When the wind bloweth in from the Orient, or when our discretion has collapsed before a lobster salad (that claw looked so innocently pink, and that lettuce so crisp and green!) then is poor human nature but too prone to be querulous; we disagree, like the lobster, with our fellow creatures; we are peevishly disposed to nag. "My mestur has been a good husband to me," said one of the matrons of my flock, "but he can chime in nasty when he wants to nag."
Times of refinement are probably at hand when, under the sacred influence of School Boards, the rural tongue shall cease to substitute the word no-at for nought, or nothing. I am not sorry that when that epoch comes I shall no longer be attached to this machine. I cling to those expressions, which I have heard from childhood: "He's like a _no-at." "_He's up to no-at." One day, years ago, we waited for the train at, not Coventry, but Ratcliffe-on-Trent, and while we waited a weary workman, with his bag of tools on his back, came and sat on the bench beside. Presently we were joined by a third person in the garrulous phase of inebriety, and he pestered the tired artisan with his _bosh_and gibberish (two words which should have been introduced at an earlier period of my history) until he provoked the righteous expostulation, "Oh, don't bother me; you're drunk." Then, with an air of outraged dignity, and with a stern solemnity, which, if he had not wobbled in his gait and stammered in his utterance, might have suggested the idea that he had just been appointed Professor of Philosophy for the Midland Districts, he delivered an oration: "Now just you listen to me. Do you suppose as a Mighty Power 'ud mak the barley to grow, and the 'ops to grow, and then put it into the minds of other parties to mak' 'em foment, and me not meant to drink 'em? why, you know no-at!" Whereupon the apt rejoinder: "I know this—that a Mighty Power never meant the barley to grow, nor the hops to grow, for you to take and turn yoursen into a be-ast."
Nobbut is still common in these parts, in abbreviation of "nothing but." I congratulated an invalid parishioner on the presence of the doctor, and he said dolefully, "Oh yes, sir; thank yer, sir—but it's nobbut th' 'prentice."
My limits do not allow me to mind my L's and Q's and R's, or I might have enlarged upon such words as palaver, and pawling, and peart, and prod, and_romper_, and ramshackle, and rawm; and I can only dwell upon one selection from the S's, of which there is a long Sigmatismus, such as snag ("Billy and Sally's always at snags"), and scuft, and scrawl ("he wor' just a glass over the scrawl," i.e. the line of sobriety), and scrawm, and slape, and snigger, and slive ("I see that _shack a-sliving and a_-skulking about"), and slare, and_slawmy_, and sneck, and snoozle, and spank, and stodge, and stunt, and swish.
The word which I would illustrate is skimpy. It signifies something mean and defective; and in the following history, told to me by a clerical friend, it refers to an attenuated and bony female. When a curate in a remote country parish, he took a raw village lad into his service, to train him for some better place; and, when his education was sufficiently advanced, and he had made some progress in the art of writing, he was permitted to accompany his master to a large dinner-party given by a neighbouring squire. Next morning he communicated his experiences to the housekeeper, and she treacherously repeated them to my friend. "'Oh,' he said, 'it just wor' grand. Me and t'other gentlemen in livery we stood i' th' 'all, and they flung open folding-doors, and out comes the quality tu and tu, harm i' harm, all a-talking and a-grinning, and as smart as ninepence. I wor' quite surprised at mestur. He come out last of all, with a _skimpy_old woman. I should say she wor' sisty off, and there were squire's daughter, looking as bewtifle as bewtifle, and dressed up as gay as waxwork. I never made no mistake, except giving one gentleman mustard wrong side, and just a drop or so o' gravy down a hunbeknown young lady's back.'" I have reached the length of my tether, and will go no longer a-tweing after words, lest I put my readers in a tiff, and leave them in a tantrum. I will yark off. Said an underkeeper who had just shot at a snipe: "It yarked up and screeted, and I nipped round and blazed; but I catched my toe on a bit of a tussock, and so, consarn it, I missed." Let me hope that I have not so completely failed in my aim, while firing my small shot against certain abuses and disuses connected with The Vulgar Tongue.
THE SCHOOLMASTER ABROAD WITH HIS SON
[Sidenote: Calverley]
O what harper could worthily harp it,
Mine Edward! this wide-stretching wold
(Look out wold) with its wonderful carpet
Of emerald, purple, and gold?
Look well at it—also look sharp, it
Is getting so cold.
The purple is heather (erica);
The yellow, gorse—call'd sometimes "whin."
Cruel boys on its pickles might spike a
Green beetle as if on a pin,
You may roll in it, if you would like a
Few holes in your skin.
You wouldn't? Then think of how kind you
Should be to the insects who crave
Your compassion—and then, look behind you
At yon barley-ears! Don't they look brave
As they undulate (undulate, mind you,
From unda, a wave).
The noise of those sheep-bells, how faint it
Sounds here—(on account of our height)!
And this hillock itself—who could paint it,
With its changes of shadow and light?
Is it not—-(never, Eddy, say "ain't it")—
A marvellous sight?