146 



KNOWLEDGE. 



[June 1, 1897. 



•with the intention of finally descending in a falcon-like 

 stoop at the lower bird, who, anticipating the attack, 

 swerves downward, and finally plunges headlong. The 

 swishing sourd produced by the descending swifts can be 

 heard at a considerable distance. The pursuer mounts 

 again, almost vertically, and renews the assault. This 

 goes on for some time, and when it ceases many of the 

 swifts have already retired to the nests. The others begin 

 to pursue each other in noisy groups, at about the level of 

 the housetops, and this game is kept up for a quarter of an 

 hour or longer, the birds traversing a wide area, and being 

 sometimes out of sight for several minutes. Then they 

 continue the same sport at a higher level, no longer 

 descending so low as the roofs. 



At about forty minutes after sunset (whether in June or 

 July) the group of swifts begins to whirl round and round 

 like a mob of rooks ; but again and again the cluster 

 breaks up in a pursuit and a mad noisy rush across the 

 sky. Yet the birds are gradually attaining a higher 

 position, and their screaming becomes the less noticeable. 

 Their wings have often a tremulous motion, reminding 

 one of the flight of an ascending skylark. Still, there is 

 no deliberate upward (light — only a succession of swoops 

 and rushes terminating at increasing distances from the 

 ground. The birds keep fairly together, and not one 

 descends to the houses ; but it may be that the cluster is 

 joined by another group, coming you know not whence. 

 Dusk is beginning to fall, and even the sparrows are silent ; 

 but the cries of the swifts can yet be faintly heard. The 

 birds may now be easily lost sight of altogether, especially 

 if there be no white fleecy clouds high overhead to throw 

 into relief the whirling black dots in the sky. Now is the 

 time to use a field-glass or a small telescope, and, having 

 once found the birds with it, to keep them within the 

 fie'.d as long as possible. The peculiar skylark-like 

 motion of the wings is now almost continuously main- 

 tained, and the birds, instead of whirling round in a 

 cluster, seem to prefer to lie head to wind. Against thy 

 loftiest white clouds their movements may yet be clearly 

 traced : up and up they go, appearing smaller each moment, 

 till even the power of the glass is overcome, and the tiny 

 specks vanish for the night. 



As you drop your aims wearily you find that the dusk 

 has fallen, the bats are out, and the evening mists are 

 rising ; but the swifts must now be nearly on a level with 

 those remote flecks of cloud, which, at an immense height, 

 are yet snowy in the sunshine. 



This charming incident of bird life cannot be observed 

 from all towns and villages with equal certainty. At Stroud 

 I used to see it often, but in my present neighbourhood 

 swi(ts are not very plentiful, and only one or two have 

 been seen to go up at nightfall. 



THE LANGUAGE OF SHAKESPEARE'S 

 GREENWOOD-I. 



By Gkokge Morley, Author of ^^ Leafy Warwidishiie," 

 " In Fiustic Lirery," " Street Audrey," etc. 



THOUGH something less than two and a half hours' 

 journey from London to the fringe of the famed 

 Forest of Arden, in "leafy Warwickshire," it is 

 little short of surprising that, at the end of the 

 nineteenth century, the same forms of speech in 

 vogue in the days of Shakespeare, and even before then, 

 should still be in use in every part of the county in all 

 their quaintness, directness, and simplicity. 



It is surprising, but I also think it is extremely pleasant ; 



for civilization, utterly offended, as it appeared to be, with 

 the picturesque forms of speech, migrating from the 

 pastoral plains to the hothouses of society, invented a 

 language of its own — a catch-word or slang language — - 

 which, however " smart " and applicable it may be in the 

 mouths of those who are pleased to use it, cannot compare 

 in grip, in appositeness, or in poetical feeling with the 

 strong, broad, euphonious, and clearly expressed provincial- 

 isms — centuries old as they are, but still in vogue, with an 

 unslayable uniformity of meaning and utterance ; and in 

 Warwickshire (owing, perhaps, to the high place which it 

 holds in the best of English literature, through the genius 

 of its literary sons and daughters) it /.v pleasant to know 

 that the old forms of speech, so valued and so intrinsically 

 valuable as the original expression of an ancient and 

 historical people, are, perhaps, as deeply rooted to-day as 

 they were in primeval days. 



Why it is so I cannot say. "Leafy Warwickshire" was 

 an impenetrable forest. But, though still leafy — though 

 still, with regard to some of its villages and hamlets at 

 least, perfectly isolated from the world of fashionable 

 language — it is far from being impenetrable to-day. The 

 railways of the nineteenth century, following in the foot- 

 steps of the mediaval constable of the shire, have cut their 

 way in a network of lines right through the heart of " the 

 heart of England.'' Moreover, from the most isolated of 

 the villages the carrier comes almost daily into the fashion- 

 able places of modern civilization. 



As an illustration of the inability of country-born folk 

 in Warwickshire to cast off' the yoke of their natural 

 language, even though their contact with town life is busy, 

 daily, and continuous, I may instance the case of the 

 Harbury carrier. 



Now, Harbury is a village but six miles south-east of the 

 fashionable town of Leamington, where there are so many 

 scholastic institutions, all racing towards a perfect erudition 

 in everything, that language ought to be in an extremely 

 forward state in that " seat of learning," as Leamington 

 has been called. 



As I am anxious to make this paper as interesting as I 

 can, in the hope that it may serve as a contribution to the 

 rural dialect of this charming county which has already 

 been garnered up — in the plays of Shakespeare, the novels 

 of George Eliot, and the archives of dialect societies — I 

 shall give the language of the peasants of Warwickshire 

 as I have heard it spoken by them during the past five or 

 sis years, in villages near my home at Leamington : pre- 

 mising that in this form — catching the words as they 

 fell from the lips of the rustics — greater value may 

 attach to it ; though the words will not necessarily 

 run in the alphabetical order of the dictionary, my 

 object being to write an interesting and chatty paper 

 on some of the dialect words of the Warwickshire 

 peasantry, rather than a learned, dry, analytical treatise 

 on provincialisms. 



The Harbury carrier comes into my " seat of learning " 

 at least three times a week, and mingles with the towns- 

 people : and yet from that man's speech he might well 

 bave been own brother to William, the lover of Audrey, 

 resident in the Forest of Arden, in the days when the 

 banished Duke held his court there under the greenwood 

 tree. 



" My ould man," he said — meaning his buxom wife, 

 younger than himself, whom he sometimes brought 

 with him in the cart — " hev med a blue biggen for 

 the recklin' yander " (a young child was sitting in the 

 conveyance). " 'Tia a nesh 'un, ye see, an' canna goo 

 in closen wi'outen summat's on yed when th' dag's 

 fallin'." 



