Before entirely quitting the parish, a few of the older words and forms of expression may be recorded, chiefly as remembered from the older generation, for “the schoolmaster” and the influx of new inhabitants have changed much that was characteristic of the genuine West Saxon. Nor, indeed, was there any very pronounced dialect, like a separate language. The speech is slow, and with a tendency to make o like aa, as Titus Oates does in Peveril of the Peak. An Otterbourne man going into Devonshire was told, “My son, you speak French.” No one ever showed the true Hampshire south-country speech and turn of expression so well as Lady Verney in her Lettice Lisle, and she has truly Hampshire characters too, such as could once easily be matched in these villages.
The words and phrases here set down are only what can be vouched for by those who have grown up to them:—
Words
Caddle, untidy condition.
“In he comes when I’m all of a caddle.”
To stabble, to walk about aimlessly, or in the wet.
“Now, Miss, don’t you come stabbling in and out when I am scouring.”
Or,
“I can’t come stabbling down that there dirty lane, or I should be all of a muck.”
Want, mole.