Rustic Speech and Folk-Lore

by Elizabeth Mary Wright

Chaucer, Prologue, l. 523.

Swink (Sc. n.Cy. Yks. War. Hrf. Ken.), to work hard, labour, toil, O.E. swincan, M.E. swinken:

Or swynke with his handes, and laboure.

Prologue, l. 186.

The form swinked, oppressed, tired, also occurs, reminding us of Milton’s:

... what time the labour’d ox

In his loose traces from the furrow came,

And the swink’t hedger at his supper sate.

Comus, ll. 291-3.