By J. U. Powell, M.A. 



125 



poking about the house) . " Ees, Her wur a proper vool. Her wur 

 missis of a public-house, and left it for to be missis of a teaty- 

 pit " (of an innkeeper's widow who married a labourer). " What 

 sort of man is the new farmer ? " Oh, like a crooked road, in and 

 out." " Our Tom he's too wuld and too stiff for a souldier, perhaps 

 they'd have en, if a were oiled and plyed." "My uncle worked 

 seven years o' Sundays." The meaning is that he worked for 

 fori y-ni ne years ; he was a shepherd, and therefore had to work on 

 Sundays. If the number of Sundays he had worked during his 

 life were added together, they would make seven years ; multiply 

 52 Sundays by 49 = 2548 ; divide this by 365, and you get seven 

 years. Various similes from animal life : — " They ran like two 

 young greyhounds " I can't get out of Dobbin's pace " ; " need to 

 have a head like a hawk " ; "as cunning as a young rook " ; " the 

 poor baby's arm's no thicker than a lamb's tail a'ter it's been 

 skinned.'' Various : — " What, be I to be shrowded like a wuld 

 polly P " (said by a man when told by the doctor that he would have 

 to lose his arm, i.e., lopped like an old pollard) ; " These yere cats 

 be passon and clerk " (one white, the other black) ; " I be just 

 like a almanack, I can tell the changes coming " (said by a 

 rheumaticy woman). " Chatter- watter " is good for " tea " ; two 

 good terms of abuse are " Thee girt maa-kin " (malkin, a long 

 thin baking-stick), " Thee little truckle-muxen " (little girl playing 

 about in the mud). " Passon gied 'em a physic-ball 'smarnin' 

 in church." 



The Glossary concludes with an appendix of stories, but to it this 

 is not the place to make additions. Like rough country rhymes in 

 cradle-songs or on tomb-stones — but we are no longer to cut 

 our simple rhymes upon them — such stories should be carefully 

 preserved by anyone who hears them ; they have a germ in them. 

 But if anyone should tell a story, let him preface it with such words 

 as these : — " Once upon a time, 'twernt in my time, nor in your 

 time, nit in anybody else's time ; "'twere when magpies builded in 

 old men's beards and turkey-cocks chewed bacca ; all over hills 

 dales mountains and valleys, so far as I shall tell you tonight, or 

 tomorrow night, or ever I shall tell you before I done, if 1 can." 



