The future is formed the same way as in lit. Eng. except that in Sc. Irel. and Wal. will is used for the first person singular and plural.
The perfect is generally formed the same way as in lit. Eng., but in those dialects of England which have preserved the old strong past participles, the auxiliary have is generally omitted in affirmative sentences when the subject is a personal pronoun immediately followed by the verb, as: we done it, I seen him, they been and taken it. In the Midl. e. and s. dialects, this construction is sometimes used to express the preterite.
The negative in O.E. was expressed by the particle ne prefixed to the verb, and to all the other words in the sentence that admitted of contracted negative forms. If no such words were present, then nā or naht was used to strengthen the ne. This usage was kept up in M.E., as: he never hadde noþing, but beside it nat, not, the weak form of O.E. nāwiht, began to take the place of the ne. In Modern English the ne disappeared entirely, and the influence of Latin grammar led to the adoption of the rule ‘two negatives contradict each other and make an affirmative’. In the dialects the old pleonastic negatives remain, as: He nivver said nowt neeaways ti neean on em; Neeabody’s neea bisniss ti thraw nowt inti neeabody’s gardin; I deean’t want nobbut yan.
CHAPTER XI
POPULAR PHRASES AND SAYINGS
To most people the details contained in the preceding chapter will seem but the dry bones of dialect speech; they would prefer the bones to be covered with sinews and flesh. Dialect speech as the embodiment of living, many-sided, human nature is perhaps nowhere so closely seen as in a collection of the figurative terms and phrases applied to people and things. Here we approach the unlimited humour displayed in the dialects. It is of all kinds—the ironical, the sage, the frankly jolly, the merely ridiculous. It takes every shape; we meet it in similes, metaphors, proverbs, and in various other forms which elude description. A characteristic form of humour, often combined with sarcasm, appears in those comparisons wherein the moods, habits, and actions of men are likened to those of birds, beasts, fishes, and even insects in real or imaginary situations. The following is a miscellaneous selection of similes: as awkward as a cat in pattens; as big as bull-beef, said of a conceited person; as black as the devil’s nutting-bag; as blue as a whetstone; as bug [self-satisfied, vain] as a pump with two spouts; as busy as bees in a basin, said when any one is busy about trifles; as busy as a cat in a tripe-shop; as clean as print; as cold as snow in harvest, said of any one who looks hard and unfeeling; as dark as a boot; as dark as a black cow’s skin, said of a very dark night; as dateless as a rubbin’-stoop [as stupid, insensible as a rubbing-post]; as dazed as a duck against thunder; as dazed as a goose with a nail in its head; as deaf as a beetle cp. ‘We faren as he that dronke is as a mous,’ Chaucer, Knightes Tale, l. 403, ‘Thou comest hoom as dronken as a mous,’ Wife of Bath’s Prol., l. 246; as dunch [deaf] as a door-post; as dutch [fine, affected in language] as a dog in a doublet; as dutch as a mastiff, said of one who assumes an air of innocence after having done some mischief; as fat as a modiwarp O.Fr. flaon]; as fond [foolish] as a besom; as fond as a poke [bag] of chaff with the bottom end out; as foul as a curn-boggart [as ugly as a scarecrow]; as friendly as a bramble-bush; as genny [fretful] as a bear with a sore lug [ear]; as greedy as a fox in a hen-roost, referring to the fact that a fox kills many more hens than he can eat; as good-natured as a pump; as green as a leek, cp. ‘His eyes were green as leeks,’ Mids. N. D. V. i. 342; as happy as pigs in muck; as happy as little pigs in new straw; as handy as a gimlet, said of any one who is quick and useful; as hard as a ground toad, said of any one who looks healthy and strong; as hardened as Pharaoh; as heart-sound as a cabbage, said of any one possessing a good constitution; as hungry as a June crow; as in and out as a dog’s hinder leg, said of any one not to be depended on; as keen [strong] as Samson; as lilty as tykes in a tramp-house [as light-hearted as vagrants in a tramps’ lodging-house]; as lonely as a milestone; as lonely as a steg [gander] in sitting-time, said of a bachelor living by himself; as mild as a moon-beam, said of a particularly mild and placid person; as narrow as a drink of water, said of a person excessively thin; as nimble as a cat on a hot backstone; as nimble as a cow in a cage, said of a person who is clumsy and awkward; as plain as a pack-staff. This refers to the pedlar’s staff which supports the pack on his back, and also serves to measure his wares, and which by constant wear on his journeyings becomes exceedingly smooth. The better known version—as plain as a pike-staff—is thought to be a corruption of pack-staff. As peart as a gladdy [as lively as a yellow-hammer]; as peart as a robin; as pleased as a dog with two tails; as poor as a rames [as thin as a skeleton]; as right as pie; as sackless as a goose; as safe as a church tied to a hedge, said when superfluous precaution has been used; as sharp as a weasel; as simple as a ha’porth of cheese; as simple as a ha’porth of soap in a washing-mug, i.e. as ineffectual as so small a quantity of soap would be in so large a vessel of water, mug here denoting a wash-tub; as slender in the middle as a cow in the waist, said of a very stout person; as slick as a oont [as smooth as a mole]; as slim as a barber’s pole; as soft-hearted as a rezzil [weasel], said of a person who is absolutely cruel; as sound as a trout; as sour as a grig, referring to grig, the wild bullace, not to the proverbial merry grig; as straight as a loach, an allusion to the swift direct motion of the loach; as sure as God’s in Gloucestershire, an allusion to the large number of churches and religious houses the county used to possess; as throng [busy] as a cobbler’s Monday, said in ridicule, because a cobbler is supposed to rest on Monday to work off the effects of a drinking bout at the week-end; as tough as a withy; as wakken as a witterick [as lively as a weasel]; as warm as a bee; as weak as a midsummer gosling; as weak as a wet dish-clout; as welcome as flowers in May, said to a friend entering the house; as welcome as snow in harvest, or as welcome as water in one’s shoon, said of an undesired guest; as whisht as a winnard, an allusion to the redwings which reach Cornwall in the late autumn, and are seen there in the winter in a very thin and miserably weak condition; as windy as a wisket [basket], said of a forgetful person; as yellow as a gollan Similes and Metaphors To look like a bit of chewed twine is to look worn out; the tears were running down his cheeks like beetles up a hill is said in ridicule of a child who is crying for nothing; to grin like a Cheshire cat chewing gravel, eating cheese, or brass wire. Charles Lamb once explained why a Cheshire cat is given to grinning: ‘I made a pun the other day, and palmed it upon Holcroft, who grinned like a Cheshire cat. (Why do cats grin in Cheshire?—Because it was once a county palatine, and the cats cannot help laughing whenever they think of it, though I see no great joke in it.)’ Letters, vol. i, p. 245. Like a chip in a mess of milk, or like a chip in porridge, said of a person or thing of no importance, useless; to stare like a choked throstle, or like a throttled earwig; like a cow handling a musket, said of a person doing something in a clumsy manner; to look like death on a mopstick is to look miserable; to work like Diggory is to work hard. The name Diggory was once a common Christian name. It occurs as the name of a farm labourer in Goldsmith’s She Stoops to Conquer. To go like a dinner of broth is to go successfully without hitch or friction; short and sweet like a donkey’s gallop; to go buzzing away like a dumbley-dory stick as close to him as St. Anthony’s favourite is supposed to have done to the saint, cp. ‘Lord! she made me follow her last week through all the shops like a Tantiny pig,’ Swift, Polite Conv. i; to sit like a toad on a shovel, said of any one who has a very uncertain seat on horseback, and also of a person in a very uncertain condition of affairs; like a toad out of a tree—thump; to live or lead a life like a toad under a harrow is to suffer from ill-treatment or ill-usage; he’s like a Tom-noup [the great tit] on a round of beef, said of a swaggering, pretentious, little man; drinking to drown sorrow is like trying to sleck a fire with gunpowder; it runs in the blood like wooden legs. Conversational Allusions to Fictitious Persons or Things