I, the egotist, has for once nothing to say; but J recalls to me an extract from a conversation which took place during one of my parochial visitations.
Pastor.—"Did I not see old Nanny Smith talking with you at your door just now?"
Parishioner.—"Oh yes, she wor' here not three minutes sin', and jabbering, as usual, like a clamm'd [famished] jay in a wood; but when she see your reverence coming up th' lane, th' old lass wor' gone in a jiffey."
K makes no suggestions, and L but few. "I'll lay," has no reference to eggs or to a recumbent posture, but implies a wager. Some years ago, I was riding to the meet, and came up inaudibly, upon the wayside grass, with two grooms on their masters' hunters, peering over their pummels at a mounted horse in the distance before them and anxiously discussing his identity. Just as I was passing the disputants, the one turned to the other and said, "I shall lay yer three threepenny gins to one as it's Colonel's rat-tailed 'oss."
Lig is still commonly used for "lie." "Our Bob has ligabed sin' Monday." "The moon wor ligging behind a cloud, so they couldn't see keepers coming." To lorp is to move awkwardly or idly, and the word suggests a noble line for the alliterative poet:
Lo, lazy lubbers loutish, lorp and loll.
In the days of my boyhood I was perplexed conjecturing by what process of the rustic mind moles had changed their names into Mouldi-warps; but I have since discovered that in this instance, as in countless others, the bucolic brain was not so mollified by beans and bacon as some would have us believe. The mould—and very fine mould it is—is warped, turned up by the mole; and this reminds me of a mole-catcher, whose principles were warped also, and whose occupation was gone awhile in our parts, when it was discovered that he carried a collection of dead moles about with him, with which, the morning after his traps had been set, he made a grand display on some contiguous hedge, inducing his employer fondly to imagine that his enemies (as he thought of them) had been all destroyed in a night.
Flying onwards—for this is a very fugitive piece—I would ask admiration for the adjective muggy, as exquisitely descriptive of weather, not uncommon in this climate, where a fog gives one the idea, suggested by Dickens, that nature is brewing on an extensive scale outside, and there's dampness everywhere, taking the curl from ringlet and whisker, and causing our adhesive envelopes to fasten themselves on our writing-table, as though practising the duties of their post.
No sun, no moon,
No morn, no noon,
No dawn, no dusk, no proper time of day—
No sky, no earthly view,
No distance looking blue.
No road, no street, no t'other side the way—
No warmth, no cheerfulness, no healthful ease,
No comfortable feel in any member,
No shade, no shine, no butterflies, no bees,
No … vember!
I love, though not as licensed victuallers love, the little monosyllable nip. What a nimble agility, what a motive power, in that curt, imperative word!—the pistol-shot which starts the boat-race, the brief, shrill whistle which starts the train. "Just nip off your horse and pull out that stake." "You nipped out o' the army," said a snob to a friend of mine, who had retired some years before the Crimean invasion, and who, in his magisterial capacity, had offended the snob; "you know'd t' war wor' a-coming; you nipped out, you didn't relish them Rooshan baggonets a-prodding and a-pricking. You nipped out o' th' army; you know'd t' war wor' coming. Good morning. I think you were right."