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The linguistic importance of the dialect-vocabulary for the study of our English language and literature in its earlier periods cannot be over-estimated, for herein is preserved a wealth of historical words familiar to us in our older literature, but lost to our standard speech. Numbers of words used by Chaucer and the early Middle English poets, by Shakespeare, and by the translators of the Bible, which are now treated as archaisms to be explained in footnotes and appendices to the text, still live and move and have their being among our rural population to-day. Take for illustration this line from the Middle English alliterative poem, Sir Gawayne and the Green Knight (l. 2003):

Þe snawe snitered ful snart, þat snayped þe wylde.

‘Attercop’ and ‘Bairn’

The three principal words have disappeared from the literary language, and to give an exact rendering of these two brief sentences we should have to paraphrase them something like this: The snow, full keenly cold, blew on the biting blast, which pinched the deer with frost. But if we turn to the dialects, there we find all three: snitter (Sh.I. Yks.), to snow, sb. a biting blast; snar, snarry (Cum. Yks.), cold, piercing; snape (n.Cy. Dur. Lakel. Cum. Yks. Lan. Chs. Stf. Der. Lin. War. Shr.), to check, restrain, &c. The difference between snart and snar is accounted for by the fact that it is a Norse word. An adjective in Norse takes a t in the neuter, and this t not being recognized on these shores as an inflexional ending was sometimes adopted into English as if it belonged to the stem of the word, as for example in the literary words scant, want, athwart, cp. Icel. snarr, swift, keen, neut. snart. Many a delightful old word which ran away from a public career a century or two ago, and left no address, may thus be discovered in its country retreat, hale and hearty yet, though hoary with age. It is hard to make a choice among so many, especially where the chosen must be few, but the following may perhaps serve as representatives of the remainder: attercop (Sc. Irel. Nhb. Cum. Wm. Yks. Lan. Chs. Wil.), a spider. This was in Old English attorcoppe, a spider, from ātor, attor, poison, and coppe, which probably means head, the old idea being that spiders were poisonous insects. In the M.E. poem The Owl and the Nightingale (c. 1225), the owl taunts the nightingale with eating ‘nothing but attercops, and foul flies, and worms’. Wyclif (1382) has: ‘The eiren [eggs] of edderes thei tobreeken, and the webbis of an attercop thei wouen,’ Isaiah lix. 5. Bairn or barn (Sc. Irel. and all the n. counties to Chs. Der. Lin.), a child, O.E. bearn, a child, a son or daughter, M.E. barn or bern. Owing to its use among educated Scotch people, this word has gained some footing in our colloquial speech, and it has always had a place in poetical diction, but its real stronghold is Scotland and the North. Perhaps no other word breathes such a spirit of human love and tenderness as this does. How infinitely superior is the barns to our commonplace the kids; or a bit bairn, or bairnie to that objectionable term a kiddie! Pillow-bere (Irel. n.Cy. Yks. Chs. Der. Lin. Shr. e.An. Ken. Sus. Som. Cor.), a pillow-case. We read of Chaucer’s ‘gentil Pardoner’ that:

… in his male he hadde a pilwebeer,

Which that, he seide, was oure lady veyl.

Prologue, ll. 694, 695.

The word also occurs in several of the wills published in Wells Wills, by F. W. Weaver, 1890, as, for instance, in that of Juliane Webbe, of Swainswick, dated Jan. 11, 1533: ‘Julian Woodman vj shepe, a cowe &c. a salteseller, a knede cover, a stand, my ijⁿᵈ apparell of my body, a flockebed &c. ij pelowberys.’ Char, or chare (many dials.), an errand, a turn of work, an odd job, O.E. cerr, a turn, temporis spatium. We retain the word in the compound charwoman, and in a disguised form in ajar, which literally means on the turn. An old proverbial saying (1678) runs: ‘That char is char’d, as the goodwife said when she had hanged her husband.’ Shakespeare has the word in:

the maid that milks

And does the meanest chares.

Ant. & Cleop. IV. xv. 75.

Charming the Bees

Charm (gen. use in midl. and s. counties), a confused intermingled song or hum of birds or bees, e.g. Ow the birds bin singin’ this mornin’, the coppy’s all on a charm. It is also used of the sound of many voices. A Herefordshire farmer’s wife writing to me about her five children under seven years of age, added: ‘You can guess what a charm they make.’ The O.E. form was cierm, a noise, with a verb cierman, to make a noise. Palsgrave (1530) has: ‘I chitter, I make a charme as a flock of small byrdes do when they be together.’ But we know the word best in Milton’s lines:

Sweet is the breath of morn, her rising sweet,

With charm of earliest birds.

Par. Lost, iv. 641.

The phrase to charm or cherm bees belongs here, and has no connexion with the ordinary word charm, of French origin. To charm bees is to follow a swarm of bees, beating a tea-tray, or ringing a stone against a spade or watering-can. This music is supposed to cause the bees to settle; but another object in doing thus is to let the neighbours know who owns the bees, if they should chance to settle on adjacent property. Har, or harr (Sc. Nhb. Dur. Cum. Wm. Yks. Lan. also Mid. e.An. Hmp. Wil. Som.), the upright part of a gate or door to which the hinges are fastened, O.E. heorr, a hinge. Chaucer, in describing the ‘Mellere’, tells us:

Ther nas no dore that he nolde heve of harre,

Or breke it at a rennyng with his heed.

Prol. ll. 550, 551.

Hulk (n.Cy. Nhb. Nhp.), a cottage, a temporary shelter in a field for the shepherd during the lambing season, O.E. hulc, tugurium. The ‘lodge in a garden of cucumbers’, Isaiah i. 8, is in Wyclif’s Bible: ‘an hulke in a place where gourdis wexen.’ Marrow (gen. dial. use in Sc. Irel. and n. counties to Chs. Der.), a match, equal, a mate, spouse, &c. The word is found in the Promptorium Parvulorum (c. 1440): ‘Marwe, or felawe yn trauayle, socius, sodalis, compar.’ We are chiefly familiar with it in the ballad of The Braes of Yarrow, which begins:

Busk ye, busk ye, my bonny bonny bride,

Busk ye, busk ye, my winsome marrow.

Mommet (n.Cy. Wm. Yks. Lan. War. Wor. Shr. Hrf. Wil. Dor. Som. Dev. Cor.), an image, effigy, a scarecrow, &c., M.E. mawmet, an idol, O.Fr. mahummet, mahommet, ‘idole en général,’ La Curne; Mahumet, one of the idols of the Saracens. It is the same word as Mahomet, Arab. Muhammed. The form in Shakespeare is mammet:

a wretched puling fool,

A whining mammet.

Rom. & Jul. III. v. 185.

Words used for marshy places

In Wyclif’s Bible it is mawmet: ‘And thei maden a calf in tho daies, and offriden a sacrifice to the mawmet,’ Acts vii. 41; ‘My little sones, kepe ȝe ȝou fro maumetis,’ 1 John v. 21. Quag (gen. dial. use in Sc. and Eng.), a quagmire. This word occurs in The Pilgrim’s Progress, in the description of the Valley of the Shadow of Death: ‘behold, on the left hand there was a very dangerous Quag, into which, if even a good man falls, he finds no bottom for his foot to stand on: Into that Quag King David once did fall, and had, no doubt, therein been smothered, had not he that is able plucked him out.’ Immediately afterwards the same ‘Quag’ is called a ‘Mire’: ‘when he sought, in the Dark, to shun the Ditch on the one hand, he was ready to tip over into the Mire on the other.’ Mire, a bog, a swamp, is common in the Lake District and Devonshire. Yet another word with the same meaning is mizzy (n.Cy. Lan.), used by the Lancashire author of Sir Gawayne and the Green Knight (c. 1360) in one of the most picturesque passages in the whole poem, the account of Sir Gawayne’s ride through the forest on Christmas Eve:

Þe hasel & þe haȝ-þorne were harled al samen,

With roȝe raged mosse rayled ay-where,

With mony bryddeȝ vnblyþe vpon bare twyges,

Þat pitosly þer piped for pyne of þe colde.

Þe gome [man] vpon Gryngolet glydeȝ hem vnder,

Þurȝ mony misy & myre, mon al hym one.

ll. 744–9.

Words used by Middle English Poets

Rise (gen. dial. use in Sc. Irel. Eng.), a branch, twig, O.E. hrīs, a twig. ‘Cherries in the ryse’ is an old London Street Cry, as we know from Lydgate’s poem entitled London Lyckpeny:

Then vnto London I dyd me hye,

Of all the land it beareth the pryse:

Hot pescodes, one began to crye,

Strabery rype, and cherryes in the ryse.

Stanza ix.

Another instance of the use of the word may be taken from the old carol The Flower of Jesse (c. 1426):

Of lily, of rose of ryse,

Of primrose, and of fleur-de-lys,

Of all the flowers at my device,

That Flower of Jesse yet bears the price

As most of heal,

To slake our sorrows every deal.

Stanza vii.

Steven (Cum. w.Yks.), a gathering; an appointment. Hence, to set the steven, a phrase meaning to agree upon the time and place of meeting, O.E. stefn, a voice. The phrase ‘at unset stevene’ occurs in Chaucer’s Knightes Tale, l. 666, and in other early poems. In the Cokes Tale we read concerning ‘Perkin Revelour’ and his friends:

And ther they setten steven for to mete

To pleyen at the dys in swich a strete.

ll. 19, 20.

Shep (Cum. Lin. Som. Dev.), a shepherd. This form is familiar to us as occurring in the opening lines of Piers Plowman:

In a somer seson whan soft was the sonne,

I shope me in shroudes as I a shepe were.

Toll-booth (Sc. Yks.), a place where tolls are paid, a town or market hall. Matthew, according to Wyclif (1388), was ‘sittynge in a tolbothe’, Matt. ix. 9. Thwittle (n.Cy. Cum. Yks. Lan.), a large knife. Simkin, the miller of Trumpington, had one:

A Sheffield thwitel baar he in his hose.

Reves Tale, l. 13.

The word is a derivative of thwite (Sc. n.Cy. Lan. Der. Shr. Dev.), to pare wood, to cut with a knife, O.E. þwītan, to cut, shave off.

Survivals of old Substantives

‘Hit were to tore [hard] for to telle of þe tenþe dole’ of these old substantives still surviving in the dialects, but I will add just a few more in a list: ask (Sc. Irel. n.Cy. to Chs. and n.Lin.), a newt, lizard, O.E. āðexe, cp. Germ. Eidechse; bree (Sc. n.Cy. Yks. Lan. Chs.), the eyelid, the eyebrow, O.E. brǣw, the eyelid; cloam (Pem. Nrf. Dor. Som. Dev. Cor.), crockery, earthenware, O.E. clām, clay; dig (Irel. Yks. Lan. Chs.), a duck, cp. ‘Here are doves, diggs, drakes’ Chester Plays, c. 1400, Deluge, 189, ‘anette, a duck, or dig,’ Cotgrave; gavelock (Sc. Nhb. Dur. Cum. Wm. Yks. Lan. Der. Not. Lin. Nrf. Suf.), an iron crowbar, O.E. gafeluc, a spear; holster (Som. Dev. Cor.), a hiding-place, O.E. heolster, a place of concealment; ham (Not. Nhp. Glo. Sus. Wil. Dor. Som. Dev.), flat, low-lying pasture, land near a stream or river, O.E. hamm, a pasture or meadow inclosed with a ditch; haffet (Sc. Irel. Nhb. Cum. Wm.), the temple, the side of the face, O.E. healf-hēafod, the front part of the head; heugh (Sc. Irel. Nhb. Cum. Wm. Yks.), a crag, cliff, precipice, O.E. hōh, a promontory, lit. a hanging (precipice); hull (in gen. dial. use in Sc. and Eng.), a husk, a pod, also used as a verb, to remove the outer husk of any vegetable or fruit, O.E. hulu, husk, cp. ‘Take Whyte Pesyn, and hoole hem in þe maner as men don Caboges,’ Cookery Book, c. 1430; hoar-stone (Sc. Lan. Oxf.), a boundary stone, O.E. hār stān (lit. a hoar stone, i.e. a grey or ancient stone), often occurs in Charters in the part describing the boundary line; haysuck (Wor. Glo.), hedge-sparrow, O.E. hegesugge; hobbleshow (Sc. Nhb. Dur. Cum. Wm. Yks. Lan.), a tumult, disturbance, &c. ‘An hubbleshowe, tumultus’, Levins, Manipulus Vocabulorum, 1570; litten (Brks. Sus. Hmp. Wil. Som.), a churchyard, a cemetery, O.E. līctūn, an enclosure in which to bury people; lide (w.Cy. Wil. Cor.), the month of March, O.E. hlȳda; lave (Sc. Irel. Nhb. Dur. Cum. Wm. Yks.), the remainder, O.E. lāf; leap (many dials.), a large basket, seed-lip (gen. dial. use in Yks. Midl. e. s. and w. counties from Lei.), a basket used to hold the seed when sowing, O.E. sǣdlēap; oly-praunce (Nhp.), a merry-making, M.E. olipraunce, vanity, fondness for gay apparel; pollywig, pollywiggle (Sc. Lan. Lei. Nhp. e.An. Hmp. Dev.), a tadpole, cp. ‘Polewigges, tadpoles, young frogs,’ Florio, 1611, ‘Polwygle, wyrme,’ Promptorium Parvulorum; porriwiggle, porwiggle (n.Cy. Yks. Lei. e.An. Sur.), a tadpole, cp. ‘that which the ancients called gyrinus, we a porwigle or tadpole,’ Sir Thomas Browne, Vulgar Errors, 1646; preen (Sc. Nhb. Lakel. Yks.), a pin, O.E. prēon; rake (Sc. Nhb. Dur. Lakel. Yks. Lan. Lin.), a track, path, &c., cp. O.E. racu, a hollow path; ridder (Oxf. Hrt. Mid. e.Cy. Sus. Hmp. I.W. Wil. Dor. Som. Cor.), a sieve for sifting grain, O.E. hrīdder; rivlin (Sh. & Or.I.), a kind of sandal made of undressed skin with the hair outside, O.E. rifeling; ream (Sc. Irel. n.Cy. Cum. Yks. Lan. Dev. Cor.), cream, O.E. rēam; rother (n.Cy. Lan. War. Wor. Hrf. Sus.), horned cattle, M.E. rother, an ox; sax (Sh.I. Lin. Brks. w.Cy. Som. Dev. Cor.), a knife, O.E. seax; seal (Sc. Chs. e.An.), time, season—the seal of the day to you is a friendly salutation; to give a person the seal of the day is to give him a passing salutation—O.E. sǣl, time, season, &c.; shippen (Sc. Nhb. Cum. Wm. Yks. Lan. Chs.), a cow-house, a cattle-shed, O.E. scypen, scipen, a stall, a fold for cattle or sheep; slade (many dials.), a valley, a grassy plain between hills, O.E. slæd; souter (Sc. n.Cy. Yks. Nhp.), a shoemaker, O.E. sūtere, from Lat. sutor; soller (n.Cy. Yks. Lan. Shr. Hrf. e.An. s.Cy. Cor.), an upper chamber or loft, O.E. solor, a loft, upper room, from Lat. solarium; singreen (Wor. Shr. Bck. Ken. Sus. Hmp. I.W. Wil.), the house-leek, O.E. singrēne, the houseleek, lit. evergreen; snead (in gen. dial. use in Sc. Irel. Eng.), the handle of a scythe, O.E. snǣd; whittle (Irel. Dur. Lei. War. Pem. Glo. Oxf. Suf. Sus. Hmp. Dor. Som. Dev. Cor.), a cape, a shawl, &c., O.E. hwītel, a cloak, a blanket; wogh (Nhb. Dur. Cum. Wm. Yks. Lan. Chs. Der.), a wall, O.E. wāg, wāh; yelm (War. Glo. Bdf. Mid.), straw laid ready for thatching, O.E. gelm, a handful, a sheaf.

It would be possible to produce samples of these retired English words categorized under each of the various parts of speech, but it will be sufficient here to keep to the most important categories, namely, nouns, adjectives, and verbs. Not but what many interesting words will thus perforce stand neglected, for even the humble adverb is often worth a glance. Take for example the modest form tho (Dor. Som. Dev. Cor.), then, at that time. This is the regularly developed lineal descendant of O.E. þā, and Chaucer’s tho in the line:

To don obsequies, as was tho the gyse.

Knightes Tale, l. 135.

The common dialect adverb nobbut, only, nothing but, lit. not but, occurs in Sir Gawayne and the Green Knight. When Sir Gawayne is looking for ‘þe grene chapelle’, to his disgust he finds that it consists of a hollow mound, ‘nobot an old caue,’ where, he says:

… myȝt about mid-nyȝt,

Þe dele his matynnes telle!

ll. 2187, 2188.

Adjectives now disused in Standard English

But to come to our second category, namely, old adjectives now disused in standard English, examples are: argh (Sc. Nhb. Dur. Yks. Lin.), timorous, apprehensive, O.E. earh (earg), cowardly (cp. Germ. arg), ‘His hert arwe as an hare,’ Rob. of Gloucester, Chron., c. 1300; brant (Nhb. Cum. Wm. Yks. Lan. Lin.), steep, high, also erect, and hence proud, pompous, e.g. as brant as a besom, O.E. brant, bront. Brantwood on the eastern margin of Coniston Lake, the residence of Ruskin, was so called from the brant, or steep wood which rises behind it. Dern (Sc. Nhb. Chs.), secret, obscure, also dreary, dark, O.E. dyrne, derne, cp. ‘For derne love of thee lemman, I spille,’ Milleres Tale, l. 92; elenge (Ken. Sur. Sus.), solitary, lonely, tedious, O.E. ǣlenge, tedious, tiresome, lit. very long; fremd (Sc. Nhb. Dur. Cum. Wm. Yks. Lan. Chs. Lin. Nhp.), strange, foreign, not of kin, O.E. fremde, foreign, cp. Germ. fremd. In M.E. this word is often coupled with sibb, which latter word has the opposite meaning of related, akin, as for example in the lines from the Moral Ode, c. 1200:

Wis is þat him seolue biþenkþ þe hwile he mot libbe,

Vor sone willeþ him for-yete þe fremede and þe sibbe.

ll. 34, 35.

‘Sib’ and ‘Lief’

This too remains in the dialects as sib (Sc. Irel. Nhb. Cum. Yks. Lan. Chs. Der. Lin. Nhp. War. Wor.), closely related, akin, e.g. Oor Marmaduke’s sib to all the gentles in th’ cuntry, though he hes cum doon to leäd coäls. Fenny (Ken. Hmp. Wil.), mouldy, mildewed, also in the form vinny (Glo. Brks. Hmp. I.W. Wil. Dor. Som. Dev. Cor.), O.E. fynig, used by Ælfric in translating Joshua ix. 5, of the Gibeonites’ bread; hettle(Sc. Nhb. Dur. Yks.)-tongued, foul-mouthed, irascible in speech, O.E. hetol, full of hate, malignant. Lief, dear, beloved, is obsolete as an adjective even in the dialects, but as an adverb it is common throughout the country, so too is the comparative form liefer, more willingly, rather, M.E. me were lever, I had rather, a phrase familiar to us in the description of the Clerk of Oxenford:

For him was levere have at his beddes heede

Twenty bookes, clad in blak or reede,

Of Aristotle and his philosophie,

Then robes riche, or fithele, or gay sawtrie.

Prologue, ll. 293–6.

Piping hot (gen. dial. and colloquial use) is a phrase also found in Chaucer:

And wafres, pyping hote out of the glede.

Milleres Tale, l. 193.

Punch (Sc. n.Cy. Yks.), short, fat, occurs in Pepys’s Diary, April 30, 1669, ‘I … did hear them call their fat child punch, which pleased me mightily, that word being become a word of common use for all that is thick and short.’ Rathe (Sc. Irel. Yks. Hrf. Gmg. Pem. Glo. Brks. Hrt. e.An. Ken. Sus. Hmp. I.W. Wil. Dor. Som. Dev.), adj. and adv. early, soon, quick, O.E. hræð, adj. quick, swift, hræðe, adv. quickly, soon, recalls Milton’s line:

Bring the rathe primrose that forsaken dies.

Lycidas, l. 142.

Familiar Miltonic Words

In many of the dialects the word is found in the compound rathe-ripe, coming early to maturity, for the use of which we have evidence as far back as the seventeenth century, in an epitaph on two little children who died in 1668 and 1670:

Such early fruites are quickly in their prime,

Rathe ripes we know are gathered in betime;

Such Primroses by Death’s impartiall hand

Are cropped, and landy’d up at Heaven’s command.

Another familiar Miltonic word is scrannel (Yks. Lan. Not. Nhp. War.), lean, thin; of the voice: weak, piping.