By Rev. M.J. Bacon.
It is not easy to determine in a subject of this kind what are the strict lines of demarcation which separate words and phrases used within a specific area from those used elsewhere, or again, in many instances, to decide what is dialect, and what mere local pronunciation. Where the area is confined to the limit of a county, the difficulties are increased, as the dwellers near the borders would naturally be influenced by the characteristics of the neighbouring county. Thus Berkshire folk on the Wiltshire side of the county would differ in many respects from those on the Hampshire side; and while the verb to kite, for instance, would be unknown to the one, the adjective deedy would be equally strange to the other.
Probably, next to verbs and adjectives, the names given to birds and animals, implements, or any common object, would determine a man's county. Phrases are less numerous, but adjectives rank first among local peculiarities.
Many of these convey the same idea, but are applied to different objects, and in different ways. Thus in Berkshire chuff, pruff, fess, peart, and sprack, all imply something sharp, smart, or perky; but pruff is applied solely to vegetable life, such as young and healthy shoots, buds, or growing plants; while a sharp, quick mannered man may be either chuff or fess. "Speak up, chuff, now," is the adjuration of the parent to the bashful child who has just been addressed by the quality. Fess will be recognised at once as the fierce of the Eastern counties, implying a certain amount of vigour, indeed, but conveying no idea of savagery or temper. Peart and sprack speak for themselves.
Next come bristle and briffut, used both as nouns and verbs, though the former is more often the substantive, expressing a sharp, active fellow, or perhaps a terrier, who would briffut about in search of rats. The adjective deedy, on the other hand, is careful, wary, cautious, almost the Yankee 'cute, and is usually intensified by main, very. "What sort of a girl is your daughter?" asked the late Baron Huddleston of the mother of a young girl who had just given evidence in an important case in the Reading Assize Court. "She be a main deedy little girl, my Lord," was the reply. "Greedy, did you say?" "No, my Lord, deedy—main deedy." But Reading is not central enough in the county for anyone in court to have replied to his Lordship's puzzled look of enquiry.
Besides main, feart, or feartish, is used to emphasise an expression. "He be a main sight, or a feartish deal better," or perhaps "only tar'blish" a contraction of tolerablish. In like manner, the patient would change for the better, but alter for the worse, while a bit altery would apply to the weather tokening for rain. Smart is used to qualify another word, as a smart few, meaning a good many, or it would rain smartish. Other words, sometimes corruptions, are common, as unked, awkward, in the sense of obstinate, troublesome; stomachy, proud, self-willed; quisiting, inquisitive; querky, querulous; wangery, languid; shackelty, shaky; hechatty, onomatopœan, applied to a cough; peaked, pronounced pikkid, pointed, as the end of a stick; worriting for worrying, though terrifying is more often used, to terrify and to worrit being synomymous. Casualty is risky, hollies being considered casualty things to plant, while it is often casualty weather in hay-making time. To be in a ferrick is to be in a fidget, and all of a caddle in a muddle. Heft is weight, and hefty, weighty. To poise anything in the hand to test its weight would be to heft it. Overright is opposite, a word unknown to the aborigines; but what a "Leicestershire mon" would call over yon, is expressed by his Berkshire compeer as athurt thur, evidently a corruption of athwart there. Overright would, of course, be originally rightover, and this tendency to put the cart before the horse is common. Droo wet is always used for wet through. The same peculiarity appears elsewhere, as in breakstuff for breakfast, and even in monosyllables, as hapse for hasp, clapse for clasp, and aks for ask. This last, however, is by no means confined to Berkshire.
Some of the verbs are original, while others bear signs of being simply mispronunciations. To quilt is to swallow; to plim to swell, like rice in the boiling; to huck to dig up, or empty. A man hucks out a gutter or ditch, or simply hucks his potatoes. To tuck is probably originally to pluck, and is applied to dressing the sides of a newly made rick with the hand to make it trim and neat. To kite, or kite up, is to look up sharp or peeringly; while bees are indifferently said to bite or tang. "They do tang I," would seem to preclude any derivation from sting, as it undoubtedly is. To argue is used in its proper sense, and is very common; but it is always turned into the monosyllable arg.
It is not surprising to find peculiarities in the common objects and customs of everyday life. Thus the eleven o'clock snack under the hedge, known elsewhere as elevenses, is nuncheon; and so it comes to pass that a horse deficient in barrel is spoken of disparagingly as having "no nuncheon bag." A bradawl is a nalpasser, no doubt "nail-passer"; but a gimlet retains its name, and is not called a twinnet, as in some places. A duckut is a small bill hook for cutting faggots; while a fag-hook, or fagging-hook, is a crooked stick used instead of the left hand in clearing a bank of nettles, etc., with an iron "hook." The new mown hay is termed eddish, while tedding out hay is spreading it out in the sun after it has been mown. The hay-loft over the stable, often the sleeping place of the fogger (forager), the man who tends the cattle, is called the tallut; the smallest pig in the litter, elsewhere either the "cad" or "darling," is invariably the runt; a dog's fangs are tushes, and a bird's claws nippens. In the poultry-yard and pigeon-cote the cock-bird is the tom; and some of the wild birds have their peculiar names assigned them. Thus the wryneck, or cuckoo's mate, is the pe-pe bird, from its note; a wish wagtail is a dasher; a woodpecker a yaffingal; and the golden plover a whistling dovyer. The little white moth that flits about in the twilight at sundown in the summer months is a margiowlet, and the steady, plodding mole, is either a want or a mouldiwarp.
Berkshire stands confessedly at the head of all pig-breeding counties, but that is no reason why the usual call of "choog, choog, choogy," at feeding time, should be changed to "teg, teg, teggy." The cattle call of coop, coop, is of course a corruption of "come, come"; and coobid, coobiddy, the poultry call of "come hither." The carter, walking on the near side of his horses, calls them towards him by coomither, or coomither-awo-oy, or more frequently holt, or holt tóward, with the accent on the first syllable of "toward," and sends them to the off side with the monosyllable wug. It is not often that the Berkshire man stoops to abuse, for he is naturally easy-going, stolid, and impassive; but a driven cow taking a wrong turn would inevitably be denounced as an old faggot, and a troublesome boy be branded as a young radical, though without any political signification attached. A simile would not be looked for amongst essentially an unimaginative folk, but as 'pright as a dish is common, and singularly inappropriate.
Of superstition there is comparatively little, and ghosts and witches meet with but little respect, the men believing that a good "vowld-stake" (i.e. fold-stake) is a sufficient weapon in all cases of emergency, and the women being fully as undaunted as the men. There is, however, a curious old Berkshire saying, that "a spayed bitch will catch a witch," and that there is some faith in the truth of the saying is shown by the fact that sheep dogs, if of the feminine gender, used frequently to be so treated.