330 STAGE-COACH AND MAIL IN DAYS OF YORE 



ear-trumpet Avhicli lie now drew forth, clapped to 

 his ear, and asked them Avhat it was they said. 



Swift, who, travelling hetween London, Chester, 

 Holyhead and Dublin, remarked upon the many 

 nations and strange peoples he passed on the way, 

 serves to emj^hasise these notes upon the fading 

 individuality of places and peojile. The dialect 

 of " Zummerzet " has not wholly decayed, but it 

 has become so modified that when old references 

 to its Boeotian nature are found, the reader who 

 knows modern Somerset, and does not consider 

 these changes, concludes that its grotesque speech 

 was greatly exaggerated; just as he cannot be 

 made to implicitly believe the remarkable and 

 oft-repeated story told by William Hutton of the 

 visit of himself and a friend to Bosworth in 1770, 

 when the people set the dogs at them, for the only 

 reason that thev were strano-ers ; or that other 

 tale of the savagery of the Lancashire and Y^ork- 

 shire villagers, who, when a person unknown to 

 them a2)peared, conversed as folloAvs : — 



" Dost knaw 'im ? " 



"Naya." 



" Is't a straunger r " 



" Ay, for seAver." 



"Then pause 'im; 'eave a stone at 'un ; fettle 

 'im." 



No inoffensive stranii^er in country districts is 

 likely to meet Avith that recej^tion nowadays. The 

 stranger in those times was regarded, as he gene- 

 rally is in savage countries, as necessarily an 

 enemy; but travel has changed all tliat, and it has 



