Since farming is an industry covering the land, and not confined to particular districts, like coal-mining or salt-making, it would be possible to collect several different series of dialect terms relating to land-tenure, haymaking, reaping, ploughing, &c., each belonging to a specified geographical area. If we were travelling through the country at the time of the haysel, or hay-harvest, we should have to call a hay-cock a hay-cock wherever we met one, but it might locally be known by the name of a hatchel, a hob, a jockey-cock, a keil, or a wad, or by some other name equally unfamiliar to our ears. Or again, later in the season, if we went into a cornfield and looked at the sheaves set up to dry, each pile would be a yellow corn-stook and nothing more to us with our limited vocabulary of the harvest field, but it might stand there as a hattock, a hile, a kiver, a mair, a stitch, &c., according to the district where it had been set up.
Farm labourers everywhere are accustomed to wear some sort of rough gaiters to protect their legs from cold and wet, often it is worsted stockings without feet, which serve this purpose, especially for walking in snow. The various names for these gaiters in the different dialects form a curious list. They are: bams, baffles, bofflers, cockers, galligaskins, gamashes, hoggers, kitty-bats, loags, martyens, moggans, scoggers, whirlers, yanks, &c. But one of the biggest lists of dialect names might be found belonging to the slight refreshment taken by labourers between meals, either at eleven o’clock or four in the afternoon. Here is a selection of some of the names: bagging, bait, bever, clocking, coger, dew-bit, docky, down-dinner, downdrins, elevens, four-hours, jaw-bit, lump, nammet, i.e. noon-meat, O.E. nōn-mete, nocket, nuncheon, undern.
If we turn to the animals on the farm, the sheep in its various stages of growth and commercial value would probably be found to possess the largest number of names. It would puzzle most people, other than those to the manner born, to define all the technical terms in use, such as: chilver, cull, dinmont, gimmer, he-der, shear-hog, wether-hog, theave, thrinter, twinter, two-tooth.
Calls to Animals
More interesting, however, than mere names of the animals are the words used by the farmer and his men in dealing directly with the beasts under their control. A study of wagoners’ words raises one’s notion of the intellectual level of cart-horses considerably. All sorts of exact directions are conveyed to them through the medium of interjections such as the following: Boc! Chee-eggin! Come-other-whoa! Cubba-hoult! Hait! Hap! Har! Hauve! Joss! Kip! Mather! Mock-mether-hauve! Ree! Ware-whoop! Weesh! Whet-gee! Wo-cum-huggin! Woor-ree! Wug! The word hait is found in Chaucer, cp. ‘The carter smoot, and cryde, as he were wood, Hayt, Brok! hayt, Scot! what spare ye for the stones,’ Freres Tale, ll. 244, 245. So too are kip, and joss, cp. ‘Thise sely clerkes rennen up and down, With keep, keep, stand, stand, Iossa, warderere,’ Reves Tale, ll. 180, 181.
Then there are all the mysteriously alluring cries which summon creatures to the shippon, sty, or pen; and the authoritative words of command which drive them in the way they should go. To take a few examples. Cows may be addressed thus: Coop! Cush, cush!—cp. O.N. kus! kus! a milkmaid’s call—Hoaf! Hobe! Mull! or Mully! Proo! Proochy! Prut! Calves: Moddie! Mog, mog, mog! Pui-ho! Sook, sook! Sheep: Co-hobe! Ovey! Pigs: Check-check! Cheat! Dack, dack! Giss! or Gissy! Lix! Ric-sic! Shug, shug, shug! Tantassa, tantassa pig, tow a row, a row! Tig, tig, tig! Turkeys: Cobbler! Peet, peet, peet! Pen! Pur, pur, pur! Geese: Fy-laig! Gag, gag, gag! Ob-ee! White-hoddy! Ducks: Bid, bid, bid! Diddle! Dill, dill! Wid! Wheetie! Pigeons: Pees! Pod! Rabbits: Map!
It must be very confusing for animals transported to a distance to understand the calls of a new and strange dialect. I have more than once tried the effect of imitating the seductive tones of the Yorkshire Co-oop in addressing an Oxfordshire cow. But with her foot securely planted on her native heath, she would either pay no heed whatever, or else she would turn upon me the gently indulgent eye of a consciously superior intelligence.
Sheep-scoring Numerals
In olden times it was customary among sheep-farmers and shepherds in the Lake District and in the northern counties generally, to use Celtic numerals for counting sheep. The traditional forms varied in different localities, as may be seen from the various series which have been collected and put on record by folklorists. The following are the numbers up to ten formerly in use near Keswick: Yan, tyan, tethera, methera, pimp, sethera, lethera, hovera, dovera, dick.
The custom of counting sheep by means of such numbers has now been obsolete for about a hundred years, but it is a curious link with our Celtic predecessors, coming down as it does so near to our own times. Our Anglo-Saxon forefathers never amalgamated with the Celts, and the Celtic language never seriously influenced English. The Celtic loan-words borrowed by the Anglo-Saxons are comparatively few, and those few, chiefly names of places and things of no special importance. From a linguistic point of view it is strange to find such an everyday implement as a set of numerals persisting in the spoken speech of a people who hardly knew another word of the language of which these formed part, and who of course had their own numerals. It is perhaps not too romantic an explanation to suggest that among the few Celts who became subjects to the foreign invaders were the humble shepherds who had always tended sheep on the north-country moors and fells. The new settlers would doubtless find it useful to keep them on in their hereditary occupation, and in taking over the shepherd, they also took over his system of numeration, which in his mind was indissolubly associated with the sheep under his care.