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A GLOSSARY OF WORDS

STILL USED IN WARWICKSHIRE

TO BE FOUND IN SHAKSPERE.

As I before stated, I by no means wish to say that the following words are to be found nowhere but in Shakspere and Warwickshire. Some, though, undoubtedly are provincialisms. And we must remember the fact, how very strongly different dialects are marked in England, and the wide difference there is, not only in the meaning, but in the pronunciation of the same words, in Dorsetshire, where the Saxon element is most marked, and in the eastern and midland counties, where the Anglian is more prominent. Venus and Adonis, Shakspere rhymes "juice" as if spelt "joyce," a thoroughly midland pronunciation of the word:

Ill-natured, crooked, churlish, harsh in voice,
O'erworn, despised, rheumatic, and cold,

Thick-sighted, barren, lean, and lacking juice.

Thus, in the

And again, in the very next stanza, as Dr. Farmer also remarked,

"ear" is rhymed, as it is to this day pronounced in Warwickshire, as if it were "air:

Bid me discourse, I will enchant thine ear,
Or, like a fairy, trip upon the green,
Or, like a nymph, with long, dishevell❜d hair,

Dance on the sands, and yet no footing seen.

I shall venture, then, to give a list of what Shaksperian words I have chiefly noticed as still in use among the peasantry of Warwickshire; premising only that the chief value is in the fact, that they are still spoken by breathing human beings, the same sort as from whose lips Shakspere learnt his mother tongue.

BATLET.-Rightly explained in the glossaries as an instrument with which

washers beat their coarse clothes. I have heard women speak of their "batlet-tub." Round Stratford the former is now more commonly called "a dolly," or "a maiden." As You Like It, act ii. scene 4.

BAVIN.-There are several different definitions given of this word in the dictionaries; but in Warwickshire I have found it more generally to mean the scraps and scrapings of the faggot, in distinction to the faggot itself, and which so easily kindle, thus explaining the passage in the First Part of King Henry IV., act iii. scene 2, "rash bavin

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wits soon kindled and soon burnt." Used also by Lily, in Mother Bombie.

BOTTLE.-"A bottle of hay," for which Bottom pines in the Midsummer Night's Dream, act iv. scene 1, is still a current phrase in Warwickshire, and the midland counties generally. We meet with it everywhere in common use in the proverb of "looking for a needle in a bottle of hay."

Bow.-Still means a yoke for cattle. "As the ox hath his bow, sir man hath his desires."-As You Like It, act iii. scene 4.

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CALIFORNIA

GLOSSARY.

151

BIGGEN.-A child's cap: rarely heard.

Sleep

Yet not so sound, and half so deeply sweet,

As her whose brow, with homely biggen bound,
Snores out the watch of night.

BRAVERY.-Finery. Taming of the Shrew, act iv. scene 3. Common among all Shakspere's contemporaries.

BRIZE.-The gadfly. Pronounced "breeze," and sometimes "bree." Antony and Cleopatra, act iii. scene 8. Found also in Spenser.

BROKEN TEARS.—Still used of tears, which are suddenly stopped; though in Troilus and Cressida, act iv. scene 4, they seem rather to mean tears broken by sobs.

CHILDING.-Pregnant. Is very beautifully applied in the Midsummer

Night's Dream, act ii. scene 2, to the autumn, which the common
texts entirely spoil by reading "chilling." The same thought may
be found expanded in the Sonnets,—

The teeming autumn, big with rich increase,
Bearing the wanton burden of the prime.

Sonnet 97.

CLAW.-To flatter. "If a talent be a claw, look how he claws him with a talent." Love's Labour's Lost, act iv. scene 2.

COB-LOAF.-" A badly set up loaf," to use one country expression to explain another, with a great deal of crust upon it. "Cob," by itself, in Warwickshire, as in Oxfordshire, means a cake. And in the former county we meet with "warden-cobs," cakes in which warden pears are baked. In Troilus and Cressida, act ii. scene 1, Ajax calls Thersites "cob-loaf," and the allusion is to his ill-shaped head; and in act v. scene 1, the metaphor is still carried out and explained by his being called a crusty batch."

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COMMIT.-TO commit adultery. So Othello to Desdemona: "What committed, O thou public commoner !"-Othello, act iv. scene 2. CUSTOMER.-A common woman. Othello, act iv. scene 1; Comedy of Errors, act iv. scene 4.

DOUT.-A corruption of" do out : " very commonly used of putting out the candle, the extinguisher of which, as Miss Baker observes, in her Glossary of Northamptonshire Words, is called a "douter." To be

heard also in the southern counties. Metaphorically used in Hamlet, act iv. scene 7.

DUP.-Formed, like the former word, from "do up." "Dup the door,"

or, more commonly, "sneck the door," may still be heard. Hamlet, act iv. scene 5.

Doxy.-As Beaumont and Fletcher say in the Beggar's Bush, "neither wives, maids, nor widows." Still heard, though rarely. The Winter's Tale, act iv. scene 2.

EANLINGS.-Young lambs just eaned, or "dropped." The Merchant of

Venice, act i. scene 3. In Lycidas, Milton speaks of the “weanling herds," which means, though, the lambs that have been weaned from their dams.

FEEDERS.-Idle, good-for-nothing servants. Timon of Athens, act ii. scene 2. In Antony and Cleopatra, act iii. scene 11, we find them called "eaters," just as we now say of horses standing idle in the stable, that they are eating their heads off; or as Massinger, in A New Way to Pay Old Debts, act i. scene 3, says of them,—

born

Only to consume meat and drink, and fatten.

FORWEARIED.—Very tired. King John, act ii. scene 1.

FARDEL.-A faggot, or "kid,” as it is more commonly called. Metaphorically used in the well-known passage in Hamlet, act iii. scene 1. Termed in the more southern counties a "niche."

GIB-CAT." I am as melancholy as a gib-cat," says Falstaff, in the First
Part of King Henry IV., act i. scene 2, and the proverb may not
only be heard in Northamptonshire, as Miss Baker in her Glossary
remarks, but also in Warwickshire. In our old writers a gib-cat
seems to have meant a tom-cat, and the phrase probably arose because,
as Linnæus observes of the animal, miserè amat.
HONEY-STALKS.-White clover, so called because it is so full of honey.
in Titus Andronicus, act iv. scene 4, we find,-

With words more sweet, and yet more dangerous
Than baits to fish, or honey-stalks to sheep;
When as the one is wounded with the bait,
The other rotted with delicious feed:

So.

lines which every farmer knows to be true. I may perhaps here notice that Titus Andronicus contains a great number of provincial words; such as the next on the list "jet," to strut; "shive," a slice; "urchin," a hedgehog, &c.; which together with other internal evidence of style and language, would form a strong argument for its genuineness.

JET.—To walk, or rather strut, proudly, “like a crow in a gutter," as the common Warwickshire saying that accompanies it runs. Shakspere, however, in connection with this word in Twelfth Night, act ii. scene 5, uses another bird with reference to Malvolio: "Contemplation makes a rare turkey-cock of him; how he jets under his advanced plumes." INKLES.-A sort of common tape; the poorest and cheapest kind being called "beggar's inkle." The phrase which Miss Baker quotes in her Northamptonshire Glossary: "as thick as inkle weavers," may also be heard in Warwickshire, and without the word "inkle” even in the southern and western counties. Winter's Tale, act iv. scene 3. IRK. To make uneasy. Still used impersonally: "it irks," exactly equivalent to the Latin tædet. As You Like It, act ii. scene 3.

KECK or KEX.-Used in Warwickshire and the midland counties, generally of the various species of umbelliferous plants which grow in the ditches and hedges :

KINDLE.-Said of animals bringing forth their young, more especially in reference to rabbits, as Rosalind uses it in As You Like It, act iii. scene 2. "A kindle" is sometimes used of a litter; as

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trip" is

in the south-western counties. LIEF.-Soon. "I had as lief do so and so," may be heard every day in Warwickshire. See Mr. Craik's English of Shakspere, p. 38, and Miss Baker's Northamptonshire Glossary, on this word,