Of rain ye'll have a wee bit drap."
There is a saying very common in many parts of Huntingdonshire, that when the woodpeckers are much heard, rain is sure to follow.
Cuthbert Bede, B.A.
Bacon's Essays: Bullaces (Vol. viii., pp. 167. 223.).—"Bullace" (I never heard Bacon's plural used) are known in Kent as small white tartish plums, which do not come to perfection without the help of a frost, and so are eaten when their fellows are no more found. They have only been cultivated of late years, I believe, but how long I cannot tell.
G. William Skyring.
Somerset House.
"Bullaces" are a small white or yellow plum, about the size of a cherry, like very poor kind of greengage, which, in ordinary seasons, when I was a boy, were the common display of the fruit-stalls at the corners of the streets, so common and well known that I can only imagine Mr. Halliwell to have misdescribed them by a slip of the pen writing black for white.
Frank Howard.
"Gennitings" are early apples (quasi June-eatings, as "gilliflowers," said to be corrupted from July flowers). For the derivation suggested to me while I write, I cannot answer; but for the fact I can, having, while at school in Needham Market, Suffolk, plucked and eaten many a "striped genniting," while "codlins" were on a tree close by. And many a time have I been rallied as a Cockney for saying I had gathered "enough" instead of "enow," which one of your Suffolk correspondents has justly recorded as the county expression applied to number as distinguished from quantity.
Frank Howard.