Historical Value of Loan-words
Apart from isolated scraps of history preserved in epithets and sayings such as these, there is the mass of historical evidence that can be gleaned by a careful study of the loan-words in the dialects. We have already noted many of them, but only for their philological value. To estimate their importance from an historical point of view they would have to be treated geographically, the point of consideration being not the form in which they are found, but the locality. Thus we should obtain valuable corroborative testimony to known historical facts, regarding the settlement of the British Isles. For instance, history tells us that some time before the Norman Conquest some Flemish people settled in England. John of Trevisa wrote: ‘The Flemmynges, that woneth in the west syde of Wales, habbeth yleft here strange speche and speketh Saxonlych ynow.’ But in learning English they carried over into the new language some of their own words, and these Flemish words brought in by these colonists have remained in the dialects of those counties which lie on the west side of Wales, e.g. south Pembroke and Glamorganshire.
The loan-words, further, give living support to written history in pointing back to the existence of Frisians in Kent, the Isle of Wight, and Hampshire; to an early settlement of people from the south-west of England in Wexford; to the influx of Scots into Ulster; and of Huguenots into Norfolk. They prove, too, that far more Normans settled in the south-midland and southern counties than in the rest of England; that the Scandinavian settlers in East Anglia were to a great extent Danes; and that the Scandinavians in Northumberland, Durham, Cumberland, Westmorland, Yorkshire, and Lancashire were chiefly Norwegians.
[2] The Carlyles, however, used this phrase in a different sense. Mrs. Carlyle in a letter to her husband (September 13, 1844) wrote: ‘The evening of the Bullers’ departure Jenkin’s Hen came, pale as a candle, with a red circle round each eye which was very touching;—he had evidently been crying himself quite sick and sore.’ Carlyle’s note on this passage is as follows: ‘Fleming. To “die the death of Jenkin’s hen” expressed in Annandale the maximum of pusillanimity.’ V. The Second Post, E. V. Lucas, p. 151.
CHAPTER XII
SUPERNATURAL BEINGS
A book such as this cannot pretend to do justice to the mine of folk-lore which even the most superficial acquaintance with the dialects opens up to any one who cares to delve therein. Here we meet with the outward and visible signs of old superstitions of mythical origin, popular beliefs, faith in charms, and quaint medical lore concerning all kinds of human ills, betokening a strange mixture of Christianity and creeds of heathen times, of pious faith and childlike dread of the unknown and mysterious still existing in the minds of our rural population. Very many of these old superstitious beliefs and practices are, as we should naturally expect, dead and gone, or traceable only in shadowy legend and story, the marvel is that so many are yet alive in spite of the spread of education. Indeed, superstition is by no means a monopoly of the uneducated or semi-educated mind, the only difference is that where the rustic gives free expression to his fears and fancies, we disguise ours from the public gaze under a cloak of mockery or of would-be science.
Local Apparitions
Among the outworn superstitions is the belief in all those imaginary beings that peopled the darkness of long ago. They have nearly all disappeared, except that the names of some of them have been added to the list of that hideous crew of fictitious personages invented to terrorize the young. They are chiefly monstrous animals, and goblins, some harmless, some terrific and of evil omen; the ghost, as the spirit of the departed, is a minor character on the stage. The dialect terms: fearing, frittening, summat, things, usually imply ghostly appearances of any shape, not specially human. The same may be said of the word know, e.g. The know of a dog, is the shape of a dog when the dog is not there. Ghostlin is a contemptuous term for an apparition, one which might be used by a person born on Christmas Day, for such are born ghost-free to the end of their lives. To come again is the common phrase for the supposed return of the dead, e.g. You remembers ’Arry Whitly as was cut t’pieces an the line? Well, he comes agen strong, in six pieces; or the dead man may be said to be troublesome, e.g. I can’t never bide in th’ouse—the poor old Harry’s that troublesome. Here and there some special ghost keeps its local habitation and name, as for instance, Spotloggin, the ghost of a murdered man which haunts a certain ditch near Evesham in Worcestershire. It appears after dark to any one who attempts to cross the ditch at a point where there is no hedge on the bank, and where according to tradition no hedge will grow, it being the precise spot where the murder took place. We may presume that few do venture to pass that way, and encounter the veritable ghost, for its identity is still a matter of question. Some who ignore the commonplace murder story, maintain that Spotloggin was ‘a lady of that name who used to patch her face, and was supposed to be very proud’. Speaking generally, however, I think it may be said that it is rather the educated mind which concerns itself with ghosts of this kind. A lady historian of Shropshire folk-lore tells us that her inquiries after ghost-stories had more than once been met by this answer from the country rustic: I dunna believe as there’s anythin’ in it, as the dead come back. If they bin gone to the good place they wouldna want to come back, and if they bin gone to the tother place they wouldna be let to.