JuLT 1, 1897.] 



KNOWLEDGE. 



173 



really does give a quaint and picturesque force to the 

 speaking of a sentence. 



In the language of the isolated dwellers in these solitary 

 nooks of leafy nature, there are sundry dialect words used 

 in a friendly and companionable sense. The word "wench" 

 is one of these. This is applied distinctively to females of 

 whatever kind, calling, condition, or rank. In a similar 

 sense the word used towards males is " butty." It means 

 a friend, a companion, a mate, and sometimes something 

 more, for it is not infrequently that a village lass will, in 

 a merry mood, call her sweetheart her " butty." Strictly, 

 however, the word is the property of the male. It is 

 addressed both to human and animal friends. The 

 poacher's human companion on his nightly prowls is 

 always his " butty," and the shepherd will address his dog 

 as follows : " " Hey, bless his four paws ! he's a dear old 

 butty ; aye, an' a goodly." 



It has been said that the language of the Warwickshire 

 greenwood is more akin to the language of Shakespeare 

 and the Bible than any other English dialect. Certainly 

 it has the simplicity, the directness, and the force both of 

 the Bible and Shakespeare. This fact can be well seen in 

 the word " cumber," so frequently heard in the mouth of 

 the Warwickshire peasant. " Ah ! the cumber that I had 

 wi' that lad ! " cries the mother in despair for the well-being 

 of her son. " Cumber " means trouble, burden, weight, 

 and care. George Eliot alludes to it in " Adam Bede " 

 (Chapter XXVI., p. 241), where Lisbeth speaks to her 

 son, Adam ; " I know it's a grit honour for thee to be so 

 looked on — an' who's to be prouder on it nor thy mother ? 

 Hadna she the cumber o' rearin' thee an' doin' for thee all 

 these years ? " 



In the Biblical story of the barren fig tree the meaning 

 of " cumber " is precisely the same as its significance 

 to-day. The fig tree cumbered the ground : in other words, 

 troubled and burdened the ground with a great care, like 

 the rearing of children, which, in the opinion of some 

 Warwickshire housewives and mothers, is a thankless and 

 barren office. 



Other words there are in constant vogue of a kindred 

 meaning. One of these is " moither." No peasant of 

 Shakespeare's greenwood, in a certain condition of mmd, 

 ever faUs to make use of this word. " Adone, I tell thee ; 

 ye moither me to death ! " cries the mother to the hardy 

 rustic lad who persists in importuning for a holiday. To 

 " moither " is to worry, to bother, to bewilder. This word 

 is indigenous to urban a3 well as rural Warwickshire, and 

 it may even be heard in the mouth of a fair huntress 

 rebuking her horse ; " Be quiet, sir, and don't moither 

 me so." 



" Mummock " is a curious word in the same category. 

 A baby " mummocks " its mother — that is, bothers her, 

 worries her, pulls her about. Often in the silence of these 

 leafy lanes the voice of the rustic may be heard screaming 

 through a cottage door in far from dulcet or kindly tones, 

 " Adone, ye Ul mummock ! ye moither me above a bit ! " 

 In another sense, "mummock" expresses sorrow and 

 mourning, as, "I shall just mummock mesel' into me grave 

 when thee'st gone from me." The nightingale " mum- 

 mocks" or mourns for the eggs of which she has been 

 robbed, and 30 on; as an expression of sorrow, "mummock" 

 is used throughout the range of living things, whether of 

 the human, brute, or bird creation. 



In continuation of the set of words denoting worry or 

 expressing sorrow, I may instance the truly Shakespearean 

 word " moil." " The moil of this life puUs me down to the 

 ground," sighs the weary villager, seeing his labour come 

 to naught ; and the sentence clearly brings out the real 

 meaning of the word. " Moil," in its practical sense, is 



but another name for toil. It simply means labour, hard 

 work, drudgery, care, and trouble. 



In the course of her laundry work the Warwickshire 

 village housewife maybe heard calling out, " You mun 

 give me the batlet ; I canna do wi'outen she." Now, the 

 word " batlet " is direct from Shakespeare. In "As You 

 Like It " (Act II., Scene 4) Touchstone says, with a 

 pretty sense of the foolishness of a lover, " And I remember 

 the kissing of her batlet " — the batlet that the pleasing 

 •Jane Smile had used in her washing. 



The "batlet" of Shakespeare is the "dolly" of the 

 modern housewife— a wooden bat or machine for beating 

 or dollying the family linen. It was also known as " the 

 maiden,'' by which name it is dignified to-day by many of 

 the homely women of rural Warwickshire. 



A townsman wandering down some of the more isolated 

 lanes of the leafy shire in the evening of the day, may 

 often hear a parent calling to her child, " Come thee in, 

 Httle dillin'. The dag's faUiu', an' thee hanna no hat on 

 thy yed." Now that word " dag " is one of the picturesque 

 peculiarities of the Warwickshire rural dialect. It means 

 dew, moisture, or fine rain. The old weatherworn shep- 

 herd of any farm is anxious to in-barn his young eanlings 

 " afore the dag comes on ' ; the watchful mother, both 

 morning and evening, will place a " biggen," or cap, upon 

 the youngest born, " to keep the dag off on thee." My 

 old friend Amos Oates, the shepherd of the Combe Farm, 

 has often, in the early hours of the morning, addressed to me 

 the words :" It be as heavy a dag, sir, this mornin' as I 'ood 

 wish to see afore Marti'mas Day— so it be." Though some 

 peasants do say " dew," the majority always use " dag." 



As an example of the apparent kinship of some of the 

 words in the Warwickshire dialect with the words to be 

 found in the English Bible, I may instance the word 

 " anointed." The peculiar significance of this word lies 

 in the fact that it has an evil rather than a good inter- 

 pretation. The woodland peasant boy who has been so 

 ualucky as to incur the displeasure of an elder, is "an 

 anointed young scaramouch, folly-fit for Old Harry"; that 

 is to say, the lad is " anointed " with the oil of wicked- 

 ness : is, in fact, a very wicked boy indeed. 



So glib has this word become in the mouth of the 

 peasant that everybody or everything that has done 

 what is considered to be wrong is assailed with the word 

 " anointed." 



In another and more endearing sense is to be noted the 

 epithet " cade." This is a well-known Warwickshire 

 word, peculiar, I believe, to Shakespeare's greenwood. 

 "Cade" is the rustic's pet name for anything that is 

 tame, mild, or gentle. The lamb, for example, that 

 has been reared in the homestead by bottle through loss 

 of its dam, is " as cade as cade " — that is to say, as 

 tame and gentle as could be. When the colt has been 

 roughridden and broken to harness, then " she be cade as 

 a kitten." Everything that is meek and mild of bird and 

 beast is a " cade " thing. The term is also used by the 

 young men to their lasses. Whenever a rustic damsel is 

 more than usually dainty and gentle she is called " a pretty 

 cade JiU." 



I have heard the dialect of the Warwickshire rustic 

 spoken of as being " very broad." Certainly there are 

 words in the tongue which might come within the range 

 of that definition, but they are in a minority. When you 

 meet a jaded peasant woman in a narrow lane — " a chewer," 

 as she would call it — resting after what, perhaps, has 

 been a hard journey, and she tells you that she is " fore- 

 wearied wi' her jaunt," I think you may honestly say that 

 the language is poetical. To be " fore-wearied " is to be 

 very weary, very tired — in fact, dead-beat. Shakespeare has 



