72 NOTES ON ESSEX DIALECT AND FOLK-LORE. 



boards and railways are fast sweeping away every vestige of old 

 beliefs and customs which in days gone by held such prominent 

 places in social and domestic life. The folk-lorist has also to deal 

 with remote periods, and to examine the history of tales and tradi- 

 tions which have been handed down from the distant past and have lost 

 much of their meaning in the lapse of years. But as a recent writer 

 has said, " Folk-lorists tread on no man's toes. They take up 

 points of history which the historian despises, they prosper and are 

 happy on the crumbs dropped from the tables of the learned, and 

 grow scientifically rich on the refuse which less skilled craftsmen 

 toss aside as useless." The tales with which a nurse wiles her 

 charge to sleep provide for the folk-lore student a succulent banquet, 

 for he knows that there is scarcely a child-story that may not be 

 traced back to the boyhood of the world, and to those primitive races 

 from which so many polished nations have sprung. 



Around every stage of human life a variety of customs and 

 superstitions have woven themselves, most of which, apart from 

 their antiquarian value as having been bequeathed to us from the 

 far-off past, are interesting in so far as they illustrate those old-world 

 notions and quaint beliefs which marked the social and domestic life 

 of our forefathers. Although many of these tales and phrases appear 

 to us meaningless, yet it must be remembered that they were the 

 natural outcome of that scanty knowledge and those crude concep- 

 tions which prevailed in less enlightened times than our own. 

 Probably if our ancestors were in our midst now, they would be able 

 in a great measure to explain or account for what are often looked 

 upon nowadays as the childish fancies of the nursery. 



Many of the old traditionary beliefs and practices associated with 

 the nursery are relics of what the Scandinavian mothers taught their 

 children in days long ago. The familiar fairy tales of our own 

 childhood still form the nursery literature or " baby classics " in 

 most homes, and are of unusual interest as embodying not only the 

 myths and legends of the ancient Aryan race, but also their concep- 

 tions of the world around them. 



Our task, however, is not concerned with the large subject of the 

 fairy tales of the infant world in general, but rather with the local 

 traditions, superstitions, and common beliefs of our Essex county 

 and peasantry. 



It may be useful to say something of the dialect of Essex, the 

 greatest peculiarities of which occur north of Chelmsford, especially 



