“ Mr. Kentish watched the little operation of "sticking up" without a word."So that's Stingaree!" he said, more to himself than to his comrades in humiliation; but the bushranger had cantered back into the scrub, and his name opened the flood-gates of a profanity which made Kentish wince, for all his knowledge of the world."Do you never swear at him till he has gone?" he asked when he had a chance. The driver leant across the legs of his friend."Not unless we want a bullet through our skulls," he answered in boorish derision; and the man between them laughed harshly. ”
Kentish
Definition and stakes
The theme of “Kentish” has been addressed by authors such as Thomas William Shore, J. W. Horsley, E. W. Hornung, Various and Ben Jonson. It is often associated with terms like Kent, Kenneth, Kenton, John and London.
Quotes about “Kentish”
Thomas William Shore, Origin of the Anglo-Saxon Race (1906)
“ The Kentish man’s liberty was his marked characteristic in the Middle Ages—a characteristic which had come down to him from the earliest Kentish settlers. Descended partly from Frisians—who were themselves, as the remnant of their ancient language shows, also of the old Gothic stock—and strongly marked by their love of freedom, the people of Kent preserved, through all the changes of the Anglo-Saxon period and the later powerful influences of feudalism, their free institutions, the relics of which, in the customs incidental to the gavelkind land tenure, have come down to our time. ”
Charles G. Harper,
The Ingoldsby Country: Literary Landmarks of the "Ingoldsby Legends"
“ These are those true Kentish men in whose mouths the sound of "th" is impossible, and who pronounce the definite article "the" like a Frenchman. To hear a Kentish rustic holding forth upon the iniquities of "de wedder" when he is intent upon abusing the climate is as humorous an interlude as to listen to a Kentish housewife who talks in unaccustomed plurals and asks the hungry tourist at tea if he will have any more "bread and butters." ”
