menu_book Chapter 41

chapter forty one of highways and byways in sussex this librivox recording is in the public domain recording by peter yearsley highways and byways in sussex by e v lucas chapter forty one the sussex dialect the body of the sussex dialect is derived from the saxon its accessories can be traced to the celts to the norse thus rape a division of the county is probably an adaptation of the icelandic and to the french some hundreds of hughiannots having fled to our shores after the edict of nantes the hastings fishermen for example often say boccaux for plenty and frapp to strike while in the rye neighbourhood where the hughiannots were strongest such words as meaning untidy undressed and peter grievous from petit griffe meaning fretful are still used but saxon words are of course considerably more common you meet them at every turn a sussex auctioneer's list that lies before me a catalogue of live and dead farming stock to be sold at a homestead under the south downs is full of them so blunt and sturdy they are these ancient primitive terms of the soil

lot one pitch prong two half pitch prongs two force bean spuds and a road hoe lot five five short prongs flint spud dung drag two turnip pecks and two shovels lot nine six hay rakes two scythes and sneethes cross-cut saw and a sheep-hook lot thirty nine corn chest open tub milkingstool and hog form lot forty three bushel measure shawl and strike lot one hundred rick borer lot one hundred and forty three eight knaves and seven fellows lot one hundred and forty eight six dirt boards and pair of wood hames lot one hundred and fifty two wheelwright's sampson lot one hundred and seventy four set of thill harness lot two hundred and one three plough bolts three tween sticks lot two hundred and four sundry harness and whippences lot two hundred and eight tickle plough lot two hundred and twenty two iron turnrist pronounced turn rist plough

lot two hundred and forty two nine time scarifier lot two hundred and fifty one clod crusher lot two hundred and fifty two hay tedder from another catalogue more ramalogues these abrupt and active little words might be called but at one as lot four flint spud two drain scoops bull lead and five dibbles lots ten dung rake and dung devil lot eleven four juts and a zinc skip farm labourers are men of little speech and it is often needful that voices should carry far hence this crisp and forcible reticence the vocabulary of the countryside undergoes few changes and the noises to-day made by the ox-herd who urges his black and smoking team along the hillside are precisely those that piers ploughman himself would have used another survival may be noticed in objuration a sussex man swearing by job as he often does is not calling in the aid of the patient sufferer of ur but job the anglo-saxon jupiter

a few examples of sussex speech mainly drawn from mr parrish's dictionary of the sussex dialect will help to add the true flavour to these pages mr parrish's little book is one of the best of its kind that it is more than a contribution to etymology a very few quotations will show mr parish lays down the following general principles of the sussex tongue a before double d becomes r whereby ladder and adder are pronounced la-der and a-der a before double l is pronounced like o fallow and tallow become foller and toller a before t is expanded into ea rate mate plate gate are pronounced reat meat piet geat a before ct becomes e as satisfaction for satisfaction e before ct becomes a and affection effect and neglect are pronounced affaction effect and neglect

double e is pronounced as i in such words as sheep wig called ship and wick and the sound of double e follows the same rule in filled for field having pronounced e e as i the sussex people in the most impartial manner pronounce i as e e and thus mice hive dive become meese heave and deave i becomes e in pet for pit spet for spit and similar words i o and o i change places respectively and violet and violent become voilet and voilent while boiled and spoiled are biled and spiled o before n is expanded into oa in such words as pony don't bone which are pronounced poony doont boon o before r is pronounced as a as carn and marning for corn and marning o also becomes a in such words as rad crass and crap for rod cross and crop

o u is elongated into a o u in words like hound pound and mound pronounced hound pound and mound the final ow as in many other counties is pronounced er as folla for fallow the peculiarities with regard to the pronunciation of consonants are not so numerous as those of the vowels but they are very decided and seem to admit of less variation double t is always pronounced as d as lidlch for little etc and the th is invariably d thus th becomes d and these them theirs these dem d in its turn is occasionally changed into th as in fodder for fodder the final sp in such words as wasp clasp and hasp are reversed to wops claps and harps words ending in s t have the addition of a syllable in the possessive case and the plural and instead of saying that some little birds had built their nests near the posts of mr west's gate

a sussex boy would say de birds had built der nests near de posters of mr west's geot roughly speaking sussex has little or no dialect absolutely its own for the country speech of the west is practically that also of hampshire and of the east that of kent the dividing line between east and west mr cripps of steyning tells me is the adur once an estuary of the sea rather than the stream it now is running far inland and separating the two sussexes with its estranging wave mr parrish's pages supply the following words and examples of their use chosen almost at random a done have done leave off i am told on good authority that when a sussex damsel says oh do a done she means you to go on but when she says a done do you must leave off immediately crownation coronation i was married de day de crownation was when dey was a bullock roasted whole up at forrall park furl i don't know as ever i eart anythin so purty in all my lief

but i never got no fudder den for all crossways all neat no more din a good many denticle dainty my master says that this here prussian query cut what you gave me is a deal too denticle for a poor man's cut he wants one as will catch de meese and keep herself dunna many i do not know how many there was a ton of many people come to see that girt hog o mine when she was took bad and they all gov it in as she was took wid de information we did all as ever we could far there was a bottle o stuff wad i had from de doctor time my leg was so bad and we took an mix it in wid some milk and give it to her lukewarm but none as we could give her didn't seem to do her any good foreigner a stranger a person who comes from any county but sussex i have often heard it said of a woman in this village who comes from lincolnshire that she has got such a good notion of work that you'd never find out but what she was an englishwoman without you was to hear her talk

frenchy a foreigner of any country who cannot speak english the nationality being added or not as the case seems to require thus an old fisherman giving an account of a swedish vessel which was wrecked on the coast a year or two ago finished by saying that he thought the french frenchies take em all in all were better than de swedish frenchies for he could make out what dey were drivin at but he was all at sea wid de others heart condition said of ground i've got my garden into pretty good heart at last and if so be as there weren't quite so many spars and greybirds and roberts and one thing and other i dunno but what i might get a tidy lot o sass but there tain't no use what you do as long as there's so much varmint about hill the south down country is always spoken of as the hill by the people in the weald he's gone to de hill harvesting inkhorn inkstand

fetch me down to incarn mistus i be going to put my hand to this here partition to parliament tis agin the romans mistus for if so be as the romans get the up an hand on us we shall all be burneded and bloodshedded and have our bibles took away from us and there'll be a hem set out just about certainly extremely i just about did enjoy myself up at de christiel palace on de forester's day but there was a terrible girt crowd i should think there must have been two or three hundred people a-scrouged about no used as a substantive for knowledge poor feller he has got no no what'sumdever but his sister is a nice knowledgeable girl lamentable very this word seems to admit of three degrees of comparison which are indicated by the accentuation thus positive lamentable as usually pronounced comparative larmentable superlative lamentable master chucks he says to me says he tis larmentable purty weather master crockham larmentable says i larder corruption of ladder master's got a lodge down on de land yonder an as i was goin across t'other day mornin to fetch a larder we keeps dere a lawyer catched holdin me an scratched my face

note lawyer a long bramble full of thorns so called because when once dey gets a hold on yer yer don't easy git shut of em little diminutive of little i never see one o dees here gurd men dere so much talk about in de peepers only once an dat was up at smiffle show a dunna many years ago prime minister dey told me he was up at lunnon a leetle leer miserable skinny lookin chap as ever i see tisraeli i imagine why i says we dawn't count our minister to be much but he's a deal primer lookin than what your'n be loonst alone will ye lend mudder to loonst of a little tea master pronounced mass the distinctive title of a married labourer a single man will be called by his christian name all his life long but a married man young or old is mass even to his most intimate friend and fellow-workman as long as he can earn his own livelihood but as soon as he becomes past work he turns into the old gentleman leaving the breadwinner to rank as master of the household mass is quite a distinct title from mr which is always pronounced

thus mus smith is the employer mus smith is the man he employs the old custom of the wife speaking of her husband as her master still lingers among elderly people but both the word and the reasonableness of its use are rapidly disappearing in the present generation it may be mentioned here that they say in sussex that the rosemary will never blossom except where the mistess is master may be and may hap perhaps maybe you knows mas pillbeam no don't you well he was a very singler man was mas pillbeam a very singler man he says to his mistress one day he says tis a long time says he since i've took a holiday so cardinally next mornin he laid a bed till pretty nice seven o'clock and then he breakfasts and then he goes down to the shop and buys four ounces of baka and he sets hisself down on de maxon and dere he set and dere he smote and smote and smote all de hull day long for says he tis a long time since i've had a holiday

ah he were a very singler man a very singler man indeed queer to puzzle it has queered me for a long time to find out who that man is and my mistis she's been quite in a quirk over it he don't seem to be quaint wi nobody and he don't seem to have no business and for all that he's always to and fro to and fro forever lasting reynolds muss reynolds is the name given to the fox when i was first told that muss reynolds come along last night he was spoken of so intimately that i supposed he must be some old friend and expressed a hope that he had been hospitably received he helped hisself was the reply and thereupon followed the explanation illustrated by an exhibition of mutilated poultry short tender a rat-catcher once told me that he knew many people who were in the habit of eating barn-fed rats and he added when derin a puddin you couldn't tell dem from a chick dey eart so short an purty

shruck shrieked an old woman who was accidentally locked up in a church where she was slumbering in a high pew said i shruck till i could shruck no longer but no one com'd so i up and tulled upon de bell spanel to make dirty footmarks about a floor as a spaniel dog does i goos into de kitchen and i sez to my mistis i sez twas over saturday de old sow's hem ornery i sez well says she dere ain't no call for you to come spanelling about my clean kitchen any more for that she sez so i goos out and didn't say noun for you can never make no sense of women folks over saturday surely there are few words more frequently used by sussex people than this it has no special meaning of its own but it is added at the end of any sentence to which particular emphasis is required to be given tedious excessive very i never did see such tedious bad stuff in all my life mr parish might here be supplemented by the remark that his definition explains the use of the word by old walker

as related by niron when bowling to lord frederick beauclerk oh he said that was tedious near you my lad unaccountable a very favourite adjective which does duty on all occasions in sussex a countryman will scarcely speak three sentences without dragging in this word a friend of mine who had been remonstrating with one of his parishioners for abusing the parish clerk beyond the bounds of neighbourly expression received the following answer you be quite right sir you be quite right i've no ought to ha said what i did but i don't mind telling you to your head what i've said a many times behind your back we've got a good shepherd i says an excellent shepherd but he's got an unaccountable bad dog valiant veillon stout well built what did you think of my friend who preached last sunday master piper ah he was a valiant man he just did stand over de pulpit why you beant nothing at all to him see what a noble paunch he had jarbs herbs an old man in east sussex said that many people set much store by the doctors but for his part he was one for the jarbs and paul podgum was what he went by

it was not for some time that it was discovered that by paul podgum he meant the polypodium fern such are some of the pleasant passages in mr parrish's book in mr coker egerton's sussex folk and sussex ways is an amusing example of gender in sussex the son by the way is always she or her to the sussex peasant as to the german savant but it is not the only unexpected feminine in the county mr egerton gives a conversation in a village school in which the master bids tommy blow his nose a little later he returns and asks tommy why he has not done so please sir i did blow her but her wouldn't bide blowed in the foregoing examples mr parrish has perhaps made the sussex labourer a thought too epigrammatic a natural tendency in the illustrations to such a work the following narration of adventure from the lips of a southdown shepherd which is communicated to me by my friend mr c e clayton of holmbush is nearer to the normal loquacity of the type

i mind one day i'd been to buy some lambs and comin home in de dark over de bostil i gets to a field and i knows dey was a geart and i kept beatin de hedge wid my stick to find de geart and at last i found un and i coos to get over and twas one o these here girt ponds full o foul water i'd mistook for de geert and so in i went all over my head and i tumbles out again middlin sharp and i slips cause twas so slobby and in i goes again and i do think i should a bin drownded if it weren't farum a stick and i was that frightened and dere was some bullocks close by and i frightened dem splashing about and they began a run around and that frightened me and dere well i was all wet through and grabby and when i got home i looked like one o dizier watercress men but i kept em a peep in em mouth all the time i didn't lose em the late mr f e sawyer another student of sussex dialect has remarked on the similarity between sussex provincialisms and many words which we are accustomed to think peculiarly american

one cause may be the two hundred sussex colonists taken over by william penn who as we have seen was at one time squire of warminghurst in recent years we have gathered from the works of american comic writers and others many words which at first have been termed vulgar americanisms but which on closer examination have proved to be good old anglo-saxon and other terms which had dropped out of notice amongst us but were retained in the new world take for instance two southern words probably sussex quoted by ray sixteen seventy four squirm artemus ward describes brother uriah of the shakers as squirming like a speared eel and curiously enough ray gives to squirm to move nimbly about after the manner of an eel it is spoken of eel another word is sass for sauce also quoted by artemus ward mrs phoebe earl gibbons an american lady in a clever and instructive article in harper's magazine on english farmers but in fact describing the agriculture etc of sussex in a very interesting way considers that the peculiarities of the present sussex dialect resemble those of new england more than of pennsylvania she mentions as sussex phrases used in new england

you hadn't ought to do it and you shouldn't ought be you for are you i see him for i saw you have a crock on your nose for a smut nuther for neither parcel for parcel and a pucker for a fuss in addition she observes that sussex people speak of the fall for autumn and guess and reckon like genuine yankees so far mr sawyer sussex people also i might add disremember as huck finn used to do i should like to close the list of examples of sussex speech by quoting a few verses from the sussex version of the song of solomon which mr lower prepared for prince lucien buonaparte some forty years ago the experiment was extended to other southern and western dialects the collection making a little book of curious charm and homeliness here is the fourth chapter one looky you be purdy my love looky you be purdy you've got dove's eyes a deen your locks your hair is like a flock o goats that appear from mount gilead

two your teeth be like a flock o sheep just shared that come up from the ship wash every one of em bears tweens and ne'er a one among em is barren three your lips be like a thread o scarlet and your speech is comely your temples be like a fiat of a pomegranate to din your locks four your nick is like the tower o built for an armoury what they hang a thousand bucklers on all shields of mighty men five your two breasts be like two young rows what be twins that feed among the lilies six till the daybreak and the shadows go away i'll git me to the mountain o mur and to the hill o frankincense seven you be hem purty my love there ain't a spot in ye eight come along with me from lebanon my spouse with me from lebanon look from the top o amana from the top o shenir and herman from the lions dens from the mountain o the leopards

9. You've stole away my heart, my sister, my spouse. You've stole away my heart with one of your eyes, with one chain of your neck. 10. How fair is your love, my sister, my spouse? How much better is your love than wine, and the smell of your intments, than all spices? 11. Your lips, O my spouse, drop like the honeycomb. There's honey and milk under your tongue, and the smell of your garments is like the smell of Lebanon. 12. A fenced garn is my sister, my spouse, a spring shut up, a fountain sealed. yield thirteen your plants be an orchard of pomegranates with pleasant fruits campfire and spicknard

spicknard and saffron calamus and cinnamon with all trees of frankincense myrrh and the alas would all be de best of spices fifteen a fountain of garns a well of living waters and streams from lebanon sixteen wake o north wind and come ye south blow upon my garn that the spices of it may flow out let my beloved come into his garn and ate his pleasant fruits chapter forty one