By J. U. Powell, M.A. 125 
“poking about the house). ‘* Kes, Her wura proper vool. Her wur 
missis of a public-house, and left it for to be missis of a teaty- 
pit” (of an innkeeper’s widow who married a labourer). ‘‘ What 
sort of man is the new farmer?” Oh, like a crooked road, in and 
out.” “Our Tom he’s too wuld and too stiff for a souldier, perhaps 
they’d have en, if a were oiled and plyed.” “My uncle worked 
seven years o’ Sundays.” The meaning is that he worked for 
forty-nine years ; he was a shepherd, and therefore had to work on 
Sundays. If the number of Sundays he had worked during his 
life were added together, they would make seven years ; multiply | 
52 Sundays by 49=2548 ; divide this by 365, and you get seven 
years. Various similes from animal life :—‘‘ They ran like two 
young greyhounds”; ‘+ I can’t get out of Dobbin’s pace”; “need to 
have a head like a hawk” ; “as cunning as a young rook”; “ the 
poor baby’s arm’s no thicker than a lamb’s tail a’ter it’s been 
skinned.” Various :—‘‘ What, be I to be shrowded like a wuld 
polly ?” (said by a man when told by the doctor that he would have 
to lose his arm, é.c., lopped like an old pollard) ; “ These yere cats 
be passon and clerk’ (one white, the other black); “I be just 
like a almanack, I can tell the changes coming ” (said by a 
rheumaticy woman). ‘“‘ Chatter-watter ” is good for “tea” ; two 
good terms of abuse are “ Thee girt maa-kin ” (malkin, a long 
thin baking-stick), “ Thee little truckle-muxen » (little girl playing 
about in the mud). “ Passon gied ’em a physic-ball ’smarnin’ 
in church.” 
The Glossary concludes with an appendix of stories, but to it this 
is not the place to make additions. Like rough country rhymes in 
eradle-songs or on tomb-stones—but we are no longer to cut 
our simple rhymes upon them—such stories should be carefully 
preserved by anyone who hears them ; they have a germ in them. 
But if anyone should tell a story, let him preface it with such words 
us these :—‘“ Once upon a time, *twernt in my time, nor in your 
ime, nit in anybody else’s time; *twere when magpies builded in 
Jd men’s beards and turkey-cocks chewed bacca ; all over hills 
lales mountains and valleys, so far as I shall tell you tonight, or 
mmorrew night, or ever I shall tell you before I done, if I can.” 
nd 
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