Intimately bound up with the race are of course the folk-lore of a district, and what we are now pleased to call provincialisms, but which are more properly nationalisms, showing us the real texture of our language; and in every way preferable to the Latin and Greek hybridisms, which are daily coined to suit the exigencies of commerce or science.
Provincialisms are, in fact, when properly looked at, not so much portions of the original foundations of a language, as the very quarry out of which it is hewn. And as if to compensate for much of the harm she has done, America has wrought one great good in preserving many a pregnant Old-English word, which we have been foolish enough to disown.[212] Provincialisms should be far more studied than they are; for they will help us to settle many a difficult point,—where was the boundary of the Anglian and the Frisian? how far on the national character was the influence of the Dane felt? how much, and in what way, did the Norman affect the daily business of life?
Still more important is a country’s folk-lore, as showing the higher mental faculties of the race, in those legends and snatches of song, and fragments of popular poetry, which speak the popular feeling, and which not only contain its past history, but foreshadow the future literature of a country; in those proverbs, too, which tell the life and employment of a nation; and those superstitions which give us such an insight into its moral state.
Throughout the West of England still linger some few stray waifs and legends of the past. In the New Forest Sir Bevis of Southampton is no mythical personage, and the peasant will tell how the Knight used to take his afternoon’s walk, across the Solent, from Leap to the Island.
Here in the Forest still dwell fairies. The mischievous sprite, Laurence, still holds men by his spell and makes them idle. If a peasant is lazy, it is proverbially said, “Laurence has got upon him,” or, “He has got a touch of Laurence.” He is still regarded with awe, and barrows are called after him. Here, too, in the Forest still lives Shakspeare’s Puck, a veritable being, who causes the Forest colts to stray, carrying out word for word Shakspeare’s description,—
“I am that merry wanderer of the night,
When I a fat and bean-fed horse beguile
Neighing in likeness of a filly foal.”
(Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act ii., Sc. 1.)
This tricksy fairy, so the Forest peasant to this hour firmly believes, inhabits the bogs, and draws people into them, making merry, and laughing at their misfortunes, fulfilling his own roundelay—