Catch and scrabble
Thic that's yable:—
Catch and scramble
He who's able.
Again, thic that dont like it mid leave it,—he who does not like it may leave it. It should be noted that th in all the pronouns above mentioned has the obtuse sound as heard in then and this and not the thin sound as heard in both, thin, and many other words of our polished dialect. Chaucer employed the pronoun thic very often, but he spells it thilk; he does not appear, however, to have always restricted it to the meaning implied in our that and to the present Somerset thic. Spenser has also employed thilk in his Shepherd's Calendar several times.
"Seest not thilk same hawthorn stud How bragly it begins to bud
And utter his tender head?" "Our blonket leveries been all too sad
For thilk same season, when all is yclad With pleasance."
I cannot conclude without a few observations on three very remarkable Somersetshire words, namely twordn, wordn, and zino. They are living evidences of the contractions with which that dialect very much abounds.
Twordn means it was not; and is composed of three words, namely it, wor, and not; wor is the past tense, or, as it is sometimes called, the preterite of the verb to be, in the third person singular; [Footnote: It should be observed here that was is rather uncommon among the Somersetshire peasantry—wor, or war, being there the synonyms; thus Spenser in his 'Shepherd's Calendar.'"
"The kid,—
Asked the cause of his great distress,
And also who
and whence that he wer
You say he was there, and I say that a wordn;
You say that 'twas he, and I tell you that twordn;
You ask, will he go? I reply, not as I know;
You say that he will, and _I_must say, no,
Zino!]
and such is the indistinctness with which the sound of the vowel in were is commonly expressed in Somersetshire, that wor, wer, or war, will nearly alike convey it, the sound of the e being rarely if ever long; twordn is therefore composed, as stated, of three words; but it will be asked what business has the d in it? To this it may be replied that d and t are, as is well known, often converted in our language the one into the other; but by far the most frequently d is converted into t. Here, however, the t is not only converted into d, but instead of being placed after n, as analogy requires thus, twornt, it is placed before it for euphony I dare say. Such is the analysis of this singular and, if not euphonious, most certainly expressive word.
Wordn admits of a similar explanation; but this word is composed of two words only, war and not; instead of wornt, which analogy requires, a d is placed before n for a similar reason that the d is placed before n in twordn, namely for euphony; wordn is decidedly another of the forcible words.
Wordn fir gwain?—was he not going, may compete with any language for its energetic brevity.
Zino, has the force and application of an interjection, and has sufficient of the ore rotundo to appear a classical dissyllable; its origin is, however, simply the contract of, as I know, and it is usually preceeded in Somersetshire by no. Thus, ool er do it? no, zino! I thawt a oodn. Will he do it? no, as I know! I thought he would not. These words, Twordn, Wordn, and Zino, may be thus exemplified: