That shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream."
So with the obsolete possessive it. When a Lancashire woman says, "Come to it mammy!" how plain the reminder of the lines in King John—
Do, child, go to it grandam, child;
Give grandam kingdom, and it grandam will
Give it a plum, a cherry, and a fig;
There's a good grandam.
Archaic words are illustrated in many a familiar phrase. A Lancashire girl in quest of something "speers" for it (Anglo-Saxon spirian, to inquire). If alarmed, she "dithers"; if comely and well conducted, she behaves herself "farrantly"; if delicately sensitive, she is "nesh"—
It seemeth for love his herte is tendre and neshe.
So when the poor "clem" for want of food—"Hard is the choice," says Ben Jonson, "when the valiant must eat their arms or clem." Very many others which, though not obsolete in polite society, are seldom heard, help to give flavour to this inviting old dialect. To embrace is in Lancashire to "clip"; to move house is to "flit"; when the rain descends heavily, "it teems"; rather is expressed by "lief" or "liefer," as in Troilus and Cresseide—