106 Timehrv. 
That night I consulted Webster. De Foe in 1705 wrote that he had passed 
through “a set of misfortunes.’” But set, in the sense of “a lot,” Webster 
recorded as now obsolete. Pension, meaning “a payment, a tribute’ was also 
“ obsolete.’ Yet in far Barbados, here were both words-senses flourishing in 
all their original freshness. 
An old man said his mind had never given him to try Demerara. He heard 
there were “ a many varmints in that bush. *’ He used vermin in the old sense, 
not limited to offensive animals of the smaller kind. Another spoke of his father 
as having lived to a “ pretty’ age. Cf. Carlyle’s “Cromwell ” (I. 158 Ed. 
1870). “ We disputed it with our swords and pistols a pretty time.” 
‘“* Meat ’’ in the old Biblical sense is common, although I think principally in 
the sense of food for animals. A woman gathers “meat ” for her goat. That 
part of Bridgetown where bundles of fodder are sold is known among many of 
the black péople as the “ meat market. ” 
I was puzzled in an interview with an old Negro. He had “seen slavery,” 
but he told me that they had many a lively time, “ even though was slavery.” 
There was a fiddler who had jobs all over the island at Christmas time. Some- 
times they had a touk dance. 
** A what ?” 
* A touk dance—fiddle, drum and thing. ” 
Looking through Jamieson’s Dictionary of Scots Dialect some time afterwards, 
I discovered “ Touk —a stroke ora blow. As touk of drum, beat of drum.” 
Apropos of the survival of old Scots words in Barbados, a correspondent writes : 
“ You sometimes hear, even now-a-days, ‘ Boy! I'll gi’e you a jouk’, or * Vl 
jouk out you’ eye.” When I wasa child, I was told that this was a very vulgar 
expression. It is really a corruption of an heraldic term. The word was jupe 
to pierce. Hence jwpon, a defensive coat of mail to prevent piercing. The 
Negroes probably got it from the Scots by whom French terms of Heraldry were 
frequently used.” 
But these old words,—even the quaint corruptions of old words,—are dying 
out. The “‘ young generation them”’ are getting literary. ‘‘ Education ” has 
destroyed much that was valuable. 
