I 



By the Rev. W. C. Plenderleath, M.A. Ill 



knows it only in the first application, and another informant in 

 Hampshire in the second. 



Dejd Year. Always used with the' possessive pronoun. "His 

 dead year " is the year immediately following his death, i.e., 

 probably, the year of mourning for him. 



Elms, or Helms, *.=long straws chosen out for thatching, the 

 process of choosing them being called " elming." Under the form 

 of yelms the word occurs in several local glossaries, and that of the 

 Oxfordshire dialect quotes a common saying to the effect that 

 " Women sometimes yelm, but they do not thatch.-*^ Skeat, in his 

 etymological dictionary, connects it with the Anglo-Saxon gilm, a 

 handful. But is it not more likely to be simply a form of the 

 common word haulm, a stalk, from the Latin culmiis, which is itself 

 cognate to calamus, a reed ? A recent writer upon Holland speaks 

 of the duins or shore-banks being " plentifully sown with such 

 plants as will thrive in poor soil, in order to prevent the wind from 

 scattering the sand of which they are composed over the adjacent 

 lands. Chiefly rank grasses are used for the purpose ; the helm 

 being generally selected on account of its long and spreading roots, 

 which shoot and intertwine in every direction." Halliwell defines 

 helm as meaning in Gloucestershire " to cut the ears of wheat from 

 the straw before thrashing it." 



Follow, or Follow on, v. «.=continue. A man would say that 

 " if you do want a good crop, you must follow on hoeing of the 

 ground : but you can^t do no hoeing so long as it do follow raining." 

 The phrase occurs in the Authorized Version of Hosea, vi., 3, but 

 I am not sure whether it does not there bear rather the ordinary 

 meaning of procession from one thing to another {i.e., in this case, 

 from life to knowledge), than the local sense which we are now 

 considering of continuance in the same thing. Halliwell mentions 

 the expression " following-time " as being used in the East of 

 England for " a wet season when showers follow successively." 



Let off, t?.a.=abuse. I have heard it repeatedly said of a man 

 who had been too free with his tongue, " He let I off at a vine rate!" 

 But I cannot hear of the phrase being in use in any other part of 

 England, though "let on" (from the Norse lacta) is common 



