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Show SELECTED. ENGLISH DIAX.ECT AS IT WAS. Extinct Etymological Eccentricities. Eccentrici-ties. In those dayi iwo hundred year; : ago the talk m our provinces, aj we; 1 ad the tune of the taik, dinercd mu-.-h more from the metropolitan than it does now. She's muia up to the buckon, is a phrase that is an example. ex-ample. What d'jes it mean ? It aid, one hundred and fifty years since, I jf a woman dirty up to the .knucliti To call her a daffxk, a dawkm, a daw-goj, daw-goj, was anoiher way of yikig hr a slattern. The title h"arr.giud meant that the was w.ldish, p. a yful; to say that she was hattle, was another version of the same thing; and so it was to declare she had too few harns, brains. Were this woman a stepmother, step-mother, she was known as eil-mothcr; were she neatly diessed she was taid to be snogly-geered. A little girl was a mautber, did she frolic much and augh aloud, she was said to be guyl-ter; guyl-ter; were she. on the other hand grave and witty more than usual at her years, she was set down as und-fraud A lumb person was a cank; one who squinted was gly; one almoat crazed ivas welly-moldered. A wife's mother was a meugh; an uncle was a neuie; a miser was a pin panierbly fellow: straogers were comeling in some place, and frimfolks in others. Were people tbolish, they were said to be ketnniet; were they idle, they were trantrels. The times for idiiDg were called scop-perloits; scop-perloits; the places where the trantrels would stay to lounge were hipping hawds. Clinkets might be met there, clinkets being crafty folks; and against the palings aud on the benches might be ha?pats, striplings, and duinbers, rascals; and crassautly, and cranny, and routing lads, cowards, and jovial boys, and boisterous ones; and they could stop with one another all the dondinner of the onedher (the afternoon), after-noon), and they could indulge themselves them-selves the while in donudrins, afternoon after-noon drrukings. Christinas, of crourse, was Nowell: the beginning of Lent was Fasguntide. Were the uioiniug uiisty, it was called cobweb; a long, tedious day was called dree. If people' peo-ple' felt but indifferently well, they said they were liobly nobly; if they hud swollen faces, they spoke of boun uiuns; if they were ready to faint, they said joate. They spoke of the sull, the plough; or of wedding nepes, turnips; and as they trudged along, they would tread down paigles, cowslips, aud turn up many a forkiu-robbin, ear-wig, and mad, earthworm; they spoke of picking pick-ing erk, stubble; aud of mending the skeels,colloeks, stufrets, posnets, eskius, gotcheta, and other kitchen utcn.- Is, quite asqueerly called. If they wuuted to say they worked with all their might, they used the word bure; and let us give them credit for dointr it. though it might be haggling; hailing, though thete might be a sea hurr, a sea storm, with the gill hooters, the owls, at their cry, aud memories of goet e, witchcraft, to grow them, trouble trou-ble them, as they strode across the runes and grindlets, watercourses, aud by rank zittens, churchyards. "Where went you?" And " Where wun ye ! " ''Where do you live?" And they might speak of the thone tugs, damp meadows, near them, with the pulks, holes of standing water, and the run-ches; run-ches; carlock, heaps of rubbish. On the hedge, too, they might point to bumblckites, blackberries; and, high above, to a cletch of caddows, a brood of jack-daws; and a strewing theearth beneath, to the whitening dodmeu, with one another, for stull-time, the hour for a huge slice of bicad and cheese; but that would not come sooner than it would come, nor could they hurry on a moment the hour for eein, leisure. What if the hauber jannocks, raten-cakes, and the flauus, custard, aud feans, gooseberries are not on the doubler, great dish or platter? What if the bagester is among the hart-ealver hart-ealver (we will not translate any longer, lon-ger, but leave our reader's the powers of guessing full scope), and for helaw the henting eats a whole eever of the stuckling, and zuppes are on pariicts, and araines in attcreobs so that a buffci-stool bits the quck. baza-picklet is given to pates, lioppets are tilled with newing? It is f ho cousciciko. For without fresh elden it is u-e.ess to sheer the ease, and a dosem beast will still be dosom, despite his cock apparel, and it is crawly-mswly known that he neither does nor daws. AH th 1 tar Round. |