220 OLD WEST SURREY 



choke and kill, and usurp the place of one so much older 

 and better. For instance, the fine old verb ' to abide ' is 

 still in their mouths. ' Bide still ' says the cottage grand- 

 mother to a restless child, or 'I'll bide at home till the 

 rain gives over.' 



' Stand on a cheer, Gooerge, ye'll have moor might,' said 

 an old father, when his son was trying to pull a nail out of 

 a beam at arm's length. ' Might ' in this sense is nearly 

 lost to us ; the only hold we seem to keep of it, except in 

 the adjective and adverb forms, is in the idioms, 'with all 

 his might ' and ' with might and main.' Why have we 

 become so shy of the good old words ? I hear the old 

 carpenter say of the new gate-post, ' Rare (rear) it up,' and 

 of the tree-trunk ' Saw it asunder,' whereas I suppose we 

 should say 'Stand it up on end,' or 'Stand it upright' and 

 ' Saw it in two ' or ' Saw it across,' surely all weaker and 

 more cumbersome ways of saying the same thing. 



Some words they use in a sense different to that usually 

 accepted. If a child has done wrong and the father says 

 he will ' chastise ' him, it does not mean that he will 

 corporally punish, but that he will exhort him, or 'give 

 him a good talking to.' When, in summer, horses and 

 cattle are worried by flies, they say the Hies ' tarrify ' them. 

 ' To remember is ' to mind ' ; 'I mind the time when such 

 a thing happened.' To use abusive language to a person 

 is to ' scandalise.' This is quite good old English, though 

 generally obsolete. When a small child shows precocious- 

 intelligence and a desire to assert itself, the proud mother, 

 or her admiring visitor, says, ' He's a little masterpiece/ 

 The old woman 'grafts' her gown when she puts in a 

 patch, and gleaning is known as ' leasing.' Tendons, or any 

 visible cord-like muscles, as on the back of the hand, are 

 always called ' leaders.' 



