. At most, she makes a reluctant confession to good health by saying: I’m pretty middlin’. This one word middling, by the aid of a preceding adverb, and by due adjustment of the speaker’s tone, may be made to express almost any degree of health. ”

“ Pixies and Fairies It is difficult to classify all the supernatural beings known to dialect lore, otherwise than very roughly, for even a cursory glance at the whole mass of superstitions and fancies regarding them shows that there is great confusion of idea between fairies and witches, bogies and goblins. Sometimes it is the fairies who terrify the stabled horses at night, sometimes it is a witch; here the benevolent Hob has been at work, and there his doings are ascribed to a pixy. ”

“ Alliterative Phrases A love of alliteration and rhyme in phrase and compound has always been characteristic of English as a whole. We tend naturally to say weary and worn, or sad and sorrowful, and we cling to compounds like helter-skelter and pell-mell. We even begin the education of our babies by teaching them to call a dog a bow-wow, and a horse a gee-gee. It is not, therefore, surprising to find this prevalence still more marked in the dialects, where all normal tendencies have fuller sway than in the standard language. ”

“ To catch a person napping, as Moss caught his mare, is a saying which occurs as far back as 1641 in Taylor’s works. To sit like Mumchancer who was hanged for saying nothing contains an allusion to an old game of chance played with cards or dice, at which silence was essential. ”

“ A method whereby Berkshire damsels of to-day seek to discover the name of a future husband is this: Split open an unused envelope, and write three names of young men you know, or would like to know, one in each of three corners, leaving one corner a blank. Place a piece of wedding-cake in the middle of the envelope, and fasten it up firmly, and then lay it under your pillow for three successive nights. Each morning tear off a corner, and the name left on the fourth morning will be the name of the destined husband, or if it is the blank corner which remains, then you will die an old maid. ”

“ PLANT NAMES AND NAMES OF ANIMALS A few of the dialect plant-names have been noticed in previous chapters in connexion with superstitious beliefs, medical lore, &c., but there are a great many more, equally well worth considering. What one feels about them—and herein lies their chief attraction—is that they reflect the popular mind, and are not the result of mere peeping and botanizing. The rustic sees in the flower something which calls up in his mind a familiar object—a dish of eggs and bacon, the parson in the pulpit, a hen and chickens ”

“ Foretelling the Seasons But popular meteorology does not confine itself to foretelling the weather of the immediate future; there are plenty of prophetic utterances concerning the seasons, and their effects on the crops of weeks and even months ahead. For instance: If the ice will bear a man before Christmas, it will not bear a mouse afterwards. If the sun shine through the apple-tree on Christmas Day there will be an abundant crop of apples in the following year. If the wind is in the west at noon on Candlemas Day it will be a good year for fruit. ”

“ 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’. ”

“ A death in the family may also be presaged by the sudden death of a pig. I remember just twenty years ago, when an old cook, whom I knew very well, inquired after my brother who was then recovering from a severe attack of scarlet-fever, she concluded the conversation by saying: ‘I knew quite well that there would be a serious illness in your family, because you had told me that one of the pigs had died suddenly.’ The sudden departure of rats from a house is sometimes held to betoken the death of one of the inmates. ”

“ Here we approach the unlimited humour displayed in the dialects. It is of all kinds—the ironical, the sage, the frankly jolly, the merely ridiculous. It takes every shape; we meet it in similes, metaphors, proverbs, and in various other forms which elude description. A characteristic form of humour, often combined with sarcasm, appears in those comparisons wherein the moods, habits, and actions of men are likened to those of birds, beasts, fishes, and even insects in real or imaginary situations. ”

“ A Warwickshire folk-rhyme runs:
O, dear, O!
My cake’s all dough,
And how to make it better
I do not know. Shakespeare uses the phrase twice in the Taming of the Shrew, I. i. 110; V. i. 145; and it occurs in Don Quixote, translated [Pg 166] by Jervas: ‘The duchess’s cake was dough, as the saying is, till she had read her letter.’ To be all mops and brooms is to be bewildered; to be all skin and grief is to be half-starved, of a melancholy disposition; anything peculiarly agreeable is said to be honey and nuts; a rich fool is said to carry his brains in his breeches-pocket ”

“ If a crow settles on a house, one of the inmates will die within the year. If a hare or a white rabbit crosses your path; if you hear a hen crow; if the cock crows at midnight; or if a cow lows three times in your face, it is a sign of death, as are, too, the midnight hooting of owls, and the howling of dogs. ”

“ The rustic, moreover, accepts the weather as he finds it, and puts plain facts into words, he does not abuse unalterable conditions in the way we are so apt to do, as if a cold wind, or drizzling rain were a personal insult not to be borne. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Weather Rhymes and Sayings To the countryman who lives by tilling the soil, or by tending sheep and cattle, the prospect of fair days or foul is all-important; we therefore find in the dialects a mass of weather-lore, in part based on old superstition, in part on trustworthy observation. Sun, moon, and stars, clouds and [Pg 314] wind, the habits of animals, and the various signs of the approach of winter, or the advent of spring, are all observed and studied, and then, in course of time, the results of this observation have become crystallized in popular sayings and homely rhymes. ”

“ The Knockers know where to find the most productive lodes, and sometimes they reward an industrious miner by pointing out to him where he might take a good tribute pitch. They are generally heard working deep underground, but at no great distance, for the rolling of barrows, the stroke of pickaxes, and the fall of earth and stones are distinctly heard, and sometimes voices seem to mingle with these sounds. Some say that these phantom toilers are the souls of the Jews who formerly worked the Cornish tin-mines, and who, for their wicked practices as tinners, have never been allowed to rest ”

“ Don’t cast a clout Till May is out, based on the uncertain temperature of the month of May. It is very unlucky to kill a swallow, a robin, or a wren, and even to take their eggs is a sacrilegious act certain to bring ill-luck, for: The Robin and the Wren Are God Almighty’s cock and hen. The Martin and the Swallow Are God Almighty’s scholars. Other versions of this rhyme are: Martins and swallows Are God’s teachers and scholars. Robins and wrens Are God’s chickens and hens. Those who kill a robin or a wren Will never prosper, boy or man. ”

“ Hitherto we have been concerned chiefly with the second of these three characteristics of a dialect, namely vocabulary, but we will now consider in some detail the first on the list, namely pronunciation, and here we cannot fail to be struck by the wonderful uniformity and regularity of the sound-system of modern dialects.
To classify the modern dialects of a country is a difficult and unsatisfactory task. ”

“ If a shrew-mouse runs over your foot, it portends ill-luck, sometimes the coming ill-luck is defined as paralysis of the foot. In Sussex the country people have an idea that the shrew-mouse is unable to cross a path which has been trodden by man. Whenever it attempts to do so it is said to be immediately struck dead, and hence the number of shrew-mice which may be found lying dead in lanes or on field footpaths. If a hare crosses the path of a woman with child, she must instantly stoop down and tear her shift, or the child will have a hare-lip, or ’ar-shotten lip, as it is called (Shr.) ”

“ Many a word which we meet in the dialects in some unfamiliar shape, can be shown to be no mere vulgar mispronunciation or misspelling, but a genuine old form, once under distinguished patronage in our earlier literature. ”

“ It is unlucky to hang a picture over a door. When you have set out on any business, or started on a journey, it is very unlucky to turn back and re-enter the house, but if it is absolutely necessary to return, the evil may be counteracted by sitting down on a chair before starting again. Some say even to look back is unlucky, and in this case they connect the superstition with the fate of Lot’s wife. Pick up pins, pick up sorrow, is a saying which is contradicted by other versions such as: See a pin and pick it up, All the day you’ll have good luck ”

“ 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. ”

“ Death Superstitions According to a popular superstition once prevalent in many parts of England, dying persons could not pass away peacefully if there were any feathers of game-birds or pigeons in the bed on which they lay. Instances have been recorded where some such feathers have been placed in a small bag, and thrust under the pillow of a dying man to hold him in life until the arrival of some expected relation; and further, instances where, out of pure kindness, a sufferer at the point of death has been removed from his bed, and laid on the floor to die ‘nat’rally’. ”