107 



By the Rev. W. C. Piendebleath, M.A. 



5N all life there are two processes necessarily involved — those 

 of growth and of decay j and in no life are these more 

 conspicuously present than in that of a language. Its growth may 

 be traced in the pages of successive writers. But the record of its 

 decay is less certain, inasmuch as words and phrases often survive 

 in local dialects for centuries after they have passed away from, 

 even if they have ever really belonged to, the language of literature. 

 Hence the importance of the labour of the philologer in noting the 

 existence of such forms of diction ; and especially so in an age like 

 our own, when the spread of education and the increased facilities 

 for locomotion produce a more rapid disappearance of old words and 

 phrases than has probably ever before been known. 



The following words have all come under my notice as having 

 been actually in use in the village of Cherhill, in North Wilts, 

 during the last twenty years ; but they are not to be found in the 

 glossary published in 1842 by the late Mr. Akerman, nor, so far as 

 I am aware, in any other Wiltshire glossary whatsoever. Most of 

 them are common up to the present day, though in the mouths of a 

 constantly diminishing number of people. And it is quite probable 

 that in the course of twenty years more they may have entirely 

 disappeared from the conversation of the villagers when talking to 

 outsiders, though possibly not quite, even then, from use amongst 

 themselves. At the commencement of the period during which I 

 have been collecting them, there were many inhabitants of our 

 country villages whose only talk was the old Wiltshire vernacular, 

 and who were in no wise shy of using it. Now, most of the country 

 folk are ashamed to employ, when in colloquy with educated people, 

 the old words and phrases which lent so picturesque a vigour to 



