150 THE LIFE OF THE FIELDS. 



"Simmily" is a word of little interest, being 

 evidently a mere provincialism and distortion of 

 " seemingly," as " summat " of " something," or " some- 

 what," indifferently. 



Occasionally a person is seized with a giggling fit, 

 laughs on the least, or without any, provocation 

 a rather idiotic state which he is quite conscious 

 of but cannot stop. Persently some one will ask, 

 " Have you found a wicker's nest ? " which is a biting 

 sarcasm, though the precise meaning seems uncertain, 

 unless it bears some relation to mare's nest. Mares 

 wicker, so do goats ; giggling is wickering. The first 

 work a boy does is to go out with a clapper, or his 

 own strong voice, to scare birds from the corn all 

 day; this we call bird-keeping, but the lads them- 

 selves, with an appreciation of the other side of the 

 case, call it bird-starving. Forage is often used in 

 a general sense of food, or in the more particular 

 sense of green food, as clover, or vetches. Fodder, 

 on the other hand, indicates dry food, such as hay ; 

 the labourers go twice a day in winter to fodder 

 the cattle, that is, to carry them their hay. Many of 

 these labourers before they start out to work, in their 

 own words, " fodder " their boots. Some fine soft hay 

 is pushed into the boots, forming a species of sock. 

 Should either of them have a clumsy pair, they say 

 his boots are like a seed-lip, which is a vessel like a 

 basket used in sowing corn, and would be a very loose 

 fit. They have not yet forgotten the ancient super- 

 stition about Easter Sunday, and the girls will not go 

 out without a new ribbon at least ; they must have 

 something new on that day, if the merest trifle. 



