Rustic Speech and Folk-Lore

by Elizabeth Mary Wright

Literary Words with Dialect Meanings: Radical, Serve, Simple, Unshut

Simple (Ken. Sur. Sus.) means unintelligible, hard to understand, e.g. Will you please lend mother another book? She says this one is so simple she can’t make it out at all; small (Yks. Lan.) is thin, slender, so that a man over six feet high may be small; in the phrase: a small family (Sc. n.Cy.) it means young, e.g. A small family of nine children; a soul (Yks. Glo.) is a night-flying white moth; a stag (n. w. and sw. counties) is a young cock. A School Inspector who asked a child what it was that recalled St. Peter to repentance, was completely nonplussed when informed that it was a stag. To stammer (Sc. n.Cy. Nhb. Cum. Yks.) is to stagger, stumble, totter, e.g. Grandfather’s very stammering, though ’e’s lisher [more nimble] of his feet than uncle; to be suited (Cum. Yks. Lin.) is to be pleased, e.g. Oor Bill’s just suited noo he’s getten into th’quire wi’ a white surplice on; to suppose (Yks. Not. Lin. Rut. Lei. War. Shr. Hrf. Sus.), in the phrase I suppose, is used to express certainty, e.g. I suppoäse he’s deäd for I was at th’ funeral; tender (Hmp.), used of the wind, means sharp, biting; to terrify (midl. and s. dialects) is to annoy, irritate, worry, e.g. ’E canna get a wink a slip uv a night, ’is cough is that terrifyin’; it can also mean to damage, destroy, e.g. Thay wapses do terrify our plums; thin (Irel. Yks. Chs. Wor.), used of wind or weather, means cold, piercing, e.g. My word! but it’s a thin wind this morning, it’ll go through you before it’ll go round you; a pair of twins (Shr.) is an agricultural implement for breaking the clods and uprooting the weeds of ploughed land, e.g. Tell Jack to shet [yoke] a couple o’ ’orses to that par o’ twins; to upbraid (Nhb. Yks. Lan. Lin.) is used in speaking of digestion, e.g. Ah nivver eeats onions bud they upbraids mă; to up-raise, or up-rise (Dev. Cor.) is to church a woman, e.g. Please, Sir, can Mrs. Smith be uprose this afternoon?; to live upright (Yks. Lin. Nrf.) means to have independent means, e.g. He lives upright, and keeps a pig; to worship (Som.) is to be fond of, e.g. Her young (Som. Cor.) means unmarried, e.g. Are you young or married? Of a very young bride it was said: She du look a pretty lot better than when she was young.

Literary Words in the Dialects with Peculiar Idiomatic Uses

Sometimes the simplest of English words have a peculiar idiomatic use in the dialects, which may sound curious to our ears; for instance, with belong (Wm. Lin. Stf. Nhp. Som.) property and its possessor are reversed, e.g. Who do belong to these here bullicks? A town boy, seeing some geese pasturing on the wide expanse of Newby Moor, wanted to carry off one of them, and being remonstrated with, he replied: Why! nobody belongs to ’em! To break (Nhp. Glo. Hmp. Wil. Som. Dev.) is used of things which tear, and conversely, tear is used of things which break, e.g. Please, governess, her’s a-broke my jacket. Who’ve a-bin an’ a-tord the winder? He wadn a-tord ’smornin’. Few in many dialects is used in speaking of liquid food, more especially of broth, e.g. Will ye hev a few mair broth? Just (Nhb. Der. Gmg. Pem.) implies nearly, almost, e.g. She’ve a just cut her hand off, means she has narrowly missed doing so; partly (Yks. Chs. Der. Oxf. Brks. Hnt.) is similarly used, e.g. He’s partly ten years old. It is also often used as a termination to a sentence, much in the same way as like, or in a manner of speaking and other phrases intended to round off the angles of a too explicit statement, e.g. Well, ah thenk a’d a-coom if his woife ’ud a-let him, paartly. To want (Sc. Irel. and n. dialects) signifies to do or be without, to be free from, e.g. She never knew what it was to want a headache; to half do a thing (Oxf.), used with a negative, implies an excessive amount of energy in the performance of the action, e.g. She didn’t half cry, means that she made a tremendous noise; while (Sc. n.midl. and e.An.) means until. A north-countryman taking a Sunday-school class ‘down south’ surprised his hearers by saying: Now, boys, I can’t do nothing while you are quiet. An epitaph in a Lancashire church runs:

Here must he stay till Judgment day,

While Trumpets shirl [shrill] do Sound,

Then must he Rise in Glorious wise,

And Gloriously be Crown’d.

Another, commemorating a married pair in Lincolnshire, is as follows:

Married we were in mutual love,