Rustic Speech and Folk-Lore

by Elizabeth Mary Wright

Corruptions and Mispronunciations

Jommetry is interesting for the sake of its meaning. It is used in Gloucestershire in the sense of magic; anything supported in a mysterious and unknown manner might be said to hang by jommetry; the phrase all of a jommetry means in pieces or tatters. Lattiprack (Wil.) for paralytic is a strange distortion. Hapsherrapsher (Cum. Lakel.) for haphazard is equally unreasonable, but agreeable withal. Forms like solintary (Nrf.) for solitary, skelington or skelinton (Yks. Lan. Stf. War. Wor. Shr. Glo. w.Cy. Dor.) for skeleton, have acquired an intrusive n in common with many words in the literary language, as messenger, scavenger, &c. Skelet (Sc. Lin. Cor.) is not a corruption, but a pure French form, cp. ‘Scelete, a skeleton,’ Cotgrave. Pronunciations such as: chimbly (var. dials.) for chimney; singify (Yks. Lan. Der. Brks. e.An. Hmp. I.W.) for signify; synnable (Yks. Lan. Chs. Stf. Shr. Suf. Ken.) for syllable; ulster (Cor.) for ulcer; pumptial (Not. Rut. Lei. Shr. Som.) for punctual; turmit or turmut (gen. dial.) for turnip, can all be accounted for phonetically. Hantle (Sc. Irel. and n. counties to War. Wor. Shr.) is a perfectly legitimate contraction of handful, but besides the ordinary meaning, it can also denote a large quantity. A story is told of a Scotch minister who alluded in his sermon to the fact that a number of his flock had joined the Baptists, thus: I thocht till ha’e gethered ye under my wings, as a hen gethereth her chickens, but a hantle o’ ye ha’e turn’t oot to be deuks, an’ ta’en to the water.

A ‘nice Derangement of Epitaphs’

Occasionally one literary word is mistaken for another, and adopted in its place, as, for instance, information (Lin. Sus. Som. Dev.) used for inflammation; sentiment (Lin. Nrf.) for sediment. A farmer having been asked if he would clean out a pond, replied: No, sir, I can’t undertake the job; there’s a sight of sentiment in that there pit. Profligate (Shr. Dev.) for prolific is a surprising change of adjective, especially when applied to the guileless and innocent. I remember my old nurse, when she took to minding chickens because we had outgrown the need of her daily ministrations, telling me that she had collected a ‘sitting’ of a certain kind of eggs, because she thought it would produce ‘a profligate hatch’. This is paralleled by the use of reprobate for probationer. The Vicar’s daughter asked a young girl if she had joined the parochial Guild. The reply was: Oh, yes, Miss! Last week I were took in as a reprobate (Lin.). A youth writing home from Canada to his father the village blacksmith, in describing the Coronation festivities in the city where he dwelt, wrote: The soldiers fired three volumes. A rheumatic old woman, who had been taken with several others for an excursion on a very hot day, said to me: Have you heard what a very nice exertion we had yesterday? Quite recently too, I was told of a man who had been ‘crossed in love’ in his youth, that he had been a woman-atheist ever since. One is constantly reminded of Mrs. Malaprop and her ‘nice derangement of epitaphs’. Unction (Sc.) for auction, with its derivative unctioneer, is probably a phonetic change; and the same may be said of ivory (Irel. Not. Lin. Rut. Hrt. e.An.) for ivy. The use of persecute for prosecute may be merely the result of confusion of prefixes, as in: discommode, dismolish, mislest, perdigious, preverse. The use of the native prefix un- where the standard language has im-, in-, &c., is very frequent. For instance, unpossible occurs in all the dialects in Scotland, Ireland, and England. Other examples are: undecent (many dials.), unlegal (Yks. Midl. War. Hrf.), unregular (many dials.), unsensible (Sc. Dur. Yks. War. Sur.), unpatient (Sc. Dur. Lan.), unpeaceable (Yks. Som.), unperfect (n.Cy. Yks. Lan. Som.), unpassable (Sc. Yks. Som.). The three last were once good literary forms, and may be found with quotations from learned authors in Johnson’s Dictionary. Beside unconvenient there exists in many dialects the useful compound ill-convenient. Unhonest for dishonest, though now a dialect form, occurs in literature of the sixteenth century.

Curious Prefixes and Suffixes

Sometimes the prefix un- is a superfluous addition, as in: unbeneath (n.Yks.), beneath; unempt (Nhp. Hrf. Oxf. Bdf. Wil.), to empty; ungive (Lan. Chs. Lei. Nhp. Bdf. Hnt.), to relax, give way, thaw, though this last form has the support of early literary evidence. But on the other hand, un- is used in the formation of practical native words, for which the standard language substitutes words of foreign extraction, for example: uncome (Sc. Wm. Yks. Lan. Lin.), not arrived; unfain (Sc. Yks.), reluctant; unhandy (Pem. Glo. Ken. Dor.), incapable; unfriend (Sc. Nhb. Yks. Not. Hrf. Dev.), an enemy. Ungone (n.Cy. Yks. Lan. Lin.), not gone, not sent, is merely making one simple word out of two, with no gain in meaning, but ‘he’s just ungone’, for ‘he is at the point of death’, rises almost into poetic simplicity. In the hybrid form unheeastie (n.Yks.), indolent, we have an old word which recalls the ‘lowly asse’ of Spenser’s Una:

One day, nigh wearie of the yrkesome way,

From her unhastie beast she did alight,

And on the grasse her dainty limbs did lay

In secret shadow, far from all mens sight.